Abuses by Kenyan Security Forces

The Security Operation

The joint police-military disarmament operation in the Mandera Triangle began on October 25, 2008. It was ostensibly an attempt to address one of the underlying causes of insecurity in the region by seizing illegal firearms from warring Garre and Murulle communities. For the next few days around 600 personnel from the regular Kenyan police, Administration Police,[35] and Kenyan army targeted Garre and Murulle settlements in the districts of Mandera Central and Mandera East.[36] The approach was simple: security forces terrorized the civilian population through violence while demanding that they turn over illegal weapons if they wanted the violence to stop. By the time the operation was over on October 28, more than 1,200 people from both clans were injured as a result of severe beatings and torture by the security forces; one person died.[37] The government hailed the operation as a success because it claimed to have seized 130 illegal firearms and arrested more than 150 Ethiopian and Somali militiamen found on Kenyan soil and implicated in the clashes that triggered the operation.[38]

The operation swept through Bambo, Gari, and Warankara on October 25; Lafey, Elele, Qaramadow, Wargadud, and Damasa on October 26; and reached the town of El Wak and the village of Qalankalesa on October 28 (see map on page 3).[39] In February 2009 Human Rights Watch visited and conducted interviews in the towns of El Wak, Lafey, Qaramadow, Elele, and Wargadud and spoke to residents of Damasa and Warankara.

The operation unfolded in a largely similar manner in each location. Police, Administration Police, and army personnel attempted to gain an element of surprise by arriving early in the morning, though some people were able to escape and flee into the bush. Men were rounded up en masse and forced to march or crawl to a central gathering point, often beaten by a gauntlet of security force members along the way. The security forces then began house-to-house searches for weapons, often beating, and in at least a few cases, raping women found at home. Widespread looting of homes and businesses by the security forces took place in some communities. 

Throughout the length of the operation—the better part of a day in most places—the men who had been rounded up were beaten and ordered to produce illegal firearms in order to escape further punishment. In most cases victims were not even given an opportunity to produce a weapon before they had been thoroughly beaten. The security forces kicked and punched their prostrate victims, beat them with clubs, wires, and iron rods, and squeezed or mutilated the testicles of some of the captive men. In every community visited by Human Rights Watch many of the victims were beaten so severely that their mistreatment rose to the level of torture. At the operation’s conclusion the security forces moved on, leaving the local populace to nurse their wounds and search for lost family members. Many people fled into the bush, fearing further attacks, and spent days or weeks living with their herds before returning to their homes. In some communities, residents fled across the nearby border into Somalia to seek shelter there.

The following section presents a detailed account of how the operation unfolded in some of the communities where serious abuses were most widespread during the operation.[40]

Lafey

An elderly chief told Human Rights Watch that on October 25, the day before the operation came to Lafey town, he was summoned to a meeting with the district officer along with local members of the Kenya Police Reserve and told to surrender his government-issued weapon.[41] The following day he was rounded up and beaten along with everyone else. 

Security forces surrounded the town early in the morning of October 26 and began rounding up all the men they could find. A teacher in Lafey was about to leave for school when soldiers arrived at his house: “Soldiers came to my house at 7:30 a.m. I said, ‘I am also an officer of the government, I am a teacher, let us respect each other.’ They said, ‘There is nothing like that today. Today we are in charge.’”[42]Another man was shot at during the initial roundup: “When a soldier was trying to enter my plot I was leaving the toilet,” he told Human Rights Watch. “He shot at me [and missed]—I think he was surprised.”[43]

After being rounded up, men were forced to walk or run to a central point by security forces wielding sticks, batons, and guns. In Lafey, the place of assembly was near the district administration office. There, the men were made to lie down in the sun and described to Human Rights Watch how they were severely beaten intermittently until the late afternoon while members of the security forces periodically shouted at them to produce weapons. The men were beaten with iron rods, clubs, and even metal-tipped canes which had been taken from some of the victims. A primary school teacher detained there described the scene to Human Rights Watch:

