Residents of the world’s largest refugee complex are in a precarious position: unable to leave and yet awaiting expulsion

In order to be granted permission to leave the camp, residents need a special pass. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images

Daniel Wesangula in Nairobi

For more than a decade now, Dadaab has held the dubious honour of being the world’s largest refugee camp.

Originally set up back in 1992 as a transit camp for those fleeing a war-torn Somalia, the refugee complex is home to over 350,000 mostly Somali refugees. It sits in one of the harshest terrains in Kenya and since it was meant to be a transition zone, houses are semi-permanent. The walls are built from twigs cut from surrounding shrubs. Some lucky residents have tin roofs, but for most pieces of canvas that were once pitched as tents form the much needed cover from the sun over their heads. Windows are not a priority, blocks of wood and straightened out USAid tin containers form doors. Houses are built close together leaving a narrow corridor between them. Most hardly rise above six feet.

In its 25 years of existence, the camp has been a home to hundreds of thousands of refugees in search of a safer, better life. Many have found this within the five camps that make up the massive complex. Life for them is safer. Exploding bombs and whizzing bullets become a distant memory. But for those within the camps, peace has come at a price: freedom.

Movement in and out of the camp has always been a challenge. Now though, it has become even harder. Kenya, their host country for a quarter of a century, is grappling with security challenges which authorities are blaming on refugees. The government has insinuated that the camp is a recruitment hotbed for terror group Al-Shabaab. This has made moving from one place to another difficult for the camp’s residents. Warsame Abdihakim came to Daadab in 1993 at the height of the chaos in Somalia and, like many of his friends and relatives, hasn’t ventured out of the complex since then. “We have tried, but our reasons are never good enough,” he says.

In order to be granted permission to leave the camp, residents need a special pass that can only be issued after a vetting process that includes oral interviews. “One time the motor to my ice maker broke down,” says Abdihakim. “I had to wait for a month for someone to bring me a replacement. How do I survive? By trusting those on the outside.” He is one of the biggest businessmen in Hagadera, one of the five camps that make up Dadaab, and runs a restaurant and an ice making plant. “Even with all this, they think if I leave the camp I will not come back,” he says.

Family life in Dadaab

For all his life, 25-year-old Mohammed Abdi Abdulahi has been part of this boxed-in population. So has his wife. Now they have a daughter and all they want is a chance for their little girl to see the world outside. “We can’t let her grow up thinking this is all that life has to offer,” he says. “We want her to have a country she can call home.” Mohammed’s daughter, Sumaiya, is one of 6,000 grandchildren of the first arrivals that came to Dadaab in the early 1990s.

On one of the walls of the family’s hut an out-of-date calendar shows a green meadow, contrasting to the surroundings. Massive deforestation has left Dadaab devoid of almost all vegetation. An insatiable appetite for charcoal and wood for the construction of houses has stripped the ground bare. The golden brown soil stretches as far as the eye can see.

Abdulahi’s wife, Sara Hassan, says they once had dreams about their future, but now they have grown resigned to their fate. “We dreamt of getting a good education and good jobs. But as we grew older, we understood the limits of our lives,” she says. “We wouldn’t want Sumaiya to give up on her aspirations.” Her daughter, playing around her parents’ feet, has just turned three. In a year she will be enrolled in one of the schools within the camps run by NGOs.

The only way for the family to leave the camp is to qualify for asylum in an ongoing UNHCR resettlement programme and end up in another country. They have seen friends and family get settled all across Europe and the United States. But Abdulahi says that was before things got complicated.

“I am a father, husband, a refugee and Muslim from a country many do not understand. Events around the world make it hard to get asylum,” he says. “So I stay put and continue to re-apply for the asylum.”

Abdulahi says he has no preferred destination and jobs are hard to come by. With his secondary level education, he has worked for various NGOs. But a heightened threat level within the camps has forced many of such organisations to abandon operations in Dadaab, resulting in the shrinking of an already small job market. “I just want my family and I to get out,” he says.

Business in Dadaab

For others like Abdihakim, the ice shop owner, Dadaab is home. “If I leave, where will I go? I have been here for 25 years. I have learned to live with the limited movement,” he says.

He has no reason to leave. His restaurant, in the middle of a busy street near Hagadera’s main food and clothes market, is the busiest in the camp. Every day from sunrise to sunset hundreds attracted by the smell of cooking goat meat make their way to Midnimo Restaurant.

The camp’s outdoor market, popular for meat, sugar, spices, fruits and clothes is Abdihakim’s immediate neighbour. At lunchtime, it feels as if the whole market converges in his restaurant for a meal. The air is filled with sounds of hungry patrons calling out orders to a waiter at the end of the room, laughter from acquaintances sharing a plate of pasta and the voices of customers haggling over the price of a fabric or a kilo of khat. Spoons are hard to come by. Patrons prefer to eat with their hands. “Food is sweeter that way,” says Abdihakim, in the centre of it all.

If the Kenyan government has its way however, Abdihakim will need to find a home elsewhere. In 2013 the government made links between the camp and the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall. As a result, the Kenyan government signed anagreement with UNHCR to work on voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees in Dadaab. Now, many in the camp know it is only a matter of time before they are sent “home” to Somalia. The Garissa University Massacre, in which terrorists linked to Dadaab killed 147 people, further strengthened government’s resolve to close the camp.

At the time of the massacre in April 2015, Kenya’s deputy president gave a three-month ultimatum for the camp to be shut down or the refugees forcefully moved back to Somalia. He has since taken a softer approach after concerns were raised by the international community. For now the camp remains, but no one knows for how much longer the third biggest city in Kenya will exist.

Source: The guardian