US sec­re­tary of state John Kerry who ar­rived in the So­mali cap­i­tal Tues­day has held talks with So­mali of­fi­cials, telling them to make Mo­gadishu more peace­ful, so that he can go down to down­town on his next ar­rival.

His ar­rival marks a new dawn for So­ma­lia which is strug­gling to con­tain the deadly in­sur­gency led by the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab group. He high­lighted the US’s de­sire of sup­port­ing So­ma­lia to re­store peace and sta­bil­ity af­ter decades of war.

Mr. Kerry then flew to Djibouti, a tiny horn of Africa nation which hosts the US’s largest military base. “Great progress has been made, and you have all contributed to that progress … most importantly, obviously, the need to provide your citizens with the safety and security that they want and need.” He
told Somali leaders at the airport.

His visit, the first by a US sec­re­tary in So­ma­lia is parts of a visit he paid to East Africa, a re­gion which seen the rise of Is­lamic in­sur­gency that killed hun­dreds of the re­gion’s cit­i­zens for the past few years.

Be­fore his So­ma­lia visit, Kerry has spent two days in Kenya where he held talks with pres­i­dent Uhuru Keny­atta, con­vinc­ing Kenya to back down its con­tro­ver­sial plan to repa­tri­at­ing So­mali refugees in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp in Kenya.

Dur­ing his talks with the So­mali pres­i­dent, Mr. Kerry high­lighted the im­por­tance of de­feat­ing AL-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda branch which lost large grounds to the US-funded African Union forces and So­mali forces.

So­ma­lia is re­cov­er­ing from decades of war that turned the horn of Africa into a dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ist hub, rais­ing con­cerns by west­ern na­tions who be­lieve it could serve as a launch­ing pad for mil­i­tants to
strike west­ern tar­gets.

The US’s new in­volve­ment in So­ma­lia opens a new page for the US which pulled out of its troops from So­ma­lia in 1991 af­ter mili­tias shot down Black Hawk down, an in­ci­dent which forces the US to dis­en­gage So­ma­lia for decades.

The US has re­cently ap­pointed a new am­bas­sador So­ma­lia; how­ever, they are yet to open the em­bassy, ap­par­ently for se­cu­rity rea­sons.