From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Aug 27 2009 - 09:16:00 EDT
How Kenya's 'Little Mogadishu' became a hub for Somali militants
The Somali enclave of Eastleigh in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, is now a
recruiting and financial center for hardline Islamists fighting in
neighboring Somalia.
By Heba Aly | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the August 27, 2009 edition
Eastleigh, Kenya - The streets of Eastleigh, a Somali enclave of Kenya's
capital, Nairobi, are crowded and dirty. Sewage and rotting garbage flow
through gullies. Police are virtually nonexistent; restaurants are locked,
even when open, for safety reasons; and guns are readily available for sale
at the market.
No one ever said "Little Mogadishu" was paradise, but now the sprawling
neighborhood has become a hub of financing and recruiting for militant
Islamists waging holy war in neighboring Somalia, according to residents,
security analysts, and diplomats.
"Those who kill people in Somalia are also here - scattered all over the
place," says an elderly Sufi Muslim sheikh matter-of-factly. "This is the
hotspot of the Somali fundamentalism.... They are recruiting right here in
Nairobi."
In the latest chapter in a civil war that has raged since 1991, Somalia's
radical insurgents this week rejected the Western-backed transitional
government's call for a cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Militant and moderate Islamists are battling for control of the
rubble-strewn streets of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, fighting that has
forced more than 1.4 million people to flee their homes and caused what the
United Nations on Wednesday called the country's worst humanitarian crisis
in 18 years of war.
But here in Eastleigh, the war takes a different form. Little Mogadishu has
become a port through which Somali insurgents raise money and recruit
fighters, especially for the militant group, Al Shabab, which has been
labeled an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization by the US government.
"What we know is that Al Shabab is very popular in Eastleigh," says Roland
Marchal, senior research fellow at the Paris-based National Center for
Scientific Research. "Al Shabab has been able at different moments to bring
a number of people in Eastleigh to fight in Somalia. It's very likely that a
number of economic operators in Eastleigh try to collect money and support
this organization."
Why young Somali-Kenyans join militants
Outside a small green-gated home in Eastleigh, the elderly sheikh - who
declined to be named due to the grave threat to anyone talking about Somali
militant operations - says agents of Somali insurgents have recruited from
across the country dozens of Somali-Kenyans, most in their early 20s, who
are missing and presumed dead in Somalia. Though their parents were
moderate, a lack of employment or alternatives led them to become students
of madrassas (religious schools), where they adopted more extreme
ideologies, he says. (Read our in-depth story:
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0714/p10s01-woaf.html> How one youth was
drawn to jihad in Somalia.)
Estimates of the number of recruited Kenyans range from dozens to thousands,
most - but not all - Somali-Kenyans. The insurgency benefits from an
effective recruitment network that works out of Eastleigh. Diplomats say
recruiters use a combination of money and brainwashing to pull in the
youths, many of them from refugee camps and areas along the Somali border.
"These young men have no ID papers, no future," says the sheikh. "The only
future they see is blowing themselves up and going to heaven." Insurgents in
Somalia are increasingly relying on suicide bomb attacks in their
offensives.
One woman, the sheikh says, lost her 12-year-old son. She went looking for
him in Somalia's southern port town of Kismayo, under insurgent control, and
found him training to be a suicide bomber. She returned home emptyhanded.
"If she'd tried to bring him, she'd be killed," the sheikh says.
In Somalia, moderate Sufis, belonging to a traditionally peaceful group
called Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama'a, have taken up arms to defend their vision of
Islam against militant groups, like Al Shabab, that are not only fighting
the government, but also desecrating Sufi graves and attacking their more
moderate views.
In Kenya, Sufis are also fighting back, but not with guns. Instead, they are
trying to keep their children alive through a "counterjihad."
"We are trying to teach our children at home. We don't even send them to
madrassas.... We don't trust [the madrassas] with our children," says the
sheikh. "If they knew you were writing this, you'd go back without a head."
How money flows through Eastleigh
According to a regional analyst who has studied Somalia for nearly two
decades but cannot be named because his work is too politically and
diplomatically sensitive, up to $3 million passes through Eastleigh to
Somalia every year.
The money comes from businessmen who support the insurgency, from mosques
that fundraise, and from foreign donors who sometimes funnel it through
Eastleigh. Using an informal money transfer system called hawala, Somalis in
any part of the world can make money available in Eastleigh within minutes.
>From there, it can be carried north to the porous and badly guarded
Kenya-Somalia border. The cash funds anything from guns to fuel to uniforms.
The transfers are hard to track, Mr. Marchal says, because they are
generally small payments that do not attract much attention.
But money also gets to Somalia in other ways. He lays out an example:
Sympathizers of insurgents knowingly buy sugar from certain vendors in
Kenya. They send that sugar to Somalia, where it is resold. None of these
activities are illegal, but "then the money disappears," Marchal says. "It's
very efficient.... There is no profit, no fee. [All the money] goes to the
organization. This is untraceable for anybody."
