Background

The history of Kenya’s North Eastern province, like other remote Kenyan border regions, is one of neglect and discrimination at the hands of successive authorities, first by the colonial British regime in Nairobi and then, after independence in 1963, by the Kenyan government.[1] Despite positive trends in security and governance in the region over the past decade, the abusive October 2008 disarmament operation in the Mandera districts echoes earlier patterns of central government repression.

The province’s “Mandera triangle” is made up of three districts—Mandera West, Central, and East—of arid and undeveloped scrubland bordered by Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the east. It is largely populated by ethnic Somali pastoralist communities with close ties to their ethnic kinsman in both Ethiopia and Somalia.[2]

The geography and politics of the region have long contributed to a feeling, both in Nairobi and amongst the local population, that the region has little meaningful connection with the rest of Kenya. Even today, the citizenship of many in the Mandera triangle is questioned by the state. In colonial times it was known as the Northern Frontier District (NFD).

In 1960 Italian and British Somaliland became independent and immediately merged to form a single independent state: Somalia. In response to pressure from the Somali delegation at the London talks on Somali independence, in 1960 the British administration in Kenya invited an independent commission to assess the views of Somalis living in the NFD on possible secession from Kenya and unification with Somalia. The commission found that a majority of the population favored unification with Somalia.[3]

However, the British did not follow the commission’s findings, acquiescing instead during the talks that led to Kenyan independence in 1963 to the demands of Kenyan nationalists led by Jomo Kenyatta that the NFD remain part of Kenya. This sparked an armed struggle for secession in the NFD, popularly known as the “Shifta War.”[4]The British bequeathed the war to the independent Kenyan government in December 1963 and the new government immediately declared a state of emergency.[5] It would last for 28 years.

Although Somalia formally renounced its claim to the NFD—thereby formally ending the “Shifta War” in 1967—the state of emergency persisted until 1991.[6] This meant that for over 25 years Kenya effectively “had two separate legal regimes.”[7]The emergency laws, reinforced in 1966 by the North Eastern Province and Contiguous Districts Regulations,[8]“explicitly endorsed instances when the fundamental human rights of the person could be violated,” including enhanced powers of search without warrant, arrest, and detention for up to 56 days without trial, the death sentence for unlawful possession of firearms, and the creation of special courts.[9] The regulations also created “prohibited” zones along the Kenyan-Somali border where unauthorized entry was punishable by a life sentence.[10]

Government repression of ethnic Somalis in North Eastern province continued well into the 1980s, after the so-called “Shifta War” ended, partly due to the identification of Somali communities as sources of cross-border arms-smuggling, banditry, and lawlessness. Successive attempts by the government to establish or restore “law and order” were characterized by abusive or discriminatory operations that failed to treat ethnic Somali Kenyans as legitimate citizens.

One of the worst atrocities by state security forces in independent Kenya’s history occurred in North Eastern province in 1984: the infamous “Wagalla massacre,” also known as the Wajir massacre.[11] In February 1984 security forces rounded up several thousand men from the Degodiya clan in a purported disarmament operation and forced them to remove their clothes and lie down on the Wagalla airstrip for up to five days in the sun, while beating and torturing them. Hundreds of people died on the airstrip from the beatings and some were shot to death. The Kenyan government initially claimed that 57 people had died, but belatedly admitted in 2000 to a much higher death toll of 380.[12]

As Somali refugees began fleeing Somalia’s civil war and streaming into Kenya in the late 1980s, the Kenyan government introduced multiple “screening” operations to distinguish ethnic Somali Kenyan citizens from Somali nationals. The screening operations resulted in many abuses, including the deportation of hundreds of people without due process.[13] The screening operations ended in 1990; however, identity cards issued to ethnic Somalis facilitated continued discrimination and harassment. While the situation has improved in recent years, even today ethnic Somalis still complain that they face prejudice and discrimination while attaining or using identity documents.

Like Kenya’s other border areas, the region has consistently suffered from underdevelopment and insecurity, partly resulting from the emergency regulations and the effective closing of the district for many years, but also due to low government investment, a very thin police presence, and associated banditry and cross-border cattle-raiding.[14] The introduction of large numbers of automatic weapons into the area over the past two decades has exacerbated insecurity.[15] Northeastern Kenya has also suffered from the deterioration of security in neighboring Somalia since 1991 and the long-running conflict in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region. As in Kenya’s other border or “frontier” areas, cross-border clan-based violence has been a recurring event, often sparked by cattle theft or clashes over grazing land or water points. These clashes have regularly claimed lives and seen the theft of livestock that local communities depend on for their livelihood.[16] 

