City of Thorns

by Ben Rawlence

  The resettlement corruption scandal of 2001 was the subject of an investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. See OIOS, Investigation Into Allegations Of Refugee Smuggling At The Nairobi Branch Office Of The Office Of The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees, UN Doc A/56/733, 21 December 2001.

  25. In Bed with the Enemy

  A former diplomat serving in a European embassy in Nairobi confirmed to me that a French warship was also involved in the September 2012 shelling of Kismayo.

  The picture of the ‘pax commercial’ was reported by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia in its July 2011 report. The UN Monitoring Group report of 24 October 2014 said, ‘Al-Shabaab continues to benefit from revenue generated, on a scale greater than when it controlled Kismayo, at charcoal production sites, from checkpoints along trucking routes and from exports, in particular at Kismayo and Barawe, all of which to date have been uninterrupted by the military offensive against the group’ (here). The percentages of the cut taken by each armed group are from the same report. The estimate of 60–70 per cent of illegal sugar coming from Kismayo came from an interview with a European intelligence agency official interviewed in Nairobi in November 2014.

  The name ‘Selma’ is a pseudonym.

  The dire, ‘untenable’ situation in the camps at the end of 2012 was highlighted in the unprecedented appeal from the NGO coalition, entitled, ‘The Human Costs of the Funding Shortfalls for the Dadaab Refugee Camps’, and released in November 2012. It was signed by CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Danish Refugee Council, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran World Federation, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam and Terre des Hommes.

  The $100m shortfall was reported by UNHCR in early 2013. See Refugees International, ‘Kenya: Government Directive Leads to Severe Abuses and Forced Returns’, 26 February 2013.

  PART THREE

  26. Crackdown!

  The Department for Refugee Affairs’ relocation order of 13 December 2012 is hosted on the Human Rights Watch website: see ‘Kenya: Don’t Force 55,000 Refugees Into Camps’, 21 January 2013. The estimate of 100,000 illegal aliens in the country is not based on any evidence but is a figure regularly offered by Kenyan officials from the DRA in interviews, including several with me in Nairobi and Dadaab in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

  The crackdown is covered in detail in Human Rights Watch, You Are All Terrorists: Kenya Police Abuse of Refugees in Nairobi (2013). The quotes: ‘This is Kenya, we can rape you if we want to,’ and ‘You are all al-Shabaab and you are all terrorists,’ are taken from the report.

  27. The Stain of Sugar

  The farce of the press conference announcing the election results is from a description by Michela Wrong, ‘To be prudent is to be partial’, New York Times, 14 March 2013.

  John Githongo, ‘Moving On: Welcome to Kenya Inc,’ Africanarguments.org, 22 May 2013, includes his claim that the election was ‘stolen well’.

  The findings of the unpublished newspaper report about sugar racketeering were shared with me by a source within the publishing house who does not wish to be named.

  29. Too Much Football

  What Guled called the ‘Tabliq’ are a Muslim missionary group whose proper name is Tabligh Jama’at. The Tabligh are a transnational, non-violent evangelical group with origins in India in the nineteenth century. In recent years they have won many converts in eastern Africa.

  30. The Night Watchmen

  UNHCR reported the killings as follows: ‘On May 23 three refugees working as watchmen in the market were killed and one injured in a bandit attack … the motive behind the killing is unknown.’ UNHCR Dadaab Update 7/13, 16 May–15 June 2013.

  The allegations of Ethiopian intelligence assassinating ONLF leaders inside Kenya were made by Kenyan local government officials. See Boniface Bosire, ‘Authorities Concerned Spillover Conflict in Ethiopia’, Tesfa News, 1 August 2014.

  31. Sugar Daddy

  The allegations about Sharif’s involvement in sugar smuggling and the sums involved were mentioned to me by several different police officers and confirmed by refugee journalists working in the camp, by businessmen working in Dadaab town as well as the admissions of UN officials mentioned in the text.

