Monday, September 30, 2013
The Shabaab terror group has built a cross-border network with
the aim of recruiting and training youth to fight in Somalia and carry
out attacks within Kenya, says a security think-tank.
According
to International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa project director E.J.
Hogendoom, there seems to have been increased Islamic training in
Kenya’s North Eastern region.
“There have been a number
of factors. One longer term one is that for the last couple of decades,
there has been an increased funding of conservative madrasas that have
made the Muslim community in North Eastern much more conservative and
isolated from the central state,” he said.
Mr
Hogendoom said in addition that there has been a spillover of Islamic
extremism from Somalia where radical groups are trying to indoctrinate
Kenyan Somalis.
He said the first group to start
indoctrinating Kenyans is called Ittihad al-Islam. It was a prototype
radical Islamist group, he added.
“It was militarily
defeated by Ethiopia, but its leadership basically went to all the
Somali-speaking portions of the Horn and continued their radicalisation
activities,” he said.
He said al-Shabaab — which is
now taking control of some parts of south and central Somalia — has
developed extensive networks in North Eastern and other Somali-speaking
areas of Kenya and has been trying to indoctrinate the community.
He said the group indoctrinates students, who are in conservative madrasas.
“They
try to get them to join groups that are sympathetic to al-Shabaab, and
ultimately they try to recruit them to engage in jihad with them in
Somalia,” said Mr Hogendoom.
He noted that Kenya had
largely taken a counter-terrorism approach towards al-Shabaab, where the
country sees the issue at hand as a security problem, one that can be
addressed by either the police or other security agents.
“That’s
problematic. We think that counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation
are very different things and require different policies,” he said.
The
International Crisis Group said that the extensive use of the police
and other security agents risks alienating the Kenyan Somali population
and increase indoctrination by al-Shabaab among them.
He said the Kenyan Government should take a more holistic approach to indoctrination of Kenyans by al-Shabaab.
“Obviously,
counter-terrorism has a role to play in keeping the country safe. That
said, the Kenyan Government needs to be much more proactive in terms of
monitoring radical madrasas that are promoting very extremist Islamist
views,” he advised.
He added that the government
should do more to counter the appeal of radical groups in Somalia and
try to bring development to very poor parts of Kenya where Somalis live.