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Jul 7, 2010

Kenya's constitutional vote on sharia courts pits Muslims against Christians

Kenyans protest the proposed constitution, which goes for a vote next month. Ten percent of the country is Muslim. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Wednesday, July 7, 2010; A01

NAIROBI -- For 13 years, Judge Mudhar Ahmed has worked in relative obscurity, issuing Muslim marriage certificates, divorcing Muslim couples and weighing in on Muslim inheritance disputes. Now, he's facing an issue unlike any he has seen. He has one word to describe it: "Islamophobia."

Ahmed is the head of Nairobi's Kadhis Court, one of 17 judicial bodies that administer sharia, or Islamic law, to Kenya's Muslim minority. The courts were enshrined in the nation's constitution decades ago, but Christian leaders are seeking to remove them from a proposed new constitution, scheduled for a referendum Aug. 4. They argue that Kenya is a secular state and that Muslims should not receive special privileges.

Muslim leaders say the maneuvers are part of an agenda to deny their community rights and undermine their beliefs. "They are creating hatred between Muslims and Christians," said Ahmed, his soft voice hardening.

The tussle portends a larger collision between Islam and Christianity in Kenya, a vital U.S. ally in a region where Washington is quietly fighting the growth of Islamic radicalism. Many Kenyans are concerned that the tensions, if not contained, could deepen political fissures and spawn the sort of communal upheaval that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2008 after elections.

In this predominantly Christian nation, Christians are worried about a Muslim community that is growing in numbers and influence, and they have been vocally backed by U.S.-based Christian groups. Muslims are wary of the rising power of fundamentalist Christian organizations backed by American Christians.

The 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania frayed relations between Christians and Muslims. Those links have further eroded in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as concerns about Islamic radicalization and terrorism grew in this East African country.

Many Kenyans today fear that the civil war in neighboring Somalia, where the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militia is seeking to overthrow the U.S.-backed government, could spread into Kenya. A massive influx of Somali refugees, almost all Muslim, has spawned xenophobia and extended misconceptions of Islam.

"The kadhis courts issue is a red herring," said Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. "They feed into historical prejudices on both sides and misperceptions which has increased in the last 10 years."

Centuries of tradition

The kadhis courts have existed in Kenya for centuries. Under Kenya's constitution, their jurisdiction is limited to matters concerning personal law, such as marriages, divorces and inheritances for Muslims, who form 10 percent of Kenya's population. The courts do not hear criminal matters and have far less power than Kenya's higher courts.

For decades, the courts operated without controversy, under the radar of most Kenyans.

But after the Sept. 11 attacks, church leaders grew concerned that the courts could breed extremism. In 2004, a group of churches filed a court case to remove the kadhis courts from the current constitution, but it languished for years in the judicial system. Some Christian leaders worry that the courts could be used to justify an expansion of sharia law in Kenya.

The proposed constitution is part of an effort to create a fairer balance of power among Kenya's ethnic groups. It was that perceived imbalance that led to much of the 2008 violence. While religion did not play a significant role in the violence, it is now dominating the debate on the upcoming vote.

The U.S. ambassador to Kenya has publicly urged Kenyans to vote in favor of the proposed constitution, including the kadhis courts, arguing that passage is key to keeping Kenya stable. But on Web sites and in opinion pieces, conservative U.S. Christian groups have denounced the proposed constitution. They are opposed to the kadhis courts provision, and they see other aspects of the constitution as being pro-abortion. Some have organized petition drives against the courts.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by evangelical Pat Robertson, opened an office in Nairobi this year to oppose the new constitution. On its Web site, the group says that the "high number of Muslims in the slums and a significant increase in the number of Somalis" have brought the kadhis courts issue into "sharp focus."

"There are those who believe there is an overall Islamic agenda geared towards the Islamisation of the country," the group says.

Last month, Kenya's high court ruled that the kadhis courts provision should be removed from the draft constitution. That decision is being appealed. Some senior politicians have railed against removing the courts from the draft constitution, partly because Muslims have become a powerful voting bloc.

'We want unity'

On June 13, explosions ripped through a park in Nairobi during a demonstration against the constitution, killing five people and injuring dozens. No one asserted responsibility, but the assault deepened the suspicion among Christian groups.

"We want unity in Kenya, but not a unity that will compromise us," said Bishop Joseph Methu, a senior evangelical Christian leader. Christian leaders say they fear that if the courts are enshrined in the constitution, "sooner or later, you will find an enclave where they will say we are predominantly Muslim and Islamic laws rule here," said Oliver Kisaka, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya. "You have created space for the creation of a nation within a nation."

As evidence, the Christian leaders point to an incident in April in which a group of Muslim clerics in the northeastern town of Mandera, near the Somalia border, imposed a ban on public broadcasts of films and soccer ahead of the World Cup.

Muslim leaders say the kadhis courts protect their community's rights and cultural values.

"A good constitution is gauged by the extent to which it protects minorities," said Abdalla Murshid, a Muslim lawyer and community leader.

Other Muslim leaders said the courts would stem Islamic radicalism in Kenya. Judges, not mosque imams, would regulate the uses of sharia law. Muslims would feel a deeper sense of national identity.

Kadhis courts are an entity that binds "Muslims to the Kenyan state," said Hassan Ole Naado, head of the Kenyan Muslim Youth Alliance. "It is for the best interests of Kenya to have such courts."

A recent public debate about the courts at a hotel in Nairobi quickly degenerated into a Muslim-vs.-Christian fight.

A Muslim woman named Fatima said that removing the courts from the constitution would make it too easy for Christian members of parliament to get rid of them altogether.

"That's what we want," muttered a man in the audience.

Then a Christian said: "Who are the Muslims? Are they Kenyan or non-Kenyan? If they are Kenyan, they should be satisfied with only one court."

"The Christian clergy have a problem with Islam," said Hussein Mahad, a sheik from the northeastern town of Garissa. "But we are here to stay. We are not going anywhere."

Afterward, he declared: "This is a Christian agenda to keep Islam contained. They think we are all terrorists."

Jun 27, 2010

“Welcome to Kenya” | Human Rights Watch

Police Abuse of Somali Refugees

June 17, 2010

Based on interviews with over 100 refugees, this 99-page report documents widespread police extortion of asylum seekers trying to reach three camps near the Kenyan town of Dadaab, the world's largest refugee settlement. Police use violence, arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention in inhuman and degrading conditions, threats of deportation, and wrongful prosecution for "unlawful presence" to extort money from the new arrivals - men, women, and children alike. In some cases, police also rape women. In early 2010 alone, hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Somalis unable to pay extortion demands were sent back to Somalia, in flagrant violation of Kenyan and international law.

