Since the start of the Somalia war, there are at least two unique and intriguing cases in the capture of dozens of towns in southern Somalia.
These two victories can be the pride of any military in the world.
The most publicised is the victory at the port city of Kismayu in September 2012 codenamed Operation Sledge Hammer.
This was achieved through a seaborne (amphibious) landing, the first such operation by an African military.
During Operation Sledge Hammer, troops in three battle groups and a team of Special Forces, who were critical in spearheading the vanguard unit to secure the landing zone, captured the port city without much fanfare.
Actually by the time they arrived in Kismayu, Al-Shabaab militants had run away, leaving only pockets of resistance that were overrun.
The second intriguing capture of a town in the five-year war is that of Badhadhe, a small town in the Gedo region of southern Somalia full of Al-Shabaab militants that KDF retreated from after the El Adde attack.
Perhaps the reason not much has been heard about it is because it was captured by special forces.
The men who captured Badhadhe were drawn from KDF’s Special Operations Regiment (SOR), which includes troops from a variety of Kenya’s best units, whose numbers have grown since 2011.
While most of their operations remain classified, SOR operators have been used more aggressively in the past five years than ever before.
“Our revolution started with Somalia,” a commanding officer in one of the elite units, who spoke in confidence, told the SundayNation.
The elite soldiers train to track a target, and finish him off without being detected.
They are highly trained, well equipped, and experts in weapons, intelligence gathering and battlefield medicine.
Before the start of the Somali war, the battle-hardened Kenya Army’s 20th Para which ran to the rescue of besieged KDF troops during the El Adde attack in January, was the only known unit of Kenya’s elite forces.