North Eastern Kenya's horrid history of conflict and State neglect

Residents during the commemoration of Wagalla massacre in 2011. [File, Standard]

Heavy gunfire tore through the darkness. Terrified screams rent the air as men, old and young fell to a hail of bullets. For hours the gunfire paralysed the atmosphere before an eerie stillness slipped in.

The nightmare started unfolding on the evening of Monday, February 10, 1984. Thousands of men and boys were rounded up throughout the night. Many were picked up from their offices while others were taken from their homes. Soldiers from the Kenya Armed Forces assembled men from the Degodia, one of the largest Somali clans in Wajir District.

Like cattle being taken to the slaughterhouse, they were ferried to the Wajir airstrip where soldiers stripped them naked before forcing them to lie on the ground facing down with hands tied behind their backs.

In a televised documentary, a survivor says that when panicky women began looking for their husbands and sons, soldiers told them:  “Today, we are your husbands. We will take you and show you where they are.” They proceeded to brutally rape the women and break their legs.

The Wagalla massacre of the Degodia was triggered by a government order. In his oral submissions to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), on June 14, 2011, former Provincial Commissioner North Eastern Province Benson Kaaria said: “It was necessary in order to recover illegally acquired firearms owned by the Degodia clan, or tribesmen, following a government order to have all illegal firearms surrendered. The Ajuran clansmen surrendered all the firearms but the Degodia were adamant and they continued to attack the defenseless Ajuran. All the arrested persons were transported by the Kenya Army vehicles to the Wagalla Airstrip for questioning and interrogation. That is where the shooting took place and this ended in a number of the arrested persons being killed.” 

The Wagalla massacre exemplifies decades of suffering communities in North Eastern region have endured since colonial times.  

Districts under what the Colonial administration referred to as the Northern Frontier District (NFD) faced harsh treatment and isolation. They were abandoned and lacked basic amenities like schools, hospitals, and roads. Residents tasted ‘freedom and development’ with the dawn of devolution.       

Former Mandera Senator Mohamed Mahamud, captures some of his early education challenges in his forthcoming memoir, An Arduous Journey. He says: “We were all, boys of different sizes and varied ages squeezed inside the tiny Duksi, small informal religious school. What used to be a former hides and skin store, had been turned into an education centre. In the 1960s, Duksis, (plural), were sprinkled across Kenya’s North Eastern Province. They played a central role in educating Somali children, especially in the deep, forgotten and neglected communities”

The Duksis were often small, community-run institutions operating without formal recognition by the government. They were typically held in open spaces, mosques, or temporary structures. Teaching was done by sheikhs or maalims, (religious instructors), who had basic or advanced Islamic training. Duksis provided the only access to education in the absence of formal schools.

Secession threat

Colonial marginalisation had made some Somalis in the region to discuss identity and self-rule. They were fed up of being treated like children of a lesser god.  In July 1962, the Colonial Secretary, Reginald Maudling, established the Regional Boundaries Commission to redesign the old provinces and create six new regions. Kenya was rapidly moving towards independence. The Somali had declared that they wouldn’t be part of Kenya and were administratively placed under the coast region.

Charles Hornsby captures the secessionist threat that Kenya had to confront in the 1960s, in his book, The History of Kenya since Independence.  

March 1963, marked the turning point for the Somali in northern Kenya. The towns of Wajir, Garissa, Mandera and Isiolo, were hit by mass protests. Populations here had been attracted to the allure of the government of Somalia which wanted to unite all ethnic Somalis domiciled in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. When designing their national flag in July 1960, the Somalis put in it five stars to represent what they regarded their rightful territory stretching through Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. 

In April 1962, Somalis began calling for armed secession. With the help of the government of Somalia, and funding from Russia, a guerrilla group called, Shifta, (bandit in Amharic), was born. The Shifta, about 2,000 men, went on the offensive, attacking, maiming and killing government and military officials. The Kenya government moved troops to the Somali border. It started detaining without trial suspected Somali separatists. Somalia accused Kenya of committing genocide and increased its army to 20,000 men. War was imminent. In the years leading up to independence, the Shifta morphed into Northern Frontier District Liberation Movement (NFDLM), advocating for secession from Kenya.