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ISBN: 1-56432-641-1

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Download summary and recommendations in SOMALI (PDF, 89.63 KB)
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Apr 17, 2010

For Somalis caught between Islamists and weak government, fleeing is only option

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By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 17, 2010; A01

IFO, KENYA -- Two Islamist militants delivered an ultimatum to Zahra Allawi's daughters: marry them or die. The men were from al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaeda that is fighting Somalia's U.S.-backed government. The two girls were 14 and 16.

Allawi said her neighbor in southeastern Somalia received the same command. But he swiftly married off his daughter to someone else. The next day, the fighters returned with a butcher's knife.

"They slaughtered him like a goat," she recalled.

Three hours later, she and her 10 children fled. After handing their life savings of $300 to a smuggler, they crossed into northeastern Kenya last month, joining tens of thousands of Somalis in this sprawling refugee settlement. They are the human fallout from Africa's most notorious failed state, haunted by unending conflict and a quiet U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

About 2 million Somalis, roughly one-fifth of the population, have sought refuge in other parts of their country or in neighboring countries, most of them since 2007, when the fighting intensified. Nearly 170,000 have fled this year alone, according to U.N. officials, arriving in desolate camps inside and outside Somalia with barely anything except the clothes on their backs.

Many are running from al-Shabab's radical dictates and increasing savagery, as well as fears of a major government offensive.

This article is based on more than 60 interviews conducted in Somali refugee communities in Kenya and Yemen. The refugees' stories of life under al-Shabab could not be independently verified, but community leaders, refugee officials and human rights groups as well as al-Shabab spokesmen gave similar accounts of recent events in Somalia.

Allawi had plenty of reasons to flee. Al-Shabab fighters, she said, once whipped her for not attending midday prayers at the mosque. Last month, she was forced to prove that the man she was walking with was her husband.

An al-Shabab commander also sought to recruit two of Allawi's sons, ages 10 and 13. Allawi begged him not to take them. In exchange, he forced her to buy three weapons for his force.

"If they could all afford to come, not a single person would remain in Somalia," said Allawi, 37, seated with her children on the reddish, sunbaked earth a day after they arrived. "There is no freedom in Somalia, only death."

Instability since 1991

War has gripped Somalia since 1991, when the collapse of President Mohamed Siad Barre's regime plunged the country into lawlessness and clan fighting. Two years later, mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. soldiers through Mogadishu, the capital, during a U.N. peacekeeping mission, an event later depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

The country has vexed U.S. policymakers, who fear that Somalia could become the next Afghanistan. In December 2006, the George W. Bush administration indirectly backed an Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamists, who had risen up against Somalia's secular warlords.

But within two years, the Islamists returned, more radicalized and led by al-Shabab, which in Arabic means "The Youth." The Obama administration and European nations are backing the Somali government with arms, training, logistics and intelligence.

Yet al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization, now controls large swaths of Somalia. It has imposed Taliban-like Islamic codes in a region where moderate Islam was once widely practiced. Urged on by Osama bin Laden, the group has steadily pushed into Mogadishu, importing foreign fighters and triggering U.S. concerns that the movement could spread to Yemen, across East Africa and beyond. Somalia's government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and has little legitimacy elsewhere.

Many Somalis say they believe the United States is guiding the war.

"We expect American helicopters to strike Mogadishu at any moment," said Aslia Hassan, 40, who arrived at this refugee settlement three days ago with two small plastic bags of possessions. "This is why we are running."

Al-Shabab's dictates

The refugees say they are also escaping al-Shabab's puritanical dictates. Western and Somali music is outlawed in the areas the group controls in southern and central Somalia. Movie theaters have been shuttered, and the watching of films on DVDs is prohibited. In some areas, the refugees say, playing soccer -- and even watching it on television -- is banned. So is storing pictures on cellphones and using Western-sounding ringtones. Only Koranic music is allowed.

Al-Shabab's religious police, often led by children, order people to put out cigarettes and give haircuts at gunpoint to anyone with modern hairstyles or longish hair, the refugees say. As a warning to those who defy their dictates, al-Shabab fighters have displayed severed heads on steel poles.

Women must sheath themselves from head to toe in abayas made of thick cloth and are not allowed to wear bras. In Mogadishu, buses are segregated, with women sitting in the back.

"Even if a pregnant woman asks to sit in the front of the bus, where it is less bumpy, she will be refused," said Dahaba Duko Ali, 35.

She arrived here last month with her seven children, evading al-Shabab checkpoints. Fearing the police -- Kenya has closed its border with Somalia -- the smugglers drove along back roads and dropped the family just over the border. Under cover of night, Ali and her children walked 30 miles to Ifo.

Ali Mohamud Raghe, an al-Shabab spokesman, said that "our Islamic religion tells us" to separate men from women and for women to wear thick abayas. The militia forbids all "the evil things that infidels aim to spread" among young Muslim Somalis.

"So music is among the evil actions," he said in a telephone interview.

Even donkeys are not beyond al-Shabab's dictates. The militia has decreed that donkeys cannot wear harnesses, nor can they carry more than six sacks. They are also segregated: Women can use only female donkeys; men must use male ones. "How can I feed my children?" lamented Hassan Ali Ibrahim, 40, a gaunt donkey-cart driver who arrived in Yemen with his eight children.

Savage methods

On a Friday in October, the Ibrahim brothers -- Sayeed and Osman -- were taken from their prison cell in the coastal Somali town of Kismaayo. An al-Shabab court had convicted them of robbery, they said, adding that their imprisonment was politically motivated.

The brothers and a third inmate were driven in a minibus to a field in front of a police station. A crowd of 4,000 had gathered. Ten masked men stood in the field; one held a microphone and another clutched a knife, the brothers recalled.

The third inmate, in his early 20s, was taken out of the van. Several of the masked men held him down and his foot was chopped off above the ankle, the brothers recalled.

It took five minutes.

"God is great," chanted the fighters, drowning out the screams.

Minutes later, the brothers were taken out of the van. Sayeed looked away as his brother's leg was sliced off.

"I felt powerless," Sayeed said. "I wanted a miracle to happen."

A voice over the loudspeaker announced that Sayeed's right hand and left leg were to be amputated. By the time his limbs were hacked off, he had passed out. He woke up in a hospital. After 10 days, the brothers fled Kismaayo. In February, relatives hid them inside a crowded minibus and smuggled them into Kenya.

"What they did to us has nothing to do with Islam," said Osman, as he struggled to get up from a chair with his crutches.

But Mohammed Muse Gouled, 70, said al-Shabab had helped bring stability. For years, he said, warlords contested for power and territory, and chaos and insecurity grew. "No one can harm you under the Shabab," said Gouled, adding that he fled shelling by the regional African Union peacekeeping force.

