The past few weeks have been dominated by military issues: AMISOM’s ongoing campaign and Kenya’s fight against Al Shabaab. On 8 November, Lord Howell, the Foreign Office Minister, made clear our support for Kenya in the House of Lords. Kenya bears much of the burden of the threat emanating from Somalia and the UK shares Kenya’s concerns about the threat to its national and international security.
The past few days, however, have been a moment to remember the fallen, including those seeking to establish peace, and others who have fallen victim to Somalia’s civil war. Friday was Armistice Day – when, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, people across the UK stop to mark the moment when the guns fell silent at the end of World War I. Sunday was Remembrance Sunday when, at war memorials and cenotaphs around the world, people gather to remember those brave servicemen and women who have died in conflict.
As the Ugandan High Commissioner led the tributes at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery on Sunday, I not only reflected on those that fallen in the two World Wars, but also those friends and family that have served in more recent conflicts. My thoughts also turned to the bravery and commitment shown by the Ugandan and Burundian soldiers serving in AMISOM and with the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu. And I reflected on the many other, often nameless, victims of conflict in Somalia – the starving, the displaced and those suffering at the hands of Al Shabaab.
So it is with Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’ that I want to end this blog. First published in 1914, the poem was written to honour the dead of World War I. But its words ring as true today as they did in 1914 – and are a powerful reminder that our Act of Remembrance is not just for those that died in two World Wars, nor simply for those outstanding British service personnel that have died in recent conflicts and those that continue to serve. Our Remembrance Day is also to pay tribute to those brave and dedicated soldiers in AMISOM and the TFG that have paid the ultimate sacrifice. We will remember them.
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn;
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”