Somali parents panic over missing children

Monday 29 November 2010
Muhyadin Ahmed Roble, AfricaNews reporter in Nairobi, Kenya

Dozens of Somali children were lured away from the safety town of Nairobi to fight back in Somalia in August this year, AfricaNews has uncovered. Parents said in different interviews that 13 Somali children disappeared between 11 and 23 August, triggering the worst panic among Somali parents in Nairobi.

Some of them vanished from their homes in South C and South B in Nairobi, where most of Somalis from abroad and rich families live.

Sources indicated that some of the children were recruited from their Islamic Schools in Nairobi. They were all aged between 13 and 20 years who were born in Mogadishu originally and recently came to Kenya.

AfricaNews indentified some of the disappeared children as two brothers Ali and Osman Jama. The others are Abdul karim Nur, Ayanle Ahmed, Abdirahman Ali, Ahmed Elmi, Fuad Omar, Hassan Ahmed and Abdullahi Mohamed.

A widowed mother Anab Osman is one of the parents brave enough to share full details about her elder son Abdullahi Mohamed. He was aged 10 years old when his family fled from their house in Mogadishu in 2007.

Her husband who was a teacher at a private school in Mogadishu died after a mortar hit him four years ago. Then she decided to leave the country with her son and three other children.

Sleepless nights

Mohamed aged 13 did not arrive home early on August 14, 2010. When He came home late he told his mother that he was playing a video game with his neighboring friends.

“In the next night (15 August), he did not come home again and his phone was switched off. We called some of his friends and told us that they have not seen him. I didn’t sleep all night, waiting for him,” the mother told AfricaNews.

She said the next morning, she searched for her son in the village and made a report to the police at the Pangani Police station near Eastliegh.

“Five days after, the phone rang. It was my son, calling from Somalia. He said he is in Dhobley – a town near Kenya and Somali border. I felt a bit of joy for hearing his voice but when I asked what he is doing there, he answered ‘I am home to defend my religion and my country. I am going to pull out Allah’s enemy and will be back when we finish all infidels and enemies,’” Anab noted.

She said the line dropped when she probed further to know her son’s intentions.

Other parents have taken it upon themselves to go to troubled Mogadishu in search of their children but to no avail.

Amina is one of such who just returned to her Nairobi base some few days back. She declined to speak to us but one of her relatives Sheikh Ibrahim Moalim Noor, a moderate cleric said Amina was allowed by Al-Shabaab to meet her son but he refused to return with the mum.

Source: AfricaNews.
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