One woman's journey

Habiba Abdi, 19, was five months pregnant and unmarried. Under the dictates of al-Shabab, she would have faced death by stoning. Fighters entered her neighborhood in Kismaayo, searching for the woman with the "illegal child."

She hid with relatives. Four days later, she begged a smuggler to take her to Kenya. A few months later, she had a baby girl. She named her Sabreen, which means "tolerance."

They live here with a cousin. Other refugees taunt her as the "one who broke the law of Islam." Some call her dhilo, or whore.

But she is more worried about al-Shabab. Last year, fighters from the militia crossed into Kenya and abducted three aid workers and a Somali cleric; last week, the group raided a Kenyan border town.

"Sometimes, I prefer to die," said Abdi, as she cradled Sabreen in her arms.

Mar 31, 2010

BBC News - Kenya denies links to Somalia's al-Shabab

Image by alles-schlumpf via Flickr

BBC News - Kenya denies links to Somalia's al-Shabab

Dec 22, 2009

In Kenya, ethnic distrust is as deep as the machete scars

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 22, 2009; A10

KIAMBAA, KENYA -- Nearly two years after a wave of post-election violence brought this East African nation to the brink of civil war, Joseph Ngaruiya has learned to ride his bike with one leg, the other having never fully healed from machete cuts. He's learned to tolerate the "sorrys" and small talk of neighbors who he believes hacked him nearly to death and burned a church here, killing 36 people in one the worst days of the ethnic bloodletting.

What he has not managed, he says, is to summon sufficient faith in their apologies or in justice to keep him from buying an AK-47 once he gathers enough money.

"To stay the way we were that time, unarmed, we can't," said Ngaruiya, 38, who was among hundreds of thousands of ethnic Kikuyus driven from this western farming region by Kalenjin tribal militias after the disputed December 2007 election. "Next time, it will be much worse."

Despite a power-sharing deal and a reform agenda intended to rescue this nation from collapse, the situation remains dangerously volatile, troubling U.S. officials who are already juggling other worries in the region. With Kenya's eastern neighbor, Somalia, at war with al-Qaeda-linked rebels and its northwestern neighbor, Sudan, sliding toward civil war, U.S. officials say a stable Kenya is more crucial than ever.

But the coalition government of President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader turned prime minister Raila Odinga has remained entrenched in the divisive tribal politics that led to the ethnic violence.

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The government has moved slowly on reforms, blocking any domestic judicial process for trying the perpetrators of the violence, who are widely believed to include Kenya's political elites.

The International Criminal Court recently announced its own investigation, which is likely to focus on a few top leaders alleged to have orchestrated violence.

"Leaders and people are going into their tribal cocoons, where they feel they are safe," said Ken Wafula, director of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a Kenyan human rights group. "Unless something is done, we are waiting for an explosion that would be very disastrous."

Rift Valley violence

Perhaps nowhere is the situation more fragile than here in the rolling, green Rift Valley. Some of the worst ethnic violence played out in this western region after Odinga accused Kibaki, who is Kikuyu, of stealing the 2007 presidential election. What followed has been described by investigations as a well-planned bloodbath in which Odinga's Kalenjin supporters burned houses and farms and otherwise drove Kikuyus out of the Rift Valley with bows, arrows and machetes. Kikuyu gangs soon organized their own ethnically driven retaliation against Odinga supporters. In all, more than 1,000 people were killed.

Though the tribal calculus could change this time, depending on political alliances in Nairobi, the capital, people speak with near certainty of a repeat of that violence, only this time with guns.

According to Wafula and others, Kalenjin and Kikuyu self-defense militias are forming, some of them including retired military commanders. And while reports of people buying guns are difficult to verify -- and Kenya's gun laws are strict -- Kenyan police earlier this month intercepted a cache of 100,000 bullets, military-grade weapons and uniforms being smuggled with the assistance of local police, which has lent some credence to the claims.

Sitting in his mud-walled house, Joseph Ngaruiya said that he knows where to get a gun when he's ready.

"You go near the swamp by the Ugandan border," said the former shopkeeper, who rescued his wife, daughter and four boys from the burning church. "You can't miss."

It was late afternoon, and Ngaruiya ran his fingers absently along the machete scars that divide his face and crease his skull. He was tired from riding his bike to town, where he has tried without luck to find work. Groceries, shops, and bus and truck companies seem interested in hiring only Kalenjin these days, he said, because of the possibility that Kikuyu-dominated businesses will be burned, as they were last time.

When he thought about it, he said, the post-election crisis taught him not that tribalism is a destructive tool of political elites but that his tribe is perhaps his only refuge anymore. The Kalenjin, he figured, have decided the same.

"We Kikuyus, we are uniting," Ngaruiya said. "And the Kalenjin, they follow their leaders so strongly. We know that. This thing has made tribalism stronger."

Kiambaa, a mostly Kikuyu community of yellowy fields and shaded red dirt paths, is relatively quiet these days; only about half of its residents have returned from tented displacement camps. Where the church was burned, two rows of low, wooden crosses, already overgrown with weeds, mark the graves of people who died inside, most of whom were women and children.

Tensions here remain so high that local Kalenjin leaders objected to building more permanent cement graves or a memorial, saying it would amount to an admission of guilt, or even a curse.

'It's taking too long'

One of those objectors is Alfred Kiplamai Bor, an influential Kalenjin elder whose sprawling family farm is just across a barbed wire fence from Kiambaa. He is accused of helping to finance Kalenjin militias, which poured across his farm to attack his neighbors at Kiambaa, a charge he denies. Bor's sons were recently acquitted in a Kenyan court of charges that they directed the militias and helped burn the church, a trial that many Kikuyu victims said was deeply flawed.

Bor, 88, calls Kikuyu neighbors "thieves" and accuses them of a sordid array of tribal practices that he calls "uncivilized."

"They are not wanted here," said the elder, sitting at his home on a little hill, where he's hosted some of Kenya's top Kalenjin leaders. "To solve this thing, it's very difficult."

Before the election, the Bors bought sugar and other goods from Kikuyus in Kiambaa. Kikuyus walked to Bor's farm for milk and corn. With few exceptions, those simple gestures of trust have not resumed.

One of Bor's sons, Emmanuel, said he does not share his father's views, though he feels in some way captive to them. When the militias arrived at his farm on New Year's Day -- by his count, more than 1,000 young men smeared with mud to disguise their faces -- he said he had little choice but to pretend to join them. Had he declined, he said, he might have been killed. When he arrived at the burning church, he said, his conscience told him to help. He said he yelled at the militias to open the church door before the building collapsed. He was there to rescue his neighbors, he said, not to burn them.

"These are people I've grown up with here," Emmanuel Bor said. "I don't know why they've not come back. This reconciliation is worrying. It's taking too long."

