On the morning of October 20, as Kenyans were filing into Nyayo Stadium for the Mashujaa Day celebrations, a band of Al Shaabab militants was fleeing, and were perhaps several miles away from a small fishing town at the tip of the boundary between Kenya and lawless Somalia.
Mzee Mohammed Masha, a village elder, told the Nation at Ras Kamboni that there were no bullets fired.
“We woke up, and there was nobody,” said Mr Masha of the retreat by the rag tag Al Shabaab militia that morning, four days after Kenya’s Defence and Internal Security ministers announced the start of Operation Linda Nchi.
Later, as the rain dampened the celebrations at the stadium in Nairobi, Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced that the army had taken over Ras Kamboni township.
Ras Kamboni, pronounced Ras Chiamboni by the Bajuni and written Ras Kaambooni in Somali, is clearly a strategic town.
“Ras” is the Arabic word for “head”, and the foremost part (“head”) of this town is at the top of a steep hill, where the burnt-out shell of a tank and the remains of a flag post are the only indications that Siad Barre once ruled the seaside town.
“Kiembo” is the Bajuni word for the stalk that connects the coconut fruit to the stem of the tree. There is a strip of land that connects the “Ras” to the rest of the land, hence the name Ras Kamboni.
The buildings at the hill, whose roofs were long blown off, and windows and doors removed, are the remains of the outpost once used to monitor the land and sea by radar.
The farthest point of Ras Kamboni offers a commanding view of the ocean, while the land on either side and behind is high enough to receive signal from the mobile telephone masts at Kiunga, a town on the Kenyan side of the border.
It was therefore by no error that the Siad Barre government had elected to set up their radar here, stationed a tank to protect it, and put up the buildings to house the troops that would protect the radar.
When the Americans and Ethiopians bombarded the Islamic Courts Union out of parts of Mogadishu in 2006, the Islamists naturally settled for Ras Kamboni.
In southern Somalia, the ICU morphed into the Al Shaabab — the extremists who had foreign jihadists amongst them, and the moderates, amongst whom were Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the current Somali president.
Al-Shabaab then forged an alliance with the Al Qaeda, and they used this fishing town of an estimated 3,900 people as the base from which they could organise the training for terrorists.
Maj Seif S. Rashid, who is Kenya’s second in charge at Shakani military camp of the Southern Sector, told the Nation that Ras Kamboni is a crucial entry point to the sites in the Lakta Belt where Al Qaeda are said to have carried out their training.
Control of the beach there results in a hold over the entry point.