Empowering our Community
The barrier that the government seeks to build along the border with Somalia was a subject of heated debate in the Somali Parliament on Saturday. While debating a motion about the wall in the Somali capital Mogadishu, Somali MPs expressed reservations about th... More »
In the wake of the Garissa University College shootings that left nearly 150 people dead, the Kenyan government has threatened to close the world’s largest refugee camp. In response, US Secretary of State John Kerry promised an extra $45m to the United Nations... More »
WHEN HE FIRST started to believe Shabaab was corrupting the cause that brought him to Somalia, Ibrahim says, “at that time I felt like in my heart I could just sense that something was wrong, but I wasn’t open about it. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was tr... More »
UNTIL the night of June 15, Mpeketoni was not a household name in Kenya. It appears only on some maps as an administrative section of Lamu County, but in the past week it has been described as a town complete with police station and branches of the country’s t... More »
AS THE SOMALI LEADERS of al Shabaab have moved to reassert their authority, al Qaeda, along with the foreign fighters, has found itself marginalized. Osama bin Laden had always wanted to establish a foothold in Somalia for al Qaeda. But the country’s clan-base... More »
Mpeketoni, site of the massacre on Sunday of at least 56 people, was created in the 1960s by a large influx of Kikuyu who had been displaced from their land in Central Kenya during the State of Emergency in the 1950s. The coastal town in Lamu county, which wa... More »
SOON AFTER JOINING al Shabaab, Ibrahim met the most famous American fighter in Somali history — a young U.S. citizen from Alabama, Omar Hammami, known in Somalia as Abu Mansour al Amriki. “He was a happy, young guy — typical Western,” Ibrahim recalls. Ibrahim ... More »
More than 3,000 hotel workers in Lamu County are jobless following the closure of six beach hotels. The resorts shut down due to lack of international guests, according to Lamu Tourist Association Vice-Chairman Ghalib Alwy. He said since last year, European to... More »
Several police officers were injured on Monday evening after Al-Shabaab attacked their convoy at Yumbis in Fafi Sub-County, Garissa County. The officers were travelling to Yumbis in four vehicles to reinforce the squad that was battling the militants who had a... More »
After years in Dadaab, Ibrahim Hussein is one of many refugees facing a return to Somalia after the Kenyan government’s order to close the camp For Ibrahim Hussein, it was the final blow. When the Kenyan government ordered the closure of the Dadaab refugee cam... More »
U.S. COUNTERTERRORISM AGENCIES have long been preoccupied with the threat posed by the recruiting successes of the Somali terrorist group al Shabaab in Western countries. The group has managed to lure hundreds of foreign fighters — including some 40 Americans ... More »
Detectives from the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) have arrested a suspected Al-Shabaab recruiter in Mombasa. The 45-year-old man was detained for allegedly being one of the people funding and recruiting youths to join the Al-Qaeda linked terror group. He w... More »