Stabilization Operations, Security and Development: States of Fragility by Robert Muggah

Author:Robert Muggah [Muggah, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781299751989
Goodreads: 18599269
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Insecurity in the borderlands

The geographic focus of CJTF-HOA Civil Affairs hearts and minds activities in Kenya from 2003 was the North Eastern and Coast Provinces, “frontier” regions bordering Somalia and Ethiopia that have long been considered a security threat to the Kenyan state.9 Sources of insecurity differ between these Provinces, as do international and local perceptions of risk and security. The North Eastern Province is Kenya's third largest and yet least populated Province. The majority of its population come from one of several Cushitic-speaking ethnic groups, who share a similar Islamic culture and, traditionally, a nomadic pastoral way of life. Somalis form the largest ethnic group, and sub-clans of the Darod clan-family dominate the border region from the river Tana in Kenya to the river Jubba in Somalia. The Oromo are the second largest group, of whom the Borana are the largest branch.10 The ethnic bonds and divisions between the pastoralist peoples that traverse the borders are a crucial feature of the region. The simple “line in the sand” drawn by nineteenth-century colonialists demarcating Kenya and Somalia has affected relations between those states, and between Kenyan Somalis and the Kenyan state. Since the 1960s, the Province has experienced periods of acute communal violence, variously linked to latent irredentism, marginalization, environmental degradation, resource competition, endemic poverty, changing livelihoods, proximity to Somalia, small arms proliferation and Islamic radicalization.11

At independence in 1963, the Kenya government was confronted by a separatist insurgency among Somalis wishing to unite with their brothers in Somalia, which had gained independence three years earlier.12 The government's counterinsurgency tactics, in what became known as the Shifta War,13 involved an assault on pastoralists' way of life, forcing them into settlements and confiscating livestock. Forced villagization, a common counter-insurgency tactic of this era,14 also reflected a prevailing development paradigm and a bias in the new state that considered pastoralism as un-Kenyan and un-productive.15 The management of the insurgency through the villagization of pastoralists is an earlier example of a merging of security and development policy in northern Kenya that was later apparent in the CJTF-HOA hearts and minds campaign. The Shifta War ran from 1963–68, but its legacies continued well beyond the cessation of hostilities. State emergency laws remained in place until 1992. The alleged threat of shifta was used to legitimize the continuous presence of Kenyan military in the Province, where it has been responsible for several violent events including massacres in Garissa in 1980 and Wajir in 1984.16 It was also was used to justify nation-wide screening of Somalis in 1989 and 1990.17

Political relations between people in North Eastern Province and the central government have subsequently improved, but the socio-economic and political consequences of that period feed a narrative of injustices that underline a sense of marginalization among Muslims in Kenya. Poor educational provision and the fact that the only paved road from Nairobi to North Eastern Province ends at Garissa are cited locally as evidence of the neglect of the Province. The collapse of the Somali state in 1991

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