He walked outside his house then, across his field, under the barbed wire and into Kiambaa. It was getting dark, and the silence of the place was odd.

"This place was so full and busy," Bor said, walking past burned-out houses. "But listen now -- only bats. What keeps people away? I really don't understand." There are some Kikuyu neighbors who believe the younger Bor's story and have been branded traitors for it. Others said that even if they wanted to believe him, they cannot.

"We don't know what they are planning," said Regina Muthoni Nyokobi, whose mother died in her wheelchair in the church fire and who sometimes dreams of revenge. "We don't know their hearts."

Dec 18, 2009

Eritrea's national soccer team seeks asylum in Kenya

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

By Barney Jopson
Friday, December 18, 2009; A14

KAMPALA, UGANDA -- Eritrea's entire national soccer team is seeking asylum in Kenya, joining tens of thousands of compatriots who have fled one of Africa's most repressive governments.

The team absconded after traveling to Nairobi for a regional tournament. Eritrea, with only about 4 million people, was the second-biggest source of asylum seekers in the world last year, and the missing players are probably the highest-profile defectors since the country won independence in 1993.

The 11 players and one substitute were reported missing over the weekend when the team plane returned to Eritrea without them after a match against Tanzania.

After going into hiding, the players contacted the U.N. refugee agency in Nairobi, which directed them to file asylum applications at Kenya's Immigration Ministry.

Nicholas Musonye, a Kenyan soccer official who first alerted the authorities to the missing players, said: "I have been informed by the tour guide who was with them that they are in Nairobi and have been seeking political asylum."

The number of Eritrean asylum seekers worldwide last year was second only to the total from Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations.

People are fleeing a combination of political repression, food shortages, open-ended military service and a moribund economy.

More than half of them, about 34,000, fled overland to Sudan, braving harsh terrain and army shoot-to-kill orders. But many more are likely to have escaped without registering with the U.N. refugee agency.

Musonye, the general secretary of the Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations, said he had spoken to officials at the Eritrean National Football Federation, who were "a bit upset."

"The federation has a responsibility to bring the players home, so they have a lot to explain," he said.

Individual players have gone missing from the Eritrean national team before. Musonye said six absconded three years ago after a match in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Ali Abdu, Eritrea's information minister, told the BBC that the players would get a "good welcome" if they returned home in spite of "betraying" their country.

Human rights groups say failed defectors and critics of President Isaias Afwerki's government are often tortured and confined to shipping-container prisons in the desert.

The government denies the allegation.

Oct 30, 2009

Kenya: Stop Recruitment of Somalis in Refugee Camps - Human Rights Watch

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Deception Used to Enlist Refugees to Fight in Somalia
October 22, 2009

(Nairobi) - The Kenyan government should immediately stop the recruitment of Somalis in refugee camps to fight for an armed force in Somalia, Human Rights Watch said today. Kenyan authorities have directly supported the drive, which has recruited hundreds of Somali men and boys in the sprawling Dadaab refugee camps as well as Kenyan citizens from nearby towns.

Since early October, Somali recruiters claiming to act on behalf of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have operated openly in the Dadaab camps in northeast Kenya, near the Somali border, to enlist young refugees in a new force intended to fight in Somalia. But military recruitment in these camps contravenes the principle recognized in international law that refugee camps should be entirely civilian and humanitarian in character.

"Permitting recruitment of fighters in refugee camps undermines the very purpose of the camps - to be a place of refuge from the conflict," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "Kenyan authorities need to immediately put a stop to this recruitment drive targeting Somali refugees."

The recruitment drive is also targeting Kenyans around the towns of Dadaab and Garissa. The Somali armed group al-Shabaab has also sought to recruit fighters among Somali refugee communities and Kenyans.

Human Rights Watch investigations have found that recruiters for the new force have used deceptive practices, promising exorbitant pay and claiming that the force has United Nations and other international backing. They have urged teenage refugees to lie about their ages and to join without informing their families. Former recruits say that their cell phones were taken from them before they were transported to the training center.

Top Kenyan officials including the foreign minister have categorically denied this recruitment drive is taking place at all, but in fact it is operating with direct Kenyan support, including government transport vehicles and guards.

The Dadaab camps, built to house 90,000 people in the early 1990s, are now home to over 280,000 refugees, mostly from Somalia. It is the largest concentration of refugees in the world. More than 50,000 people have arrived in the camps since January 2009. Many are fleeing the bloody conflict between Somalia's weak TFG and various armed opposition groups, including al-Shabaab, some of whose leaders have publicly linked themselves to al-Qaeda.

Human Rights Watch has documented war crimes and serious human rights abuses by all sides to the conflict, which has caused thousands of civilian deaths, tremendous destruction of civilian property, and massive displacement. The Kenyan government strongly supports the TFG and has become increasingly apprehensive about the possibility of attacks on its soil by al-Shabaab.

This month, Human Rights Watch researchers visited the Kenyan town of Dadaab and the three refugee camps that surround it-Ifo, Dagahaley, and Hagadera. They interviewed more than two dozen people, including young men and boys who had been approached by recruiters, parents of young men who joined the force, individuals involved in the recruitment effort, and community leaders in the camps.

Recruiters began circulating in the refugee camps in early October. According to local community leaders and a recruiter working in two of the camps, they have recruited at least several hundred refugees. Many recruits are promised an initial payment of between US$400 and $600 for the military training itself, to be followed with a generous monthly salary upon deployment to Somalia. Most of the recruiters are telling prospects that they will be deployed to fight alongside the transitional government's forces, either in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, or in southern Somalia.

The recruiters operating in the camps are themselves refugees who have been promised generous payments by the coordinators of the drive. Recruiters have also been operating in the town of Dadaab, seeking to enlist ethnic Somali Kenyan citizens into the same force. Residents and local officials in Garissa, the provincial capital of Kenya's North Eastern Province, and surrounding communities said that recruitment is also taking place among their own young men and boys.

The recruitment program is being coordinated by a small group of Somali nationals who are living and operating openly from a hotel in Dadaab. The team is allegedly headed by two prominent individuals from southern Somalia who had ties to the administration of the former president of the transitional government, Abdullahi Yusuf.

Recruiters hire private cars to transport young men and boys to one of at least two isolated staging locations near the town of Dadaab. From there they are loaded into Kenyan military and National Youth Service trucks and told that they are being taken to a Kenyan government facility at Manyani, near Mombasa, for military training. Two sources - a young man who went searching for a recruited relative at the Manyani training center, and a government official with knowledge of the recruitment program - told Human Rights Watch that this facility is a Kenya Wildlife Service field training school. The school provides paramilitary training to anti-poaching rangers as well as other branches of the Kenyan security forces. Police personnel for Somalia's transitional government have also undergone training at the facility in the past.

