While the Somali government has been vocal in accusing Kenya of interference in its internal affairs, it is actually Somalia that is actively sponsoring secession of some communities in Northern Kenya.
Between October and December 2020, there were several high level meetings held in Mogadishu that were attended by leaders within the Degodia community as well as FGS officials such as Abdullahi Sheikh Ali from the Federal Government of Somalia and Jibril Alkutuby, the first Degodia MP for Hirshabelle Region in Somalia and a Kenyan by birth.
During one such meeting, the Somali Intelligence identified a Kenyan Degodia – Rahma Mohamed Guliye from Mandera to be the chief coordinator for the unification of the Kenya and Somali Degodia. Consequently, Rahma was appointed the Chief of Staff in the office of the Prime Minister of the FGS on 3rd November 2020. Rahma accepted the appointment and thanked President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmaajo”, the President of Federal Government of Somalia, for the favour he had extended to her and the Degodia in Kenya.
The Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) with the guidance of their Intelligence Chief has been propping up the Degodia community in Kenya’s Northern Eastern Region to lead the calls for secession from Kenya. Under the guise of uniting Kenyan and Somali Degodia, the FGS has organized various forums in Kenya and Somalia with the hidden agenda to heighten the secession.
An important task given to Rahma among others was the immediate launching of the Degodia flag in Nairobi Kenya. The Degodia community launched their flag on 29th of November 2020 at Grand Royal Hotel in Eastleigh, Nairobi. The ceremony was attended by politicians, religious leaders, youth, women and representatives from the FGS led by Hon Abdullahi Sheikh Ali.
On 19th November 2020, Rahma participated in a Degodia meeting in Mogadishu which was graced by Jibril Alkutuby, Degodia MP, Hirshabelle Region. This was consultative meeting held by the youth committee of Degodia Clan as a precursor for a bigger meeting that MP Ali Jibril would hold with the Degodia community in Mogadishu later. The MP is a Kenyan by birth from Mandera and holds a Kenyan Passport.
Before his appointment to the Second Parliament in Hirshabelle, Jibril was working in Somali Intelligence (NISA) as the head of Open Source Intelligence Unit that used to recruit journalists as agents for the intelligence organization. Rahma travelled back to Nairobi and proceeded to Mandera the following day where she held a meeting at Granada Hotel on 22nd November, 2020.
The call for independence and perseverance in the course of fighting for the community to attain independence was the dominant theme at the launch of the flag. Speaker after speaker praised the launch indicating that they were ready to chart the course for Degodia and their independence by all means.
Rahma, a Kenyan by birth and other leading politicians from Wajir, Mandera and Garissa discretely support FGS and President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ‘Farmaajo’ interests in Kenya. These politicians include a fomer MP who is also related to Rahma, a Governor, a prominent city lawyer, Garissa County MP and a prominent businessman from Ogaden clan.
The Ajuraan clan consider themselves to be the “original” inhabitants of much of the land, and enjoyed protected access to Wajir-West under the British colonial system. Since independence they have faced long-term migratory pressure and changing demographics from westward-expanding neighbors, especially the Degodia (Goldsmith 1997: 30). The district has historically been almost entirely rural and pastoral, with only four settlements in the entire district in 1940. Today, there are 71 settlements, of which 26 are new since 1996; a total of about 380,000 live in the district.
Tensions between the Degodia and Ajuraan had already led to an alarming level of assassinations in the 1980s, rendering the area one of the most unstable in Kenya.
The politicians subliminally champion the secessionist agenda through insinuations of marginalization of Kenyan Somalis. This, according to multiple sources appears to be part of a bigger scheme to reignite controversial calls for Northern Kenya independence or its annexation to Somalia.
The launched Degodia flag is horizontal tricolour of black at the top, blue Somalia flag with white star in the middle and red at the bottom. During the launch, it was explained that the black represents Degodias living in Kenya, the Somalia flag represents their people living in Somalia and the red colour represents “The blood shed during the fight and struggle for the independence of Degodia community.”
