From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Oct 09 2009 - 13:24:48 EDT
Somali govt recruiting Kenyans for war - residents
Fri Oct 9, 2009 12:41pm GMT
* Youths offered $400 a month to fight
* Local police commander discounts report
(Adds Somali information minister, paragraph 13)
By Noor Ali
ISIOLO, Kenya, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Somalia's U.N.-backed government has
recruited more than 170 young Kenyans and former servicemen to help it fight
rebels in the failed Horn of Africa state, local leaders in eastern Kenya
said.
Mohamed Gabow, the mayor of Garissa, told Reuters the enrolment of ethnic
Somali Kenyans was being conducted at a home in Bulla Iftin village, on the
outskirts of his town.
"The recruitment is not a secret. Those involved are not worried. They are
going around all the villages to announce the exercise," Gabow said in an
interview late on Thursday.
Gabow called for there to be an investigation.
"We are raising an alarm. Our community must not be used to kill its kin or
risk the lives of its people."
Local police commander Paul Mukoma dismissed the report as a rumour and said
no official complaint had been lodged.
"No local leader or any parent has come forward to inform us about any such
reports," he told Reuters.
Western donors agreed at a meeting in Brussels in April to give Somali
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's administration nearly $214 million to help
build up a police force of some 10,000 personnel and a 5,000-strong security
force.
But less than a third of the aid pledged to help end 18 years of lawlessness
in the country and in waters off its coast has been received, U.N. officials
say.
Mohamed Khalif, a human rights activist in Garissa, said more than 300
Kenyans had enrolled to fight for Ahmed's government, which is battling a
stubborn Islamist insurgency.
But he said only about half of that number had so far left to fight, with
the rest apparently succumbing to pressure from family and friends not to
cross the border and take up arms.
Washington accuses one of Somalia's two main rebel groups -- al Shabaab --
of being al Qaeda's proxy in the country.
"We have not asked Kenya to recruit soldiers for us," Somalia's Information
Minister, Dahir Mohamud Gelle, told Reuters in Mogadishu. "(Kenya's)
Northeastern province where the soldiers are being recruited is not part of
Somalia."
Locals say finding more willing gunmen will not be hard for Somali
authorities in a region where marginalisation and drought for a fifth year
running is forcing many into severe hunger.
One security source in the area said recruits were being offered 30,000
shillings ($400) a month, while experienced former Kenyan servicemen were
being offered 40,000 shillings.
"Youths in this province are desperate. They can get more who are ready to
take any risk just to earn a living," Khalif told Reuters. "Some have joined
al Shabaab. Many have been killed. They are travelling to their graveyards
in Somalia." (Additional reporting by Abdi Guled in Mogadishu; Writing by
Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Daniel Wallis) ($1=75.00 Kenyan Shilling)
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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