Shifta War
Encyclopedia
The Shifta War was a secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...

ist conflict in which ethnic Somalis
Somalis in Kenya
Somalis in Kenya are citizens and residents of Kenya who are of Somali descent. Somalis are one of the largest Cushitic-speaking ethnic minority groups in the country. They first started arriving in the area in the 19th century. Following the civil war in Somalia that broke out in 1991, many...

 in the Northern Frontier District
North Eastern Province (Kenya)
North Eastern Province is the third largest province in Kenya and has thirteen constituencies represented in the Kenya National Assembly.The region is home to a rare type of antelope called the Hirola, which is classified as an endangered species. The NFD's pastoralists also possess livestock in...

 (NFD) of Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

 (a region that is and has historically been almost exclusively inhabited by ethnic Somalis) attempted to join with their fellow Somalis in a Greater Somalia
Greater Somalia
Greater Somalia refers to those regions in the Horn of Africa in which ethnic Somalis are and have historically represented the predominant population. Greater Somalia encompasses Somalia, Djibouti, the Ogaden of Ethiopia and the North Eastern Province of Kenya. Pan-Somalism refers to the vision...

. The Kenyan government named the conflict "shifta
Shifta
Shifta is term used in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia for rebel, outlaw, or bandit. The word is derived from shúfto. Historically, shifta served as local militia in the lawless rural mountainous regions on the Horn of Africa...

", after the Somali
Somali language
The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900....

 word for "bandit", as part of a propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 effort. The Kenyan counter-insurgency
Counter-insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...

 General Service Unit
General Service Unit
The General Service Unit is a paramilitary wing of the Kenyan Military and Kenyan Police, consisting of highly trained police officers and special forces soldiers, transported by 7 dedicated Cessnas and...

s forced civilians into "protected villages
Villagization
Villagization is the resettlement of people into designated villages by government or military authorities....

" (essentially concentration camps) as well as killing a large number of livestock kept by the pastoralist
Pastoralism
Pastoralism or pastoral farming is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It may have a mobile aspect, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and...

 Somalis. The war ended in the late summer of 1967 when Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal, Prime Minister of the Somali Republic
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

, signed a ceasefire with Kenya. However, the violence in Kenya deteriorated into disorganized banditry, with occasional episodes of secessionist agitation, for the next several decades. The war and violent clampdowns by the Kenyan government caused large-scale disruption to the way of life in the district, resulting in a slight shift from pastoralist and transhumant
Transhumance
Transhumance is the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and to lower valleys in winter. Herders have a permanent home, typically in valleys. Only the herds travel, with...

 lifestyles to sedentary, urban lifestyles.

Background

Throughout much of the 20th century, the Northern Frontier District (NFD) was a part of British East Africa. From 1926 to 1934, the NFD, comprising the current North Eastern Province
North Eastern Province (Kenya)
North Eastern Province is the third largest province in Kenya and has thirteen constituencies represented in the Kenya National Assembly.The region is home to a rare type of antelope called the Hirola, which is classified as an endangered species. The NFD's pastoralists also possess livestock in...

 and the districts of Marsabit
Marsabit District
Marsabit District is an administrative district in the Eastern Province of Kenya. Its capital town is Marsabit. The district has a population of 121,478 The district is located in northern Kenya. It borders the eastern shore of Lake Turkana....

, Moyale
Moyale District
Moyale District is an administrative district in the Eastern Province of Kenya. Its capital town is Moyale. It has population of 53,479 and an area of 9,390 km² . The district has only one local authority, Moyale county council. The district has one electoral constituency, the Moyale Constituency.-...

 and Isiolo
Isiolo District
Isiolo District is an administrative district inEastern Province of Kenya. Its population is 100.861 , and its capital is Isiolo town. Isiolo District is to be the first district to be developed as part of the Kenya Vision 2030 program....

, was closed by British colonial authorities
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

. Movement in and out of the district was possible only through the use of "passes". Despite these restrictions, pastoralism was well-suited to the arid conditions and the non-Somali residents—who represented a tiny fraction of the region's population -- were relatively prosperous, whereas the Somali owners of the land were calculated in under-development. Anthropologist John Baxter noted in 1953 that:
The Boran and the Sakuye
Sakuye
The Sakuye or Saguye are a semi-nomadic people living in Marsabit and Isiolo districts, Eastern Province, Kenya. The 1979 Kenyan census reported this group had 1,824 persons, but Günther Schlee believes this number "is definitely too low. The 1969 census gave 4,369 as their number, and the...

 were well-nourished and well-clothed and, though a pastoral life is always physically demanding, people led dignified and satisfying life... They had clearly been prospering for some years. In 1940, the District Commissioner commented in his Handing Over Report: "The Ewaso Boran have degenerated through wealth and soft living into an idle and cowardly set"...