In 1998 the Kenyan government appointed a judicial commission to examine the causes of clan and tribal clashes during the 1990s, headed by Justice Augustus Akiwumi. The commission noted that in North Eastern province the traditional practice of cattle rustling had been transformed through the widespread availability of automatic weapons and exacerbated by frequent droughts and a shortage of grazing land and water sources for livestock. The commission also acknowledged that these clashes had a political dimension as clans vie for parliamentary and local government representation that can then be used to dominate local resources and control the best grazing areas for themselves.[17]

The Akiwumi Commission recommended several measures to decrease clan conflict in North Eastern province: opening up the region to development, improving road and telephone communications, improving education, securing the border, increasing marketing outlets for livestock, investing in water resources (boreholes), and taking care to ensure the fair distribution of boreholes.[18]

By the late 1990s, the region’s reputation for total lawlessness and insecurity declined, though it remained prone to criminal and communal violence. Unlike neighboring Wajir and Moyale districts, Mandera was comparatively calm.[19] The improved situation was partly due to positive trends in central government policy, including the introduction of multiparty politics, and factors like the growth of cross-border or regional trade.[20] Local politics played both a positive and negative role. The former Mandera district had been sub-divided into three constituencies in the 1980s—Mandera East, Central, and West—and the identification of these districts and even more local-level “locations” along ethnic or clan lines has sometimes exacerbated tensions, particularly given the way local government officials have used their positions to allocate services, jobs, and water resources as a form of political patronage.[21]

Today, the trends shaping the political landscape in Mandera remain problematic. Since 2007 each of the three former constituencies of Mandera district have in fact become districts themselves, part of the Kibaki government’s move to greatly increase the number of districts earlier that year.[22] At the same time, however, there have been signs of change for the better. The coalition government established after the contested presidential election of December 2007 has paid more attention to northern Kenya than most previous governments, establishing a Ministry of Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands and announcing the opening of regional abattoirs to promote economic activity for pastoralists. Furthermore, there have been moves towards more local ownership of conflict, with the growth of local peace committees and community-based organizations, the involvement of elders and Islamic leaders in mediation talks, and a less heavy-handed approach by the national government.[23]

The dramatic worsening of the security situation in Somalia since late 2006 has again increased cross-border insecurity, producing cross-border attacks and an increased Kenyan military presence along the border.[24]The conflict has also caused tens of thousands of Somali refugees to flee the fighting in Mogadishu and enter Kenya, despite the border closure, putting enormous pressure on the refugee camps at Dadaab and the land in North Eastern province. Dadaab now houses more than 275,000 refugees—more than any other single location in the world—and is the largest urban development in the region.[25]

The 2008 Clashes at Alango

In July 2008 the provincial administration failed to heed local warnings and drilled a well in Alango, one of the so-called buffer zones and an area of chronic inter-clan conflict between the Mandera East and Central districts where the border was disputed. The drilling provoked renewed conflict between the Garre and Murulle clans—both claimed the right to access the water—resulting in violence that killed 21 people between July and October 2008.[26]

The Garre and Murulle clans both mobilized to collect money and weapons to defend their kin, and both sides received support from allied clans across Kenya’s borders. Borana militia from Ethiopia came to the aid of the Garre while Marehan militia from Somalia rallied to support the Murulle.[27]

The dispute over the borehole at Alango and ensuing clashes between the Garre and Murulle clans were the latest of many similar disputes and clashes in recent years. Indeed, inter-clan disputes are so frequent that well-established mediation structures exist for their resolution. Previous fighting led to the signing of the Garre and Murulle Peace Accord in April 2005.[28]

Tensions over the Alango borehole were linked to disputes over the exact boundary between Mandera East and Mandera Central districts, which created confusion among the population because many people associate administrative boundaries with clan boundaries and thus with their grazing and water rights. All of this was recognized and apparently resolved at a three-day mediation meeting between Garre and Murulle clan elders in July 2008, observed by army and police commanders and district commissioners from both Mandera Central and East.[29]

The government said that it had facilitated dialogue between the two clans three times and had sent a technical team to ascertain the district boundary.[30] While mediation efforts were ongoing, however, the hostilities continued, resulting in the killing of 18 citizens and three policemen during August and September 2008.[31]

Abandoning its previous successful mediated approach to conflict resolution, the government instead stated that a security operation was necessary because the warring clans had “internationalized the conflict by enlisting support of militias from neighboring countries, which amounts to gross violation of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”[32]However, elders in Wargadud and Elele involved in the mediation claimed that the violence had finished by the time the security operation to disarm the militias began.[33]

A member of parliament, Dr. Abdi Nassir Nuh, voiced what many in the Mandera region expressed to Human Rights Watch when he noted, “What brought the flare-up this year was a very trivial matter, namely allocation [of the borehole].”[34] He said that rather than address the violence in the course of regular policing, the authorities chose to launch a special joint police-military operation to disarm the militias.