INSIGHT-Kenya needs to win war of ideas to stop Islamist advance
Sun Dec 7, 2014 8:00am GMT
* Somali Islamist raids targeted border, coast this year
* President says mosques "fertile places" for militants
* Police crackdown stokes Muslim youth anger
* Moderate Muslims say government failing to protect them
By Drazen Jorgic and Edmund Blair
MOMBASA/NAIROBI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Kenya must win a battle against militant
ideology that is seeping in from its northern neighbour and spreading to
Muslim youths at home if it is to stop Somali Islamists extending their
reach in east Africa.
After two attacks in 10 days by Somalia's al Shabaab group that killed more
than 60 people, President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed to step up his "war on
terror" to halt raids across the porous border and stop any dream of making
an Islamic Caliphate.
In Somalia, he can point to military gains where Kenyan and other African
troops have retaken territory from al Shabaab, but he faces a more stubborn
enemy on home soil where security forces are trying to drive out militancy
from mosques.
"The only language these kafirs (non-Muslims) can understand is the bullet
from the AK-47 rifle," a Kenyan preacher told worshippers at Mombasa's Mina
mosque last month before police shut it down - with three others - detaining
about 100 youths.
Such tough tactics may temporarily silence the radical voices but it also
fuels anger that helps militants find new recruits and deepens the homegrown
threat, Muslim activists say.
This is where al Shabaab may have a trump card. While it has been driven out
of major Somali strongholds, a military offensive in Somalia has not stopped
the group spreading its ideology and finding enough loyal foot soldiers for
attacks that need little more than dedication to the cause and a few rifles.
Cohorts of frustrated and often jobless Muslim youths in the sweltering port
city of Mombasa and along the coast, where most Kenyan Muslims live, offer
fertile ground for the Islamists.
FIREBRAND SERMONS
"The government needs to sit down and understand these people," said Hussein
Khalid of Haki Africa, a group that works to promote dialogue with Muslim
communities. "It always wants to use force and this merely pushes people
away."
Alarmed by sermons of firebrand imams and radicalised youths emerging from
mosques in Mombasa, police have in the past month shut four places of
worship and made mass arrests. This has been done before but not on such
scale.
"We want to arrest the situation from spilling over to other mosques," said
Mombasa County police commander Robert Kitur.
Al Shabaab said it launched recent raids partly to punish Kenya for such
acts of "aggression" and promised to continue.
Losing territory in Somalia has not prevented al Shabaab exploiting its
guerrilla skills. It may even free up resources.
"Now they are not ruling such large chunks of Somalia, they no longer have
to pay for a shadow government," said a diplomat. "You can mount an
insurgency for really not very much money."
Deepening worries for the authorities is a video posted on YouTube this week
with an address by Ahmad Iman Ali, a Kenyan believed to head al Hijra, the
local branch of al Shabaab. He promised to target "non-believers" to avenge
the suffering of Muslims in Mombasa, where Ali studied under a radical
preacher.
"Wait and see, it is just a matter of time," Ali said as a group of men
toting AK-47 rifles shouted: "Bullets and daggers have created warriors. Let
us spread this to all mosques."
In 2007, Ali and his young supporters took over a Nairobi mosque, creating a
hotbed of militancy. Radicals have done the same in Mombasa, defying
repeated police crackdowns.
"It has never worked anywhere in the world," Ali Hassan Joho, Mombasa County
Governor, told Reuters of his concerns about police strategy. "This is an
ideological battle, therefore you cannot win it in any other way besides
engagement."
LIVING IN FEAR
Such worries are not yet turning into action. Haki Africa's Khalid said
meetings between officials and the Muslim community had thrashed out
strategy but there had been no "concrete meetings to confirm or at least
agree on how to roll that out."
Rattled by border raids in the north and other al Shabaab attacks this year
along the coast, Kenyatta urged the Muslim community to help root out
Kenya's militant "collaborators".
But many moderate Muslim preachers have been cowed. In November, Sheikh
Salim Bakari Mwarangi, who supported moves to stamp out radicalism, was shot
dead by unknown assailants. Another moderate leader was killed in June.
"There is a very big sense of fear and people think it's not worth
challenging these (radical) people," said Mudhar Khitamy, coast chairman of
the Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims.
When Mombasa's Mina mosque was shuttered, about a dozen young men chanting
"Allahu akbar", or "God is greatest", marched through the street and hacked
to death a Christian shopkeeper.
Kenya needs rethink strategy, said a Western diplomat: "They're not reaching
the population they are trying to reach." (Additional reporting by Joseph
Akwiri in Mombasa; editing by Anna Willard)