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Somali refugees recruited to fight Islamist militia

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 6, 2010



Hassan Mukhtar, 16, a refugee was lured by false promises by Somali government recruiters to join a covert force to fight a U.S-backed war against Islamist militants inside Somalia. He was later taken by Kenyan military trucks to a training camp near Mombasa. On the way, he managed to escape. (Sudarsan Raghavan - Washington Post)


DADAAB, KENYA - The U.S.-backed government of Somalia and its Kenyan allies have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees, including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabab, an Islamist militia linked to al-Qaeda, according to former recruits, their relatives and community leaders.

Many of the recruits were taken from the sprawling Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya, which borders Somalia. Somali government recruiters and Kenyan soldiers came to the camps late last year, promising refugees as much as $600 a month to join a force advertised as supported by the United Nations or the United States, the former recruits and their families said.

"They have stolen my son from me," said Noor Muhamed, 70, a paraplegic refugee whose son Abdi was recruited.

Across this region, children and young men are vanishing. All sides in Somalia's conflict are recruiting refugees to fight in a remote battleground in the global war on terrorism from which they fled, community leaders say.

It is unclear whether recruiting by the governments of Kenya and Somalia is ongoing. But their military officers continue to train refugees at a heavily guarded base near the northern Kenyan town of Isiolo as the Somali government prepares for a long-planned offensive against the Shabab.