They were beating [us] at the camp with anything they could get their hands on, everywhere.... some were stripped naked, there was lots of blood on the ground. Some had arms broken, some legs, blood was flowing from many heads. I was beaten with a club until I fractured a rib. When it stopped, many could not walk, could not sit up. We carried 10 who could not walk.... People were beaten mercilessly, like snakes.[44]

A Koranic teacher at Lafey told Human Rights Watch how he was tortured by members of the security forces who ripped his testicles open with a pair of pliers:

I am one of the teachers teaching Koran so they suspected me, and thought I might give them information. For seven years I haven’t even been to the border.... They stripped me in front of everyone, and pulled my testicles with pliers—all the skin came off and blood poured down, for two weeks it was still bleeding.[45]

While the men were detained at the camp, women said that members of the security forces had gone house to house searching homes, beating up several women they found in their homes while demanding that they turn over illegal weapons. Women were also rounded up and made to sit together in the middle of the main road running through town. Several of them were beaten by members of the security forces who demanded that they identify the whereabouts of firearms and local militiamen.[46] Many of the women there said that at one point two police or soldiers attempted to drag two young women away from the crowd, but ultimately relented when one of their superiors intervened to stop them. One elderly woman in Lafey said:

They took me and started beating me and took me into the sun. Two girls were beaten up on the road. The officers[47] started quarrelling over them in front of us. Hundreds of women were gathered there. I became unconscious when outside there and was taken to the police post. They refused to let me relax there, they just started asking, “Where is your eldest son, how many militias do you know?” They dragged me to that police post. They were kicking and slapping women out there, saying, “Where are your husbands and sons? Where are the militia?” My husband died a long time ago. And my son is far from here.[48]

Members of the security forces also attacked several girls in their homes; the girls alleged that they had attempted to rape them. Three schoolgirls were attacked at home and described security forces attempting to sexually assault them, but claimed they had not succeeded—possibly because of shame. One of them recounted:

He made me lie down and beat me on the buttocks with a club for 30 minutes. He kept asking me, “Where is the gun?” When I reply I don’t know he beat me more, he said I was lying. One tried to force himself on me but I refused and he slapped me.[49]

While rounding people up some members of the security forces even beat children. A mother of a 10-year-old boy who was beaten told Human Rights Watch:

Physically, nothing happened to me, but when they entered my house they broke everything. Six came inside but only two were destroying everything. When they came they asked, “Where is your husband, where is your gun, where are your sons?” I said my husband was with the livestock and I do not have any son. They just started smashing everything. Then they found my young son hiding under the bed and they hit him on the head with a metal rod. They hit him once and he fell down and nearly fainted.[50]

Male victims in Lafey said they were held until the afternoon, alternately beaten and questioned. Eventually elders pleaded with the commanders to stop the beating and agreed to provide weapons. An elder in Lafey recalled:

[We] were pleading with the military to stop and allow us to go and get some weapons. Eventually they relented.  There was one commander from the army, one from the police, and one from Administration Police. We agreed to get weapons if they would stop beating our people. We brought 57 guns after two weeks.[51]

In order to recover the weapons, a community leader from Lafey described going to Somalia to negotiate with the militia and recover weapons after the operation. He pointed out, “If elders had been consulted, we would have collected the weapons without being harassed.”[52]

In addition to abusing Lafey’s residents, the security forces looted many homes and stores.  Residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch described security forces looting in front of them, while they were supposedly searching the premises. One woman said, “They took 5,000Ksh [US$74] from inside a locked box in the house and destroyed some clothing that was in the box. I cannot wear them now.”[53] Another woman said the members of the security forces who came to her home demanded, “Do you have money, do you have money?” She said she gave them what little money she had, but that “they started smashing our jerry cans—the most valuable thing to us because we use it to get water. They also knocked down my toilet [outhouse].”[54]

A woman told how security forces looted from her husband’s shop:

