In the holy name of God

They were on their way to Somalia when, authorities say, officers from the Anti-Terrorist Police Unit pounced on them.

The five, among them three minors, are suspected to have links with Al-Shabaab and were arrested along Mombasa-Lamu highway last week.

The minors are said to be students in secondary schools at the Coast. Police said one of the adults, Aziz Abdulrazul, a Yemeni, had been masquerading as a dentist. The other one, Abdo Almohamad Mohamad, is Syrian.

But they were not the first Al Shabaab suspects to be arrested in Kenya, probably indicating the spread of the group’s tentacles.

When 17-year-old Burhan Hassan left the comfort of his family’s home in Minneapolis for the war-torn Somalia two years ago, his highly brainwashed teenage mind was clouded by visions of a religious paradise in a country from which his parents fled two decades ago.

But, like many of his peers that have been lured by jihadist recruiters from the Somali Diaspora to join al-Shabaab, the radical group waging war against the combined force of Somali government forces and the African Union (AU) troops, rude shock awaited.

His passport and belongings were immediately confiscated upon arrival in the port town of Kismayu before being whisked into a secret training base in Southern Somalia. Seven months later, the boy was dead under mysterious circumstances.

“He was a shy young man who earned clean ‘A’s at Roosevelt High School and was planning to apply to Harvard University two months before he disappeared,” his uncle Osman Ahmed told the Washington Post.

Burhan’s mother, Bihie, who has since written a book on her son’s story, said relatives and friends in Somalia informed her that the boy was killed in Mogadishu to prevent him from exposing the intricate Al-Shabaab recruitment network upon his return to America.

But Burhan’s case is just one example of many incidents of Somali youths in the Diaspora being recruited to the radical group.

And intelligence and family reports indicate that tens of fighters recruited from Kenya alone have died while fighting for al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Media reports have quoted numerous parents from Mombasa saying they are not able to trace their sons after they disappeared to fight in Somalia.

Like Burhan’s mother, many have received the bad news of their boys’ death from anonymous callers.

“When I got news of his death, the words he told me the last day I saw him echoed in my mind,” a tearful Saum Mwachambuni, whose 27-year-old son Suleiman Hassan died while fighting for Al-Shabaab in Somalia, told the Nation from her Mombasa home.

And the youth exodus to the north has been going on unnoticed for months, probably even years now.

Last December, for instance, police officers patrolling the far-flung island of Kizingitini intercepted a group of Kenyan youths on their way to Somalia as recruits for the Aal-Qaeda-affiliated terror group.

Sources said the six said they had been recruited from a mosque in Majengo, Mombasa, after they were persuaded by a radical imam during his weekly lectures.

Detectives say they have confiscated audio and videotapes containing jihadist sermons issued by the now wanted cleric.

Among the six youths arrested in Kizingitini, three were Form Three students at Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Secondary School in Mombasa.

The Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya national treasurer Sheikh Omar Hassan told Daily Nation that the number of Kenyan youths who have died in Somalia could be as high as 50, with the returnees posing a security threat to the country due to the terrorism training and indoctrination.

Drawing a huge bulk of their membership from the masses of poverty-stricken youths, terrorist groups use religion mainly to brainwash recruits in training bases into believing that they are involved in a God-sanctioned mission.

From Eastleigh to Mombasa, radical imams in certain mosques have been accused of collaborating with terror groups by brainwashing children and jobless youths in madrasas (religious schools) with extremist messages that urge them to support and enlist as mujahideen.

A UN report on Somalia released in April 2010 noted that, besides infiltrating major mosques in Eastleigh, Nairobi and Mombasa, Al-Shabaab operatives also provide ideological leadership and a resource base for militants.

“What worries me most is that this extremist ideology will continue to grow,” one director of a moderate religious school in Eastleigh told the Washington Post.

“We have to confront it before it’s too late.”

Religious leaders in Mombasa have been waging a campaign to dissuade gullible youths from being lured into an early grave in Somalia by explaining that “the war in Somalia is not jihad as it involves Muslims fighting against other Muslims”.

While the religious are easily lured through a promise of martyrdom and hefty rewards in the hereafter, monetary rewards for the immediate family does the trick for the materialistic.

“We were jobless. That’s what encouraged us to join Al-Shabaab,” Abdullah (not real name) told the BBC early last year.

“We were told we were fighting a holy war, a jihad, and if you kill supporters of the government you will go to heaven”.

