NAIROBI: At 2 a.m, baton-wielding police kick open the doors of a home in Kenya’s Mombasa port, bludgeon its Muslim inhabitants and seize a terror suspect. Furious Muslim leaders complain of anti-Islamic prejudice.

In Malawi, US agents and police grab five foreign Muslims suspected of plotting terror and whisk them overseas without a court appearance, triggering days of protests by local Muslims.

If US President George W. Bush expects sympathy from ordinary Africans for his global war against Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group when he visits the continent this month he will be disappointed.

Instead, anti-US sentiment is deepening as governments hunt militants at the behest of Washington and Britain, raising fears for civil liberties, straining ties between Christians and Muslims and hurting old friendships with the West.

“Must we sing to their tune, as if we are still a colony?” wrote Kenyan Joseph Mutua in Nairobi’s The People newspaper, referring to former colonial power Britain.

“The overt coercion used by the Kenyan government and other governments such as Malawi’s is highly objectionable. They should use more subtle means,” said community leader Mohammed Hydar of Mombasa’s Muslim Civic and Education Trust.

In Nigeria, analysts say a tough campaign against Al Qaeda suspects could trigger a backlash in the already volatile Muslim north, where hundreds died in sectarian riots in Kano ignited by the start of the US campaign in Afghanistan.

Matters have been made worse in East Africa by Western terror alerts and travel warnings that have hurt vital tourism.—Reuters