They came to our home. My husband was in the shop. They asked, “Where is your husband?” and I told them. They searched the house and they looted my husband’s shop—they took around 45,000Ksh [$660] from him. They beat up my husband and marched him to the place where people were being brought together.[55]

Another shopkeeper described how they stole all the sugar, cigarettes, and other provisions from her shop—around 40,000Ksh [$590] worth, she claimed.[56] A male shopkeeper described how members of the security forces beat him in his shop and robbed him of 20,000Ksh [$295] in cash and 30,000Ksh [$440] in provisions.[57]

Most people in Lafey and other towns fled following the operation, and upon their return many found their homes and businesses looted bare. Those who were not there to witness it did not know if it was the police and military or opportunistic neighbors that looted their property. One woman from Lafey who fled to Somalia for several weeks said, “Nobody knows who looted because everyone ran away.”[58]

It was not only households and businesses that were looted by the security forces in Lafey.  The solar panels at the primary school in Lafey were also confiscated by security forces. The members of the security forces who took them confronted the headmaster of the school with the charge that local gangs of bandits were using the school’s solar panels to recharge their radios.[59]

In Lafey local councilors claimed that roughly 300 people had been rounded up and detained. They showed Human Rights Watch a list compiled by community members of 170 people who had been beaten, consisting of 115 men, 30 women, and 25 schoolchildren.[60]  According to records in the clinic in Lafey, 41 people were treated for second-degree soft tissue injuries resulting from “assault by security forces” in the days following the operation.[61] Many fled, eschewing treatment, and others treated themselves using traditional remedies in the bush.

Elele

At around 8 a.m., on the morning of October 26, army and police officers arrived in Elele, a small community near the larger town of Wargadud. The security forces found only a small number of people in the village because, as one witness described it, “Most ran away very early in the morning or were out with their herds. Immediately when the army vehicles came to town people started running in all directions.”[62]But the operation in Elele was even more brutal and undisciplined than in most other communities: in addition to the severe beating of at least 25 male members of the community, seven women told Human Rights Watch that they were raped in their homes by members of the security forces. More than 10 women were apparently raped in total.

As in other locations, the security forces attempted to cordon off the community and then rounded up all of the men they could find. Those men were gathered next to the road that runs through the town, beaten, and in some cases tortured until late afternoon. At the same time, groups of police officers or soldiers searched homes and raped several women. Late in the day most of the men who had been beaten were taken in a police truck to Wargadud. Once there they were beaten again along with the captured residents of that town until evening and then returned to Elele by the same truck.

One man, a mason, described what happened to him:

That morning we were building a water tank, we were seated there [by the road] as the army and police trucks came. People said, “These are the vehicles of the operation that have come to get us.” Two of the men with me ran away. They rounded the rest of us up including some ladies.... They brought us to the road, told us to remove our IDs and held them. They said, “Where are your guns?” Some people were even ready to accept that they had guns but before they could talk they started beating us.[63]

Victims were taken to a central point in the village. One man recalled the event:

Immediately when they brought us there they started beating us. When they were finished they said, “Where are the guns?” And if you still say you don’t have any, then they beat you again. Some of the personnel who were there and talked our language said to us, “Instead of dying here, just show us your guns.”[64]

An elderly man in Elele described how he was caught at home and tortured, including by members of the security forces who squeezed and twisted his testicles until he fainted:

It was soldiers, police and Administration Police all together. They brought me to the other group that had gathered there [on the road] and told us to lie down. We lay down with our hands straight out like this [stretches his hands out above his head, palms down]. One will walk on your hands and one will walk on your thighs. One will come with a stick with thorns and scrape it against our heads. Two men will stand on both sides hitting us. They told us to tell where our guns are and we said we don’t know and they started getting hold of our testicles.[65]

In Elele only a handful of residents said that they had had firearms and turned them over to the security forces. A victim recounted:

Nobody has a gun in this village. Some people have them in the bushes with the livestock but no one was willing to say that they had one. We thought they would continue to beat us and maybe send us to jail if we said we had them. We just have them to defend our livestock. One man said he had a gun with his animals and they took him to go and get it.[66]

While the men were being rounded up in Elele, members of the security forces went house to house asking the women and children who remained there to surrender weapons. Human Rights Watch interviewed seven women from Elele who said that they were raped. One of these had hospital records confirming her injuries—she had been treated by the Red Cross and airlifted to Nairobi Women’s Hospital due to massive bleeding.[67]The others did not seek medical treatment.

