The Sex Slaves of Al Shabaab Our World

Mombasa, can you's bustling second city. -- Kenya. It is a magnet for

people looking for work. There is a dark side, here. In a backstreet, a

room of extra ordinary women need to share their stories.

TRANSLATION: They would bring two or three men for each woman every

night. We would be raped repeatedly. These women are the hidden face of a

regional war that seems without end. For six years, the Kenyan army has

been part of a force fighting the Islamist militants, al-Shabaab, in

Somalia. Now, a disturbing development: The BBC has discovered

that Kenyan women are being abducted and trafficked to become sex slaves

for al-Shabaab. We speak to an insider, who reveals how they kidnap

vulnerable women. TRANSLATION: They said, I want to

take you to work. Then they hijacked me. To the forest. It is a growing

problem that the Kenyan government seems to be ignoring. The few who do

manage to escape are too frightened to talk openly. If anyone went to

Somalia, however they went there, whether it was willingly or

trafficked, they are being looked as terrorists. I've too can you's

northern coast to see the secret trade in trafficked women, and to

hear their horrifying story is told for the first time. -- Kenya's.

The coastal city of Mombasa is predominantly Muslim.

It's a city of more than a million people, with high unemployment,

and it's always had an uneasy relationship with the government.

Salama Ali, whose name has been changed to protect her identity,

was born and raised here, an ordinary middle-aged woman

But nine months ago, her life took an unexpected twist.

TRANSLATION: I am also a victim of Al-Shabaab.

Two of my brothers disappeared without a trace

After that, our family was discriminated against.

But some women who knew what I was going through started

Many families are shunned when relatives join Al-Shabaab.

But Salama uncovered stories about women who had been kidnapped

All of these women have covered themselves to

protect their identity, and we have changed their names.

They are a range of ages and faiths, but all have suffered

TRANSLATION: Some came back with babies, and some having

Some even came back mad, because of the trauma

Because nothing was being done to help these women,

Salama took it upon herself to train as a counsellor.

She set up a support group that meets in secret

The women talk of being tricked, they were promised jobs in other

cities, but instead they ended up as slaves of Al-Shabaab.

Those men used to come and have sex with me.

For those three years, every man was coming to sleep with me.

You could have the same man maybe only twice.

The rest of the time, you were sleeping with a different man.

TRANSLATION: I was cooking for a very big team,

Those who came for food had their faces covered.

But you knew they were men because of their voices.

I only got to see the faces of the ones who came

These men call themselves the Lions of Allah.

The women say they are responsible for kidnapping and abusing them.

Allied to Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab are dedicated to creating

a fundamentalist Islamic state in Somalia.

The group has also carried out a string of attacks in neighbouring

Amid these tensions, it's not easy to find out what's

happening on the porous border between Kenya and Somalia.

The densely wooded area is called the Boni Forest,

We are told we can see the trafficking routes from the air.

It's no doubt difficult to monitor this area.

But from the air, we are seeing several cut lines, that we are told

are routes the militants use for transport between

Back on the ground, locals on the Kenyan side of the border

tell me the Boni Forest is used by Al-Shabaab.

They've found remains of recently-abandoned camps,

and I'm told that women have been spotted being transported

through the forest, en route to Somalia.

Sureya Hersi runs a group called Sisters Without Borders.

They fight for the rights of impoverished Muslim women

Even she has only just learned about the trafficking problem.

We discovered that, actually, we have women who were lured

without their will, and taken to Somalia.

Some of them have managed to come back to now tell their stories.

It's so new, that when I finally get to see the county

commissioner in Mombasa, he has no idea of the scale

of the problem, and he's in charge of security.

Yeah, there could be cases of women being smuggled out, yeah.

There could be a few cases of women being smuggled out.

You say "a few", could you put a number?

No, I cannot give you the numbers, because, you see, these things

Nobody comes out in the open to say, I am being trafficked,

or I have been given a job in Somalia.

So people hide, to go looking for greener pastures, as it were.

One of the reasons it's been hard to collect statistics,

is that those trafficked don't want to talk to the authorities.

They say they are frightened of reprisals.

Back at the office in Nairobi, I contact human rights

organisations, to see who is working with trafficked women.

But no one, apart from Salama Ali and her support group in Mombasa,

She's been alerted to some new women who have just

Salama is now the only known resource for women who have managed

to escape from Al-Shabaab, and she is becoming

We've come to a secluded place along Kenya's coast,

and we feel that the women would be more at ease here.

They feel safer, and open up about what they have been

going through, without having to look over their shoulder to see

who's following them, or who's listening to them.

The last time we visited Salama she said that after we left,

she spotted some suspicious-looking people who were following her,

and so we don't want them to feel unsafe for speaking to us.

Salama wears her trademark black niqab.

The two new arrivals she wants me to meet, Faith and Ayesha,

Over three days, I slowly gain their trust, and they tell me

Both young women had been tricked into travelling to the north

of the country with the promise of work, before being

smuggled into a life of slavery with Al-Shabaab.

Faith was just 16 when she was approached by an elderly couple

We were told that there was work in Malindi,

so we were taken that day in a Nissan.

We were given some water, but it's like the water

She says what happens next changes her life forever.

When we gained consciousness, there were two men inside the room.

They folded our eyes with those black scarves,

Oh, maybe this is the work we have been told we are coming to do.

