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

By Jennifer M. Haralambides
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

TAPILI, DR Congo  – A recent Human Rights Watch report accused 300 the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of killing over 300 unnamed Congolese civilians last December.

This report has gotten the attention of UN peacekeepers who now say that a new strategy is needed to prevent future massacres.  Alan Doss, the head of the UN peacekeepers said that better intelligence gathering and greater air mobility was needed.  Because the LRA operate in small, highly mobile groups that spread over a wide area, it has made the UN’s job very difficult.

“But even small groups, moving as they do in the bush, can create havoc.  Their best weapon is fear and they create fear by their extremely brutal and violent tactics which we saw again in this latest massacre near Tapili.,” said Doss.

Top official of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) says even more is needed.  “Money or military troops on the ground that’s not enough…we need more cooperation between the three countries where the LRA is operating — that is the DRC, Uganda and Central African Republic. Also those countries need to have better cooperation in terms of exchanging intelligence so that they can better organize the operation on the ground,” he said.

Early on, LRA leaders claimed their violent mission was to install a theocracy in Uganda based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.  Although, now they are only moving across Sudan, Central Africa, and DR Congo attacking villages.

During the latest attack, in December, villagers were hacked to death by rebels.  Just before they attacked, the rebels pretended to be Congolese soldiers and asked for food and other goods.  Witnesses say the stench of death hung over the area for weeks after the massacre.   Aside from the killings, at least eighty were taken by force.  Boys to become child solders and girls to be used as sex slaves for the LRA fighters.

For more information, please see:

BBC – DR Congo Needs New Strategy, UN Chief – 28 March 2010

Times Online – Lord’s Resistance Army Killed 321 People in Democratic Republic of Congo – 29 March 2010

VOA – MONUC Official Says Regional Cooperation Could Counter LRA Atrocities – 28 March 2010