So­mali and African forces aim to drive al Shabaab Is­lamist mil­i­tants out of one of the last ma­jor tracts of ter­ri­tory in south­ern So­ma­lia that the group still holds and which it uses to launch at­tacks, the So­mali prime min­is­ter said on Thurs­day.

Omar Sharmarke also told Reuters he was pressing Kenya to reopen Somali money transfer firms that are a lifeline to many in Somalia but whose licences Nairobi suspended after al Shabaab raided a north Kenyan university this month killing 148 people.

Al Shabaab has been dri­ven out of ma­jor towns and coastal strong­holds since an African Union peace­keep­ing force and the So­mali na­tional army launched an of­fen­sive last year.

But the group, which wants to top­ple So­ma­li­a’s West­ern-backed gov­ern­ment, still holds rural ar­eas, such as the Juba val­ley cor­ri­dor that leads to the strate­gic south­ern port of Kismayu, where a Kenyan con­tin­gent of AU troops is based.

“There is a cor­ri­dor they use as a launch­ing pad,” Shar­marke said in an in­ter­view. “There are ef­forts to close down this cor­ri­dor which they have been us­ing for the last few years.”

He did not give a time­line for any new op­er­a­tion.

To keep mil­i­tants out of Kenya, So­ma­li­a’s south­ern neigh­bour is im­prov­ing bor­der se­cu­rity, in­clud­ing build­ing new ob­ser­va­tion posts and bar­ri­ers, of­ten re­ferred to as a “wall”. Shar­marke said root­ing out the mil­i­tants was a bet­ter tac­tic.

“We have to close the vac­u­ums they use as a launch­ing pads rather than put a wall be­tween fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties,” Shar­marke said in Nairobi af­ter talks with Kenyan For­eign Min­is­ter Am­ina Mo­hamed.

The So­mali prime min­is­ter also said Kenya was work­ing on new reg­u­la­tions so So­mali money trans­fer firms, known as “hawalas”, could be re­opened, adding Kenya’s cen­tral bank was lead­ing the process. He said tem­po­rary mea­sures were be­ing con­sid­ered while per­ma­nent rules were be­ing drawn up, but did not in­di­cate when the trans­fer firms would be per­mit­ted to re­open.

“Mil­lions de­pend on hawalas and there are now ef­forts to see whether, in the in­terim, these hawalas could be opened.”

Kenya’s cen­tral bank had no com­ment on the re­marks but re­ferred to an ear­lier state­ment that noted con­cerns about in­for­mal re­mit­tance firms and “the global chal­lenges of money laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing.”

Many of the re­mit­tance firms have also been shut down in the United States and other West­ern na­tions be­cause of rules aimed at pre­vent­ing cash reach­ing al Shabaab.

Shar­marke said he planned to visit Wash­ing­ton in the next few weeks to dis­cuss the is­sue, while his gov­ern­ment planned to push through new So­mali anti-money laun­der­ing leg­is­la­tion.

Kenya has also an­nounced a three month timetable to close Dadaab, a camp where some 335,000 So­mali refugees are housed.

Shar­marke said any ac­tion to repa­tri­ate the refugees should be done re­spon­si­bly and only when it was safe. A botched repa­tri­a­tion would help the mil­i­tants by alien­at­ing peo­ple, he said.

“We can­not play into the hands of al Shabaab and other ter­ror­ists out there. We should not cre­ate po­lit­i­cal dis­con­tent out of this repa­tri­a­tion,” he said.