International Law Prohibitions on Refugee Recruitment

The principle that refugee camps should be "exclusively civilian and humanitarian in character" is derived from international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law and is embodied in the guidelines of the UN refugee agency and UN Security Council resolutions.

Guidelines of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) aim to prevent the military recruitment of refugees in camps and settlements. The refugee agency's executive committee has called upon all countries to "ensure that measures are taken to prevent the recruitment of refugees by government armed forces or organized armed groups." Ensuring the civilian character of refugee camps is essential for efforts to protect refugees, since the military use of camps-and the refugee population-by armed forces and non-state armed groups can make the sites vulnerable as military objectives and place the civilian population at increased risk.

The refugee agency recently distributed a bulletin in the camps warning that refugees who join an armed group risk losing their refugee status. It also warned that family members may be permanently disqualified for resettlement if they support the efforts of a relative to join an armed group. The young men interviewed by Human Rights Watch appeared to be unaware of this.
False Promises and Claims of UN Backing

Many recruiters for the force have been telling young men in the camps and nearby towns that their effort is backed by the United Nations, the United States government, and the European Union. Some are even saying that recruits will be deployed as part of a new UN force in Somalia. One elderly Kenyan Somali man in Dadaab whose 20-year-old son joined told Human Rights Watch that, "My son is educated and he told me that the United Nations is recruiting an army. So I gave him my blessing and he has my total support." Officials from the UN Political Office for Somalia, the US government, and the European Commission, in interviews with or statements to Human Rights Watch, all denied involvement.

In addition to the $600 promised for undergoing the military training, most recruiters are promising a similar amount in monthly salary after the recruits are deployed to Somalia. While most recruiters tell the young men that they will be sent to fight in Somalia, some promise that they will only be incorporated into a civilian police force that will never see combat or that they will be employed as guards at UN or African Union installations.

Recruits are poorly treated. After the first leg of their journey from their homes, many find themselves stranded in an open expanse of desert without food, water, or shelter, sometimes overnight, as they await onward transport. Human Rights Watch researchers traveled to a staging area near Ege one late afternoon and found a group of nine young men who had been sitting in the scorching sand since morning waiting to be picked up. They had neither water nor food throughout the entire day.

Recruits also soon hear that salaries are to be as low as $200 a month, much less than originally promised. Human Rights Watch interviewed several young men who managed to return home after learning this. Many Somali refugee parents who sought to find their sons who had enlisted were not able to do so because they lack Kenyan government permission to leave the camps.

"Kenyan government-backed recruiters are luring young men with false claims of UN and other international support," Gagnon said. "Getting the recruiters out of the camps and publicly dissociating the UN from any involvement are first steps to shutting the program down."

Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned that children are being recruited. Some recruiters are encouraging teenagers under 18 to lie about their age so they can enlist. Human Rights Watch interviewed boys as young as 15 who had been approached by recruiters but did not enlist. However, several recruits told Human Rights Watch that they had seen recruiters persuade boys of 14 or 15 to lie about their ages. International law to which Kenya is a party and Somalia a signatory prohibits non-state armed groups from recruiting persons under age 18.
Kenyan Government Involvement

Kenyan government officials are directly involved in the unlawful recruitment drive of refugees from the camps. Publicly, Kenyan national and provincial authorities deny any government involvement. "We are not involved in any such operation - it is propaganda," the Kenyan military spokesman, Bogita Ongeri, told Human Rights Watch, saying that only Somali militia groups working independently and illegally have been recruiting in the camps. James ole Seriani, provincial commissioner for the North Eastern province, told Human Rights Watch that the reports could not be true because, "There is no way the government can recruit people at night. We only recruit during the day." The transitional government's president, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, has also publicly denied his government is involved in recruitment in Kenya.

However, one Kenyan government official, who asked not to be identified because he feared repercussions, told Human Rights Watch that the team has been telling Kenyan Somalis whom they recruit "not to mention they are Kenyan." The source added: "They are given the names of specific parts of Somalia and told to say those are the places they come from."

The Kenyan military actively participates in the recruitment process. After being transported in small groups to staging points between Ege and Saredo, near Dadaab, recruits are driven onward on Kenyan military or National Youth Service trucks, usually after dark. Kenyan military personnel have turned away parents of enlistees within sight of the assembled recruits. The young men who board the trucks are required to turn over their cell phones and National ID cards (in the case of Kenyan citizens) or ration cards (in the case of refugees) if they have them. However, the father of one recruit said that his son had retained his cell phone and had called from the road to Mombasa.

Human Rights Watch interviewed a few young men who had escaped from the military trucks when they stopped late at night for food in Garissa. All said that they did not feel they could leave freely by that point. One group cut through the canvas covering the back of the truck and ran into town. One young man said that he traveled to the Kenyan Wildlife Service training school at Manyani to look for a relative but was turned away and briefly detained after persisting.

Kenyan authorities have made no attempt to stop the recruitment drive in the camps or in nearby towns. Parents, deserters, and community leaders said recruitment was brazenly taking place in tea shops and other public places. UNHCR has received several such complaints in recent weeks. And while police in Hagadera camp briefly detained a group of alleged recruiters who were brought there by angry community members, they were released within 24 hours.

One recruiter interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that he had operated openly and without fear of the authorities. "I was told that the Kenyan government was aware of this and I did not have any problem with the police," he said. "Our biggest problem was the parents of the recruits, not the police."

"Rumors of recruitment in refugee camps by Somalia's warring factions have been rife for years, but a Kenyan government-sanctioned program of this magnitude is unprecedented," said Gagnon. "The government's denials of its involvement are completely implausible."

Accounts from Recruits, Recruiters, and Relatives

Recruits

"I had never seen those men around before. They told me they would employ me and give me $600 to be a military man. They told me I would be taken for training inside of Kenya and then taken to Somalia. They said I will be fighting Al Shabaab, who are slaughtering people. I said, ‘No, I do not want to do that, I am a student.' I told them if I get an education I can help myself and my family instead of being sent to war and dying. But now I am regretting it my father cannot afford the uniform for school and the teacher always chases me from class."

- Hagadera camp refugee, age 15.

"When I first told them I was 18 he [the recruiter] said, ‘We are not interested in 18-year-old boys but we will just write that you are 20.'"

- R., young Somali refugee recruited from Ifo camp

"I was seated waiting for passengers in the car. The recruiter approached me and said, ‘This is not a job. You should join us and you will be paid well. You will not be fighting but part of a new Somali police.' I never expected such an opportunity, so I accepted.... An hour later he called me and told me to wait for pickup.

