Abandoned KDF war boys return to unleash terror

At the height of the al-Shabaab dominance in Somalia five years ago, Kenya grappled with ways of preventing the extremist organisation from spreading into the country.

The Transitional Federal Government of Somali (TFG), which had the backing of Kenya and that of the IGAD, was quickly losing its grip of the country and was confined mainly to areas around Mogadishu.

Kenya, worried by this state of affairs, decided to team up with IGAD and the American government to help the TFG fight off the al-Shabaab by training its soldiers and boosting their numbers.

Security agencies in Kenya, with the help of IGAD, also mooted the concept of creating a secure buffer zone between Kenya and Somalia to stop insecurity from Somalia spilling across the border.

With that settled, Kenya embarked on a military recruitment process of Somali nationals to secure the Jubaland region, which neighbours Kenya on the eastern border. However, the noble process was infiltrated by unscrupulous Kenyan elders, who recruited Kenyans instead.

A Kenyan parliamentary committee, a UN Somali monitoring group and then US ambassador to Nairobi Michael Ranneberger cautioned that the recruitment of Kenyans would be a security threat to the country. Their concerns were ignored.

The Kenyan youth were enticed by the handsome payment of between $600- $1,000 paid to recruits as a monthly salary for the exercise.

The Sunday Nation can now reveal that the youth, numbering about 3,000, trained at Manyani Kenya Wildlife Society (KWS) Training School before being moved to Archer’s Post in Samburu three years ago, have now become a security nightmare for Kenyan authorities. They are the new soldiers of fortune who are spreading terror in Kenya.

A retired KDF major who is now a security expert, Mr Bashir Abdullaiah, said that the plan, though noble, was bound to fail from the start.

“The plan was good. Train Somali youths and not Kenyans to create a buffer zone between Kenya and Somalia. However, it was infiltrated by Kenyans who received this training and later filtered back into the population and back to their families. Kenya should have handled it the way Ethiopia did to the ones they trained; put them under the command of their military so that you can monitor them long after the war. These people are today roaming and killing people in parts of Kenya,” said Major (rtd) Bashir.

According to people, including religious leaders, the Sunday Nation spoke to, the youths have been used by the highest bidders in many conflicts and attacks including the recent intra-clan attacks where 20 people were killed in Wajir on Monday.

According to some of these leaders, they had hoped to raise the issue with President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto during their meeting this week but did not get an opportunity.

“We hoped to tell the President about these people who are highly trained but the President told us to go back and resolve the problem,” said one of the leaders who attended the State House meeting.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku did not immediately respond to our inquiries on the issue. His spokesman, Mwenda Njoka, did not honour his promise to call us back by the time we went to press.

Although Kenyan security agencies initially denied the existence of such a programme, the truth came out when a parliamentary committee of the 10th Parliament investigated the issue and ascertained that Kenyan nationals had been recruited to fight al-Shabaab. The report was quietly tabled in the House.

Despite the denials, the committee, headed by Eldas MP Adan Keynan, warned of the dangers of recruiting, training and arming Kenyans to fight in Somalia.

“The committee expressed concern that the returned recruits would turn out to be a security threat to the country,” says the committee in a report that was tabled in the House during the last days of the 10th Parliament.

Likewise, Mr Ranneberger had warned the Kenya Government that recruitment of Kenyan Somalis to fight alongside Somalia soldiers would compromise security in Kenya.

“The Government of Kenya appears determined to send 2,000-4,000 newly- trained recruits to Somalia. Recent discussions indicate that many, if not most, of these recruits are in fact Kenyans of Somali origin from the Mandera region. We will continue to make the point in our conversations with Kenyan officials that the risks of employing Somali Kenyans in this effort outweigh any potential benefits,” said Mr Renneberger in a leaked cable he filed to Washington.

On Saturday, Mr Keynan maintained that these are the youths terrorising Kenyans and the government needs to identify, monitor and bring to justice rogue members of the programme.”

“Everyone knows about it especially in northern Kenya but no one wants to speak publicly about it. We must talk about it to stop people in Wajir from dying,” said Mr Keynan in a telephone conversation.

On Monday, 20 people were killed on the Wajir-Mandera border in clashes which were reported to be intra-clan fights in an area where terror attacks have increased since Kenya invaded Somalia close to three years ago.

The killing of the 20 people followed another attack in Mpeketoni, Lamu, where 65 people were killed two weeks ago. The frequency of the attacks has increased since the attack on the Westgate shopping mall last September.

ATTACK ON KENYANS

Apart from the Westgate and Mpeketoni attacks where al-Shabaab claimed responsibility, no one has claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks in Mandera, Garissa, Mombasa and Nairobi.

According to the parliamentary report, the recruitment exercise started on September 1, 2009. The recruits were all Kenyan Somalis from Garissa, Liboi, Dadaab and the recruiting officer in Garissa was Hassan Barre Dualle.

“Those who undertook the recruitment exercise were retired Kenyan Somali army officers. They were recruited as Kenyan soldiers and were to be paid an allowance or salary of 1,000 US dollars and ferried by army and NYS vehicles to a common assembly point at a place called Shabaa from where they were transported to Manyani training camp on September 06, 2009 by NYS vehicles. While in transit, all their belongings, including IDs and phones, were taken away,” says the report.

The report says that at Manyani they were trained on foot drill, arms drill, map reading and command and briefed that they would serve in the Somalia national army under the African Union. 

“While at the camp they were told by Comandant Maj-Gen Mwaniki (now retired) that they were on a mission with the government to safeguard Somalia and requested them to be good examples.”

The committee interviewed deserters from the training programme. One of the deserters, Yusuf Abdilahi Abdi, told the committee that “he was recruited alongside 91 other youths and were transported by NYS driving school vehicles. While at Manyani they were informed that they would be killed or jailed if they attempted to escape and IDs taken away from them. They were divided into groups of 35 for training. The trainers wore KWS uniform and trained them on how to shoot”.

After training, the youths were taken to Somalia through Gedo and Jubaland. Faced with the reality of war, a harsh Somali terrain and a fanatical enemy, some of the youths deserted, returned home, and were assimilated back into the local population.

The ones who remained joined General Madobe who later fought along the Somali government and Kenya Defence Forces to liberate the Juba region and Kismayu port from the stranglehold of al-Shabaab during Operation Linda Nchi.

Kenya is said to have initiated the Linda Nchi operation after the first strategy faltered and failed.

However, there are some recruits who are said to have been captured by al-Shabaab and later conscripted into their ranks to be deployed later to Kenya as sleeper cells that would be activated at the whims of their leaders in northern Kenya, Coast and Nairobi.