Kenya Tricks NFD Somalis To Fight For the TFG as Somalis...!

[gedo_gurl]

Dozens of ethnic-Somali youths in northeastern Kenya, have returned home amid a parliamentary inquiry into allegations they were recruited under false pretenses. Reports from the northeastern town of Garissa indicate that there is concern that anger over the recruitment efforts could end up radicalizing some ethnic-Somali youth in Kenya.

Two months ago, 24-year-old Garissa resident Siad Dhaqane signed up for a three-month training course that he believed would lead to a well-paying job as a Kenyan border guard.

Dhaqane says that is what the recruiters told him when he went to inquire about the job. He and about 150 others signed up that day. Several hours later, they were on military trucks, heading south toward Manyani, a training center for the Kenya Wildlife Service outside the port city of Mombasa.

For hundreds of young men in Garissa, including Dhaqane, the training opportunity was nothing less than a way out of the vicious cycle of unemployment and poverty that have long defined a young man's life in the pastoral, desert community.

On the way to Manyani, Dhaqane says he dreamed about how he would spend the $600 the recruiters said the border guard job would pay every month.

Dhaqane says he was overjoyed by the job offer and was looking forward to the training. But after arriving in Manyani, he and the others were told that they were not going to be trained as border guards, but as soldiers to fight Islamist insurgents in Somalia. Dhaqane said the recruits were then warned that anyone who tried to leave Manyani would be thrown into jail.

Mohamed Abdullahi Sirat also signed up two months ago with a recruiter, who told him the United Nations was looking to hire workers for a monthly salary of $600.

Sirat says he was sent to Manyani, where he, too, discovered he was being trained to fight in Somalia. He says he and 90 other men recruited with him from Garissa were told they were to identify themselves as Somalis, not Kenyans.

Since the collapse of Somalia's last functioning government in 1991, Kenya has feared the civil war there would create instability in ethnic Somali regions of the country. For the past several years, the rise of an al-Qaida-linked militant group called al-Shabab in southern Somalia has only deepened worries about security.

In early October, reports began surfacing that the Kenyan government was recruiting ethnic-Somali Kenyans and Somalis in refugee camps to fight for the U.N.-backed transitional government in Mogadishu. New York-based Human Rights Watch said its investigations in Garissa and Dadaab refugee camps found recruiters for the Kenyan government were using deceptive practices and false promises to lure young men.

Since then, the Kenyan military has repeatedly denied it is carrying out a recruitment drive on behalf of the Somali government. Officials in Somalia have acknowledged a recruitment drive in Kenya for its armed forces, but they say it is only targeting Somalis living in Kenya

[Mad May]

Old news They're helping Kenya at the end of the day by helping to stabilize their neighbour, win-win

[kadarre]

$600 a month thats a quite nice salary in africa. No wonder they fell for it. Poor souls, may allah help them.

He says he and 90 other men recruited with him from Garissa were told they were to identify themselves as Somalis, not Kenyans.

WTF, but arent't they Somalis?

[gedo_gurl]

MM- Aamus yarey

Kaddare- Ethnically Somali, but their nationality is Kenyan. And there is no way they would actually pay them that much, their own soldiers dont get that.

[kadarre]

Gedo gurl, I know. Its just sad the Somaliweyn dream is dying.