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Why this indecent – and illegal – haste to move refugees out of Dadaab and back into Somalia?

Saturday May 11 2013
rwalence

Ben Rawlence

At last week’s Somalia Conference in London, President Uhuru Kenyatta and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud talked about the speedy return of refugees and called on the international community to set deadlines for return. Has anyone asked what the refugees think?

It goes without saying that no refugee representatives were invited to the conference. And it is common knowledge that Kenya’s refugee act and international law make it very plain that return must be voluntary, when circumstances permit. What are the two leaders playing at?

The 23rd international conference to “fix” Somalia since 1992 was more substantial than the rest, with concrete outcomes, pledges of significant money and real expectations building on gains on the ground in the war against Al Shabaab in Mogadishu, Kismayo and several other towns.

However, it still represents an over-eager attempt to declare mission accomplished when the job is not yet done — as the international community has been keen to do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Eighty per cent of the country is still in Al Shabaab hands. And even those areas that the government does control are vulnerable. New arrivals are still coming to Dadaab, even now.

Securing the capital, the airport and some strategic towns is not peace, and the refugees know it. Talking to residents of Dadaab this week, the unanimous response is that they do want to go home, but, and it is a large but, only “if peace prevails.”

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Calling for timelines for return as the recent IGAD summit did is not only contrary to the law, it is the worst way to alienate this crucial population.

Kenyatta’s speech in London is the latest step in a misguided policy begun by his predecessor and rooted in a long history of government discrimination against Kenyan Somalis. It is a diplomatic and strategic mistake not in Kenya’s interest and the Kenyan government should change course.

We now know that Kenya’s entry into Somalia was really about the refugees. The main driver was to establish a buffer zone in Jubaland and try to shift the refugees over the border. This was a wrongheaded move on several fronts.

Firstly, the refugees are not the problem. The government has for years now called Dadaab a security threat. It is not; the government is confusing people and place.

The threat is Al Shabaab, and Al Shabaab is everywhere, including Nairobi, Mombasa, Garissa and so on. If Al Shabaab has appeared in the camp, it is actually as a result of Kenya’s invasion. In any case, recently, a mob in Ifo camp in Dadaab apprehended and killed two Al Shabaab suspects: the refugees are not the enemy.

Secondly, as we know, the refugees cannot be forced home. The UN refugee agency UNHCR will not be complicit in forced returns and they will not assist them inside Somalia unless they go there voluntarily.

Making Jubaland safe — something that many federally minded refugees in Dadaab would be happy to see and happy to help with — will take long-term engagement, not short-term military invasions.

In the fight against extremism in Kenya and the struggle for a stable tolerant neighbour across the border, the refugees are Kenya’s main ally — if only it could see them as such.

If anyone knows the evils of Al Shabaab, it is those who have fled its rule. Kenya’s long term foreign policy and strategy goals are best served by working with the refugees, not demonising them or threatening to send them home.

The youth in the camps have been educated by Kenya in the Kenyan system, there is a core of Swahili and English-speaking educated and jobless youths who are desperate to go home and work.

These are the educated middle classes that will build Somalia. Kenya should treat them well and help educate them further in the short term (Afghanistan’s neighbours are doing something similar under the Istanbul process, sponsoring university places to promote stability), and when, in five or 10 years’ time, these young leaders welcome Kenya’s envoys and businessmen into their offices in Mogadishu, they will have a warm reception.

Having grown up in the cosmopolitan environment of the camp, much of Dadaab is in fact the liberal cutting edge of Somali society, rebelling against outdated clan rules, rejecting FGM and arranged marriages, and committed to peace and inclusive politics.

They have had experience of democracy under the UN and they are keen to take the lessons home. Nurturing that culture so that it can be transported over the border is the soundest security strategy Kenya could devise.

Lastly, if Kenya invested in the camps, paved the roads, regularised the border trade and taxed it properly, it would be a major net benefit to the Kenyan economy and be a staging post from which to spread development into southern Somalia. Economic growth being the best glue for peace.

The refugees are Kenya’s best asset for its goals in Somalia. And these bright young people are ready to work with the Somali and Kenyan governments to contribute to that end. Is Kenya ready to work with them?

Ben Rawlence is author of Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest Conflict, and an Open Society fellow 2013-14. Twitter: @BenRawlence

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