Bloomberg
By Sarah McGregor
Friday, October 23, 2009
Kenyan government-supported recruiters have convinced hundreds of Somali men at the UN-run Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and nearby towns to join, the New York-based group said in an e-mailed statement today. The claim by HRW follows a threat by Somalia’s al-Shabaab insurgents on Oct. 12 to attack targets in Kenya unless the country stops recruiting Somalis.
Somalia is in its 18th year of civil war and has lacked a functioning central government since the ouster of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Somalia’s government soldiers and an African Union peacekeeping force are trying to counter Islamic rebels, led by groups such as al-Shabaab, in fighting that has displaced more than 2 million people.
Somalia’s Prime Minister Omar Sharmarke today dismissed the HRW report. “We never recruited in Kenya,” Sharmarke told reporters in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Kenyan military spokesman Bogita Ongeri dismissed the claim as “propaganda.” “We are not involved in any such operation,” he is quoted as saying in the Human Rights Watch report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McGregor in Nairobi at [email protected].
Source: Bloomberg, Oct 23, 2009