The sultry border town of Mandera on the eastern tip of Kenya’s north is a tough place to live.
Straddling the borderline between Kenya and lawless Somalia, people from both sides of the border mingle freely, braving the sweltering heat.
But beneath the hubbub of Mandera lies the danger - the town is the main entry point and hideout for Al-Shabaab terrorists from Somalia.
These terrorists are responsible for numerous terrorists’ attacks in Kenya.
The terrorists have also complicated inter-clan conflicts among Kenya’s Somali by supplying sophisticated weapons to select clans.
This has made the conflicts deadlier than before. These conflicts escalate during the election period.
It is here that we meet Musa (his real identity is concealed), a former Al-Shabaab militant who has since renounced the terrorist organization.
Before he turned coat, Musa served in Al-Shabaab’s dreaded Al-Aminiyat branch for six years.
Al-Aminiyat is an elite branch that is charged with gathering intelligence, smuggling goods, suicide bombing and recruitment of fighters.
“As an Al-Shabaab agent for six years, I smuggled arms and supplied them to different communal groups living in northern Kenya’’, he says, his eyes darting from side to side, conscious that he could easily fall victim to members of the terror group sent to track down and execute defectors like himself.
Since he defected, the ex-Al-Shabaab agent has never been at ease.
In a bid to hide his spoors from the terrorist’s intelligence unit that is hot on his heels, he has become itinerant, moving from village to village and from town to town.
Recruited in 2013 and deployed to Al-Aminiyat, Musa’s brief was to smuggle weapons and contraband goods, move new recruits from Kenya to Somalia and help militants from Somalia to cross to Kenya.
Musa’s home is in a village close to Mandera.
Because he was a local, he was a big asset to the terror group as he was used to distributing weapons and helping recruit fighters from his clan.
For this, he earned respect within the group.
"The group recruits and deploys in all clans living in northern Kenya. I was assigned to deal with my clan. I smuggled arms to my clan from the year 2013 to 2016,’’ admits Musa.
Among the weapons he smuggled into Kenya include the lethal military rifle, M-16, and rocket-propelled grenades which were in high demand.
But after serving for six years, he had a rude re-awakening and made a drastic decision to call it quits.
The turning point for the ex- Al-Shabaab agent came in 2016.
One day, the terror group’s seniors ordered the beheading of some of his colleagues ostensibly for sharing information with an unnamed intelligence agency. He knew he would be next.
"I knew I was next because all the fighters who were beheaded were colleagues from my village in Mandera, Kenya. I immediately dropped Al-Shabaab weapons and crossed the border into Kenya. Since then, I have been moving from place to place, fearing for my security,” he says.
North Eastern Kenya, where Musa’s Mandera is located, is dry desolate land.
Occupied by members of the ethnic Somali community, it is one of the poorest regions in Kenya.
Neglected since the colonial era, the area has only recently started getting serious attention from authorities in Nairobi.
The introduction of a devolved system of government has somewhat improved things, but the area still lags behind.
Initially referred to as the Northern Frontier District, the British colonialists used it as a buffer zone against the Italian invasion.
After independence, the area sought to secede to Somalia, but first Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta would have none of that.
A decade long war, called the Shifta War, pitting Kenya and the secessionists exacerbated the marginalization of the area.
Insecurity become the norm as bandits, armed with weapons from Somalia, freely roamed the area, terrorizing citizens and attacking government installations.
The development of social facilities such as schools and hospitals were neglected.
There was little investment in agriculture and livestock. Poverty reigned supreme.
The scarcity of resources such as water and pastures led to frequent deadly conflicts between the different clans.
These conflicts plague the area to date, only that this time, they have been worsened by the proliferation of illegal arms from Somalia.
The implosion of Somalia in the early 1990s worsened an already dire situation.
Refugees from the country flooded the region. Insecurity escalated as some of the refugees become involved in gun-running, supplying weapons to local militias.
Terror agents found a safe haven in the refugee camps, which they used to plan and launch attacks.
The region is therefore fertile ground for Al-Shabaab who exploit the poverty and desperation among the youth to recruit local fighters such as Musa.
Today, the region teems with organized militia groups, terrorist agents and assorted facilitators who illegally cross the border from Somalia and slip into major Kenyan towns.
Before the Al-Shabaab insurgency, Al-Qaeda linked terrorist organizations had been operating in Somalia territory.
These organizations easily recruited youth from Kenya’s north.
The group uses radical Islam as a strategy to brainwash the youth before recruiting and offering them advanced training.
The recruits are then used to gather intelligence, smuggle essential goods and hardware through the porous border and supply arms to certain communities and clans.
Al-Shabaab would then deploy trained youth within their respective clans.
This way, the terror group manages to reduce the chances of detection.
This also ensures that agents returning from Somalia would not be reported to the authorities as clan members are reluctant to report one of their own.
“Al-Shabaab’s first strategy was to recruit and radicalize many youths in northern and coastal Kenya. Apart from recruitment, the group’s plan was to control routes and establish cells and networks in these two regions which would facilitate their terrorist works in Kenya and the East African region,’’ says Mrs Asha Abdi, head of Countering Violent Extremism program at Garissa based Horn-Afric Consultancy.
Despite challenges posed by the supply of illicit small arms and light weapons from Somalia, Civil society organizations in northern Kenya are popularizing the implementation of the arms trade Treaty [A.T.T] which Kenya is a signatory.
The initiative which brings together various stakeholders drawn from the region held a roundtable meeting to address the urgency of the Kenyan government adopting the arms trade treaty thus addressing the illicit transfers of weapons that fall in hands of militias and terrorists.
