How Eastleigh turned into a terrorists’ haven

Wambua Muthaka who supplied water to Mzalendo

Hotel, which was attacked by terrorists last Friday.

He escaped death narrowly.

By KIBIWOTT KOROSS Nairobi, Kenya: Veiled beneath the cacophony in Eastleigh, Nairobi, are new fears stoked by a wave of terrorist attacks and discoveries of explosive devices. The estate is a sprawling market where shoppers can buy anything from castaway clothes and state-of-the-art electronics to oriental food. Grenades, too, have been added to the varied list, with police saying the devices are available in a thriving underground market. €œWe need sniffer dogs here. It is hard to detect weapons by hand. We can’t see everything,” says a police officer as he waves off a Toyota Probox carrying new mattresses. The officers are manning a roadblock on Digo Road in the wake of a bomb attack on an eatery in which six people were killed. The attackers hurled grenades at the restaurant, confirming the security threat that has hit the estate nicknamed “Little Mogadishu.” The name may have been invoked by comparing the Nairobi suburb to the bustling capital of Somalia. But now it may as well refer to the anarchic state of the once peaceful Eastleigh. “It is risky for officers, too,” a policeman says.

What if someone planted a bomb in the boot of his car and it exploded while we were inspecting it?” adds the officer who asks not to be named. Another officer says the crowded streets also make it unsafe to patrol with guns, adding that the heaving and jostling make it difficult to move around with a rifle strapped to the shoulder. Tired and heart-broken, Wambua Muthaka sits on an old tyre outside what used to be Mzalendo Food Joint within the area’s Carlifonia Estate. He supplied water using a handcart to the informal restaurant until it was brought down by a grenade attack on Monday. On a normal day, he would stay until it closed late at night.

His lucky escape came about as he stepped out to answer a call of nature. The terrorists struck then. Thirty-one people were injured in the attack. Muthaka says he was born and raised in the area, but he is not sure if he will stay any longer.  “Now I am afraid of living here,” he says, anger evident on his face. Arresting Sammy Waithaka, who operates a hardware shop along 12th Street, says he no longer enjoys the good relationship he had with his neighbours a few years ago.  “Everything has changed. Everyone looks like a suspect and you can’t trust anyone, not even your customers,” says Waithaka, 57. He, like a number of other people, blames Somalis for the chaos. The Somalis, in turn, have accused police of indiscriminately arresting them whenever there is an attack. “The Government watched as criminals took over Eastleigh. There are international criminals here who corrupted their way into obtaining identity cards and police protection,” he alleges.

According to him, many young men who cannot speak Kiswahili or English hold Kenyan national identity cards. In October last year, The Standard on Saturday exposed how illegal migrants were able to obtain national identity cards for as little as Sh100,000 in Eastleigh. Director of Immigration Jane Waikenda, however, said her office had sealed all the loopholes and cautioned that the documents being issued in Eastleigh, if any, were fake. “We are scrutinising all applicants of IDs and I would like to warn those who claim to have been issued with IDs to counter check them,” she said via telephone. “Those are fake and they will be arrested once they present the cards in any Government office.”

Eastleigh is associated with the Somalis who settled the area in 1920; it was then called Kampi ya Somali (Somali Camp). It was not until the 1930s that the name changed to Eastleigh after the arrival of the Royal Air Force. It is also believed to be a terrorists’ hub. The town is also connected to Somalia and is well networked to the rest of the world via satellite. Informal services called hawala facilitate the rapid dispatch of cash to the Somali diaspora throughout the world. It is not the residents alone who are now living in fear; security officers who are supposed to protect them are just as afraid. Ibrahim Ahmed, however, blames the security officers for making their lives unbearable. The 29-year-old miraa trader said the police where arresting them wholesale and preferring fake charges against them. “Those planting grenades should be treated as criminals. Not all Somalis are criminals but we have all been labelled terrorists,” said Ahmed, who alleges that he has been arrested twice. He says in one of the arrests, he was accused of being an Al-Shabaab informer, which he denies.