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 camp fol­low­ing the al-Shabaab ter­ror­ist at­tack in Garissa in April, Hus­sein gath­ered his courage and went to the UN refugee repa­tri­a­tion of­fice to ask to be re­set­tled back home in So­ma­lia. Af­ter years of liv­ing in the largest refugee com­plex in the world, Dadaab had be­come an open-air prison to him, with lit­tle more to of­fer than a daily dose of anx­i­ety.

“I came here be­cause of the famine in 2011. I am a farmer. There is noth­ing for me here, I can­not work. We are not get­ting much food ei­ther,” says Hus­sein, seated in the of­fice of the UN refugee agency, the UN­HCR. “And now they ac­cuse us of be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the at­tack. It’s not bear­able.”

Lo­cated halfway be­tween the So­mali bor­der and the Kenyan town of Garissa, and home to an es­ti­mated 334,600 So­mali refugees, Dadaab has once again be­come the fo­cus of the Kenyan gov­ern­men­t’s re­sponse to ter­ror­ism af­ter the mas­sacre of 147 stu­dents at the Uni­ver­sity of Garissa last month.

Dadaab refugee camp closure would risk 350,000 Somali lives, warns Amnesty.

Ten days after the attack, Kenya’s vice-president, William Ruto, gave the UN until July to relocate all the refugees and close the camp, saying that Dadaab has become a hideout for al-Shabaab in Kenya. “The group which attacked Garissa earlier this month … they stayed in the refugee camps,” said Bunow Korane, the chair of Kenya’s Refugee Affairs Commission. “They assembled their arms there.”

Ac­cord­ing to se­cu­rity ex­perts, how­ever, there is no ev­i­dence link­ing Dadaab or refugees to al-Shabaab and the Garissa at­tack.

Al­though this is not the first time that Kenya has de­manded the clo­sure of Dadaab fol­low­ing a ter­ror­ist at­tack, and de­spite gov­ern­ment as­sur­ances that So­mali refugees would not be forcibly repa­tri­ated, the an­nounce­ment has cre­ated panic in the camp.

Issa Maaciye, a UN repa­tri­a­tion of­fi­cer, says he has seen an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple turn­ing up at his of­fice since the gov­ern­men­t’s state­ment. “It is not vol­un­tary repa­tri­a­tion,” Maaciye ex­plains. “It is fear.”

Hus­sein says he knows there is in­se­cu­rity in Baidoa, the So­mali city where he in­tends to re­lo­cate his fam­ily. Since De­cem­ber 2014, the UN­HCR has run a pi­lot pro­ject for vol­un­tary repa­tri­a­tion to ar­eas of So­ma­lia deemed safe for refugees, in­clud­ing Kismayo, Baidoa and Luuq.

Re­sources are scarce in these ar­eas, in­clud­ing land, and ex­perts fear that the re­turn of refugees en masse could cre­ate fur­ther ten­sions.

Be­fore leav­ing Dadaab, Hus­sein will have to take a fit­ness test. He will be given $80 (£50) for each mem­ber of his fam­ily, and will be of­fered some prac­ti­cal ad­vice. He will also be told that he can change his mind about board­ing the UN bus out of the camp up un­til the last minute. “Above all, I want to be free,” he says.

More than 2,000 peo­ple have made use of the repa­tri­a­tion scheme so far, and a 2014 sur­vey found that less than 3% of Dadaab’s refugees in­tended to re­turn to So­ma­lia within the next two years. Mean­while, more than 3,000 new refugees have ar­rived in the camp since De­cem­ber.

It is not vol­un­tary repa­tri­a­tion. It is fear Issa Maaciye, UN repa­tri­a­tion of­fi­cer Across the yard from the repa­tri­a­tion of­fice where Hus­sein is or­gan­is­ing his re­turn, Maryan and her hus­band Ali are reg­is­ter­ing their baby son, Has­san, so that he is added to their food ra­tion card. Both Maryan and Ali grew up in Dadaab, and have no rec­ol­lec­tion of life in So­ma­lia. Over the years, more than 100,000 ba­bies have been born in the refugee camp, and to­day half of the camp pop­u­la­tion is un­der 18.

“Those who were born here don’t want to go to So­ma­lia. They would be fac­ing a new world. They could be eas­ily rad­i­calised by al-Shabaab, as they would have to take arms or be killed. There is no free­dom in So­ma­lia right now,” says Mo­hammed Yusuf, an 80-year-old So­mali el­der.

There is not much free­dom in Dadaab ei­ther. Un­der the cam­p’s dystopian sys­tem, Maryan and Ali were able to sur­vive liv­ing in tents made of plas­tic sheet­ing dis­trib­uted by the UN­HCR, and eat­ing food dis­trib­uted by the World Food Pro­gramme. It has been a life of acronyms, mo­not­o­nous ra­tions, and de­pen­dency on hu­man­i­tar­ian aid, con­fined to a few kilo­me­tres square in the mid­dle of the desert.

Maryan gave birth to Has­san in a hos­pi­tal run by Médecins Sans Fron­tières, re­ceiv­ing a level of health­care that she could not have had in So­ma­lia. But if “go­ing back” means noth­ing to her and her hus­band, stay­ing does not seem a vi­able op­tion ei­ther. “We have a son now. He can­not live like we did. But no one of­fers us any real op­tion. Where are we meant to go?”