Clear and present danger from Somalia

By Noor Ali, Reuters and Boniface Ongeri

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 sympathisers 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.

Members of the Al Shabaab armed for battle in Mogadishu. Some of Al Shabaab’s funding is said to come from piracy. [PHOTOS: FILE/STANDARD]

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 Abdullahi 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 organisations 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