The women were traumatized by what had happened to them. Some broke down crying when recounting the events of October 26. One began her account by saying, “If you want me to remember the incident of that day, I will feel unwell.” She nevertheless insisted on telling her story:

Soldiers came to the house in the morning. They said, “Where is your husband and where is the gun of your husband?” I was told to go into the house. One caught me from behind, one took the child from me. He started opening his trousers. I told them to kill me instead of raping me. They hit me with the butt of a gun at the back, and kicked me in the kidneys. Then, when they had finished they went to the neighboring house.[68]

Another woman from a house nearby told a similar story:

It was 8 a.m. I was at home. I saw people running to the bush and I saw Kenya soldiers surrounding my home. I was pregnant, seven months. Two soldiers threw me into a hut that is in front of our house. They hit me with a big stick behind the head and I fell down. They asked me, “Where is the gun?” I said I have no gun, my husband is working with a bicycle—this is the bicycle you are seeing in front of the house. 

They put me in the hut and started raping me. One held my head on the ground, and the other one started raping me, like this [she got on her knees and put her head on the ground]. I fainted because I was pregnant and when I woke up I just found myself damaged from the rape. I ran to the bush where our livestock are. I went with the five children that I could see there at home.  After three days I found the rest of my kids in the bush. I came back after six weeks to give birth in Elele. I haven’t seen any doctor or hospital. There is a building of a clinic in Elele but there are no staff.[69]

An older woman described being raped alongside her daughter:

I was sitting outside my house with my daughter. We had seen the soldiers in town, then four of them came to the house and asked for my husband and his gun. I said he is not home and we do not have any gun. They did not understand [Somali]—they just kept motioning to their guns and pointing for me to bring one.

They put us into the house, me and my daughter, she is 20-years-old. They started beating us and removing the clothes from us and put the gun across the door so that we could not run away. They stripped us naked. One was outside and two were inside; one had gone. One was holding me and one was holding my daughter. They succeeded in what they wanted to do. My daughter broke the wall of the hut and ran out naked. I stayed holding my child who was one-year-old, he had been put on the bed by the soldier. I ran to the bush. I haven’t seen my daughter since.[70]

One of the women who was raped in Elele told Human Rights Watch that her attackers were police:

Three police officers came to our house, took my ID card and asked for guns. Two of them raped me. And one wearing a military uniform was outside. When he saw that they had raped me, when I came out and I was bleeding, he ran away.[71]

There is no functioning clinic in Elele; when the mobile Red Cross team came on October 28 they treated people who came out of the bush, according to the community health worker there.[72]All of the women who were raped fled to the bush. A woman who had been particularly badly hurt lost consciousness in the bush. The Red Cross team cut a path for the ambulance and took her to El Wak, and then to Nairobi Women’s Hospital.[73]

Wargadud

Security forces came to Wargadud at dawn on October 26 while some men were already at prayer. One resident told Human Rights Watch, “As I was leaving the mosque, I saw 10 officers in the road. I was told to run to the pitch [field].” On the way to the field that served as the central gathering point, other members of the security forces told him and others to lie down and crawl the rest of the distance along the rocky dirt road. Many of the men were wearing sarongs and many of those who were forced to crawl lost them and were naked by the time they reached the gathering point. “We were told to go like snakes, about 60 of us,” he recalled. “Then they started caning us properly.”[74]

When the men got to the field they were made to lie down as others continued to arrive:

At the pitch there was a commander and an inspector of police. The commander was a police officer sitting in a chair. People were brought from all directions, then we were caned until 1 p.m., about 80 of us.  After that, we were told to sing like donkeys [...] like cows, [...] like goats, and told to jump like frogs.

