Update April 16th: Lutherans and Catholics squabble about whether it’s a good idea or not to close Dadaab, here.
In the wake of that horrific attack by al-Shabaab at Easter where over 100 Christians were slaughtered by Somalis, the Kenyan government wants the massive camp (where we get a large number of the US-bound Somalis from!) closed.
They are also planning a border wall with Somalia!
From AP (hat tip: Joanne). The UNHCR has three months to get out!
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has three months to close a refugee camp in eastern Kenya and send the more than 400,000 Somalis living there back to their country or else the Kenyan government will relocate them, Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto has said.
The Kenyan government says the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya has become a recruitment center for the extremist group al-Shabab whose gunmen last week killed 148 people at the country’s Garissa College University. Ruto said in a rally on Saturday that Kenya must be secured at all costs.
Garissa is our 9/11:
“We have asked the UNHCR to relocate the refugees in three months, failure to which we shall relocate them ourselves. The way America changed after 9/11 is the way Kenya will change after Garissa,” Ruto said in a statement distributed by his press office. [Only problem is that our lesson was short-lived!—ed]
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed a sharp response to last week’s attack at the university. Kenyan warplanes attacked suspected militant positions in Somalia, and the government said Wednesday that it was freezing accounts of organizations and individuals suspected of financing Islamic extremists.
Earlier in the week, the Kenyan government broke ground on a border wall with Somalia. Learn more here.
UN choosing refugees for us from UN camps in Kenya!
A large number of our new US Somali refugees come from the UNHCR camps in Kenya. We don’t take Kenyans as refugees so when you visit the State Department data and see that 1,424 refugees were processed into the US from Kenya from October 1, 2014 until April 6, 2015 (a little over 6 months!) know that they are largely Somalis the UN has chosen for us!
We have admitted to the US in that same time period a total of 4,425 Somalis picked up around the world! (See data here) That means we will surely surpass 9,000 new Somalis in the US by the end of the fiscal year on September 30th.
If the FBI says we can’t screen the Syrians, how on earth are we screening the Somalis?
Editor: This is our 4th stop around the world this morning. See Australia, South Africa, Spain and now Kenya.