Somalia & Kenya:
Al-Shabaab has only survived because it has run (these) extortion schemes, often under the guise of collecting Muslim "zakat" payments intended under Islam to be used to help society's destitute. Instead, the group has bankrupted and now forced into famine the majority of people living in the areas it controls.
To the 18,000 people who have fled here from deep in rural Somalia, plagued by a spreading famine and the rapacious extortions of murderous fundamentalist fighters, this truly is a sanctuary. Here, there is water. There are increasing food deliveries from aid workers cautiously crossing the border from Kenya for the first time. There is a hospital, over the border, to treat children who would otherwise starve to death.
"God" is guiding these bandits to steal, and rape and pillage, and the peole in their "care" can starve.
What's more most foreign aid is rejected, and aid-workers have been murdered ....
Somali Islamists thrive as children die in the dust—Daily Telegraph, 14th August 2011.
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