In the Somali port of Kismayo, local residents and business community leaders are calling on the United Nations Security Council to lift a ban on charcoal export so they can clear out several million sacks lying on the road between the new Kismayo International airport and the city center. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Kismayo.

The U.N. monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea said the al-Qaida linked group al-Shabab earned up to $25 million from the charcoal trade last year when they controlled Kismayo.

According to the investigators, the militant group levied taxes at every stage of the charcoal from production to export. Due to that, in February this year the U.N. enacted the ban in a bid to weaken al-Shabab financially.

Hassan Awlibah, the chairman of Kismayo’s business community, said Somalis have been working in the charcoal trade even before al-Shabab came to power.

He says the Somali people have been working in the charcoal trade for a long time and he says the situation had forced people to cut down trees when they didn’t have a government and they were hungry.

Today the charcoal ban, aimed at weakening al-Shabab, is still in effect and as you drive through Kismayo’s southern entrance you see more than four million sacks laying on both sides of the road. The charcoal is worth up to an estimated $40 million.

Awlibah says Somali businessmen have invested heavily in the charcoal trade and he believes the international community is punishing them by not allowing them to export the charcoal.

He says we think all these people in the international community have agreed to make the business people, who have invested in charcoal, poor. He says if they are looking for a solution to the charcoal menace they can give us a period of time so that we can export the charcoal. Awlibah says we don’t want to see people cutting down trees any more, but what we want first is to help the people that invested in the charcoal trade.

According to Kismayo authorities more than 5,000 people work in the charcoal trade.

A temporary 12-member committee that is operating Kismayo’s port notes that dozens of empty ships have been docked waiting for the ban to be lifted so that they can transport the charcoal.

The committee is run by Ahmed Madobe, leader of the Ras Kamboni militia, which helped to liberate Kismayo from al-Shabab, Madobe says if the ban is not lifted, a new wave of violence could break out, and the public could turn against against the African Union (AU) forces that now control Kismayo.

He says the charcoal ban can bring insecurity, there is no other life here that the people know and they have poured all their wealth into the charcoal business. Madobe says this can result in problems and insecurity for the people of Kismayo and for the AU forces.

Local official Hassan Ilmi Mooge told VOA the international community has to help to revive other sectors in the area like farming, fishing and the livestock trade.

He said since the international community banned the charcoal trade they haven’t given us any other other way of surviving. He says there is no farming taking place here and no export of livestock so there is nothing coming to the people. Mooge says they have even cut all the humanitarian assistance they used to provide to us. He says for four years we were under huge pressure from al-Shabab and no aid agency came to help us.

For close to five years al-Shabab controlled the port city and banned the international humanitarian agencies from operating in areas under its control.

Local businessmen in Kismayo now have to convince the international community they don’t have ideological links to al-Shabab and above all, that they don’t support the group’s terror activities in the country.

African Union troops and Somali government forces captured the key port city of Kismayo from militant group al-Shabab in October. Since then, the AU and government troops have established a heavy presence in and around the city, and have beefed up security with the aim of preventing further al-Shabab attacks. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Kismayo.

Sixteen-year-old Ahmed Ali Olow is locked up in an abandoned, windowless charcoal storage facility that serves as a prison. The prison doesn’t have a door, only a small hole that is blocked by a rusty old freezer, which only the guards can move.

Olow is the latest person arrested by Somali government forces at the port of Kismayo on suspicion of being a member of al-Shabab.

The teenager said he was looking for a job when soldiers took him into custody.

“They have called me while I was looking at one of the ships offloading at the port,” he said. “They asked where I was going. I told them I was checking out this ship around here. Actually this was the first time I saw the port.”

Al-Shabab has used teenagers like Olow to carry out suicide attacks against government officials, security forces and civilians.

Olow said officials at the port were afraid he was carrying explosives. He said he is not part of al-Shabab and doesn’t know how to use any kind of weapon.

Since al-Shabab was driven out of Kismayo in October, the port itself has been managed by a temporary 12-member committee led by Ahmed Madobe, leader of the Somali militia group Ras Kamboni, which helped liberate Kismayo. The committee collects revenue from port operations, while talks continue to set up a permanent administration to govern the city in both Nairobi and Kismayo.

Kenyan Major Emanuel Okello said that port security officers leave nothing to chance when it comes to safety.

“… so what happens, we have two security checks at the two roadblocks where my men, together with Somali national army, physically search and frisk each and every individual coming to the port, and even check vehicles,” said Okello. “People have to come out, open the vehicles’ boot, we conduct thorough checks before allowing them into the port, so we make sure anyone who is coming to the port is not armed or has no explosives.”