We were there up to 6 p.m. We were not given water that whole time. Some of our women tried to bring us water, but they were beaten and told to go to their homes. We had to lie down and look at the sun with open eyes. Some people were vomiting from the beating. While beating they were asking for guns.[75]

Individuals who fought back or those believed to have specific information were singled out for particularly severe torture. One man in Wargadud resisted the members of the security forces who started beating him outside of his home. “I tried to resist them and they caught hold of me,” he said to Human Rights Watch. “One stood on both of my legs, and another held both of my hands, and a third caught me by the testicles. They tied a plastic cord around [my testicles] and pulled. I went unconscious.”[76]

Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that in the late afternoon a helicopter arrived in Wargadud. One of the men detained on the field said, “A helicopter arrived around 5 p.m. The officer who got out asked in Swahili if any of us had died yet. When the answer was no, he ordered us to be beaten more.”[77] 

After several hours of beating and torture, community elders in Wargadud were able to negotiate with the security forces:

Eventually we said we are going to produce guns, just stop beating us. Whoever said he had a gun and would produce it was taken out of the lot to somewhere else. A total of 38 firearms were taken. Some were taken from the bush [where their owners had left them]. Others were given two days, so some went and purchased [guns] across the [Somali] border. During the beating [the security forces] recovered 10 from within the town [included within the 38]. Many of those who said they had guns just said it to stop the beating. Most then went and bought one to give to them. The guns we have with us are just for defending our livestock.[78]

Elders claimed 300 people were rounded up while other witnesses put the figure at 170.[79] Community health workers said that they had records of 173 men and seven women injured as a result of the assault and treated at the clinic in Wargadud.[80]

One woman told Human Rights Watch that she was raped in Wargadud by police officers doing house-to-house searches:

Soldiers came to the house at 5 a.m.—my husband was dragged out of the house, beaten, and taken away. Two of the officers remained behind for me. One of them pushed me into the house and onto the bed. He caned me and hit the child strapped to my chest who was three months old. The other officer was standing outside blocking the door so no one could come in. The one inside raped me. He also stole 5,000 shillings that I had in my underwear which he found when he stripped me. Then he went to the kitchen and took a stick and said, “The gun of your husband is here, bring it!” I said, “My husband is a porter, he doesn’t have any money to buy a gun, and now you have raped me and stolen my money, just leave me alone.” I was crying.  The other officer had taken the children outside before, now he forced them all back in and started beating them.[81]

Human Rights Watch also interviewed six other women from Wargadud who claimed police had attempted to rape them but had not succeeded.[82]

El Wak

News of the attacks on Elele and Wargadud on October 26 caused some residents of El Wak to flee before the operation reached the town at dawn on October 28. But many people remained in spite of the stories of torture and looting that were circulating. One resident of El Wak explained, “Before, we heard that there will be an operation but I wasn’t afraid. I am not a shifta [bandit]. I don’t have a gun. I have nothing to hide, I am a driver.”[83]

The operation in El Wak was on a larger scale than in any other community—it appears some 700 men were severely beaten over the course of several hours, with many suffering serious injuries. Security forces scoured the town in the early hours of the morning, rounding up men and ordering them to gather in a large field near the district commissioner’s office. The men described being seriously beaten in their homes or along the way to the field. Once there, they were divided into three groups by age and severely beaten until early afternoon. Many suffered serious injuries.

