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Drugs menace that won’t just go away amid latest crackdown

 Some of the 16 youths addicted to drugs surrender to the government during a public meeting at Likoni in Mombasa County on Wednesday 9th September 2015. Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa warned the officers collaborating with drug barons and directed the area DCIO to ensure all drug barons are arrested and charged in court. Photo/Kelvin Karani

That drug abuse has enslaved thousands of youths and arrested socio-economic development at the Kenyan Coast is not in doubt.

First time visitors to the coastal counties of Mombasa, Kwale and Kilifi are often bewildered by the dreadful images of young men and women wasting away in abandoned buildings and beaches, inhaling, snorting or injecting narcotics.

But for local residents and activists, the epidemic is almost a normal occurrence.

Most analysts believe that proximity to the sea shore and entry ports that connect the region to major international trade routes, makes the Kenyan Coast more vulnerable to narcotics, especially heroin from South East Asia and South America.

Failure to enforce the rule of law, corruption within the security agencies and complicity by top police officers make it easier for drug barons to ply their trade unhindered.

Sometimes, dutiful police officers who attempt to fight the scourge get killed, forcing their peers to play along and live in fear of the drug barons.

Drug factories

To show just how complacent the police force is, the entire establishment of the anti-narcotics police at the Coast was disbanded so that two members of the notorious Akasha clan could be arrested last November.

More so, local law enforcers had to enlist the help of US special police who stormed the Akasha residence and arrested two of the slain baron’s sons, Indian convicted drug felon Vijay Goswami and Pakistan suspect Gulam Hussein who are now fighting extradition to the US.

The four are wanted in the US for allegedly conspiring to ship at least 98kg of high-grade heroin and methamphetamine to the US through Kenya.

Increasingly, the Coast is not just a route for manufactured or raw drugs. Reports indicate that clandestine factories are being used to purify and modify narcotics, which are then ferried through private yachts and unpoliced ports.

In Mombasa, dazed youth are commonly found in neglected structures and go-downs in Shimanzi and Changamwe and in shanties dotting the shores of the Indian Ocean. These are the harrowing established drug hangouts for hard drugs addicts.

The brave ones operate from Mombasa’s Old Town, Majengo and Shimanzi where they have formed knife-wielding gangs, which police believe are behind attacks and spiraling robbery cases on the island.

But many more addicts have opted to hide in dens in Mombasa’ sprawling slums like Magodoroni in Kisauni where peddlers, addicts and their families live in a sorrowful cycle of poverty and sadness.

Petrified parents

Parents are stigmatised and overly petrified that their addicted children could either be killed by rival drug gangs, shot dead by the police or ultimately die a gradual slow and painful death from the heroin they inject into their bodies.

According to the Ministry of Health, the use of these illicit drugs, and particularly injecting drug use, is associated with adverse public health consequences that include risk of disease transmission like HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis and other sexually transmitted infections.

In a statement last week, the ministry said the use of drugs have other physical and psychosocial problems and may even lead to premature death.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates there are close to 10 million of risky injections are practised in Kenya annually. The Health Ministry states that while the 2008/09 Modes of Transmission Study attributed 3.6 per cent of all new HIV infections in Kenya to injecting drug use, the contribution to new infections in the Coast region is substantially higher at 17 per cent.

The Standard on Saturday met Halima Ahmed, 22, at Mombasa’s Old Town. Halima was once an attractive girl with clear skin, good teeth and dreamed of a good life as a fashion designer. Her pictures attests to her past beauty. She is currently a pale shadow of her former self.

Her spotty face and skin with dreadful blackheads, gaunt, wrinkled and wild eyes are the horrifying features which shockingly exaggerates her age due constant abuse of heroin.

Anti-drug campaigners call the condition acne vulgaris, a common feature of most addicts.

“Don’t take pictures. I don’t want to be arrested and die in prison,” Halima says.

She said she had just escaped a police dragnet at Shimanzi following President Uhuru Kenyatta’s directive to authorities to crack down on narcotics.

The Ministry of Health estimates that 18,327 people in Kenya are currently injecting drugs, 92 per cent of them are addicted to heroin. It further states that coast region harbours almost half of all people who inject drugs (PWID).

Reports of possible deaths from withdrawal symptoms were reported in Kwale after the anti-narcotics swoop was extended following the President’s order a fortnight ago.

“The addicts are now being victimised through these raids. These are sick people who need medical help,” said Abbas Mwanyi, Programme Coordinator of anti-drugs campaigner, Reach Out Centre.

Mwanyi said the effects of the withdrawal depends on the levels of addiction, adding that “we fear that if the swoop is haphazardly carried out, there would be deaths.”

Mahfudh Mbaruk, whose son almost died of heroin abuse, describes the frustration most parents undergo and hopes the government would rid the region of the menace once and for all.

Dark days

“He was a strong and hearty boy but his body has been consumed by the drugs. He was rehabilitated but has gone back to his old ways of nicking everything in sight to sustain his habit,” said Mbaruk.

Florence Akumu, a 33-year-old mother of three who confessed that she was hooked to heroin, says she injects a hypodermic needle is on the head and private parts.

“These are dark days indeed,” Shariff Sultan, a resident of Stage ya Paka in Kisauni sums up the frustration of many parents in the area whose children have been caught up in the drug menace.

Police say more than 150 addicts have been arrested across the Coast since President Kenyatta’s directive on narcotics, but debate is raging on who should be targeted in the swoop.

“This epidemic is being treated as a criminal problem while the big traders who supply the narcotics have been left scot-free,” said Julius Ogogoh, a human rights activist.

Ogogoh said the addicts were not only physically hurt, but also emotionally and economically affected and require help beyond treatment.

President Kenyatta also directed security officers to hunt and arrest drug barons, saying addicts are “sick people that need treatment.”

“We want the efforts to combat the narcotics to focus on the dealers that supply our youths. These youths are sick people that need our help to get treatment,” said the President.

But Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho insists that the arrest of the addicts and peddlers would lead the security forces to the barons.

The war against drug barons in Mombasa has been a dangerous one. The syndicate has in the past fought back. In 2011, several people were injured when a peaceful anti-drugs protest in Mombasa was disrupted by gunshots.

In 2005, Hassan Abdillahi, the District Criminal Officer at the Port of Mombasa, was killed in what the police linked to his investigation into drugs trafficking through the port.

In August 2010, Ali Aboud, a flying Squad police officer, was shot dead while driving along Al Nassar Road in Mombasa. Police linked his death to his probe on narcotics.

On August 20 last year, Hassan Guti alias Nasralla, who police said was key leader of drug peddlers and gangs in Majengo was shot at close range outside Arya Nursery and Primary School while driving his car.

The killing sparked violence by dreaded drug gangs Bundesliga, Bafana Bafana and Waiyo based in Majengo, Mwembe Tayari and Old Town who camouflaged as radical youths from Musa mosque.

Police then linked the gangs to the killing of a lecturer of a local institution, David Munga. Five residents were injured.

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