Thirty-six-year-old Mohamed Muhumad Mohamed has worked at the port for five years. He said that when government forces arrived in the port, people were kept waiting for hours before the search began.

“Everything is about people getting to understand and know each other,” he said. “When these guys arrived here, we will be outside the port for about two to three hours before any check-up was done and they were all doing that because of security. After some time they have made security check easy for us, now it takes some few minutes.”

Okello noted that port workers have been cooperative in pointing out new individuals visiting the port, coming to work or as truck drivers.

“There was a time we had al-Shabab operatives, three of them, infiltrate – and it’s locals who pointed them out to us,” he said. “They told us these people are al-Shabab, so they were arrested and interviewed and taken to police station in town. After thorough investigation I understand they were later released in a condition that their whereabouts must be known.”

For the time being, the teenager, Olow, will remain imprisoned in the abandoned charcoal store while he waits for officials to establish his identity.

Somali and African Union troops have made steady progress ousting al-Shabab militants from strongholds in Gedo and Juba, but now a political battle for control of newly liberated regions is posing a challenge for the country’s recently established central government. Mohammed Yusuf reports.

Communities in southern Somalia are pushing to make the autonomous region known as Jubaland a semi-autonomous state that would function like semi-autonomous Puntland, or Puntland’s neighboring breakaway republic of Somaliland.

While community and clan leaders have reached some agreement on how to divide and rule the territory, the bigger challenge is convincing central government officials to accept the plan.

“We would like to be frank with people about the talks and politics that is going on,” said federal parliamentary member Mohamed Ismail Shuriye, who says Mogadishu officials and regional partners remain far from agreement.

With many Somalis and regional representatives favoring formation of semi-autonomous states, some believe the central government fears it will lose power to regional and local authorities, as has happened with Somaliland and Puntland.

“Currently there is so much political wrangling that is taking place, [I] hope the political issues will end well and there will be common understanding between the players,” Shuriye added.

Somalia’s newly-elected President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been walking a fine line on the subject, telling reporters on Wednesday that regions have the right to form new states, but that the central government must have a role in the process.

“Jubaland should not be different from other states in relation to the central government,” said President Mohamud. “That doesn’t mean that we will name regional representatives from Mogadishu, but the government is responsible for the way people from those regions want to form their own local authority.”

Some experts say members of parliament and Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon’s newly appointed ten-member cabinet will have different views on how to administer the proposed semi-autonomous state. They suggest there should be some kind of temporary arrangement to prevent war over the spoils of liberation.

Multiple sources say the central government is worried about foreign influence in the region, which shares a long porous border with Kenya, whose troops arrived in the area last year to combat al-Shabab militants.

Juba-based negotiator Farhan Abdi Afdoob says regional inhabitants don’t view neighboring countries as enemies or occupying forces.

“Ethiopians and Kenyans who are present in our regions are not different, and there is not one of them we view as our enemy,” he said, explaining that, as Somali nationals, none of his constituents would accept being taken over by a foreign power.

“We are people who cannot secede from the Somali people,” he said. “We are people who are satisfied with the new constitution and want to be governed like other federal states. We want the freedom to build our own federal state and we don’t want interference from the government, separating us along ethnic lines and creating conflict between us.”

Afdoob says his constituents are asking central government only to support their initiative and treat them like other federal states in the country.

Kenya is preparing for more devastating floods as the annual rainy season draws near. According to the United Nations’ disaster management agency, hundreds of thousands of Kenyans are affected by the floods and other disasters ever year. Mohammed Yusuf reports.

The deputy director of Kenya’s National Disaster Operation Center, Jeremiah Njagi, says his agency is monitoring patterns of both excessive rain and drought in an effort to head off the disasters Kenya has experienced in years past.

“When the rain comes we expect floods, and we are preparing for that,” he said. “And we are also monitoring the drought pattern because when drought falls in, it affects the crops and then famine follows, so we are trying to monitor the rain patterns and the drought patterns so that we can plan for food security.”

During the past few years, hundreds of thousands of people across Kenya have been praying for rain during a devastating drought that put the country on the brink of a major humanitarian crisis.

But now, with East Africa’s long rainy season about to begin, many Kenyans are bracing for flooding and waterborne diseases.

Some critics have accused the Kenyan government of not responding quickly enough when disasters strike. Njagi notes that independent aid groups are sometimes better positioned to help people in need.

