Correspondent Heba Aly has the story of a young man from central Kenya who went to fight with the insurgents in Somalia. He’s believed to have blown himself up in a suicide bombing. Now his family and friends worry that other young men from his village will follow his path. Listen
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JEB SHARP: Somalia’s embattled government says it’s pushed back Islamist insurgents from the capital, Mogadishu. Dozens were killed in this latest round of fighting. Somalia’s long-running conflict has created misery for its people, and it’s spilled over into its East African neighbor, Kenya, home to many ethnic Somalis. Heba Aly has the story of one Kenyan community hundreds of miles from the border, that’s lost one of its young men to the insurgency.
HEBA ALY: In a village in central Kenya, children play soccer in a dusty yard. For a ball, they use plastic bags tied up with rope. Many of the Kenyans living in this poor village are ethnically Somali, though their families have lived here for generations. One young man who grew up here was Tawakal Ahmed. His friends remember him as someone who played soccer, hung out and chewed khat leaves, a stimulant popular among Somalis. But after high school, Tawakal began to change. He became increasingly religious. At first, his friends – like Frank Metro – weren’t too alarmed.
FRANK METRO: It happened gradually and I didn’t anticipate it to go out of hand. I just thought, “He’s just infiltrated with that theory of being holy, making it to heaven, but after awhile maybe he will come to terms of the reality and maybe mix in the religion and the reality on the ground.
ALY: But that didn’t happen. Instead, Tawakal took off for Somalia, where he joined Islamist insurgents fighting a new Western-backed Somali government installed in early 2007.
METRO: Then after a while, that is when we heard that he has passed. And so it was like, “This is sad.
ALY: There’s no official confirmation, but many here believe Tawakal blew himself up in a suicide attack. His friends can’t understand why, since he never had much of a connection to Somalia. But recent changes in his hometown might provide some clues. The sermon playing out of this mosque in Isiolo is in Somali. In recent years, Somali immigrants and refugees have settled and taken control of some of the mosques. Some locals say the new Somali mosque leadership is connected to extremist insurgent groups back home – specifically the feared al-Shabab, Hussein Noor Roble is a village elder.
HUSSEIN NOOR ROBLE: If ever there is a recruitment going on in this area, it’s done by those people – the elders of that mosque, be they the committee, be they the Imam, or whatever.
ALY: Noor’s wife, Kamar, also sees extremism taking hold in the village. As she cooks a meal of pancakes, she remembers a day last year when some elderly women were celebrating the birth of the prophet, Muhammed.
KAMAR: Boys from the mosque, they come. 20, 25, like that. They were many.
ALY: She said the young men didn’t believe in worshipping anyone other than Allah. So they went on a rampage.
KAMAR: That time, they stoned people. They stoned people. They come up to inside. They beat people. We said they were Al-Qaeda.
ALY: It’s not clear that those labeled extremists here have any links to Al-Qaeda. Still, some locals says it’s this kind of extremism that led Tawakal to his death. They also believe he was lured by money and the prospect of accomplishing something in his life. Village elder Noor invitesTawakal’s cousin over to talk. The cousin is too scared to give his name. He tells me it’s marginalization that leads young men like Tawakal to go to Somalia.
COUSIN: This government is not giving Kenyan Somalis any job, any opportunity. We are just like 2nd class citizens. The boys, and everybody, is annoyed with the government, with the life they are living, so they are ready to do anything.
ALY: That’s why Somali insurgents usually recruit from predominantly Somali areas of Kenya. But Tawakal’s story is among the first known cases of recruits from central Kenya, hundreds of miles from the border. And that’s troubling to many here in Isiolo. Milgo Ahmed is another of Tawakal’s cousins. She worries other young men will follow her cousin’s path.
MILGO AHMED: Tawakal is dead. But many, many other Tawakals are going to have the same fate if the international community does not take action. We are not part of al-Shabab. We don’t know their ideology.
ALY: She adds, “We are not interested in their fighting. But we cannot save our children from them.” For The World, I’m Heba Aly, Isiolo, central Kenya.
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