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Kenya crackdown on militants troubles Muslims
 A Kenyan police crackdown on Islamists is fuelling Muslim resentment and moderate preachers say it undermines their efforts to counter recruiting by al Qaeda militants with links across the border in Somalia."Yeah. Just leave us alone. We'll take care of it."
If Kenya remains bent on punishing the Shaboobs for their atrocity they'll get more results than by kicking back and letting the holy men deal with it. The cost of failure was laid bare in September when al Shabaab gunmen, one of whom police say is a Kenyan from the port of Mombasa, raided the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. At least 67 people were killed. Police say their tough approach, taken before Westgate but stepped up since, has limited the flow of would-be jihadists in and out of Somalia, citing a drop in the number of suspected militants they have tracked and arrested in the past year. But Islamists, former militant sympathisers, independent security experts and diplomats, some of whom acknowledge short-term benefits from the police actions, say sweeping detentions and perceptions police are carrying out extra-judicial killings have fuelled Muslim resentment in the mostly Christian nation.
"No, no! Certainly not!" Moderate imams, particularly along the coast where most Kenyan Muslims live, have been attacked by Islamist radicals and some say they have been cowed into silence as a result. "Oh, yeah. We'da said somethin' otherwise." Police tactics "are benefiting al Shabaab more than they are benefiting the government", said Akullah Khamis, a 33-year-old Muslim in Mombasa, Kenya's second city. He works with young people and non-governmental agencies and says he himself fended off a bid by al Shabaab to enlist his support three years ago. Kenya's battle against militancy is seen as vital to the stability of east Africa's biggest economy, the gateway for regional trade and with a long coastline that has become a transit route for would-be jihadists trained in Somalia. The United States, Britain and Israel, which fret about the reach of Africa's al Qaeda-aligned Islamists, have trained and equipped Kenya's anti-terror police and intelligence forces. Mombasa county police commander Robert Kitur dismissed suggestions the force was being heavy handed or targeting the wider Muslim community: "We have never been brutal," he told Reuters. "People shouldn't generalise this is about Muslims." "These are not Muslims, these are hooligans. We are going to deal with these people ruthlessly. We are just applying force when it is necessary." However, one man accused by Western governments of aiding the militants believes widespread arrests, along with raids on mosques and the deaths of people during clashes with police, are helping al Shabaab recruiters. "This being done to Muslims opens the eyes of the youth to al Shabaab being right," Abubakar Shariff, accused by the U.N. Security Council and the United States of raising funds and recruiting for al Shabaab, told Reuters at his Mombasa home. Shariff, whose assets have been frozen by Western powers, denies the charges against him.
Posted by: Steve White 2013-11-01 |
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