“NGOs [non-governmental organizations] are there and we know what they do, is just to assist and they are well supported. I would say some of them are better supported that sometimes they have the resources that maybe the government might not have at that time, at that place,” he said.

According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), the lives of more than 200 million Africans are disrupted each year by floods, drought, crop failure and other large-scale disasters. It says the majority of them are women and girls.

Pedro Basabe, the office’s chief in Africa, says there is a need to empower women to reduce and fight disasters at the community level.

“Women and girls, they are working at the community level, they take care of their livelihoods, they take care of their families, and in the case of disaster, they are those who suffer the most and most vulnerable,” said Basabe. “But we also need to recognize these efforts and to capitalize for them also to have more education, more participation in order to take decisions because in that case, they will be able also to reduce the impact of disaster in their communities.”

The U.N. has declared Friday as World Disaster Reduction Day, to promote efforts to lessen the frequency and impact of catastrophes that affect so many millions of people.

Kenyan officials say they are offering amnesty to Kenyans who joined the Somali militant group al-Shabab and are willing to denounce violence. This offer comes as Somalia’s new president calls on foreign militants to leave his country. Mohammed Yusuf reports for VOA from Nairobi.

Foreign jihadists

For years, foreign jihadists have fought alongside local Somali militants to topple the internationally recognized government in Somalia.

A United Nations report released last year put the number of Kenyan youths recruited by al-Shabab to fight in Somalia at as many as 500.

The newly-elected Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, has categorized al-Shabab into two factions: local and foreign militants.

He acknowledged Somali youths joined al-Shabab for economic reasons, revenge missions and for religious devotion but said they are still citizens of his land and that they should work for the benefit of the country.

He also said his government has nothing to do with other fighters who are not Somalis. He says the only solution is for them to leave.

Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a Somalia analyst with Southlink consultants in Nairobi, says the local Somali factions are showing more willingness to negotiate with the new government than foreign fighters.

“You know, if you look at the structure of al-Shabab, there are some fighters who are saying ‘Let’s negotiate with the government since now we are losing control of every corner of the country. Let’s negotiate so that we can have a stake in the next government.’ That’s why there is a rift within al-Shabab,” he said.

Radical youth

Kenyan military spokesman Colonel Cyrus Oguna says some Kenyan youths in Somalia have defected from al-Shabab, though not many.

“There is information some members of al-Shabab are nationals of Kenya and other countries in the region,” he says. “And amnesty has been extended to them to be able for those who want to be integrated into the society. But as [of] now few of them have been able to respond to the amnesty but most of them are still with al-Shabab.”

Oguna says the Kenyan government has set up programs to help those youth transition back into normal life.

Some of these defectors have been put into rehabilitation centers, while some are also helping the government in providing useful information about al-Shabab.

Sheikh Juma Ngao, the chairman of Kenya’s Muslim National Advisory Council, says some of the youths were radicalized by Muslim clerics, and says those clerics should be kept away from former al-Shabab fighters.

“These youth were brainwashed through wrong Islamic ideologies which made them want to cross over borders to Somalia and fight, and kill their fellow Muslim brothers and sisters in the name of Islam,” he says. “And therefore we need Muslim scholars with correct Islamic ideologies that shall transform the youth and make them return to their normal position as good Muslim youths.”

Community organizations like the Muslim Youth Center in Kenya have been used to spur development but they have also been used in the past to recruit jihadists for al-Shabab and send them to Somalia for training.

The government has clamped down on these recruitment centers, but the activity has continued in secret.

Ngao notes it won’t be easy for some of the youths to come back because defection can be dangerous.

“If you are known that you want to run away from al-Shabab militia group, they normally kill you so it’s not easy,” he says. “Maybe the Kenyan government and the new Somali government under the new president, they come up with new strategy that shall create a way for the youth to escape the trap of al-Shabab.”

Escape or surrender might be something the government would like to see as African Union troops and Somali forces advance on al-Shabab’s last stronghold, the Somali port city of Kismayo.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Kenyan security officers have subjected dozens of ethnic Somalis to beatings and other abuses. The alleged abuses were in apparent response to grenade and gun attacks carried out by militants with suspected links to the Somali armed group al-Shabab, against police in northeastern Kenya. Mohammed Yusuf reports.

Kenyan security forces have come under attack inside the country, particularly in the north, by suspected al-Shabab sympathizers in that region.

The Human Rights Watch investigation, published Thursday, shows that on three occasions in the month of September and October police officers attacked people in the town of Garissa and Mandera after their forces had come under grenade attack.