The roundtable meeting held in Garissa and supported by Control Arms, mobilized parliamentarians to engage the national government and ensure the adoption of the treaty.
"The roundtable brought all players together and we now have a standing committee mandated to work with parliamentarian in ensuring national is engaged on ATT and its fast adoption,’’ Disclosed Mr Awale Yussuf, who is the chairman of Northern Kenya Action network on small arms and light weapons.
According to Mr Hussein Olow, who is a regional expert on small arms and light weapons, Al-Shabaab uses illicit arms transfer to warring communities and recruitment of youth into the terrorist group as a “soft power” regional strategy.
"Al-Shabaab achieves soft power by arming communities against each other, getting their youth to join the terrorist squad and win territory that they use in sending suicide bombers and other terrorists in attacking strategic facilities and groups of people,’’ adds Olow, who is a programme coordinator with Northern Kenya Action Network on Small Arms and Light Weapons.
Al-Shabaab established terrorist cells and networks in different community jurisdictions. These cells have been responsible for various large scale armed violence in parts of Kenya.
Mandera county was worst affected, it suffered many attacks and inter-clan fights perpetrated by well-trained youths armed with sophisticated weapons between 2013 to 2015.
"By supplying sophisticated weapons to various groups, Al-Shabaab has changed the dynamics of inter-clan armed violence in northern Kenya. In the past local communities used sticks, stones and rifles to fight," says Olow.
"Most armed conflicts in East and Horn of Africa region are fought using illicit arms sourced from Somalia," adds Mrs Abdi.
A local community fighter whose village was attacked by a rival gang armed with rocket-propelled grenades admitted that his community procured sophisticated arms from Somalia to stage a reprisal attack.
"We had no option but to organise communal fundraising to buy sophisticated weapons and conduct a revenge attack,’’ said Mr Abdow Alio, a resident of Choroqo in Mandera.
Al-Shabaab supplies arms to particular communities in order to win their trust and advance their terrorist missions.
During the general election period, insecurity in the region escalates as clans jostle for influential political positions, aware that political power enables access to resources.
The vicious competition is a boon to Al-Shabaab, arms smugglers, local militias and warlords who reap from the inter-clan violence
"Al-Shabaab is a dangerous group out to take advantage of anything that will cause local and national instability and disenchantment. Their plan is to control communities. To gain the control, they can supply anything to such communities to win their support, “says Mr Adan Garad, an Executive Director of Wagalla peace and Human rights-based in Northern Kenya.
According to Mandera Women Rights Network, a local women rights group, the area registered 46 cases of armed violence during the past four elections.
The 46 cases mentioned by the organization cover attacks that took place in the 1997 general election to 2017 elections.
The violence varied in severity and locally available data indicates that between March 2012 to January 2013, 85 people were killed.
100 seriously injured and 2,500 displaced in a pre-election attack at Guba village in Mandera County.
In August 2014, 25 people were killed by heavily armed militias at Chorogo village.
The attackers carrying grenades and assault weapons torched houses and destroyed water pans in Choroqo village.
In March 2005, 22 people were killed and 1,500families fled their homes in El-Golicha village when armed militia from rival clans attacked their village.
In March 2005, 16 people were killed. 22injured in a grenade attack at a village near Kenya –Somalia border.
Hundreds of people were displaced and dozens injured at Choroko border village in Mandera county.
According to the network’s Mrs Abshiro Hussein, Al-Shabaab and other illegal arms smugglers played a role in these election periods violence.
“The large-scale attacks were different from normal inter-clan fights we have experienced in the past. The attackers used big weapons and appeared well-trained,’’ says Mr Abdinasir Guhad, a resident of the Malkamari area in Mandera county.
Terrorists and other criminal organizations understand the power of the internet. They use social media to spread fake news whose aim is to divide communities.
“The warlords use social media to disseminate fake news and information with aim of inciting one clan against the other. Maybe even some accounts are used by Al-Shabaab to disseminate hate between warring clans and spark large scale election violence, ’’ says Mrs Amran Abdundi, an Executive Director of Frontier Indigenous Network.
However, during the 2017 general election, the region did not experience any major armed violence due to the security strategy deployed by the local administration.
A human rights official who was part of the joint program between regional security agencies and CSOs confirmed this.
“The strategy worked well. By engaging local traditional governance system and upscaling intelligence capabilities, there was disruption of illegal arms transfers and movements of fighters from Somalia into northern Kenya through the porous border," says Garad of Wagalla Centre for Peace and Human rights.
The traditional governance system used a negotiated democracy where clans shared political seats and averted political contest which could ignite tension and violence.
Al-Aminiyat is the unit Al-Shabaab uses to weaponize elections in northern Kenya. It deploys its trained and combat-hardened militants to undertake such missions.
“Al-Aminiyat deployed three groups in northern Kenya. The first group was from the assassination squad tasked with killing high profile political figures and linking it to a certain clan thus igniting inter-clan blood bath.
"The second unit was charged with intelligence gathering targeting warring clans and government security and the last unit was to deliver illegal arms and training to Al-Shabaab friendly clans in northern Kenya,’’ says a former Al-Shabaab operative who denounced the group and fled northern Kenya.
Between 2013 to 2015, the region experienced increased large-scale attacks and this ex-Al-Shabaab man says he played a big role.
An arms smuggler operating on the Kenya-Somalia border area said that his business booms during the electioneering period.
“Business was good in 2007, 2013 and currently as we approach the 2022 election period. However, things were bad in the year 2017. I have received numerous orders and I don’t know where the arms will be used," he says.