No entity in Eastleigh has been under more suspicion than the Sixth Street
mosque, a small, unimposing building on top of a FedEx shop, hidden among
laundry-cluttered balconies.
The mosque is among Al Shabab's main fundraisers in Eastleigh, according to
a Nairobi-based official of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in
Somalia who spoke anonymously because he is not authorized to talk to the
media.
"Sixth Street mosque has a history of supporting militant Islamist causes in
Somalia since 1991," says the regional analyst. Its leader, Sheikh Umall,
has called the Somali government an "infidel government" and a "puppet of
foreign interests," he says. But knowing he is a person of interest to the
US, Kenya, the AU, and the UN, Umall has sung a more moderate tune in recent
months.
Fighters without borders
Unconfirmed numbers gathered by the Institute for Security Studies in Kenya
suggest that as many as 1 in every 10 refugees crossing the border from
Somalia into Kenya are members of Al Shabab, which has used severe forms of
sharia, or Islamic law, such as amputating the hands of thieves and stoning
women accused of adultery.
Al Shabab uses Eastleigh to treat its wounded and run madrassas, from which
children often disappear, says the AU official.
"They have agents who are here, who brainwash these kids, who end up going
there [to Somalia to fight]," he says. "It has become problematic."
The AU and UN say Somali-Kenyan recruits are joined by others from Rwanda,
Tanzania, Uganda, even the United States and Europe - many of whom enter
Somalia through Nairobi, according to analysts. Until recently, you could
get a fake Somali passport in Eastleigh's Garisa Lodge mall in minutes.
Government plays down Eastleigh concerns
In June, the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation reported that a Kenyan named
Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan leads a group of 180 foreigners in Somalia, called
al-Muhajirun, fighting alongside the Somali insurgents and connected to the
global terrorist group Al Qaeda.
But the Kenyan government denies there is much of a problem.
"We don't believe Kenyans have gone to Somalia or have been recruited to go
to Somalia," says Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan government spokesman. "We
received reports of attempted recruitment, [but] ... because of our security
apparatus, we've made it impossible for them."
In late 2006, when Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia to overthrow Islamists
who had taken over, Kenya took precautionary measures, he says. It closed
its border with Somalia, allowing only aid workers to enter Somalia from
Kenya. The border is heavily patrolled by police, military, and helicopters
24 hours a day, and the government is using satellite technology to monitor
vehicles crossing it, says Mr. Mutua.
Reports of recruitment are "mere speculation," he adds, as Kenya has used
"very high intelligence" to infiltrate the Somali community and disband any
recruiting circles.
Kenyan police spokesman Erick Kirathe says Eastleigh is under high
surveillance - both overt and covert - because it is a poorer, more-crowded
neighborhood where crime is more likely.
"It is much better policed than is apparent," he says. "Even visibly, there
is much more police presence than in other areas."
Because the attention it has received makes it unappealing to terrorists, he
argues, Eastleigh is not as threatening as people think.
Mr. Kirathe says no one has been arrested for supporting the Somali
insurgency, and "we really don't consider Eastleigh a major risk as of yet."
"It's a point of concern," Mutua adds, "but we feel that we've got the
situation under control."
Others beg to differ
Some observers strongly disagree. They say recruitment in Kenya is
longstanding and widespread.
"We all know it's happening," one diplomat in Nairobi says, adding that the
Kenyan government is unable or unwilling to stop it. The border may be
officially closed, but even Mutua admits people are able to sneak through.
But sources say the Kenyan government is beginning to take the threat more
seriously. "They are panicking," the diplomat says. "They were not doing
their best. Now the threat to Kenya is higher than ever. They have to do
something."
It seems the government is starting to feel that way, too. But it remains
divided. Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0625/p06s09-wogn.html> have called for
sending in troops, as Ethiopia had done, to defend the Somali government.
"It will be most inappropriate and inadvisable to do nothing when our
national security and regional stability is threatened," Mr. Wetangula said
recently.
Authorities fear a backlash
But with hundreds of thousands of Somalis living in Kenya, strong
involvement by the government and any taking of sides could expose Kenya to
a big risk. Insurgents have already threatened to retaliate within Kenya if
attacked.
"There's a reluctance to really mess with the Somalis," the regional analyst
says.
The fear is not only on the political level. Insurgents are perceived to
have such a presence in Kenya that even average citizens are wary of
providing authorities with information on their operations. In Nairobi,
activists who speak out against Somali extremists are threatened.
"Because I'm not one of them, then I'm on the other side," says a Somali
civil society activist who goes by the name Madobe. He calls the Somali
Islamist movement a "cancer spreading very fast," and the insurgents
"sub-human." He believes they are tapping his phone and e-mail. "Anytime, I
expect a very big knife in my back."
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