Otsieno Namwaya, Kenya researcher with Human Rights Watch, said that Kenyan police, without investigation, carry out indiscriminate beatings and sometimes even shoot people.

Namwaya notes most of the reprisals last for two hours and dozens of people are nursing serious injuries for crimes they didn’t know anything about.

“It all boils down to basic such as respect for the rule of law and respecting people’s rights, and basically following due process, because how do you beat people before you even investigate to determine where the sources of grenade attack was,” said Namwaya. “Even after those beatings they don’t bother to follow it up further and determine whether there was any justification at all the matter ends there.”

Kenya has witnessed a series of grenade attacks since the Kenya Defense Forces entered Somalia a year ago to join the battle against al-Shabab.

In its previous statements the rights group said the attacks carried out by suspected al-Shabab sympathizers against security forces and civilians were abhorrent.

But Namwaya stressed the Kenyan security officers shouldn’t assume that every villager in the area of the crime scene is guilty.

Namwaya says police need to do a systematic investigation, establish who the culprit is and follow due process. But, Namwaya says what is happening now is the opposite and attacking people has become the officers’ main tactic.

“From our investigation it looks like a clear pattern which looks like a government policy,” Namwaya added. “We want the government to clearly state to whether this is a policy they have issued directly to their officers to be doing this because it’s happening in nearly every town in northern Kenya – Mandera, Garissa and any other place grenade attack occurs people basically get beaten indiscriminately.”

Eric Kiraithe is the spokesman for Kenyan police. He denies all the allegations leveled against the force’s officers.

“Police officers do not operate with opinions, with what they think,” said Kiraithe. “We operate strictly on evidence used, the veracity of that evidence and credibility of the witnesses, and therefore we don’t need to think. Generally our officers, all our officers are trained on regular basis to respect human rights and follow the law.”

The government of Kenya has repeatedly promised to investigate accusations leveled against its security forces. According to Human Rights Watch so far no serious action has been taken and HRW says police continue to operate outside the law.

In a 65-page report released last May, the organization accused the security officers of committing widespread abuses between November 2011 and March 2012.

A United Nations report this month said half of Somalia’s population wants to leave the country despite security gains and the creation of a new government. Some Somalis who have fled still see the al-Qaida linked group al-Shabab as a threat to both their lives and the future of their country. Mohammed Yusuf reports for VOA from Nairobi.

In 2008, Ismail Maalim Ahmed, was working with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Somalia’s Bay region. That year, in July, he came under attack from al-Shabab.

“I was working with WHO as a health surveyor. Al-Shabab kidnapped me at a place which is 25 kilomteters away from Baidoa and took me to a remote place. In the first place they deceived me by asking me a favor to give them a lift to some place. When we arrived at the village they told me to come out of the car at a gunpoint and they said to me I was infidel and a spy and they shot me nine times,” Ahmed said.

Left to die, Ahmed struggled to walk for seven kilometers over eight hours. After a long ordeal he got help and he was taken to the town of Dinsroor. The next day he was airlifted to Nairobi for further treatment.

After three months staying in Nairobi he went back to Dinsoor. Ahmed says he wanted answers as to why al-Shabab wanted him dead.

But al-Shabab still saw him as a threat, and left him a message demanding he leave the country within 24 hours.

Ahmed‘s story is the example of the kind of pressure al-Shabab has put on Somalis to leave their own country.

The U.N. report says despite security gains made in the last two years, Somalis are not yet convinced things will change for better, and half of the population wants to seek refuge in other countries.

Lack of opportunities inside the country have also made easy for al-Shabab to recruit youths to fight for the group.

A Human Rights Watch report released in February noted the militant group has increasingly recruited children to strengthen its numbers. Families and children that resist the recruitment drive face severe consequences and even death.

Some parents whose sons have joined al-Shabab have found other alternatives to get their sons back without being detected by the militant group.

Thirty-year old AbdiKhadir Mohamed, who lives in Nairobi, has recently travelled back to Somalia to get his 12-year-old nephew who joined al-Shabab when his entire class joined.

Mohamed said he took the initiative to get the youngster back after his parents were so afraid from al-Shabab.

“I talked to the parents of the boy if they were comfortable with their son joining the group al-Shabab. They told me they were not okay with it. That’s when I decided I have to play the role of an uncle to save the boy whatever it takes. So that I can change his life and his future,” Mohamed said.

