Optimistic Somalis return to rebuild their homeland

By MALKHADIR M MUHUMED

KENYA: Hundreds of Somali refugees are now returning to their war-torn homeland, saying they’re running away from insecurity, police harassment and public hostility towards them in Kenya.

Some are simply saying they felt homesick, especially after the election of a new, wildly popular president who many Somalis believe would haul their Horn of Africa nation out of more than two decades of lawlessness.

 “They’re returning because of the good news in their country,” said Somalia’s Ambassador to Kenya Mohamed Ali Nur, who last week touted his country as a new front for investment.

The UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said in April alone, about 2,100 Somali refugees returned to Somalia, and in total about 16,000 people left Kenya in the first four months of this year. But the number of refugees exiting voluntarily via Jomo Kenyatta International Airport points to a high figure.

The current exodus first started just days after Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs late last year asked urban refugees and asylum seekers to quit towns and go to UN camps in the northern parts of the country. Security forces have intensified operations in neighbourhoods mainly populated by Somalis, pulling up trucks and pickups along the main streets to arrest people who were also up in arms against officers they consider as extortionists and bribe-seekers.

Police officers arrested and charged hundreds of Eastleigh residents with public order offenses without any evidence, before the courts ordered their release, said a scathing report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch released last week.

The group’s report accused security forces of committing abuses, including rape, beatings, and arbitrary detention against hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers who live in Eastleigh. It also said the motive of the “wave of abuses,” which lasted between mid-November to late January, may had been to retaliate for some 30 attacks on law enforcement officials and civilians that rocked the country since October 2011, when Kenya sent its troops to Somalia.

Although the decision to return to Somalia is mainly voluntary, it also has been a hard choice for many, for it split family members, disrupted children’s education and left a bitter taste in the mouths of many who opted for and loved Kenya after their country descended into lawlessness in 1991. Citing insecurity, hundreds of Somali refugees at Dadaab refugee camps are also returning to Somalia.

 “Who will come to our rescue, if we were arrested,” said Asha Mohamed Abdille, who fled from Mogadishu in 2010 after shrapnel hit her son in the back of his head.

Abdille said she sold three acres of land for $300 to come to Kenya, but found that life in Nairobi was far from what she envisioned.

 “We’ve met great people in Kenya and we’re grateful for them. But living here is very difficult, especially when you’re without documents,” said Abdille, while her son Faysal, now 18-years-old, stood by her side. “I have God in Mogadishu,” she replied when asked if someone was receiving her at Mogadishu airport. “There is hope in my country.”