The New York Times Agency May 2010

A Kenyan police officer stands along the border with Somalia and Kenya near Sinai, in July, 2009. Kolbio, a stronghold of Al Shabab, is located directly on the other side. A thin, dusty line is about the only thing separating Kenya, one of the Western world's closest allies in Africa, from the Shabab, a radical Islamist militia that has taken over much of southern Somalia, beheading detractors, stoning adulterers and threatening to kill any Americans or Europeans who get in their way. Kenya is widely seen as a frontline state against the Islamist extremism smoldering across the Horn of Africa. And while few expect the Shabab to make good on their threats to march en mass across the border, the creeping fear, the one that keeps the security staff at Western embassies awake at night, is that they or their foreign jihadist allies will infiltrate Kenya and attack some of the tens of thousands of Westerners living here, possibly in a major terrorist strike like al-Qaida did in 1998. (Dominic Nahr/The New York Times) 14060541