Why Al-Shabaab loved Ras Kamboni town

On the morning of October 20, as Kenyans were filing into Nyayo Stadium for the Mashujaa Day celebrations, a band of Al Shaabab militants was fleeing, and were perhaps several miles away from a small fishing town at the tip of the boundary between Kenya and lawless Somalia.

Mzee Mohammed Masha, a village elder, told the Nation at Ras Kamboni that there were no bullets fired.

“We woke up, and there was nobody,” said Mr Masha of the retreat by the rag tag Al Shabaab militia that morning, four days after Kenya’s Defence and Internal Security ministers announced the start of Operation Linda Nchi.

Later, as the rain dampened the celebrations at the stadium in Nairobi, Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced that the army had taken over Ras Kamboni township.

Ras Kamboni, pronounced Ras Chiamboni by the Bajuni and written Ras Kaambooni in Somali, is clearly a strategic town.

“Ras” is the Arabic word for “head”, and the foremost part (“head”) of this town is at the top of a steep hill, where the burnt-out shell of a tank and the remains of a flag post are the only indications that Siad Barre once ruled the seaside town.

“Kiembo” is the Bajuni word for the stalk that connects the coconut fruit to the stem of the tree. There is a strip of land that connects the “Ras” to the rest of the land, hence the name Ras Kamboni.

The buildings at the hill, whose roofs were long blown off, and windows and doors removed, are the remains of the outpost once used to monitor the land and sea by radar.

The farthest point of Ras Kamboni offers a commanding view of the ocean, while the land on either side and behind is high enough to receive signal from the mobile telephone masts at Kiunga, a town on the Kenyan side of the border.

It was therefore by no error that the Siad Barre government had elected to set up their radar here, stationed a tank to protect it, and put up the buildings to house the troops that would protect the radar.

When the Americans and Ethiopians bombarded the Islamic Courts Union out of parts of Mogadishu in 2006, the Islamists naturally settled for Ras Kamboni.

In southern Somalia, the ICU morphed into the Al Shaabab — the extremists who had foreign jihadists amongst them, and the moderates, amongst whom were Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the current Somali president.

Al-Shabaab then forged an alliance with the Al Qaeda, and they used this fishing town of an estimated 3,900 people as the base from which they could organise the training for terrorists.

Maj Seif S. Rashid, who is Kenya’s second in charge at Shakani military camp of the Southern Sector, told the Nation that Ras Kamboni is a crucial entry point to the sites in the Lakta Belt where Al Qaeda are said to have carried out their training.

Control of the beach there results in a hold over the entry point.

With the booming fishing industry, and the easy access offered by the boats that would daily depart to the Kenyan coast — where they supplied the lobsters, prawns and sharks they got in the sea — the Al Shaabab had established a “safe” route for their trade.

Intelligence reports

Intelligence reports compiled by the United States at the time they discovered Fazul Abdalla, the mastermind of the terrorist attacks in Kenya, yielded this information.

Al Shabaab were said to use the fishing vessels to land the attackers and their tools at Mokoe, near Lamu.

In Ras Kamboni, the fishermen also began to feel the impact of the fundamentalists, which interpreted the religion their own way and used it to lord it over the people.

“In Bajuni we say, the man who marries your mother is your father,” says Ibrahim Hassan Abdi, a de facto spokesman for the fishermen based there.

This allegiance to the new patriarchs meant that a portion of the catch, and some of the proceeds from the sales, had to be handed over to the members of the militia as protection fee.

Ahmed Mohammed Islan, who is better known as Madoobe — the Somali word for dark skin — knows much about Al Shaabab and their roots.

He was the governor for Jubaland when Somalia was under the control of the ICU, and suffered under the onslaught of the Americans and the Ethiopians in 2006.

Madoobe told the Nation he was the only survivor of an attack on January 22, 2007, in Kismayu and after his capture, spent some time in jail in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

When he left the jail upon the signing of the Djibouti Agreement, Madoobe, who at 48 years describes himself as a mzee kijana — junior elder — went back to fighting Al Shaabab, his former allies under the ICU.

The agreement signed in Djibouti resulted in the formation of the Transitional Federation Government (TFG) of Somalia.

The former governor of Jubaland established the Ras Kamboni Brigade, which combined forces with the TFG in their attempts to beat back the rag tag militia.

The civil engineer had not had much success until the Kenya Defence Forces stepped in with Operation Linda Nchi, which resulted in a rapid retreat of Al Shaabab.

Their control of Ras Kamboni had hampered efforts to end piracy from Somalia, with the kidnap of two tourists in September and October from Kenyan territory being the last straw.

Al-Shabaab’s control of the area also resulted in the massive destruction of small trees that previously dominated the landscape for charcoal, which it exported to Yemen.

The only healthcare available was offered by Mr Athman Bwana, who said he had been through all of six months of training with the Red Cross at Jomvu, Mombasa.

Although his pharmacy has a few rows of medicine bottles for sale, he cannot treat many diseases, and the residents have to boil the leaves of the Mwarubaini, locally known as Mkilifi, and take the herbal juice.

Mzee Masha and Mr Abdi now lament that the subsequent ban on night fishing and access to Kenyan waters has had a severe effect on business.

They say they can no longer supply the hotels along the Kenyan coast with lobsters, prawns and other fish.

But the Kenya military says some of the fishermen can also no longer supply the sympathisers and remnants of Al Shabaab with their lethal tools of trade.

The fishermen hope that when the operation is ended, and control of Somalia is handed back to the TFG, there will be order and they will no longer have to pay tax to those who do not deserve it.

Law and order would also return to Ras Kamboni, meaning for example, that the neighbour who stabbed 28-year-old Nuru Ahmed, could be brought to book.

It also means that Ms Ahmed could at least seek treatment at the better equipped Kenyan health centres across the border as they used to in the past.

Like most people who occupy border towns, the Bajuni have relatives across the border, and had been crossing it undisturbed.

Madoobe told the Nation the residents are happy to have the Kenya Defence Forces around, but urgently need food and medicine, which the international aid agencies would distribute in the absence of a stable government.

With Al Shabaab gone, residents of Ras Kamboni want their lives back, and Madoobe wants to go back to his normal life as a businessman.
War, he hopes, will shortly come to an end.