The instability which periodically plagues the Kenya-Somalia border area is part of a broader, complex pattern of state failure and communal violence afflicting much of the Horn of Africa. Violence and lawlessness are particularly acute in remote border areas where states in the region have never projected much authority. When they have, state authorities have sometimes been the catalysts of insecurity rather than promoters of peace. On the Somali side of the border, the central government collapsed in January 1991 and has yet to be revived. In Kenya, the vast, remote, and arid frontier areas bordering Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda were never entirely brought under the control of the state in either colonial or post-colonial eras. Thousands of Kenyans have died in periodic communal violence in these border areas over the past fifteen years, in clashes which sometimes produce casualties normally associated with civil wars. Kenyan government administration of its peripheral territory ranges from weak to nonexistent. There, government outposts are essentially garrisons; police and military units are reluctant to patrol towns after dark, and are badly outgunned by local militias. “Even the police are never safe here,” lamented one Kenyan newspaper headline in reference to Kenya’s northern provinces.
In 1962, a year prior to Kenya’s independence, a majority of the people of Northern Kenya (then known as the Northern Frontier District) ‘almost unanimously’ preferred secession from the Kenyan state to Somalia, in a referendum organized by the British government. The British government ignored this result, however, and instead transformed the administrative arrangements of the Northern Frontier District into the North Eastern Province (NEP), comprising Garissa, Wajir and Mandera (Lind et al., 2015). The first post-independence government made it clear it would maintain territorial borders, leading to insurgency across Northern Kenya. The insurgents formed by Somalis and their allies, with support from Mogadishu, called themselves the Northern Frontier District Liberation Front, but were labelled shifta (‘bandit’) by the state.
During the entire colonial period, Somali leaders in North Eastern Kenya did not interact with the rest of the Kenyan leaders. This was because of their political reasons, as well as the colonial policy which did not integrate the North Eastern Kenya with the rest of Kenya or Somalia. Instead, it controlled the region as an isolated part of Kenya. In preparation for Kenya’s independence, the British government facilitated the Somali vote, to determine whether they wanted to be on the side of Kenya or Somalia. About 87% of the Somali people voted to unite with Somalia.
It’s important to note that a large population of Degodia community lives in Ethiopia and their current king is based in Ethiopia too. However, they were neither represented in the colours of the purported flag nor has the flag been launched in Ethiopia. This is a clear indicator that the flag is aimed at uniting the Degodias living in Northern Kenya and those in Somalia in a concerted effort of rooting for the secessionist agenda and undermining Kenyan national security.
The Degodia and Garre clans have a long history of conflict and violence that are documented even in colonial records. The current conflict, however, began in 2008 following the election of Abdikadir Mohamed from the Degodia clan as the Member of Parliament for Mandera Central Constituency. Mr. Mohamed unseated Billow Kerow (current senator for Mandera county) from the Garre clan, the majority clan in Mandera and previous occupants of this seat. This election result had wider ramifications on the politics of Mandera: the political domination of the Garre clan was broken; and the political presence of the Degodia clan was felt.
This win-lose mentality is rooted in a “resident-migrant” dynamic that has shaped politics in Mandera for a long time.
The Garre and Murule clans were considered the “resident clans” and the rest of the Somali clans, due to their “minority” or “migrant status” (the Degodia are neither of these), were clustered into an alliance called “corner tribes”. This distinction had a major influence on the conduct of politics in the area: the “resident clans” have historically won the parliamentary seats (two for Garre and one for Murule) and the majority of the local council seats. The election of Abdikadir Mohamed (Degodia) as the Member of Parliament for Mandera Central Constituency in the 2007 election was seen to be going against this unwritten rule.
Beyond the clan rivalries and exclusionary politics, the current Mandera conflict also comes against a backdrop of changing peacebuilding architecture in the region. The long history of clan conflicts and the neglect by the state have led to the evolution of innovative and effective local “hybrid” conflict management mechanisms based on the mostly Somali and Islamic traditions of the local communities.
