(16. Februar 2012) Elements in the army, led by senior Kenyan Somali officers and politicians, including Minister of State for Defense Yusuf Haji, had long desired to intervene. They were eager to test Kenya’s well-equipped but little-used army in war conditions, to advance the interests of their own Ogadeni sub-clans in Jubaland, to gain personally from the stabilization of trade in cattle and other commodities, to capture the port of Kismayu, and to establish a Kenya-dominated buffer zone south of the River Juba, driving al Shabaab into hostile terrain north of the river.