Wajir, Kenya: The ongoing clashes in Wajir County have now taken an ugly social turn. Clan hostility is tearing families apart and even breaking marriages.
Elders have started forcing their clansmen to divorce their spouses, mostly women by their husbands, if they married from across the boundaries. The anger is being fueled by mistrust and the fear that women could be leaking crucial security information to the opposing clans.
Last month, two men of the Degodia clan left their wives of several years in Takaba in Mandera, following the deadly conflicts. The wives stayed behind for the simple reason that they could not be allowed to cross over into Wajir County since they belonged to Garre. They would be risking their lives as relations between the two clans hit rock-bottom.
The emerging reality is emblematic of the worsening fighting between the two clans that has seen security situation get worse, leaving scores dead.
Given the worsening relations between the two clans, there are fears that the spouses might never get back together. A chief in Tarbaj who declined to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media confirmed to The Standard that in one of the families, the man and his wife had agreed to share their four children equally. “It is worrying for these families that are now broken," he said.
Muslim couples
"The men and women appreciate the obvious dangers of living among the other clan,” said the administrator.
The two families are only a reflection of a much bigger problem pitting the two clans of the Somali community in Kenya. “Several other wives who were born to Garre parents in Mandera have also been sent packing by their husbands from the Wajir side,” says Salat Hassan, a resident, adding: “Several wives I know in person have been kicked out of their marriages by their Degodia husbands and have been forced to go back home across the boundary.”
Hassan, a Wajir resident who was our driver during the Wajir trip, explained that husbands were anxious that their wives would leak crucial information to their clansmen, such as plans of mounting fresh attacks.
Hassan said that typically, such plans would be discussed openly, making a case for utmost secrecy. Timing and complexity of the attacks would be discussed, including the size of militia that would be deployed on a specific attack.
Prior to this phase of animosity, intermarriages were common even as inter-ethnic competition always played out especially in the politics of Wajir and Mandera counties. Wajir County Commissioner Naftali Mung'athia said he has handled several cases of forced separation between spouses of different clans. “I have handled many cases of separation in my office; but I think many more are not reported,” he says.
He continued: “In some cases, the spouses have reported that the elders are uncomfortable with their unions and they have to be dissolved.”
It is expected that the picture of what is happening in Wajir will be replicated across the common boundary with Mandera because the factors are a mirror-image. Under the Islamic faith, divorce is allowed. Yet it is extremely rare to find married Muslim couples that are not wedded under the religion’s laws. Men too are allowed to marry up to four wives on condition that they can afford their upkeep.
“Separations among Muslim faithful of the rival clans in Wajir have reached worrying proportions,” Mung'athia said. Just last week, a house belonging to a Degodia man was torched near Wajir town because he was reluctant to kick out his wife of four years, whose parents are from Mandera.
Mass burial
The house was torched in the flare-up that followed the massacre of 20 people in Gunana village and the bodies of the victims paraded for a mass burial.
There has been rising tension in Wajir. A village occupied by members of the Darre community within Wajir immediately came under attack following the Gunana attack.
A journalist from the Degodia clan told us the villagers have been living in fear of possible retaliatory attacks, while any female member married outside her clan had either been divorced or would surely get a divorce as the fighting escalated.
Elders who were willing to speak to the media said the enmity between these clans had reached unanticipated levels after morphing from ordinary competition for supremacy to armed conflict where arms are used.