"[At Ege] we were called together and given a lecture by a Somali man with a big belly. He was with four other men and there were three military trucks waiting there. That is when we actually heard the truth of the matter-that we would be trained for 21 days, taken to Somalia and fight. They said the fighting is meant for you to kill the dirt and the mess that is in the country right now, the Al Shabaab. They said the least paid soldier will earn $200 [a month]. At that moment my wish to go to Mombasa [the training center] disappeared. The message was totally different from what I first heard.

"We had to surrender all of our cell phones, identity cards or other personal effects.

"After 10 p.m. we reached Garissa. The truck stopped in the middle of town. Me and three others cut through the canvas with a razor blade, jumped out of the truck and disappeared into town. We had no money, no phones, nowhere to sleep. So we started walking back to Dadaab. We were afraid they would follow us."

- Ifo camp refugee and commercial van driver who deserted, age 18

"A man came to me at home and said this is recruitment by the United Nations. You will be taken to Mombasa for two years of training and after that you will be assigned to the UN. But later after we had left Ege, a man who said he was a Somali general told us we will be trained for only 21 days and only get $50 until we started fighting. . . . He said this was funded by the US, the European Union, and the African Union."

- Ifo camp refugee who deserted, age 24

Recruiters

"I used to frequent and visit public gathering centers-the car parks, hotels, water pumps, to sensitize and talk to the youth. Mostly I sat at the hotel [tea kiosk] and waited for the youth to approach me. I was telling them, ‘We are recruiting an army for the Somali government. You will be paid $600 [a month]-are you interested?' I was told that the Kenyan government was aware of this and I did not have any problem with the police. Our biggest problem was the parents of the recruits, not the police. I was approached by several young boys but I turned them down. I was looking for boys 18 and above. I can look at them and tell if they are 18."

- Recruiter, Ifo refugee camp

"[Ege] was in a brush area with trees next to a dam with dirty water. The recruits were thirsty and had no water. The dam had dried up so they were digging through the soil to find water to drink. They drank the water. It was time to pray so I wanted to use the water for ablution but it was so dirty I could not."

- Refugee hired to drive recruits from Ifo refugee camp to Ege

Relatives

"He did not come home at lunch or at night. I got worried and started searching for him. Some of his friends told me that he had gone with the recruiters. Four of his closest friends have also disappeared. I left Somalia with him because of conflict, where he would either kill or be killed. But it seems the same problem has followed me here. If I had known about this I would not have let him go, even if it meant asking the police to arrest him. I want to know where he is so I can make him come back. This is the same as kidnapping our sons."

- Mother of unemployed, 19-year-old recruit, Hagadera

"My son is educated and he told me that the UN is recruiting an army. I saw in the media that the UN had decided to support the Somali army so this did not come as a surprise to me. So I gave him my blessings and he has my total support. I am happy as a father that my son has taken a decisive action. If it is a genuine effort let me pray to God that it goes well and for peace to prevail on the people he is going to serve. He is a son of the soil. He was born here and nowhere else. Please inform the world of what he is doing."

- Father of unemployed, 20-year-old Kenyan Somali recruit, Dadaab

"I have not complained to the police. It is not bandits or kidnappers who are hiding him from me but the government. So how can I complain to them?"

- Father of 19-year-old, unemployed Kenyan Somali recruit, Dadaab

"His phone was shut off immediately after he disappeared. Finally after some days he escaped and called me on a borrowed phone. He was still many kilometers away. I found him lying under a tree. He was tired and starving and traumatized. Who are these people who would take my underage boy? These boys [in the camps] are vulnerable and it is easy for anyone to overcome them psychologically."

- Father of 17-year-old deserter from Ifo refugee camp, who fetched his son after he deserted

"Initially the senior officers denied it. But finally they told me, ‘You are an educated man, you do understand he has been here a week, we have spent a lot of money on him for medical checkups and training and there is no way we can release him now.' They said, ‘Kenya has no involvement. This is being done by outsiders.' They said it was the Americans and the UN and other members of the international community."

- Elder brother of a 17-year-old Kenyan recruit, who tried to fetch his brother from the Kenyan Wildlife Service training center

Oct 14, 2009

VOA News - Al-Shabab Militants Threaten Kenya for Recruiting Allegations

By Alisha Ryu
Nairobi
12 October 2009

Ryu report - Download (MP3)

Ryu report - Listen (MP3)

Somalia's al-Shabab extremists have renewed their threat to launch attacks on Kenya. This time, the threat follows allegations the Kenyan government is recruiting ethnic Somalis in northeastern Kenya to fight al-Shabab in Somalia.

Ethnic Somalis in the Kenyan town of Garissa are telling reporters Kenyan authorities have recruited as many as 200 teen-aged boys there in recent weeks. The boys are allegedly being trained at a military camp in the coastal city of Mombasa.

Garissa resident Haile Mohamed Yusuf says her 18-year-old son believed he was going to be trained to join the Kenyan police when he left Garissa for Mombasa. She says there has been no word from her son since.

In neighboring Somalia, al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants, who control vast areas of the country, are using such reports to denounce what they say is a secret campaign by the Kenyan government to send Somali-Kenyan soldiers to Somalia to fight against them.

Al-Shabab's chief spokesman, Ali Mohamud Rage, alleges recruits are being trained in preparation for an assault on al-Shabab controlled towns in Middle and Lower Juba regions.

Rage says if the Kenyan government does not cease recruiting and training ethnic Somalis, al-Shabab will begin attacking inside Kenya.

Al-Shabab, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, is currently battling to overthrow the Western-backed government in the Somali capital Mogadishu and to gain full control of the country. Since it emerged in 2004, the group has been strengthening ties with al-Qaida and affiliated groups.

For months, Kenya's under-developed northeastern region, inhabited mostly by ethnic Somalis, had been the focus of efforts by al-Shabab to influence and recruit young men from Kenya.

In August, al-Shabab fighters stormed a school in the town of Mandera, ordering students to quit school and join the war against the "enemies of Islam" in Somalia. Some Kenyans have testified that they were offered as much as $650 from al-Shabab militants to go fight in Somalia.

The Kenyan government has not commented on allegations it is recruiting young men in the area. But Kenya's chief police spokesman, Eric Kiraithe, tells VOA that the country's security forces are prepared to deal with any al-Shabab threat.

"We have not seen the statement and certainly the matter will be investigated," said Kiraithe. [But] we have the capacity to protect the republic [in] every possible way."

In July, Somalia's embattled government appealed for neighboring countries, including Kenya, to send troops to Somalia to intervene in the conflict. Al-Shabab warned Kenya that if any Kenyan soldier is found across the border in Somalia, the group would send suicide bombers into the Kenyan capital.

