The sex slaves of al-Shabab
In today's
Magazine
When Salama Ali started investigating the disappearance of two
younger brothers last year she made an awful discovery - not only were
radicalised young Kenyan men leaving to join the al-Shabab militants in
neighbouring Somalia, but women were being seized and trafficked by the group
as sex slaves.
Salama's search for information about her brothers had to be
carried out quietly and confidentially, as any hint of a connection with the
al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab can arouse the suspicion of the security forces.
So she met discreetly with other women in Mombasa and the
surrounding area, sharing stories and seeking information about male relatives
who had vanished.
"We discovered there were lots of us," Salama says.
But Salama also uncovered something very different - stories of
women who had been taken to Somalia against their will.
The women were both young and old, from Christian and Muslim
communities, from Mombasa and other parts of Kenya's coastal region. They were
usually promised high-paid work in another town or abroad, and then kidnapped.
Last September Salama trained as a counsellor and set up a
secret support group for returning women. Word spread and soon women began
seeking her out and asking to join the group.
Media caption"When we meet we build trust,"
Salama says
Some arrived with babies, she says, some with HIV, and some with
mental illness caused by their experiences. All are terrified to speak openly,
because of the risk of being mistakenly identified as an al-Shabab sympathiser.
Sarah, the wife of a former
al-Shabab fighter, says there is an organised programme to breed the next
generation of fighters
In a dark room with the curtains drawn, I meet this
extraordinary group of women, who have a story that has never been told.
"Men used to come and have sex with me - I can't tell you
the number," says one, shaking her head as she recounts her ordeal.
"For those three years, every man was coming to sleep with me."
"They'd bring two or three men for each woman every
night," says another. "We would be raped repeatedly."
Some women were forced to become the "wives" of
al-Shabab militants, it appears, while others were held as slaves in a brothel.
Find out more
Al-Shabab is fighting to create a fundamentalist Islamic state
in Somalia and has launched attacks on neighbouring countries, which have all
sent troops to fight them as part of an African Union force.
Kenya has borne the brunt of al-Shabab's counter-attacks, and
the Kenyan army is hunting fighters in the thick Boni Forest that straddles the
border with Somalia.
Flying over it, you can see lines cut through it - narrow
pathways that militants apparently use for transport. The BBC has spoken to
more than 20 women and all talk of being held in a thick forest or transported
through it. This is most likely to be Boni.
Media captionThe forest where women say they were held by
al-Shabab
One new member of Salama's group, Faith, has only recently
escaped captivity.
She was 16 when she was approached by an elderly couple and
offered a job in Malindi, further up the coast. Desperate for work, the next
day she boarded a bus with 14 other passengers and all were given drugged water
to drink.
People fear the government -
those who went there willingly and unwillingly are both looked at as
guiltySureya Hersi, Sisters Without Borders
"When we regained consciousness, there were two men inside
the room," Faith says. "They blindfolded us with black scarves. They
raped us in that room."
Drugged again, Faith woke up in a small clearing in a dark
forest and was told she would be killed if she tried to escape.
Terrified, she spent the next three years alone cooking a group
of Somali men "with long long beards".
She had also become pregnant, as a result of being raped, and
had to deliver her own child alone in the forest.
"My grandmother was a traditional midwife, so I had a
little bit of knowledge," she says. "Everything I was doing in that
forest was alone, so I just had to get out this baby alone."
Faith finally managed to escape with her daughter when a
traditional healer foraging for medicinal roots in the forest came across her
and showed her the way out. Her child, who grew up naked in the forest, now
finds it hard to adapt to city life and struggles to fall asleep at night
unless she is outside in her mother's arms.
Image captionFaith's daughter
She grew accustomed to "living like we were animals in the
forest", Faith says.
A number of the women who spoke to the BBC had given birth in
captivity.
Sarah, the wife of a former al-Shabab fighter, says this is no
coincidence. There is an organised programme to breed the next generation of
fighters, she says, as it's hard to recruit people to live in camps in Somalia,
and children are easy to indoctrinate.
"In my camp, there [were] women who are sent to come and
recruit other women," Sarah says. "They want to multiply so they just
want women to give birth."
Most of the 300 women in her camp were Kenyan, she says.
Salama also provides support to those who have lost family
members, including Elizabeth, who last saw her sister two years ago, before she
left for what she thought was a job in Saudi Arabia.
A month later, she called.
"She told us she was in a dangerous and bad place in
Somalia, in an al-Shabab camp," says Elizabeth. The line broke - and her
sister has not been heard from since.
The Kenyan government acknowledges there is a problem but Evans
Achoki, the county commissioner in Mombasa, says it's hard to judge the scale
of it, because the women won't come forward.
While there is an amnesty programme for fighters returning from
Somalia, and some have been rehabilitated, there are also reports of men who
have suddenly disappeared, or been shot dead.
"People fear the government," says Sureya Hersi of
Sisters Without Borders, a network of Kenyan organisations working to counter
radical extremism in Kenya's coastal region.
"Those who went there willingly and unwillingly are both
looked at as guilty."
The names of all women in this
story have been changed for their security
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