Human Rights Watch interviewed numerous men in El Wak who told stories similar to this one:

About 60 of us were captured as we were leaving the mosque. Immediately they saw us they started beating us and chasing us. They marched us to the police station while beating us and made us lie down on the road. They were beating us with electrical wire, sticks, rungus [clubs]. They broke my arm with a rungu. They made us crawl like snakes up to the chief’s camp. People from all over town were being brought there to the chief’s camp. There were many serious injuries there, broken limbs and so on.[84]

An elderly woman who lives in the market in El Wak described the scene early in the morning there on October 28:

In the street, I saw the whole market place full of soldiers, beating young men and taking them to the camp—and they were smashing up shops. There was a big black truck, a police one.[85]

Another man in El Wak was at home when the operation began:

At about 5.30 a.m., I saw about 20 police coming down the street, driving people [into groups], beating them, going into each house, dragging people out and beating them and shouting, “Go to the pitch.” Three came into my house, went into the bedroom, smashed the box with clothes in, turned it upside down and dragged me out, leaving my wife and two kids inside.... In front of the police station they made us lie down. They were beating us with sticks, rungus, anything. They weren’t saying anything except beating us and then, “Bring the gun or you’ll die.”[86]

Police not only went house to house but also attacked a group of charity workers in their office. Employees of the Consortium of Co-operative Partners (COCOP), an NGO working with the World Food Programme on food distribution in North Eastern province, described how police knocked on their gate and then climbed over the wall when they refused to open it.  Six staff were beaten in the compound. They described being beaten for an hour there before being taken to the pitch with the others.[87]

Roughly 700 men were made to lie down in rows, broken up into three different groups according to age: youth, middle-aged, and elderly.[88] Throughout the day police and military personnel beat them, walked across their prone bodies, and tortured some men by beating or twisting their genitals. Throughout the day they demanded to know the whereabouts of illegal firearms, though the operation’s victims were given scarce opportunity to speak. Several accounts were similar to this one: “At the camp they made us lie on our backs then they aimed the stick at my balls. He was smashing me with a stick that he was wielding with two hands.”[89]

Victims who had served in the army and police were shocked at the crimes that they witnessed.  An army veteran told Human Rights Watch, “I used to serve in the army for 21 years in 1 Kenya Rifles. I didn’t get the chance to tell them that I used to serve in the army.”[90]The head of the Kenya Red Cross office in El Wak, who was wearing a jacket clearly marked with the organization’s logo, was among the group and was beaten along with the rest.[91]

The beating and demands for firearms continued from dawn until well into the afternoon. One man described the derision of the security forces when he asked for water:

I fainted. What I can remember is that two people came and caught hold of my hands and legs and threw me under a tree like a sack. It was a bit better than being under the sun. When I woke up there were many other people also lying under the tree, badly hurt. I asked for water. One of the army personnel shook his finger at me and said, “You are joking. Don’t look at us, look down.”[92]

Witnesses in El Wak also described an army helicopter arriving later in the afternoon containing commanders who checked on progress, one of two helicopters that visited during the day.[93]

After several hours of beating and torture and repeated pleading from community elders, the commanders began to engage elders in dialogue about the surrender of weapons. Many elders explained to Human Rights Watch the process by which people were organized into sub-clans and the leaders of each surrendered their identity cards to be redeemed upon supply of an agreed number of weapons. One elder explained how the deal was struck:

We elders told the army chiefs we had no guns. They said, “In that case you’ll have to buy your own lives, and buy firearms.” We protested and then he said, “If you don’t bring guns, many people will lose their lives.” The chief and the major discussed and then the major said, “I don’t care if you buy them or not, what I need is firearms, you have three days.” We agreed and my sub-clan gave seven guns.[94]

His clan subsequently sent representatives to Somalia to buy second-hand weapons. Another victim from El Wak was part of the same process:

At 2 p.m. they took our IDs and said we must bring weapons to get our IDs back. We were divided into sub-clans, the elders in each sub-clan surrendered their ID cards. There are nine elders in my sub-clan and we promised nine guns. We went away, every clan collected the amount of money that is equivalent to the amount of guns they promised. Every gun is 30,000Ksh [$440]. We were given three days by the police to return with nine guns. I could not move because my arm was broken [by members of the security forces]—I was in the hospital. I didn’t have money but my family paid. Some paid 10,000, some 5,000. Others went to buy guns and give them to the police, and then they brought my ID.[95]

For those without weapons the closest small arms market is in the Somali town also called El Wak, just across the border. Many victims described providing money to relatives who purchased weapons from Somalia. “In my clan, one man went to Somalia to buy two guns and a grenade,” one man said to Human Rights Watch. “He sold his animals to pay for it. I was in hospital but I contributed 10,000 shillings. It is 30,000 per gun.”[96]

The government cited the large number of firearms collected during the operation—186 according to the government—as evidence of its success.[97] However, it seems that in fact the disarmament operation may have simply led many victims of the operation to import additional firearms from Somalia.