  On Michael Adebolajo’s detention in Kenya see ‘London terror suspect had been detained in Kenya’, Daily Nation, 25 May 2013. The UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that MI6 did not investigate Adebolajo’s claims of torture: ‘This is surprising: if Adebolajo’s allegations of mistreatment did refer to his interview by [Arctic] then HMG could be said to have had some involvement – whether or not UK personnel were present in the room.’ Arctic is a code name for the Kenya Police Anti-Terrorism Police Unit which is funded in large part by the UK and US governments. The possible complicity of MI6 in the torture was, at the time of writing, the subject of another inquiry. See Lucy Fisher, ‘MI6 faces inquiry into “torture” of Woolwich killer Michael Adebolajo’, The Times, 28 November 2014.

  32. Italy, or Die Trying

  The routes from the Horn of Africa via Yemen, Sudan and Egypt and Libya are monitored by an organization called the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat. The data on refugee flows in this chapter comes from there. The accounts of the migrants drinking benzene, dying in the desert and paying ransoms on the way to Libya and the amounts of money paid for passage on the boats is from an RMMS report, ‘Going West: Contemporary mixed migration trends from the Horn of Africa to Libya and Europe’, RMMS, June 2014.

  Stemming the flow of migrants was part of the deal struck with President Gaddafi for the rapprochement with the EU: see Human Rights Watch, Stemming the Flow: Abuses Against Migrants, Asylum Seekers and Refugees (2006).

  The quote ‘You are paying $1,000 to purchase death …’ comes from the UNHCR film about the Mediterranean sea crossings, Rescue at Sea available at: http://tracks.unhcr.org/2014/07/rescue-at-sea/

  Italy launched an investigation into the video of migrants forced to strip in Lampedusa: see ‘Italy probes treatment of Lampedusa migrants “forced to strip”’, BBC,18 December, 2013.

  The information about Italy’s attitude to the migrants and the descriptions of overflowing hostels in Sicily was from a research trip I made in 2008.

  33. Waiting for the Moon

  The statistics about the biometric food distribution system are taken from a WFP update, ‘Biometrics’, dated 1 February 2014, provided to me by staff in Dadaab. The figures for those removed from the food manifest in Hagadera come from the UNHCR Dadaab Update 9/13, 1–31 July 2013.

  36. Knowledge Never Expires

  The heartbreaking letter to the media written by Fish and other members of the ’92 group describing the injustices of the incentive worker system is one of the few testimonies available in English where the refugees speak in their own voice and in telling detail about the iniquity and humiliation of life in the camp. It was published in 2010 on a private blog and is available at: https://dodona777.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/a-voice-from-the-voiceless-dadaab-refugee-camps-kenya/

  They write:

  We talk, but our voices are never heard. We move, but only inside a cage. We have many skills and talents, but we are denied our chance to maximize our potential … The incentive system is often claimed to be necessary because of limited budgetary resources and because refugee staff members are not allowed to officially work under Kenyan law. However, in actuality, these supposed justifications serve only as mere excuses for the agencies to hide behind so that they can continue to exploit refugee labor …

  The standard bribe of 5,000 shillings for a movement pass is common knowledge in the camp and was repeated to me by numerous interlocutors. When I raised the matter with Department for Refugee Affairs officials they denied knowing the amount, but smiled.

  37. Welcome to Westgate

  The description of the Westgate attack draws on the wealth of material in the public domain as well as conversations with diplomats and journalists who were there or who had access to priv
ileged information about what was happening. Along with the documentary film by Dan Reed called Terror at the Mall screened on HBO and BBC on the one-year anniversary of the attacks, among the many accounts I read, the ones cited are: James Verini, ‘Letter From Kenya: Surviving Westgate’, NewYorker.com, 27 September 2013, for the comment from the Kenyan-Somali woman about ‘they should all be sent back …’; and Guy Alexander: ‘Kenyan Mall Shooting: they threw grenades like maize to chickens’, Observer, 22 September 2013 for the quote ‘we went slowly’.

  The information about specific warnings prior to the attack was provided by two intelligence officials working in different European embassies in Nairobi.

  The catalogue of blunders during the attack emerged later, most comprehensively reported by Daniel Howden, ‘Terror in Westgate mall: the full story of the attacks that devastated Kenya’, Guardian, 4 October 2013. Howden mentions the looting and empty beer bottles, images of which are online.

