Rebecca Blackwell/AP - Somali refugee and goat herder Adan Issick walks past unoccupied refugee housing at a camp outside Dadaab, Kenya, July 12, 2011.
NAIROBI — On a recent night, Kenyan security forces rounded up 43 people, including women and children, in the Somali enclave of Nairobi known as Eastleigh. The ethnic Somalis spent five days in an overcrowded cell without access to a lawyer or being formally charged.
“They accused us of being al-Shabab sympathizers,” recalled Mohamed Noor, a Somali journalist, referring to the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militia. “They said they would chase us out of the country.”
Since entering neighboring Somalia last month to fight al-Shabab, Kenyan security forces have launched a parallel campaign on their own soil to diffuse the militia’s networks here. As a result of that crackdown, ethnic Somalis have been mistreated and in some cases beaten, arbitrarily arrested and deported, according to human rights groups, Somali community leaders and witnesses.
“The Kenyan authorities should not use the current military operation as an excuse to clamp down on the rights of people within [Kenya’s] borders,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director of Human Rights Watch, the watchdog group.
Today, many ethnic Somalis, mostly refugees who have fled Somalia’s civil conflicts, are living in a state of apprehension. Hate speech and xenophobia are on the rise, Somalis said in interviews. They are afraid to leave their homes at night, and some have even sent their children back to Somalia to prevent them from being picked up in Kenyan security sweeps.
The concerns come as anti-
Somali feelings have been growing over the past year in this East African nation. Many Kenyans say Somalis, who make up roughly 8 percent of the country’s population of 40 million, have taken over the economy, driven up real estate prices and made Kenya less secure.
Now, the military operation has made the atmosphere even more tense, Somali community leaders say. Last month, Kenya’s assistant internal security minister, Orwa Ojode, informed the parliament that the offensive would be coupled with the
“mother of all operations” in Nairobi to flush out al-Shabab members and keep the capital safe. He singled out Eastleigh.
“This is like a big animal with the tail in Somalia, and the head of the animal is here in Eastleigh,” he told lawmakers.
‘Fed up with the fanatics’
Some Somalis have welcomed the Kenyan raids on their enclaves. Al-Shabab loyalists, they say, have given their community a bad reputation. “People are fed up with the fanatics, those who harbor the terrorists,” said Mohammed Hussein Abukar, a spokesman for Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa, a Sufi Muslim force fighting al-
Shabab.
The United Nations said in a July report that there were “extensive Kenyan networks linked to al-Shabaab, which not only recruit and raise funds for the organization, but also conduct orientation and training events inside Kenya.” In particular, U.N. investigators alleged that a Kenyan youth center, headquartered in a slum next to Eastleigh, was a front for the militia.
Somali community leaders acknowledged that there are al- Shabab loyalists in Eastleigh and other Somali enclaves. They quickly added, however, that most Somalis detest al-Shabab but nevertheless face discrimination because of their ethnicity.
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