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| Africa Horn |
| How al Shabaab recruitment agents lure Kenyans to Somalia |
| 2011-06-07 |
| [Daily Nation (Kenya)] Saumu Chambulu breaks down at the sight of us at her door. She knows why we have come. As she composes herself, she tells me of the irony of how busy her home has been despite the empty space left by her son Suleiman Hassan. She knew that she wasn't always able to provide for her children but was thankful for Suleiman because, even in their poverty, he always found comfort in his faith. But two years ago, Suleiman left his mother's home. He began to be seen in the company of other young men of backgrounds similar to his own in Mworoni on the South Coast. Then one day he disappeared. After months of searching for her son, Samu said her daughter received a strange phone call indicating he had joined the al Shabaab. Saumu would quickly learn that this was not only true of her son, but that other young men like him had disappeared across the border, never to return. No comfort But the growing number of bereaved parents offers no comfort, especially if among those presumed dead in a country you've heard about only in the news -- in a war you don't understand -- is your own. There is no comfort, only pain. That was the fate of Suleiman Hassan and other young Kenyans who are recruited to fight for al Shabaab -- the jihadists battling the Transitional Federal Government of Sheikh Sherif Ahmed in Somalia. And, if a video recording of the recruits is anything to go by, the training is producing dyed-in-the-wool fighters. "We are coming to slaughter you," they chant in these recordings. The chants are in Kiswahili, perhaps to drive the message home to the Kiswahili-speaking people of eastern Africa. Not once or twice, but at least four times the region has witnessed firsthand the deadly handiwork of terrorists. Football fans watching the World Cup final on television in Kampala last year are among the most recent casualties of al Shabaab. Al Shabaab operates secret bases in Somalia--just across Kenya's eastern border. The group is believed to be an offshoot of the Union of Islamic Courts, a group that nearly seized control from the wobbly regionally backed TFG led at the time by President Abdullahi Yusuf. To increase its membership, al Shabaab capitalises on two elements: radical Islamic teachings and poverty. Saumu believes that her son's immersion in his faith may have led him to Somalia. But she also acknowledges that their poverty did nothing to stop him. Poverty is biting hard not just in Mworoni but all across East Africa, and from what we have found, the frequency at which East Africa's poor are joining the al Shabaab is chilling. All a prospective recruit needs to know is to whom to talk. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 No worries, the US to blame for this, falling currency and all, caused by avarice and outsourcing...s/ off. |
| Posted by: Rhodesiafever 2011-06-07 16:27 |