UN shows Kenya links to both sides in Somalia

Militants of al-Shabaab train with weapons on a street in the outskirts of Mogadishu. Photo/REUTERS 

By KEVIN J KELLEY  (email the author)

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Posted Monday, March 29 2010 at 00:00

Kenya serves as “a major base” for Islamist groups battling Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the United Nations says in a recent report that also details the Kenyan government’s training of TFG forces — in apparent violation of a UN embargo.

Kenyan nationals account for about half of all foreigners fighting in Somalia under the banner of the Al Shabaab insurgency force, the report says.

Many of these fighters are recruited through a support network in Nairobi consisting of “wealthy clerics-cum-businessmen, linked to a small number of religious centres notorious for their links to radicalism,” the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia states in its March 10 report.

Leaders of Al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the other main insurgent group in Somalia, “travel with relative freedom to and from Nairobi, where they raise funds, engage in recruitment and obtain treatment for wounded fighters,” the Monitoring Group finds.

Some African and European diplomats based in Nairobi meanwhile engage in visa fraud that enables the smuggling of illegal migrants into Europe and other destinations for fees of about $12,000 for a man and $15,000 for a woman, the UN says.

The ambassador of an African country to Kenya reportedly plays a key role in this visa fraud scheme, the report adds.

The Nairobi embassy of another country in the Horn of Africa is said to funnel cash on a monthly basis to insurgent forces inside Somalia. “An estimated $1.6 million of such funding may have passed through Kenya alone in 2008,” the report says.

The Monitoring Group criticises the Kenyan government for its failure to co-operate with UN investigations of breaches of the arms embargo established by the Security Council in 1992.

“One notable exception,” the report adds, “was the Kenya Police Criminal Investigations Division, which provided valuable assistance to the Monitoring Group.”

The report also cites Kenyan authorities’ denials of “sanctions-busting” activities that the UN charges they have carried out or abetted.

The Monitoring Group points in particular to military training that Kenya conducted last year on behalf of the TFG for some 2,500 youths recruited from inside Somalia and from northeastern Kenya, including the Dadaab refugee camps.

Kenyan officials have acknowledged training TFG police officers, but “initially denied any other type of training,” the Monitoring Group notes.

In the absence of authorisation from the United Nations, such training initiatives are in violation of the arms embargo.

The Monitoring Group further confirms that Kenya’s training of TFG recruits involved numerous “irregularities,” including recruitment of children and Kenyan citizens as well as “false promises of financial remuneration.”

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