After being drugged again, Faith finally wakes up to find

Terrified, she spends the next three years of her life

cooking for brutal men, who she believes were

As we prepare dinner, the women begin to relax

and reveal more detail of their abductions.

Their stories are strikingly similar.

But whilst Faith spent three years in captivity,

the ordeal lasted twice as long for Ayesha.

She too was promised a job by an elderly couple,

this time in the town of Garissa, near the Somali border.

But her dream job turned into a nightmare.

We were asleep at that time, they came in and woke us with guns.

They closed our nose and mouth, then they kidnapped us.

The people who had promised her a job had actually

Ayesha's new job was to be a sex slave for one of their fighters.

This man that you were living with, was he always there?

Faith and Ayesha have only recently escaped from captivity,

but they've been left with lifelong reminders of their time

Faith delivered her child entirely alone, in the middle

of the night, in a forest, held prisoner by Al-Shabaab.

With only her scarf to cover the baby, she says she was lucky

to have a little knowledge from her grandmother,

Ayesha also gave birth to a child in captivity.

When you look at your son, does that remind you of a very

But not all women who end up in the camps have been kidnapped.

I meet Sara, who has also just returned from Somalia.

Unlike Faith and Ayesha, she had voluntarily gone with her husband,

an Al-Shabaab fighter, but she has since left the group.

Though she says she wasn't involved herself, she explains how Al-Shabaab

As the wife of a fighter, Sara's job was to clean the weapons.

She claims the group target women in order to breed the next

Sureya Hersi is trying to understand the magnitude of the trafficking

problem by speaking to different people in the community.

But such information is hard to come by.

The biggest challenge that we have is with these women

The main reason why women don't come out to speak,

is because they also don't want to be shunned by their own

People fear the government, they fear that if I look like I'm

associated with you, and they know that you went

to Somalia and came back, then they might say I'm also part

Because, unfortunately, anybody who went to Somalia,

irrespective of how they went there, whether willingly or trafficked,

they are being looked as guilty, or probably are terrorists,

Nobody trusts them, they don't know why they are back.

And that makes Salama Ali's work very difficult.

TRANSLATION: The government doesn't know about the services I offer.

If the government discovers you've had contact with Al-Shabaab,

So, we fear talking about this publicly.

Despite the risks, Salama's secret mission is growing.

She not only helps women who have managed to escape,

but also an increasing number of families.

We are looking for a place where we can interview

We tried to go to their homes, but then they are afraid,

they say they don't want the community to know

Her sister disappeared over two years ago, tricked by a bogus agent

who had promised her well-paid work in the Middle East.

TRANSLATION: My sister left here for Saudi Arabia in January 2015.

However, a month after she left, she was able to sneak

She told me she was afraid she would never see us again.

I asked her what was wrong, and she said she was not

in Saudi Arabia but in Somalia, in an Al-Shabaab camp.

We tried to call back straightaway, but we could not reach her.

She called again and said she needed our help.

She said she did not know how to get out.

She pleaded for help, and then she disconnected.

Since that time, we have never heard from her again.

We went looking for the agent that had tricked Elizabeth's sister,

This agent rented office space right in the middle of town.

Here it's busy, clearly he wanted to look authentic.

And for the duration of time he was open for business,

we are not sure how many girls he was able to target.

But we are told that as soon as Elizabeth's sister

The lure of a well-paid job makes Kenyan women easy

prey for traffickers, now an ever-present danger

Sara, the former wife of an Al-Shabaab fighter,

told me how the militants specifically target Kenyans.

Kenya has taken the battle to Al-Shabaab.

In 2011, the Kenyan government sent their forces into southern Somalia,

ousting the militants from all major towns and cities.

Al-Shabaab's revenge was to hit back repeatedly on Kenyan soil.

The deadly attack on the popular Westgate shopping mall in the heart

67 people were killed in the four-day siege.

And even more recently, the group inflicted the biggest-ever

The UN says at least 150 Kenyan soldiers were killed at a base

Al-Shabaab is clearly Kenya's biggest security threat,

and Sureya Hersi is in no doubt of the scale of the problem,

whether from radicalisation, or the abduction and trafficking

I don't think anybody has any statistics.

Probably the government could have their own ways of finding out.

And I can assure you, almost every family is affected.

You either know somebody, or your neighbour has gone.

In the course of this investigation, I tried repeatedly to find

out from the government what was being done to stop this

trade in Kenyan women, but all attempts proved futile.

It has been very difficult and frustrating to get comment

from the relevant government officials on this issue.

This is the second time I've come to this office this week,

and I've just been thrown out by the regional coordinator

of security, the man in charge of security in this region.

For Faith and her daughter, it's a long road back to a normal life.

It was a really hard time for her, because she was used to the forest,

It's not just sleeping indoors that is new for her daughter.

She's also wearing clothes for the very first time.

Salama and her group share a special bond through similar tragedy.

Sometimes I call all the members of the group together,

We have a small party, and at the end, we introduce the new member.

Then we journey together in the healing process.

All those girls did not go there willingly,

they were looking for money, and hoping to get a good life.

But actually what they got was sexual abuse.

Without any support for victims, or increased awareness

of the risks they face, vulnerable women on Kenya's

Until government and communities recognise the problem

of trafficking, it seems that Al-Shabaab will continue