Abdullah and 20 other Kenyan youths were recruited by the radical group in the semi-arid district of Garissa and taken across the border to Somalia, where Arab trainers taught them how to use AK47 rifles and bazookas.

The young men were lured by a promise of $600 (Sh48, 000) per month, but deserted when they were not paid.

Sheikh Omar confirmed that recruits are paid in two Sh40,000 instalments before and after arrival in Somalia.

The regional threat of terrorism took a new dimension after Al-Shabaab joined forces with Al-Qaeda in 2007 and, buoyed by this new alliance, the violent Somali-based terror group has been talking tough.

Al-Shabaab made real its threats last July in Kampala when its suicide bombers struck two middle class resorts crowded with football fans watching the World Cup finals. Seventy six people died and more than 70 were injured.

Al-Shabaab said it was avenging crimes committed against its brethren by the Uganda-dominated AU peacekeeping force in Somalia.

Seventeen Kenyans were extradited to Uganda to face charges of terrorism and murder. Seven were released for luck of evidence.

However, renowned Muslim human rights activist Al-Amin Kimathi was indefinitely detained by Ugandan authorities while on a mission to organise for the defence of the Kenyan detainees.

The prosecution alleges that Kimathi provided money to help carry out the Kampala bombings, and that for that he faces charges on 79 counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and three counts of terrorism.

Fellow human rights activists strongly defend the Muslim Human Rights Forum Executive Director of any wrongdoing.

“The decision to persist with the charges against Al-Amin Kimathi raises serious concerns that this prosecution is really an effort to muzzle a well-known critic of government abuses in the fight against terrorism in East Africa,” said Rona Peligal, Africa Director at Human Rights Watch.

The Kenyan High Court issued two judgments last year which declared the transfer of the suspects to Uganda illegal and a violation of Kenya’s new constitution.

The extradition of the Kenyan suspects has also been strongly criticised by, among others, minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Mutula Kilonzo and Gichugu MP Martha Karua.

The world, and East Africa in particular, has been on a state of high alert after the recent killing of Osama bin Laden by US commandoes. It is feared that a revenge attack is in the works.

“The killing of our brother, Osama bin Laden, will not weaken us,” declared Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Raghe before the media in Mogadishu . “The blood of our brother was not worthless. We are going to take revenge for him. The defence of Islam will go on”.

Security along the Kenya’s border with the Somalia has been beefed up, and Commissioner of Police Mathew Iteere has urged the managements of crowded places like shopping malls and entertainment joints to be extra vigilant.

“We have deployed helicopters following the killing of al-Qaeda leader. They are patrolling the porous borders in Lamu all the way to our border with Somalia,” says Internal Security Assistant Minister Orwa Ojodeh.

The Al-Qaeda inspired Al-Shabaab has drastically grown in strength in the last few years, both inside and outside Somalia.

Apart from the suicide bombings in Kampala and sending personnel to al-Qaeda bases in Yemen, a man alleged to be affiliated with Al-Shabaab attempted to assassinate the controversial Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who has been accused of desecrating Prophet Mohammed.

The US declared al-Shabaab a terrorist group in 2008 and assassinated Aden Hashi Ayro, the organisation’s top leader, in a coordinated air strike inside Somalia the same year.

But even as the world grapples with its devastating consequences, terrorism remains as problematic to define as it is to fight.

A person deemed a terrorist today might turn into a Nobel Prize-winning statesman tomorrow, hence the adage “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

For instance, despite being labelled terrorists by colonialists, today Nelson Mandela and Dedan Kimathi are considered heroes of independence in their respective countries.

It’s ironical that, while America hailed Osama bin Laden and his comrades as freedom fighters in the 1980s during the Soviet-Afghan war, Mandela was considered a dangerous outlaw, a tag he was to bear until 2008 when former President George W Bush struck off the anti-apartheid icon from the American terror blacklist.

The word ‘terrorism’ as we know it today acquired its connotations from the Reign of Terror in France after the revolution between 1793 and 1794.

Originally an instrument of the state designed to consolidate the power of the revolutionary regime, terrorism was a value-laden, positive term viewed as necessary to protect the survival of the infant government.

“Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs,” declared the French revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre in a 1794 edict.

Numerous despots have used Robespierre’s principle to justify atrocities against their people but, just as the French leader learnt a few months later when he and his top lieutenants lost their heads to the guillotine, most are devoured by the same orgy of violence they create.