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By Noor
Ali, Reuters and Boniface Ongeri
Nairobi, September 05, 2009 – The threat of the fighting in Somalia
spilling over into Kenya continues to build up as militias extend
tentacles into North Eastern Province.
Al Shabaab is reaching across the border for sympathizers and recruits,
the chaos in Somalia is spilling over, fuelling a climate of suspicion
in Kenya’s remote northeastern region.
Western security agencies say Somalia has become a haven for foreign
jihadists and local Islamist militants linked to Al Qaeda who are
plotting attacks across the region and beyond. Incidents along the
border, of arrests of suspected militia trying to cross over, prove the
insurgents eye Kenya for help.
Somalis fleeing the civil war are crossing the poorly policed border
into Kenya at a rate of 7,000 a month.
That has piled pressure on the Government and aid agencies to shelter
them, and has also seen the emergence of groups that local security
officials say are linked to Somalia’s rebels.
Police said 10 young Kenyan men were arrested last month after being
recruited by two bogus charities to go to Somalia and fight for Al
Shabaab militants. Washington describes Al Shabaab as al Qaeda’s proxy
in the failed Horn of Africa state.
Insurgent groups
Somalia’s United Nations-backed administration is battling several
insurgent groups including al Shabaab. It controls just pockets of the
central region and a few parts of the capital Mogadishu.
Sheikh Abdillahi Dahir Shurie, a respected Muslim cleric in
north-eastern Kenya’s Ijara district, said it was upsetting that so many
Kenyan youths had been "misled" into believing fighting for the rebels
in Somalia was a religiously sanctioned jihad.
"Some have been recruited, others were killed there," he said. "We must
protect those who remain and stop these lies."
A Kenyan intelligence officer who declined to be named said last month’s
arrests in Eastleigh, with a high population of Somali people, were made
after months of investigation.
Humanitarian relief
He said the officials in charge of both "charities", which purported to
provide humanitarian relief in Somalia, had fled.
"We took our time, gathered information in Kenya and Somalia and
interviewed communities who are supposed to be assisted (by the
charities)," the officer told Reuters. "But they all said the two
organizations were owned and operated by al Shabaab and were used to
raise funds and co-ordinate their activities."
On the Somali border, where the Kenyan authorities have boosted their
security forces, Sheikh Shurie said he and other moderate clerics were
embracing a Government programme to try to stop Al Shabaab’s ideology
from gaining a local foothold.
The plan was launched in August by Kenyan Defence Minister Mohamed
Yussuf Haji, a local member of Parliament, and involves Imams making
sermons condemning the Somali rebels in mosques and religious schools.
The clerics have also called on the authorities to monitor closely the
work of all non-governmental groups in their area.
Recruiting youths
"The officials who allowed the agencies that were later found recruiting
youths to operate must be arrested. They received bribes, no doubt,"
said Shurie’s colleague Sheikh Mukhtar.
Haji told Reuters the Government would help educate young Kenyans.
"We will tell them the truth ... the conflict in Somalia is not a holy
war, it is evil work and evil disguised as a holy war," Haji told an
audience in the northeast last weekend.
But in the dusty border town of Mandera, where unemployment is high and
successive droughts have made life even grimmer than before, the cash
offered by militant recruiters can be hard to resist.
One local teacher, Ibrahim Mohamed, said Al Shabaab had growing
influence in the region, and that his father and other elders had chosen
not to denounce them.
"Teachers in Mandera are worried. Al Shabaab stormed a school last month
and lectured the pupils," he said. "They told them to quit formal
education and join the jihad in Somalia."
Not everyone who takes the money has gone on to fight. One young man who
now drives a taxi in Garissa town said he was approached in 2007 by a
heavily bearded recruiter.
Taxi driver
"He gave me Sh50,000 just a day after we met. The elder who introduced
him to me was very sincere. He told me I was to fight in Somalia," the
taxi driver said.
"I gave the elder half the money, threw away my phone, enjoyed myself,
chewed khat and paid fees for driving school."
Police in Kenya have said al Shabab poses a serious security threat, not
just along the border regions but also in the capital, Nairobi.
It is already suspected that some elements related to the militant group
are holed up in Nairobi.
Additional reporting by Standard Reporter
Source: The Standard, September 4, 2009
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