Kenyan converts return to take charge of jihadist killings

Lamu, Kenya: News that the people leading the attacks in Lamu County are Kenyans shed the spotlight on the issue of homegrown terrorists, or rented terrorism, as security experts put it.

A report prepared early this month by the National Intelligence Service said the man who led the attacks in Mpeketoni is a Kenyan by the name of Idris Kamau. The report further revealed that the commander of the Al Shabaab cell operating at the Coast region is Abu Jamal, a former Kenya Defence Forces soldier.

Although we could not establish more information from the security forces about the two Al Shabaab commanders, it is believed that they were radicalised in jihadist camps in Somalia. George Musangali, the Director of Centre for Risk Management in Africa, said the greatest terrorist threat in Kenya today is posed by Kenyan converts rather than external terrorists.

“Look at the people who have been arrested in connection with these attacks, and you will realise that they are ordinary Kenyans who are now vassals of foreign terror groups. Therefore, the first step in combating it is identifying the cells operating in the country and their financiers,” he said.

The Government has to contend with the rising number of young people who are converting to Islam for the sole purpose of joining Islamic jihadism.

International jihadism

When it joined hands with Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab stopped becoming a nationalistic movement and joined the league of international terrorist organisations, attracting the services of jihadists from all over the world.

Survivors and witnesses of the Mpeketoni massacres said the attackers seem to be a mixture of Somali, Arabs, English-speaking and indigenous people. In particular, they speak of an exceptionally tall Arab-looking man who mostly kept quiet during the attacks, indicating that he did not understand the local language.

Ali Shumelo, a resident of Pandanguo, which was attacked by the militants, said somebody kept translating to Arabic whatever the attackers were saying in Swahili to the tall man.

Residents and investigators said some local people directed the attackers on where to attack. “These people knew people by their names,” said David Kahosho, a resident of Mpeketoni.

Two years ago, the rising levels of insecurity in Mombasa was blamed on the Al Shabaab fighters returning home following the incursion by KDF into southern Somalia. These returnees are believed to be behind the hostile takeover of mosques in Nairobi and Mombasa by radical elements sympathetic to Al Shabaab.

“As we were chasing the monster out there, it seems it escaped to our own house and is now giving us a hard time,” said Richard Tuta, a security analyst.

 

Pumwani Riyadha mosque in Nairobi’s Majengo slums has been one of the richest hunting grounds for radical jihadists to recruit their foot soldiers.

Mr Musangali said poor collection or sharing of intelligence between the various security arms has enabled Al Shabaab to spread its roots in the country. “Our intelligence gathering mechanism has simply failed. If they (security forces) had intelligence about the attacks in Lamu as the Government claims, why then did they not stop it?” he said.

The militants are believed to be behind the spate of attacks that have rocked parts of the country since 2011 when KDF moved into Somalia. The worst incident was last year’s attack by the militants on the Westgate Shopping Mall in the heart of Nairobi, which claimed 67 lives. It is instructive to note that since the Lamu attacks began, other parts of the country that had been hit by grenades have enjoyed relative calm.

Poor intelligence

“My thinking is that the same cell that was attacking Nairobi is the same one at work in Lamu. If that is the case, then it indicates that Al Shabaab is in reality a small entity in Kenya. But it has thrived because of our poor intelligence gathering system,” said Mr Tuta.

It is worth noting that so far only one of these converts has freely admitted to joining Al Shabaab for the purposes of waging jihad. Elgiva Bwire, alias Mohamed Seif, was jailed for life in 2011 after police raided his house in Kayole, Nairobi, and recovered a cache of weapons, including guns and hand grenades. He confessed to security forces to being a member of Al Shabaab and said he had undergone training in Somalia.

Tuta said the new converts are usually the hardest to contain. “They think they can only prove their true Islamic credentials by performing extreme acts of violence,” he said.

Converted Al Shabaab Islamists from Kenya were heavily implicated in the 2010 attacks in Kampala, Uganda, which killed 76 people. Kenyan Hussein Hassan Agade was said to be the mastermind of the attacks. Known as Felix Khaemba, he ferried the suicide bombers to the scene of attacks.

Mr Agade converted to Islam in 1997 and is believed to have gone through training in Al Shabaab camps in Somalia between 2009 and 2010. He belonged to a preaching group named Da’awa Islamiya, which does comparative teaching between the Bible and the Quran. The group was mainly composed of new converted recruits from upcountry.