Aug 6, 2009

Clinton Pushes Kenyan Leaders to Follow Through on Promised Reforms

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 6, 2009

NAIROBI, Aug. 5 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began a major trip to Africa on Wednesday by publicly urging Kenya, a strategic U.S. ally, to move faster to resolve tensions lingering from a disputed 2007 election that precipitated the country's worst crisis since it gained independence.

Clinton went further in a meeting with Kenyan leaders, urging them to fire the attorney general and the police chief, who have been accused of ignoring dozens of killings carried out by police death squads, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. Clinton also raised the possibility of banning some Kenyan officials from traveling to the United States if the government does not move more quickly to prosecute those responsible for post-election ethnic violence that left 1,300 people dead. The organizers are widely suspected to include senior officials and cabinet ministers, many of whom have family members in the United States.

"We are going to use whatever tools we need to use to ensure that there is justice," the official said. "We raised the possibility of visa bans and implied there could be more."

Clinton's public remarks were more gentle but still reflected the Obama administration's concern that Kenya, which has lent crucial support to U.S. humanitarian, diplomatic and military operations in this volatile region, could slip back into political and ethnic violence that brought it close to collapse last year.

President Mwai Kibaki and former opposition leader Raila Odinga, now the prime minister, ended the crisis with a power-sharing deal and a commitment to political reforms that would include prosecution of those suspected of participating in the post-election violence. But Clinton made clear that their coalition government has not followed through.

"The absence of strong and democratic institutions has permitted ongoing corruption, impunity, politically motivated violence, human rights abuses, lack of respect for the rule of law," Clinton said at a news conference after meeting with Kibaki, Odinga and security officials.

'They're Trying to Hide'

Kenyans remain deeply frustrated with the coalition government, which they say is bloated with well-paid officials concerned more with their own survival than with the welfare of the country, swaths of which are in the midst of a hunger crisis.

In the latest example of trouble with the peace deal, the Kenyan government stepped back in recent days from a commitment to establish a special tribunal to try people accused in connection with the post-election violence. The government said it would rely on a "reformed judicial system" instead.

But in a country with a history of sweeping corruption cases, political killings and other official misdeeds under the rug, human rights groups and ordinary Kenyans cast the move as a blatant bid by senior officials to avoid punishment.

"They're selfish, and they're trying to hide," said Caleb Onduso, 25, who was among a crowd at a convention center here Wednesday hoping to hear Clinton speak. "They've forgotten us."

The U.S. Embassy also condemned the government's move in a statement on the eve of Clinton's visit, saying it was "not a credible approach in the eyes of Kenyans and the international community."

If the government fails to establish the special tribunal, U.S. officials say, they will support prosecution of the suspects by the International Criminal Court.

Clinton's trip comes just three weeks after President Obama visited Ghana and laid out his emerging policy toward Africa. Like Obama, whose father was Kenyan, Clinton is emphasizing good governance and touting a $20 billion U.S.-led program to provide poor countries in Africa and elsewhere with agricultural aid aimed at small farmers.

Clinton aides said the trips marked the first time a president and a secretary of state had visited Africa so early in a new administration. Clinton is set to log 21,200 miles on her 11-day, seven-country tour.

Economic Growth

She began her visit Wednesday morning at the annual forum on the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, a program started by President Bill Clinton that allows enhanced U.S. market access for African products. Clinton said she wanted to emphasize Africa's success stories and move beyond the "stale and outdated" image of the continent as a place awash in poverty, disease and conflict.

Sub-Saharan Africa had economic growth averaging more than 5 percent for the five years leading up to 2009, the first such expansion in 45 years. But the continent is now feeling the pinch of shriveling trade and remittances due to the global economic crisis.

At the AGOA Forum, Clinton emphasized plans for U.S. development assistance to focus more on spurring business and trade. Meanwhile, she said, African countries must focus on good governance and adherence to the rule of law, conditions she called "essential to creating positive, predictable investment climates."

In her meeting with Kibaki and Odinga, Clinton delivered a "frank statement" from Obama pressing for greater progress on political reforms such as a new constitution and an overhaul of the police, she told reporters.

Kibaki appeared to bristle at some of the U.S. demands, saying at the conference that his government had introduced electoral reforms and was in the midst of a constitutional review.

"These and other reforms are genuinely Kenyan," he said. "And Kenyans are driving them forward in earnest, for the good of all."

But Odinga, who had accused Kibaki of stealing the 2007 presidential election, acknowledged that there were problems and praised Clinton.

She has "demonstrated she's a true democrat, in agreeing to work with her opponent," he said, referring to Obama. "That's a lesson Africa needs to take seriously."

Jul 22, 2009

Radical Islamists Slip Easily Into Kenya

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

HULUGHO, Kenya — A thin, dusty line is about the only thing separating Kenya, one of the Western world’s closest allies in Africa, from the Shabab, a radical Islamist militia that has taken over much of southern Somalia, beheading detractors, stoning adulterers and threatening to kill any Americans or Europeans who get in their way.

In most places this line, the official international border, is not even marked, let alone protected. In the village of Hulugho, there is simply a tattered Kenyan flag and a cinderblock schoolhouse with chicken-wire windows. Then a meadow of thorn trees and donkey dung. Then Shabab country.

Kenya is widely seen as a frontline state against the Islamist extremism smoldering across the Horn of Africa. Few expect the Shabab to make good on its threats to march en masse across the border. But the creeping fear, the one that keeps the security staffs at Western embassies awake at night, is that the Shabab or its foreign jihadist allies will infiltrate Kenya and attack some of the tens of thousands of Westerners living in the country, possibly in a major strike like Al Qaeda did in 1998.

Last month, Western counterterrorism experts in Kenya sent out text messages warning expatriates to stay away from malls in Nairobi, Kenya’s usually laid-back capital, because of possible suicide attacks by the Shabab. A few weeks later, the group threatened to destroy Nairobi’s “tall, glass buildings.”

The Shabab has already penetrated refugee camps inside Kenya, according to camp elders, luring away dozens of young men with promises of paradise — and $300 each. It has carried out cross-border attacks, kidnapping an outspoken cleric in May from a refugee camp 50 miles inside Kenya. Last Wednesday, in one of its boldest cross-border moves yet, a squad of uniformed, heavily armed Shabab fighters stormed into a Kenyan school in a remote town, rounding up all the children and telling them to quit their classes and join the jihad.

“If these guys can come in with their guns and uniforms in broad daylight,” said one of the teachers at the school, “they must be among us.”

Then on Saturday it happened again: Somali gunmen, widely believed to be with the Shabab, stormed the offices of an aid organization and kidnapped three aid workers from a Kenyan border town before melting back into Somalia.

American and British advisers are working closely with Kenyan counterterrorism teams, but the area along the Somali border is known to be a gaping hole.

