By ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH
NAIROBI, Kenya — Fardos Osman sat on the concrete floor of a crammed room in a sprawling stadium next to scores of other women, many hiding their faces. She said she had been at the stadium for four days. Her refugee document had expired, she said, and she feared that she would be sent back to war-torn Somalia.
“I don’t want to go back,” said Ms. Osman, 28.
Thousands of undocumented refugees, immigrants and Kenyan citizens have been arrested throughout the country in recent weeks, a response to what the government says has been a recent escalation in terrorist activity in this east African nation.
Refugees found in urban areas are being forced to return to camps in northern Kenya, while dozens of Somali refugees have been deported to their home country. Here in Nairobi, the capital and the center of the operation, Kasarani Stadium has been turned into a police station where hundreds of suspects have been held, a visible reminder of the scale of the campaign.
“We bring the arrested persons to this place, screen them, verify those who have documents and those who do not have; we take appropriate action,” Joseph Ole Lenku, the cabinet secretary for interior, told reporters. “The ongoing security operations in various parts of the city are being done in a humane way and within the law.”
Just outside the gates of the stadium, the confusion and outrage among families of detained individuals are palpable.
“My pregnant wife, 17-month-old child and sister are in there,” said Mahdi Ibrahim, 39, a refugee from Ethiopia. “This is the second time they come and arrest my family. Our refugee papers are valid.”
Ismail Osman, 63, a Kenyan citizen who is an ethnic Somali, said that police officers in his neighborhood the day before had arrested his 32-year-old son, who has a mental illness and was not carrying identification.
“We don’t know where he is,” Mr. Osman said tearfully, showing his son’s Kenyan citizenship papers. “The process is confusing.”
The enforcement campaign began after a series of events that have unnerved the authorities, including a bombing here in the capital and a church shooting in the coastal city of Mombasa last month.
Peter Andiego said it had been a year since he had attended church, but on a Sunday morning in late March he fatefully decided to go.
On his way through the alleys of Likoni, a district in Mombasa, Mr. Andiego said, he saw two men behind him, each carrying a small sack, but did not think much of it. He walked into the Joy in Jesus Church as the service began and took a seat.
Five minutes later, gunfire rattled the place. He was shot, and as he turned around, he saw the same two men firing indiscriminately at the congregation.
“I saw death,” said Mr. Andiego, 39, a manual laborer and a father of five. “I crawled out of the church, went a distance, then became unconscious.”
Mr. Andiego survived, but six people died.
Days before, the police in Mombasa, with the help of the F.B.I., said they had discovered a car filled with bombs parked near a police station. Not long after in Nairobi, explosions in the crowded neighborhood of Eastleigh left six dead.
No group has claimed responsibility for any of those events, but the authorities’ suspicions have fallen on the Shabab, a Somali Islamist group that says it is fighting the Kenyan government because of the presence of Kenyan troops in Somalia. The Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack last year on the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, which resulted in the deaths of 67 people at one of the country’s most iconic symbols of wealth and stability.
The Kenyan government has responded forcefully to the recent episodes, undertaking what it has called Operation Usalama, or Operation Peace, in its declared “war on terrorism.”
Security has been beefed up around buildings seen as possible targets, and the police have been given a green light to “shoot to kill” terrorism suspects. The authorities have said that all Kenyans will have to re-register with the government via digital means and be issued new identification cards. In Mombasa, a radical Muslim preacher who supported the Shabab, Abubaker Shariff Ahmed, was killed by unidentified gunmen this month. Many believe the security forces were responsible, an allegation that officials deny.
The Eastleigh neighborhood of Nairobi, in particular, has borne the brunt of the enforcement campaign. In the neighborhood, which is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Somalis — both Kenyan citizens and refugees from Somalia — as well as by Ethiopians, the normally bustling market is now a shadow of what it once was, as many seek to avoid arrest and interrogation by the security forces.
Jimale Abdulahi, 44, a Somali-Kenyan, has been a resident of Eastleigh for more than 20 years and works closely with businesses and the police to ensure security in the market. What he has seen in the past few weeks has frustrated him.
Police officers, Mr. Abdulahi said, have entered homes and shops en masse, arresting hundreds of people, including women and children, and placing them on police trucks to take them to detention centers.
“They don’t care if you have an ID card or not,” he said.
Other police officers, Mr. Abdulahi contended, came with less professional intentions. Rubbing the thumb and fingers of his right hand together, he signaled how some Eastleigh residents had to go about getting their IDs back from the police: through extorted money or bribes.
“It is even worse than 1998,” he said, referring to the year that the American Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were attacked, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands.
Human rights groups and activists have expressed concern.
“Scapegoating and abusing Somalis for heinous attacks by unknown people is not going to protect Kenyans, Somalis or anyone else against more attacks,” Gerry Simpson, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Ahmed Khader, 29, a Somali-Kenyan activist from Eastleigh, emphasized the need for the government to make distinctions.
“Not all Somalis are Al Shabab,” he said. “We support our government against terrorism, but not the indiscriminate nature of the operation.”
A growing sense that Kenya is becoming a more frequent target may explain the government’s sweeping approach. Mr. Lenku, the cabinet secretary, was adamant about the need for the continuation of Operation Usalama.
“The operation will continue until we are satisfied with the level of security,” he said.
But the manner in which the government intends to deal with security threats is what concerns many.
“It appears that the wide net cast by the government to capture terrorists is a major international public relations exercise, visible but not substantive — no terrorist activities have been unearthed, no plans of terrorist attacks have been revealed,” said Kwamchetsi Makokha, a writer with the newspaper The Daily Nation. “Security must rely more on intelligence and less on brawn.”
Source: The New York Times