On June 26, 1960, four days before granting British Somaliland
British Somaliland
British Somaliland was a British protectorate in the northern part of present-day Somalia. For much of its existence, British Somaliland was bordered by French Somaliland, Ethiopia, and Italian Somaliland. From 1940 to 1941, it was occupied by the Italians and was part of Italian East Africa...

 independence, the British government declared that all Somali areas should be unified in one administrative region. However, after the dissolution of the former British colonies in East Africa, Britain granted administration of the Northern Frontier District to Kenyan nationalists despite a) an informal plebiscite demonstrating the overwhelming desire of the region's population to join the newly-formed Somali Republic
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

, and b) the fact that the NFD was and still is almost exclusively inhabited by ethnic Somalis.

On the eve of Kenyan independence in August 1963, British officials belatedly realized that the new Kenyan administration were not willing to give up the historically Somali-inhabited areas they had just been granted administration of. Somali officials responded with the following statement:

It was evident that the British Government has not only deliberately misled the Somali Government during the course of the last eighteen months, but has also deceitfully encouraged the people of North Eastern Province to believe that their right to self-determination could be granted by the British Government through peaceful and legal means.


Led by the Northern Province People's Progressive Party (NPPPP), Somalis in the NFD vigorously sought union with the Somali Republic to the north. In response, the Kenyan government enacted a number of repressive measures designed to frustrate their efforts:


Somali leaders were routinely placed in preventive detention, where they remained well into the late 1970s. The North Eastern Province was closed to general access (along with other parts of Kenya) as a "scheduled" area (ostensibly closed to all outsiders, including members of parliament, as a means of protecting the nomadic inhabitants), and news from it was very difficult to obtain. A number of reports, however, accused the Kenyans of mass slaughters of entire villages of Somali citizens and of setting up large "protected villages" -- in effect concentration camps. The government refused to acknowledge the ethnically based irredentist motives of the Somalis, making constant reference in official statements to the shifta (bandit) problem in the area.

Conflict

The province thus entered a period of running skirmishes between the Kenyan Army
Military of Kenya
The Kenya Defence Forces are the armed forces of the Republic of Kenya. The Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, and Kenya Air Force comprise the national Defence Forces. The current Kenya Defence Forces were established, and its composition laid out, in Article 241 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya...

 and Somali-backed Northern Frontier District Liberation Movement (NFDLM) insurgents. One immediate consequence was the signing in 1964 of a Mutual Defense Treaty between Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyattapron.] served as the first Prime Minister and President of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation....

's administration and the government of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
Haile Selassie I , born Tafari Makonnen, was Ethiopia's regent from 1916 to 1930 and Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974...

. The start of the Bale revolt in Ethiopia in 1963 indicated to both Kenya and Ethiopia the need for cooperation in checking Somali irredentism. However, the treaty had little effect as the Kenyan army was not able to stem the cross-border flow of materiel
Materiel
Materiel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....

 from Somalia to the guerrillas.

At the outset of the war, the government declared a State of Emergency. This consisted of allowing security forces to detain people up to 56 days without trial, confiscating the property of communities allegedly in retaliation for acts of violence, and restricting the right to assembly and movement. A 'prohibited zone' was created along the Somali border, and the death penalty was made mandatory for unauthorized possession of firearms. "Special courts" without guarantee of due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...

 were also created. The northeast—declared a "special district" -- was subject to nearly unfettered government control, including the authority to detain, arrest or forcibly move individuals or groups, as well as confiscate possessions and land. However, as part of its effort to reassure the public, the Voice of Kenya
Kenya Broadcasting Corporation
Kenya Broadcasting Corporation is the state-run media organization of Kenya. It broadcasts in both English and Swahili, as well as in most local languages of Kenya. The corporation started its life in 1928 when Kenya was a British colony. In 1964, when Kenya became an independent country, the...

 was warned not to refer to the conflict as a "border dispute", while a special government committee decided to refer to the rebels as "shiftas" in order to minimize the political nature of the war.

Over the course of the war, the new Kenyan government became increasingly concerned by the growing strength of the Somali military. At independence, Somalia had a weak army of 5000 troops that was incapable of exerting itself beyond its borders. However, in 1963, the Somali government appealed for assistance from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, which responded by lending it about $32 million. By 1969, 800 Somali officers had received Soviet training, while the army had expanded to over 23,000 well-equipped troops. The Kenyan fear that the insurgency might escalate into an all-out war with phalanxes of well-equipped Somali troops was coupled with a concern about the new insurgent tactic of planting land mine
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....

s. In a July 29, 1966 letter, Kenyan Defence Permanent Secretary Danson Mlamba warned Information and Broadcasting PS Peter Gachathi of:

Mounting casualties to the army and police... and the last incident, which we are keeping quiet about, when a police Land Rover
Land Rover
Land Rover is a British car manufacturer with its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom which specialises in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, forming part of their Jaguar Land Rover group...

 was blown up by a mine which killed two officers and wrecked the vehicle is a very serious development.