With al-Shabab in retreat now, losing large territories they once controlled, Mohamed says it is time for all Somalis to get their sons out of terror groups.

“Every one of us has to look ways to get our people back whatever it takes. We all know each other, we all live in the country, we know every district, town and village and we all know where our boys are stationed. They have to find solution to their sons before they are kille,” Mohamed said.

Despite al-Shabab losing ground in recent months Somalis are still worried about the threat posed by its members.

The United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea says that Kenya’s Muslim Youth Center – an organization alleged to be recruiting fighters for the Somali militant group al-Shabab – has changed its name and reorganized its membership. But, the one thing that has not changed is that its members still maintain links to the militant group al-Shabab.

The new United Nations Monitoring Group report – leaked earlier this week – does not give much detail about the recent activities of the Muslim Youth Center (MYC). That is compared to its 2011 report which outlined the group’s involvement in recruitment and financing drives for al-Shabab.

Following that report, a group of residents in the Nairobi suburb of Majengo went to court to challenge the MYC’s influence at a local mosque called Pumwani Riyadha.

Mahfoodh Awadhi, a Majengo youth leader and the Nairobi chairman of the Kenya National Muslim Advocacy Council, says his community was surprised when the court allowed the MYC-linked committee to continue to oversee the mosque given the alleged militant connection.

“They were two court orders which restricted them from running the mosque. And then later on, another judge took over the case and he went ahead and gave order to the effect that the registrar should recognize the said group. They were adversely mentioned in recruiting and supporting al-Shabab.”

The court did order the Riyadha mosque committee to elect new leadership and for Kenya’s registrar of societies to preside over the election.

But documents obtained by VOA from the registrar show the mosque instead reshuffled the current leadership, and appointed only three new members out of 17 on the board.

One of the new members is Hadija Nduta Njuguna, who came in as the new vice-secretary and the only woman on the board.

According to multiple sources, Njuguna is the former wife of Ahmed Iman Ali, the previous secretary of the committee who was named in the 2011 U.N. report for leading al-Shabab fighters in Somalia.

Another member who is listed as a trustee of the mosque committee is Mohamed Mwai Abbas, who was suspected of having trained as a combatant with al-Shabab in Somalia.

The head of the Law Society of Kenya, Apollo Mboya, says there needs to be more rigorous checking before registering questionable groups and organizations.

“We need serious reforms on how we do things how we re-engineer our processes of registration of persons, registration of groups. This is not an era whereby someone would just bring documentation and you submit it to the counter and you hope the counter will submit it to the intelligence and the intelligence gives a feedback on who those people are.”

Even though Mboya says reform is needed, he acknowledges that getting evidence needed to prove terrorism links and prosecuting it is difficult. Because of that, he says, Kenyans should not fault the court for releasing people suspected of being terrorists or linked with terror activities.

“Now when the court is not given sufficient information with regard to particular matter the court will decide based on what is before it, it cannot go on speculating and that’s why I am saying again it boils down to intelligence gathering, it boils down to different organs of government working in harmony. Is the intelligence being shared by the police and the prosecution?”

The Muslim Youth Center was established in December 2008 as a community based organization aimed at empowering youths and promoting peace. But in practice, the group has engaged in recruiting Kenyan youths to fight alongside al-Shabab and some members have openly flaunted its al-Qaida links.

As the United Nations prepares to mark World Refugee Day Wednesday, the U.N. refugee agency is struggling to put exact figures to the number of internally displaced people inside Somalia. The country’s displaced population is constantly on the move in search of humanitarian assistance and a peaceful environment.
Mohammed Yusuf reports for VOA from Nairobi.

The U.N. refugee agency, or UNHCR, said there are about 1.35 million displaced people inside Somalia. But the number is only an estimate.

Speaking to journalists in Nairobi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative for Somalia, Bruno Geddo, said his agency has faced a daunting task to make an accurate count.

He said displaced families move frequently, and satellite images pick up only temporary, makeshift shelters that remain empty most of the time, except when there is an aid distribution.

“Satellite imagery estimates, satellite cannot estimate how many people are living actually in each makeshift shelter,” said Geddo. “They can only count the shelters but cannot confirm how many people are inside. “And therefore it’s very imprecise measure of science, [a] very approximate rough estimation.”

Geddo notes humanitarian aid agencies use the satellite imagery for a working figure to provide assistance to the displaced, but not exact figures of the population in a given area.

He said the refugee agency is planning to carry out its own ground surveys in the Afgoye corridor – home to tens of thousands of displaced Somalis – to try to determine the exact number of Somalis in the 30-kilometer stretch.

