Address issues fuelling clan wars in Northern Kenya

It is highly regrettable that inter-clan wars are still erupting in parts of Kenya in the 21st century.

In Mandera and Wajir counties, inter-clan conflagration has become the order of the day. The economic mainstay of both counties is livestock-rearing, which depends heavily on water and pasture.

The history of the natives and the land is a simple narrative ignored by successive governments since independence.

Throughout the colonial history, Wajir was demarcated and preserved into Wajir West (Ajuran homeland), which stretches from Habaswe in Bridge through Wajir town and Tarbaj up to Takaba via Mansa,

Wajir East (Degodia homeland), which stretches from Wajir town along Mandera Road via Tarbaj and all the land East of the main road.

There was Wajir South (Ogaden homeland), which stretches from Habaswe in Bridge through Wajir Town to Wajir Bor. However, the Somali-Ethiopian war of 1977 and 1978 (Somali Abo War) displaced local populations who consequently migrated to join their relatives in Northern Kenya.

In Wajir County, from 1978, well-armed deserters from the war trooped to Wajir West in a conspiracy with their local relatives who were not Ajuran.

This expansionist agenda was ruthlessly executed through rape, massacres, looting, arson, confiscation of livestock and torture to displace the indigenes of Wajir West.

Resulting from these dislocation-tactics, political power was forcefully grabbed from the Ajuran in 1979 when the first non-Ajuran became MP for Wajir West since independence.

Similar war-like displacements targeting the Ajuran were executed in the run-up to the General Elections of 1983 and 1992 all of which imposed non-Ajuran MPs in Wajir West.

This expansionist sub-clan thereafter infiltrated the Provincial Administration to facilitate access to ID cards and consequent automatic paper-citizenship.

The Mandera conflict is a Garre-resistance to the displacement tactics executed in Wajir to dehumanise, displace and alienate the Ajuran from their Wajir West homeland.

The Ajuran tragedy exploded when, with the controversial election of the first non-Ajuran MP in 1979, all Ajuran chiefs in major locations of Griftu, Eldas, Arbajahan, Wagalla and Hadado were replaced by non-Ajuran chiefs, to pave the way for a greater influx of this expansionist sub-clan into Kenya.

To date, 2014, there is minimal Ajuran presence in the Wajir County Government.

Any Ajuran job seeker in the county civil service is shortlisted under Wajir North and thereafter left out, because of this deliberate mix-up.

The Constituency Development Fund Committee of Wajir West has only one Ajuran while the CDF committee of Eldaas constituency (which is part of the original Wajir West) has no Ajuran.

The Immigration department in Wajir West and Eldaas has no Ajuran, thus resulting in all the ID waiting-cards being largely held by Ajuran youth with no prospect of ever getting IDs.

While oil prospecting has reached fever-pitch in Wajir County, there is a feeling that the Ajuran and the Ogaden have been sidelined from the jobs, tenders and contracts.

In an advert in a local newspaper in 2009, a new scheme was hatched to grab large tracts of Wajir West Trust Land under the guise of establishing private ranches.

To date, the Ajuran-dominated parts of Wajir West have the poorest infrastructure, pathetic unemployment levels and humiliating poverty. This deliberate marginalisation only breeds resentment and breakout of open inter-clan fights as witnessed in Mandera recently.

This is the time to address causes of the crisis.

The writer was TNA candidate for Wajir West constituency in 2013