Kenya’s El Wak is the largest town in the area, the district capital of Mandera Central. The men detained were told to shout numbers in succession as they were released, and so witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch confirmed in separate interviews that the total detained was 701.[98] The total number of injured, according to lists of names including ID card numbers compiled by Northern Aid, a local NGO, was 306.[99] El Wak hospital treated 112 inpatients and around 130 outpatients despite having only a 32-bed capacity; patients were sleeping on mats outside and in the corridors.[100] Medical staff at the hospital noted that many other people fled following the operation and so did not seek treatment.[101] When Human Rights Watch asked community leaders to help locate victims willing to give testimony about what happened to them during the operation, over 100 men turned up at once to be interviewed.

One middle-aged man beaten at the pitch in El Wak and in critical condition in the hospital there, Abdillahi Hassan Khala, was transferred to Mandera district hospital in a Red Cross vehicle. He died en route from internal bleeding, according to the medical staff who accompanied him.[102]

The Human Toll of the Operation

Many men and women were severely injured during the operation and many suffered lasting harm as a result of those injuries. Hospital records shown to Human Rights Watch describe fractures, soft tissue injuries, internal bruising of kidneys, respiratory problems, difficulties urinating, and impotence following the beatings.[103] Several victims showed Human Rights Watch x-rays of the fractures they suffered from being beaten during the operation.

Dozens who had suffered genital mutilation and rape as part of their torture described health problems afterwards. Some women complained of continued pain in their kidneys, backs, hips, and problems urinating.[104]One man whose genitals were mutilated by members of the security forces during the operation said, “I have not touched a woman since then.” Another victim of the same form of torture complained to Human Rights Watch, “I have been unable to visit my wife since.”[105] One man excreted blood for several days after the beating.[106] Many others were unable to walk or work for weeks or months. A handful of the victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch were still nearly or completely bedridden four months after the operation.[107]

The numbers of people rounded up, raped, and beaten overwhelmed local medical facilities.  The Kenya Red Cross brought in two emergency teams from Nairobi and sent a mobile clinic through the bush, treating people where it could find them.[108]

Human Rights Watch did not obtain total figures for those detained and injured in Bambo, Gari, Warankara, and Damasa. However, the Kenya Red Cross treated more than 1,200 people in the two weeks following the operation after it deployed its mobile clinics and an emergency team to El Wak district hospital. Red Cross medical staff referred four people to the larger hospital at Wajir, nine to Mandera, and two were airlifted to Nairobi: one serious fracture from Warankara and a rape case.[109]

The military only allowed the Red Cross access to those requiring medical attention after the secretary general and representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross met with military commanders. “There was no warning from the government that this [kind of violence] would happen,” said one Red Cross official. “We were not on good terms with the military during that time. Our branch chair in El Wak was beaten along with everyone else, even though he was wearing a Red Cross jacket.”[110]

Aside from the direct physical effects, the violence has had effects on livelihoods. Some people remain unable to work months after receiving the injuries. Human Rights Watch visited two men who four months after their beatings remained bedridden. As a result children’s school fees are going unpaid and enrollment in the primary school in El Wak has dropped by 295 according to the head teacher there, partly also due to families fleeing the area after the operation.[111] 

Thousands of people stayed away from their homes after the operation, some moving to Mandera, some to Wajir, Garissa, and even Nairobi, for several months.[112] Others survived in the bush with their herds or crossed into Somalia for days, weeks, or months.