“We will try to get access into Afgoye corridor, to do ground surveys, to try and see if we can do better than satellite imagery alone,” said Geddo. “But it will remain a challenge because the gatekeepers will continue to provide figures which do not correspond to reality.”

The gatekeepers, in some areas, are al-Shabab militants who still control parts of southern and central Somalia.

It may be hard to get an exact number of people displaced in a given area, as the frontline of the military offensive against al-Shabab shifts from one region to the other.

For the last few months African Union forces have been announcing their offensives to give people time to get out of areas under military operations.

According to the UNHCR, displaced people have cited a number of reasons why they left their villages and towns. Some of the IDPs expressed fear of being forcibly recruited to fight for al-Shabab. The rebel group also increased taxation on the already-suffering population in areas still under its control, especially the Juba and Shabelle regions.

The group has been dealt a blow both militarily by the African Union forces and Somali government fighters, and financially after losing vast amounts of land it once controlled.

The Somali militant group al-Shabab has long relied on an extensive funding and recruitment network funneled through a community-based organization in Kenya called the Muslim Youth Center. Kenyans say there has been a devastating impact on the community resulting from hundreds of young men leaving their families to join the Islamist movement. Mohammed Yusuf reports for VOA from Nairobi.

Thirty-one-year-old Maryam Gulam, a mother of three, saw her husband recruited to fight for al-Shabab in 2009 when she was three months pregnant.

Maryam Gulam says her husband converted to Islam in 2006 and went to an Islamic school to study his new religion. She assumes that is where her husband was taught about jihad, or holy war, instead of basic Muslim religious teachings.

Gulam says she learned her husband left for Somalia to join al-Shabab through another family.

“My husband left me when I was pregnant,” she says, “and to this day I don’t know if he is alive or dead.” She says she came to know that her husband went to Somalia through other families whose sons were recruited. The other families knew about their sons’ journey to Somalia, but Ghulam says, “I was the only one that wasn’t aware. … I am facing so many challenges because my in-laws are accusing me of taking their son away from them and [saying that] I am also the one who made him join Islam,” Gulam said.

According to Gulam, her husband instructed the other families to wait for one month before telling tell her where he had gone.

“The message he left,” Gulam says, “was that I should forgive him, and he loves me so much, and I should take care of the children according to the Islamic teachings, and if we won’t meet now, we will meet in heaven,” Gulam said.

Gulam is not alone. Hundreds of families’ sons, brothers and husbands have been recruited to fight for al-Shabab.

Another woman, 29-year-old Hidaya Said, says her son was recruited in 2010 at the age of 14. That same year he was supposed to sit for his final primary education exam.

Said says she looked for her son for three months. She had given up when she unexpectedly came upon a letter from him.

She says: “He left the letter at home and placed it in a place where he knew one day I would find it, and that was inside the cupboard. I read the letter, which says that he was gone and he didn’t know if they will ever meet again. I should not look for him. I should not worry about him, that he was gone and he wasn’t going to come back,” Said said.

Last July, a United Nations Monitoring Group report found al-Shabab created extensive funding and recruiting networks in Nairobi through the Muslim Youth Center. For the American government, at least, the report confirmed years of anxious concern that al-Shabab has been expanding its influence in East Africa.

The Muslim Youth Center sparked a wave of much-needed development in Nairobi’s Majengo slum during 2008 and 2009.

According to Mahfoodh Awadhi, a Majengo youth leader who also is chairman of the Kenya National Muslim Advocacy Council, the center worked with the community to spur development but also was recruiting jihadists for al-Shabab and sending them to Somalia for training.

“They had a hidden agenda. They were helping the community in one way or the other but they [also] had a hidden agenda. Later on we came to learn that they were taking our youths – many youths – to fight alongside al-Shabab. We complained a lot. There was no help coming from the government,” Awadhi said.

The government stopped the center from openly recruiting for al-Shabab, but the activity has continued in secret.

Multiple sources familiar with how the recruitment is done told VOA how four youths from Majengo crossed into Somalia this month to fight for al-Shabab. Two others were arrested at the Kenyan-Somali border during the past week as they tried to enter Somalia.

For now, both Gulam and Said say they don’t have control of what will happen to their loved ones, since Kenyan military forces and Somali government fighters are preparing an offensive to take control of al-Shabab’s coastal stronghold of Kismayo by August.

Before then, the women say they hope their men will find ways to return home and restart their lives.