  According to the Sunday Nation newspaper, the President’s Commission of Inquiry was shelved, ‘after he was advised it could expose sensitive details and lead to the passing of a no-confidence vote in security chiefs in the middle of an anti-terror war’. See Andrew Teyie, ‘Commission of Inquiry that never was,’ Sunday Nation, 20 September 2014.

  Human rights groups have long accused the state of a string of extrajudicial executions, especially of terror suspects in Mombasa. See ‘We Are Tired of Taking You to the Court’, Muslims for Human Rights and Open Society Justice Initiative, 2013.

  The less publicized airstrikes inside Somalia that followed Westgate I heard about from refugees in Dadaab and from former Kenyan military personnel working in Dadaab.

  39. A Lap Dance with the UN

  The numbers of those stripped from the food manifest as a result of the new biometric procedures are from the WFP ‘Biometrics’ Briefing paper on file with me. The $2.9m figure came from an interview with Hans Vikoler, then head of WFP in Dadaab, in November 2013.

  The information about budgets and posts being cut and NGOs initiating programmes to facilitate returns is from a range of interviews with UN officials and NGO staff in Dadaab in March and November 2014. See also the MSF appeal, ‘Dadaab: Agreement on refugee repatriation should not affect aid delivery’, 28 November 2013 which reported an MSF survey that four out of five refugees did not want to return given current conditions and also that ‘Policies by donors to reduce funds are having concrete effects on the refugees in Dadaab.’

  Al-Jazeera made a documentary about the killing of Abubakr Sherrif in which serving Kenyan policemen confess to a wide-ranging programme of extrajudicial executions: ‘Inside Kenya’s Death Squads’, Al-Jazeera, September 2014.

  UNHCR spoke out about the large numbers of children separated from their parents in the Usalama Watch crackdown. In its own report on the operation UNHCR said over 600 refugees were shipped to Dadaab, many without their children: UNHCR Dadaab Update 09/14, 16–31 May 2014.

  The impression of the media at that time and the comments of Joe Odindo, then managing editor of the Nation media group, come from an interview with him and a visit to the Nation offices in Nairobi in April 2014 and a round table for journalists organized by Journalists for Justice, Stanley Hotel, Nairobi, 14 April 2014.

  The fate of the Congolese refugees deported to Dadaab, housed in Kambi Os camp, who then absconded I learned from UNHCR staff in November 2014.

  I wrote about the political benefits of the crackdown for the President and his deputy in ‘Kenya’s Anti-Terror Strategy Begins to Emerge’, africanarguments.org, 9 April 2014. That piece attributes the ‘consequences’ comment to Johnnie Carson, the US Assistant Secretary of State at the time and the ‘essential contacts’ quote to the UK High Commissioner Christian Turner.

  On the dry season surge of AMISOM and fighting in the areas targeted for returns, see the ‘OCHA Flash Update 4: Humanitarian Impact of Military Operation’, April 2014 which said 40–44,000 people had been displaced by the offensive. In September 2014 UNHCR Somalia reported that 100,000 had been displaced so far that year in the country as a whole: ‘Over 100,000 people displaced in Somalia so far this year as IDPs bear brunt of food insecurity crisis’, UNHCR Briefing Notes, September 2014.

  40. A Better Place

  The substance of the returns package offered to the refugees that volunteer to go home is listed in a UNHCR document entitled, ‘Repatriation Assistance for Spontaneous Returns to Somalia’ provided to me by UNHCR staff in Dadaab in November 2014.

  Details about the WFP ration cut were informed by a conversation with the WFP press office in Nairobi in December 2014.

  The anomaly of the number of people immunized in the polio campaign of 2013 was widely discussed among agency staff in Dadaab at the time although not reported in the media.

