How Shabaab war is changing life in Eastleigh

• Residents say the perception of the area as hosting militants and frequent security operations have opened up new realities in social and business relations

Kassim Abbas Rahim started living in Eastleigh about 40 years ago. He arrived there as a 25-year-old named Marcus Ouma, and met and fell in love with a Kenyan Somali woman. He converted to Islam and married her. They have three children.

But he is now in a quandary. The war against the militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab is bothering him. Not that he is against it but he fears for his in-laws.

Even though relations between the Kenyan Somalis and other tribes living there are still cordial, the war against the Shabaab by the Kenya Defence Forces and the Somalia Transitional Federal Government forces has opened up new realities.

“For the first time, I heard the last born, a daughter, referring to her maternal uncle as a Somali. I didn’t know what to say to her,” says a perplexed Rahim.

The war and the uncertainties of its consequences have drawn the attention of Kenyans to ethnic differences. There is more than clinical interest.

“This whole Shabaab thing is not only about insecurity,” says Rahim. “Our soldiers may be fighting with Al-Shabaab in the bush – and we wish them success and victory – but after all is said and done, right here, in this concrete jungle, we wonder if we will be able to survive the peace that will ensue.”

War on terrorism

Rahim fears that if the war on terrorism ever moved into his neighbourhood, fresh wounds would be opened in a society already stretched to the limit in terms of tolerance.

“If, by chance, something was to happen to my Somali neighbour and he is whisked away in the middle of the night by the police, he may think that, as the only non-Somali in the flat, I had something to do with his arrest. When he comes back, will he trust me again? Will we relate as we used to before this whole Shabaab business?”

He is not only thinking about surviving peacetime but also a possible post - Al-Shabaab attack in Eastleigh.

“I am not God. Neither am I the devil. But, if something were to happen – God forbid – what would we wake up to in Eastleigh?”

Ever since it became famous for its textile and furniture markets, there has always been a certain romance, even mystery associated with Eastleigh. For almost half a century, tribes have coexisted like kindred. They still do.

Henry Magomere, an electrician who has lived in Eastleigh for as long as Rahim, has seen the estate undergo a metamorphosis, especially in the last two decades.

“In the beginning, the relationship was that of landlord and tenants, where Kenyans of Somali origin were the tenants. That changed. Somewhere in the history of this place, property changed ownership. Dynamics shifted. Relationships evolved,” says the 65-year-old electrician.

But, for the first time in decades, Kenyans are changing the way the look at the commercial hub east of Nairobi that has been described by the Internal Security assistant minister Orwa Ojode as harbouring the head of Al-Shabaab.

And after the multiple grenade attacks in Nairobi and other areas such as Garissa, coupled with the numerous threats and terror alerts issued by the government, anxiety is seemingly creeping in Eastleigh.

“We have known all along that illegal activities go on in Eastleigh. We just haven’t been able to prove it. Now, after all these years, the government has come out to tell us what we have known all along,” says Magomere.

“We watched, in less than 20 years, as foreigners took over our neighbourhood. Nobody asked questions. What makes the police think that the questions they are asking now, that they should have asked decades ago, will have answers?” the old man says as he unscrews the cover of an old TV on his workbench. He fishes around for spare parts.