“The Kenyans don’t have the skills to close the border, even if they wanted to,” said one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol. “People are very concerned. But on some level, we can’t defend Kenya’s border for them.”

When asked to assess the level of security at the Somali border, the diplomat flatly stated, “There is no security.”

The raging war in the country next door, between Somalia’s weak transitional government and the Shabab, is rapidly becoming a proxy war — with Western arms and money keeping the transitional government alive, while Arab and Pakistani jihadists with links to Al Qaeda fight for the Shabab.

Late last month, American officials acknowledged that they had shipped 40 tons of weapons to Somalia’s transitional government, a disclosure that has only sharpened the Shabab’s anti-American sentiments.

Kenyan security forces are now flooding into their borderlands, marching along the shimmering roads and across the unforgiving landscape, their assault rifles slung over their shoulders.

But the 400-mile border is inevitably porous, and Somali-speaking nomads from both countries flow seamlessly back and forth in diaphanous shawls and worn-out wooden carts. And the biggest proverbial holes may be in the police officers’ pockets.

Just this month, Transparency International listed Kenya as the most corrupt nation in East Africa. The region’s most corrupt public institution? The Kenyan police.

Even though the border is officially closed, Hassan Mohamed, a refugee who used to build houses in Somalia but got driven out by war, explained how thousands of Somali refugees find their way into Kenya each month.

“It’s easy,” he said, rubbing his thumb and index finger together in the universal sign of a bribe. “If you pay, you can come in.”

The cracked wooden shelves in the border-town markets are heaped with the telltale signs of a flourishing smuggling business: sacks of Pakistani sugar, foreign brands of sodas and soaps, cigarettes with Somali labels — all illegal imports from Somalia that somehow made it past the dozen police checkpoints on the Kenyan side.

Abdi Dimbil Alan, an elder who lives in Alin Jugul, a town near the Somali border, says that nearly every night he witnesses the same Somali businessmen paying off the Kenyan police to allow consumer goods and even assault rifles to slip through the border.

“These guys are so corrupt,” Mr. Abdi said, referring to the border police, “that if 100 Shabab pulled up with a truckload of weapons and said they were coming to Kenya to kill the president, the police would let them through — for the right price.”

Erick Kipkorir, a district officer in Alin Jugul, said Kenyan forces were hard-working and honest.

“We can’t say that nothing is coming in because, as you see, the border is very expansive,” he said. “But as for bribes, that has never happened.”

Ever since Al Qaeda blew up the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands, American counterterrorism officials have been watching East Africa warily. But in the areas along the Kenya-Somalia border, it seems that anti-Americanism is still spreading, despite the millions of dollars the American government has spent on a hearts-and-minds campaign.

Take an American-built well in the village of Raya. No one is using it, though Raya is desperately poor and dry.

“The Americans wanted to finish us,” said one villager, Ibrahim Alin, convinced that the American water engineers who built the well had poisoned it to sterilize him.

The Somali-speaking areas of Kenya have always been an uneasy fit, and Kenya has often responded brutally.

This area tried to secede in the 1960s and join Somalia, leading to a guerrilla war. In 1984, Kenyan security forces imprisoned and then killed thousands of ethnic Somali men at a remote airstrip, according to Kenyan human rights groups.

In recent weeks, Human Rights Watch accused Kenyan security services of raping women and smashing the testicles of men during a crackdown in northeastern Kenya in October.

“We’re trying to find a way that when they do deploy,” the Western diplomat said, “they do more helping than hurting.”

Jun 10, 2009

Guantanamo Detainee Denies Guilt

Picture of Ahmed Ghailani on the FBI website

Mr Ghailani's trial will be an important test case for closing Guantanamo

BBC, June 9 - The first Guantanamo detainee to be brought to the US for trial has pleaded not guilty to involvement in two embassy blasts in East Africa in 1998.

Ahmed Ghailani appeared before a federal court in New York, after being transferred there earlier in the day.

Mr Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was detained in Pakistan in 2004 and taken to Guantanamo in late 2006.

The case is seen as a test of the Obama administration's pledge to close Guantanamo Bay by next January.

Mr Ghailani entered the courtroom in Manhattan wearing a blue prison uniform.

AHMED KHALFAN GHAILANI

Born in Zanzibar but date varies from 1970 to 1974

Alleged to have been Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard

Accused of buying equipment for embassy attack in Tanzania in 1998 and involvement in simultaneous Kenya attack

Indicted in 1998 in New York and reportedly fled to Afghanistan

Reported in Liberia in 2001

Arrested in Pakistan in 2004

Profile: Ahmed Ghailani

Judge Loretta Preska asked him for his plea to charges of conspiring to commit the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

"Not guilty," Mr Ghailani said.

Judge Preska set a date of 16 June for the next hearing.

The justice department says Mr Ghailani faces 286 charges.

They include conspiring with Osama Bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda to kill Americans around the world, and murder charges for each of the victims of the embassy attacks of 7 August 1998.

If found guilty Mr Ghailani could face the death penalty.

Earlier, US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement: "With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya."

Congress rejection

The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Washington says if President Barack Obama is to honour his promise to close Guantanamo Bay in his first year in office he needs as many cases from there as possible to be tried as ordinary criminal cases in federal courts.

However, the US Congress has already rejected an administration request for funding to close down Guantanamo amid widespread opposition to bringing detainees on to the US mainland.

Our correspondent says Mr Ghailani's case will also establish whether defence lawyers will seek to have US federal trials thrown out on the grounds that the government has admitted applying harsh interrogation techniques to some detainees, and holding others in secret prisons overseas.

Mr Obama is hoping to persuade America's allies around the world to take some of the other Guantanamo detainees, but negotiations have proved difficult.

A number of high-value prisoners are likely to face indefinite detention without trial, our correspondent says.

Apology

According to the transcript of a closed-door hearing in March 2007, Mr Ghailani admitted delivering explosives used to blow up the US embassy in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.

Ahmed Ghailani appeared at the Federal Courthouse in New York

However, he told the hearing he did not know about the attack beforehand and apologised to the US government and the victims' families.

Investigators say he left Africa just before the bombings.

Mr Ghailani is thought to have been born on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar in 1970 or 1974 - making him 39 or 35 years old. He is said to speak fluent English.

He is alleged to have risen through the ranks of al-Qaeda to become a bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden.

According to the US transcript, he admitted visiting an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan after the bombings. But he denied being a member of al-Qaeda.

Analysts described him as a very important figure, who was probably sent to east Africa at the time of the bombings by Osama Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It is suggested that Mr Ghailani fled to Afghanistan after being indicted in 1998.

Source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8091013.stm

Jul 7, 2010

Jun 27, 2010

Police Abuse of Somali Refugees

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