Hornsby says that when Kenya was born, its first challenge was to: “Control its borders. With an alienated and violent Somali population, military supported by Somalia, the government faced a real threat of war in its first days in office. Kenya’s army was a small, volunteer force of only 2,700 men, led by 200 British and African officers. There seemed a serious risk that Somalia might use independence as an opportunity for military intervention to enforce secession.”  

On December 25, 1963, the Cabinet declared a State of Emergency in north eastern Kenya. Colonial Governor General Malcolm Mac Donald applied the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance to detain people without trial. A five mile ‘Prohibited’ zone was established along the 400-mile Kenyan border with Somalia. The emergency powers were extended to Marsabit and Isiolo. By 1966, the prohibition powers had engulfed, Lamu and Tana River districts.

The Greater Somalia issue dominated the Kenyan Lancaster House conferences in 1960, 1962 and 1963. Since, neither of the contestants at Lancaster House, KANU and KADU, nor the departing colonial authorities, were for secession of NFD, a middleway solution was agreed. Somalis on the Kenyan side formed a political party called the Northern Province Peoples Progressive Party (NPPP) and declared “Secession Now!”

At the second Lancaster Talks in 1962, the NPPP threatened to head to New York for arbitration by the United Nations. The conference decided that a referendum be held in the NFD. It returned an overwhelming ‘Yes’ to secession.  

The last British Governor of Kenya, Malcolm MacDonald, called a meeting with the 34 administrations Chiefs in the six districts of NFD in Wajir. He wanted to persuade them to participate in the May 1963 independence elections. The Chiefs quit government service and walked out on him.  

An urgent meeting was called in Rome in August 1963. The Somali government insisted that since Kenya was yet to attain full independence, the meeting be between Somalia and Britain. Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta dispatched Cabinet ministers Mbiyu Koinange, Tom Mboya and James Gichuru as part of the British delegation to Rome.

In Rome, the British head of delegation Duncan Sandays chose Tom Mboya to present the British view. Mboya told the meeting that the so-called Greater Somalia would forever remain a “bad dream in the minds of those who conceived it”.

On Christmas Day of 1963, Shifta bandits killed 40 people at the Wajir-Tana-River border. Among the dead were four administration officers, one of them a Briton. They raided and burned villages and ambushed government forces.

The Shifta war went on from 1963 to 1969, severely affecting education in the region. Teachers became scarce.  It is this poisoned environment that existed when I worked in North Eastern Province as an Information Officer and Correspondent for the Nation in the 1980s.

The plight of northern Kenya has deep historical roots: “When the railway was built through British East Africa towards Uganda to control the source of the Nile and suppress the slave trade, it needed agriculture to make it pay. So, Britain had to encourage British settlers to take up and develop land along the line” says Richard Hughes in his book, Capricon, David Stirlings Second African Campaign

Since northern Kenya is far from the railway line, it offered little to the colonial government. The British government only set up a few essentials such as police stations, military bases and administration offices.

Al-Shabaab attacks

Like an old festering wound, insecurity still haunts education in the northern region. First it was the 28 years of State of Emergency imposed on the region by the colonialists and the Jomo Kenyatta administration. President Daniel arap Moi lifted the emergency in 1991.  

The civil war in Somalia, which broke out in early 1990s, added fuel to the insecurity fire in northern Kenya.  Today, Islamic fundamentalist groups such as al-Shabaab, Daesh and Takfiriyun, have emerged to oppose western education.  

A researcher and scholar, Saida Hussein Mohamed, says in an article titled “Al-Shabaab and the Education Crisis in Northern Kenya: “Northern Kenya has borne the brunt of al-Shabaab attacks. The insecurity hit the education sector hard since 2018 when al-Shabaab began attacking and killing teachers many of whom started fleeing the region that year.”

In the article published in The Elephant, Saida adds: “Most teachers hail from elsewhere in Kenya. Al-Shabaab, which seeks to create sectarian strife, has killed many public servants besides teachers, including engineers and security personnel. The armed group staged an attack that targeted the only university in the entire region, Garissa University College killing 148 students.”