By Jared Kleinman

Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa Desk

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya serves as “a major base” for Islamist groups battling Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the United Nations says in a recent report.

The UN report says Kenyans account for about half of all foreigners fighting in Somalia under the banner of al-Shabaab and details Kenya’s training of TFG forces in apparent violation of a UN embargo.

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 centers 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 report says.

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 Nairobi embassy of another country in the Horn of Africa is said to funnel cash to insurgents in Somalia monthly. “An estimated $1.6 million may have passed through Kenya.”

The report criticizes Kenya for not cooperating with the UN on breaches of an arms embargo slapped in 1992. “One notable exception,” the report says, “was the Kenya Police Criminal Investigations Division, which provided valuable assistance.”

The report points to Kenya’s training last year for the TFG of 2,500 youths recruited in Somalia and northeastern Kenya, including Dadaab camps. Officials acknowledged training TFG police, but “denied any other type of training.”

The report says training involved “irregularities,” like recruitment of children and Kenyans as well as “false promises of financial remuneration.”

In detailing connections between Somalis in Nairobi and the rebels, the report names several mosques in the Kenyan capital. It describes a 31-year-old cleric “believed by the government of Kenya to have obtained Kenyan nationality under false pretences,” as a key leader of one such mosque.

For more information, please see:

 The East African – UN Shows Kenya Links to Both Sides – 29 March 2010

Somaliweyn – UN Links Kenya to Somali Rebels – 29 March 2010

Daily Nation – UN Links Kenya to Somali Rebels – 28 March 2020