Police have disrupted a smuggling racket run by an Ethiopian militia through the border in Moyale.
A major police operation traced the massive inflow of narcotics, illegal aliens and offensive weapons to the Oromo Liberation Army, which had multiple bases in Kenyan soil.
The militia has been operating in temporary makeshift camps in the sprawling thickets in the vast desert areas of Marsabit, Isiolo, Tana River, Lamu, running parallel governments under the nose of the Nairobi administration.
National Police Service’s elite Special Operation Group is now on its trail, seeking to flush them out.
So far, it has netted some 3.5 million Ethiopian Biir and $200,000 in fake currency, 20 tonnes of bhang, weapons and ammunition and food substances.
Also recovered in the raids are tonnes of white crystal and fine powdered substances suspected to be cocaine and heroine, but which were destroyed at site when set ablaze by the raiding party.
A water bowser the group used for its supplies and other equipment that include solar panels and power generators was also recovered.
Others are two new Probox vehicles, motor cycles and fake Kenyan ID cards, and the group’s uniforms and flag.
The militia had developed itself to be a self-sustaining force prepared for the long haul.
This is evidenced by a fully fledged media unit for broadcasting and publishing its propaganda, to a makeshift detention prison for the deviant in its ranks, an economic unit and a medical unit attending to its wounded.
Police IG Douglas Kanja says the operation will do whatever it takes to eradicate the group from Kenyan soil with lethal force in the long term, cutting off its drug and people smuggling chain in the immediate term.
IG says the militia had “colonised” the areas it had dominated, exploiting the cultural symmetry between its fighters and the local communities to control the socioeconomic activities in the areas.
But the elite team’s work curtailed their operations, if an intelligence report seen by the Star is anything to go by.
Bhang circulation in Nairobi and its environs has reportedly significantly reduced, making the price of a kilogramme in the black market to shoot to the north of Sh40,000.
Kanja says the militia also fuelled criminality in other parts of the country, including banditry in the North Rift, by proliferating small and light weapons and ammunitions, smuggling them to their enablers.
The special team’s commander Pharez Emitundo said his troops recovered publications from the camps spelling out the militia’s mission.
Its stated aim is self determination, with a long-term agenda of setting the areas of Marsabit, Isiolo, Tana River and Lamu to be part of its envisioned independent state that has dots of Oromo people.
Simultaneous raids by the special team on February 3, when the operation was launched by DIG Gilbert Masengeli, destroyed its Adadi Odada medical makeshift camp.
Also targeted were Adadiprison, Ambalo training cam and Jirole media camp, which was its propaganda nerve centre.
Also destroyed were Qate camp, Uran camp, Badaan Arero camp and Funanyatta Dimaado camp, where the militia stored a huge tonnage of narcotics, and Malka Ada camp, where another cache of narcotics was recovered.
The police found 25 fighters at the Adadi camp and 39 aliens nabbed from other camps, who have been taken to custody.
“Most of the fighters have been neutralised and the group has been degraded and its capabilities diminished significantly,” Emitundo said.
“Some escaped with injuries, especially its leaders, but we are closing in on them.
“We ask them to surrender to authorities if they are still in Kenyan territory. My team is the tip of the spear in law enforcement that takes the fight to the enemy. It is a matter of when and not if before we get them.”
It is from these camps that the Oromo Liberation Army has been recruiting naive locals to take up arms and be its boots on the ground.
It has also been sourcing tonnes of bhang from the neighbouring country, which find its way to major cities and generates revenue for the OLA’s subsistence.
In fact, the impact of its 32-year activity has led to the Moyale-Isiolo-Meru route replacing the coastal-Nairobi route as the main conduit for narcotic and hard substances flow into Nairobi.
Interior PS Raymond Omollo pointed this out in an interview with the Star last December.
“We are seeing a lot of hard drugs. There is an increase in the consumption of heroin and cocaine,” he said.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said East Africa is
attractive to international drug trafficking syndicates as the countries,
especially Kenya, have ineffective border controls.