  Further Reading

  Amnesty International, ‘No Place Like Home: Returns and Relocations of Somalia’s Displaced’, (2014)

  David Anderson and Jacob McKnight, ‘Kenya at War: Al-Shabaab and its enemies in East Africa’, African Affairs, Volume 114, Number 1, January 2015

  Tarak Barkawi, ‘On the Pedagogy of Small Wars’, International Affairs, Volume 80, Issue 1, January 2004

  Cedric Barnes and Harun Maruf, ‘The Rise and Fall of Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts’, Chatham House, Briefing Paper, April 2007

  Laurence Binet, Somalia 1991–1993: Civil War, Famine Alert and UN ‘Military-humanitarian’ Intervention (MSF Speaks Out Series, 2013)

  Anneli Botha, ‘Radicalisation in Kenya’ and ‘Radicalisation and al-Shabaab Recruitment in Somalia’, Institute for Security Studies (South Africa), September 2014

  Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999)

  Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst (eds.), Learning from Somalia: The Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Intervention (Perseus, 1997)

  Mohammed Diriye, Culture and Customs of Somalia (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001)

  Dave Eggers, What is the What? The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (London: Penguin, 2006)

  Nuruddin Farah, Maps (London: Pan, 1986)

  Nurrudin Farah, Gifts (London: Penguin, 1993)

  Nurrudin Farah, Secrets (London: Penguin, 1996)

  Nurrudin Farah, Crossbones (London: Granta, 2012)

  Jonathan Fisher and David Anderson, ‘Authoritarianism and the Securitization of Development in Africa’, International Affairs, Volume 91, Issue 1, January 2015

  Debi Goodwin, Citizens of Nowhere (Toronto: Doubleday, 2010)

  Gerald Hanley, Warriors and Strangers (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971)

  Mary Harper, Getting Somalia Wrong (London: Zed/African Arguments, 2012)

  Barbara Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees (Oxford: OUP, 1986)

  Cindy Horst, Transnational Nomads: How Somalis cope with refugee life in the Dadaab camps of Kenya (Berghahn Books, 2005)

  Human Rights Watch, Screening Ethnic Somalis: The Cruel Consequences of Kenya’s Passbook System (1990)

  Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu (2007)

  Human Rights Watch, Ballots to Bullets: Organized Political Violence and Kenya’s Crisis of Governance (2008)

  Human Rights Watch Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region (2008)

  Human Rights Watch, So Much to Fear: War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia (2008)

  Human Rights Watch, From Horror to Hopelessness: Kenya’s Forgotten Somali Refugee Crisis (2009)

  Human Rights Watch, Welcome to Kenya: Police Abuse of Somali Refugees (2010)

  Human Rights Watch, You Don’t Know Who to Blame: War Crimes in Somalia (2011)

  Human Rights Watch, Criminal Reprisals: Kenya Police and Military Abuses Against Ethnic Somalis (2012)

  Human Rights Watch, No Place for Children: Child Recruitment, Forced Marriage and Attacks on Schools in Somalia (2012)

  Human Rights Watch, High Stakes: Pol
itical Violence and the 2013 Elections in Kenya (2013)

  Human Rights Watch, Hostages of the Gatekeepers: Abuses Against Internally Displaced People in Mogadishu (2013)

  Human Rights Watch, You Are All Terrorists: Kenya Police Abuse of Refugees in Nairobi (2013)

  Human Rights Watch, I Wanted to Lie Down and Die: Trafficking and Torture of Eritreans in Sudan and Egypt (2014)

  Human Rights Watch, The Power These Men Have Over Us: Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by African Union Forces in Somalia (2014)

  Human Rights Watch, Yemen’s Torture Camps: Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate of Impunity (2014)

  International Crisis Group, ‘Somalia’s Divided islamists’, Africa Briefing No.74, Nairobi, 18 May 2010

  International Crisis Group, ‘The Kenyan Military Intervention in Somalia’, Africa Report No.184, 15 February 2012

  Stig Jarle Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamic Group, 2005–2012 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)

  Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: the Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)

  Parselelo Kantai, ‘The Rise of a Somali Capital’, The Chimurenga Chronic, March 2013

  I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali (Woodbridge: James Currey, 4th edn, 2002)

  Emma Lochery, ‘Rendering Difference Visible: The Kenyan State and its Somali Citizens’, African Affairs, Issue 111/415, September 2012

  Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (New York: Free Press, 1997)

  Nene Mburu, Bandits on the Border: The Last Frontier in the Search for Somali Unity (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005)

  Nadifa Mohamed, The Orchard of Lost Souls (London: Simon and Schuster, 2014)

  Solar Mamas (2012), a film by Jehane Noujaim