Nearly two decades into the Cold War, and just a year into her independence, Kenya found herself riding the waves of global power plays even before she learnt to walk.
Several borders south of the East African country, a conflict that pitted West against East was brewing and threatened to boil over into a bloody affair.
The South West Africa People’s Organisation had felt the winds of change that swept south from its Northern neighbours on its face and liked it. News from up north spoke of a form of self-reliance and self-rule that the organisation could only dream of.
Colonial masters
There was talk of independence and of African nations governing themselves and severing whatever ties they had with their colonial masters.
For the territory known as South West Africa, this meant cutting of South Africa, which had been its colonial masters for years, was possible and somewhere in this dream also lay possibility that the people of this territory could reclaim their original name and call themselves Namibia.
Almost the entire continent galvanised behind the small Southern African country. Kenya too played her part, and in 1964, the government donated a Land Rover to SWAPO to ease their transportation needs within some Southern Africa states. It took almost 30 years for Namibia to get her true independence, and Kenya, like many other countries, helped the southern African country rediscover herself.
Although it began with the modest gesture of the donation of a Land Rover, Kenya’s dalliance with continental and world peace was just beginning to grow under the presidency of Daniel arap Moi.
Kenya’s concerns for human rights abroad can be traced back to 1979-80 period when Kenya participated in the Commonwealth Monitoring Force (CMF) Zimbabwe following the Lancaster House Negotiations.
The CMF supervised the ceasefire arrangements and transfer of power in Zimbabwe from December 28, 1979 to March 20, 1980.
The diplomatic activity and negotiating strategies employed to achieve these results are generally recognised as being examples of a successfully conducted settlement of a violent and intractable insurgency. Kenya was part of the force.
After Zimbabwe, President Moi’s government participated in the Chad I and Chad II missions in 1981 and 1982 that are largely hailed as being Africa’s first peace keeping mission. During this mission, Kenya contributed some 29 military observers to the OAU peace keeping force dominated by soldiers from Zaire, Senegal and Nigeria.
The Land Rover donated to Namibia came full circle in 1990 with the formation of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) Force. Years of international pressure had finally compelled the warring factions in Namibia to agree to a peace deal under the guidance of the United Nations.
The troops that made up UNTAG were drawn from 28 countries and the staffing of the Force Commander’s Headquarters reflected the various contingent nationalities.
As a consequence of providing infantry battalions Kenya, Malaysia and Finland provided officers to fill the positions of Deputy Commander, Chief of Staff and Chief of Operations respectively.
By March 21, 1990 when Namibia officially gained independence from South Africa, all UNTAG forces had left with the exception of some Kenyan troops who remained to train the new Namibian Army under an independent agreement.
January of 1991 started with much promise for Kenya. In just over a year’s time, the country would for the first time go into a multi-party election. But as the country mulled over this, eastwards, something else was happening.
Mohamed Siad Barre, president of Somalia was facing a bloody coup in his country.
He fled Mogadishu and found himself in Nairobi where he sought refuge for close to a year before going into exile in Nigeria in 1992. After his ouster, Somalia plunged into civil war and unrest that persist to this day.
President Moi’s last decade in power was almost entirely focused on stabilising Somalia, with the most significant act being the agreement by his government to host Somali citizens running away from war in their country.
That same year, Moi as the Commander-In-Chief ordered his troops south to Mozambique. Despite the fact that a successful truce had been negotiated three years earlier in Nairobi between the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana (RENAMO), the peace never held and sporadic civil war between the two sides persisted. After the war drums stopped beating and both sides had suffered massive casualties and caused much pain, suffering and death to its people, the two sides finally signed a General Peace Agreement in 1992 which paved way for the establishment of the United Nations Operations in Mozambique (Onumoz).
Onumoz had a battalion of some 6,625 troops, 354 military observers, 1,144 civilian police and 900 electoral observers, some of whom were Kenyan.
International intervention
When the fires in Mozambique were dying out, new ones were being lit in Liberia.
In 1993, a bloody massacre of some 600 women, children and elderly Liberians in Harbel on the West Coast of Liberia necessitated an international intervention.
The UN mandated the Secretary General to investigate the killings. The Secretary General, Boutros-Boutros Ghali, instituted a panel of inquiry and appointed Amos Wako as its chairman. The chief Military Observer for the United Nations Mission in Liberia between 1993-95 was Gen Daniel Ishamel Opande.
Colonel David Magomere succeeded him in 1996.
Even after Liberia, there was still more to be done. The 1997 formation of the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) provided another opportunity for Kenya to help shape the collective destiny of the continent.
MONUA was mandated to restore peace between the Popular Movement for Liberation of Angola led government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola under Jonas Savimbi.
The mission had some 10 military observers from Kenya.
It is estimated that President Moi’s government participated in not less than 20 UN sanctioned missions across the continent and Europe.
