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| Africa Horn |
| Kenya tightens security on porous Somalia border |
| 2010-02-04 |
| [Mail and Globe] desert border with Somalia ahead of an expected offensive by government forces there that could prompt hard-line Islamist rebels to try to cross the frontier. Al-Shabaab insurgents who declared their loyalty to al-Qaeda this week and want to impose a harsh version of sharia law on the Horn of Africa state have controlled several small towns on the Somali side of the border since late last year. Tensions are growing in the drought-ridden region, where jobs are scarce and both of Somalia's warring factions have been trawling Kenyan villages, seeking to recruit young fighters. "We have deployed more troops and increased patrols along the border because the threat from the other side is higher now," Winston Murungi, district commissioner of Lagdera, told Reuters in an interview near the border. Somalia has not had an effective government in almost two decades, and the Western-backed administration of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed controls little more than a few strategic blocks in the coastal capital, Mogadishu. Fearing the threat from weapons and narcotics traffickers, as well as the heavily armed militias allied to warlords, Kenya officially closed the 680km border back in 2007. But it has allowed thousands of refugees from Somalia to enter and live in sprawling refugee camps at Dadaab, where there are more than 260 000 mostly Somali inhabitants. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it had registered 2 730 refugees in January -- lower than last year's average of 5 000 a month. But that could be about to change with the start of a long-promised offensive by Somali government forces against the al-Shabaab rebels and other Islamist insurgent groups. |
| Posted by:Fred |