The Kenyan government response may have been inspired by the counter-insurgency efforts taken by the British during the Mau Mau Uprising
Mau Mau Uprising
The Mau Mau Uprising was a military conflict that took place in Kenya between 1952 and 1960...

, which had been spearheaded by the Kikuyu, who now ironically dominated the Kenya African National Union
Kenya African National Union
The Kenya African National Union, better known as KANU is a political party which ruled Kenya for nearly 40 years after its independence from British colonial rule in 1963, until its electoral loss at the end of 2002...

-led government. Gachathi mused that they should perhaps "take a leaf from the (British) operations carried out during the emergency against the Mau Mau movement which, I am sure you will agree, were considerably effective." In 1967, Kenyan fears reached a fever pitch, and a special government committee was created to prepare for a full-scale war with Somalia. The government also adopted a policy of compulsory villagization
Villagization
Villagization is the resettlement of people into designated villages by government or military authorities....

 in the war-affected area. In 1967, the populace was moved into 14 Manyattas, villages that were guarded by troops (some referred to them as concentration camps). East Africa
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...

 scholar Alex de Waal
Alex de Waal
Alexander William Lowndes de Waal is a British writer and researcher on African issues. He was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City...

 described the result as "a military assault upon the entire pastoral way of life," as enormous numbers of livestock were confiscated or killed, partly to deny their use by the guerrillas and partly to force the populace to abandon their flocks and move to a Manyatta. Thus, made destitute, many nomads became an urban underclass, while educated Somalis in Kenya fled the country. The government also removed the dynastic Sultans, who were the traditional leaders, with low-ranking government-appointed chiefs.

In 1967, Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....

n President Kenneth Kaunda
Kenneth Kaunda
Kenneth David Kaunda, known as KK, served as the first President of Zambia, from 1964 to 1991.-Early life:Kaunda was the youngest of eight children. He was born at Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, Northern Province of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia...

 mediated peace talks between Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Egal and Kenyatta. These bore fruit in October 1967, when the governments of Kenya and Somalia signed a Memorandum of Understanding
Memorandum of understanding
A memorandum of understanding is a document describing a bilateral or multilateral agreement between parties. It expresses a convergence of will between the parties, indicating an intended common line of action. It is often used in cases where parties either do not imply a legal commitment or in...

 (the Arusha Memorandum) that resulted in an official ceasefire, though regional security did not prevail until 1969. After a 1969 coup in Somalia, the new military leader Mohamed Siad Barre, abolished this MoU as he claimed it was corrupt and unsatisfactory. The Manyatta strategy is seen as playing a key role in ending the insurgency, though the Somali government may have also decided that the potential benefits of a war simply was not worth the cost and risk. However, Somalia did not renounce its claim to Greater Somalia
Greater Somalia
Greater Somalia refers to those regions in the Horn of Africa in which ethnic Somalis are and have historically represented the predominant population. Greater Somalia encompasses Somalia, Djibouti, the Ogaden of Ethiopia and the North Eastern Province of Kenya. Pan-Somalism refers to the vision...

.

Effects

With Somali support for their movement for self-determination temporarily halted, many former rebels returned to the traditional activity of pastoralism.

The forced internment of the Northern Frontier District's inhabitants also resulted in an economic bifurcation of its other minority residents. Those with means diversified into trade and sedentary farming. Those without became wage laborers, while the poorest were reduced to dependence on outside relief aid. Anthropologist John Baxter returned to the village in Isiolo District
Isiolo District
Isiolo District is an administrative district inEastern Province of Kenya. Its population is 100.861 , and its capital is Isiolo town. Isiolo District is to be the first district to be developed as part of the Kenya Vision 2030 program....

 that he had researched in 1953, and had this to say about the few non-Somali minority tribes that lived at the time alongside the Somali majority:

In 1982, only a few fortunate ones still maintained themselves through stock pastoralism. Some 40 percent of the Boran and Sakuye of the District had been driven to peri-urban shanty villages in the new administrative townships. There, they eked out a bare subsistence, hanging around the petrol stations for odd jobs, hawking for miraa
Khat
Khat, qat, gat or Waquish Spoken from true Yemeni, is a flowering plant native to tropical East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula....

, making illicit alcohol, engaging in prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 and the like.


The war thus marked the beginning of decades of violent crackdowns and repressive measures by the police in the NFD coupled with trumped-up allegations and unsubtle innuendo on the part of the Kenyan media charging the region's almost exclusively Somali inhabitants with "banditry" and other vice.

A particularly violent incident referred to as the Wagalla Massacre
Wagalla massacre
The Wagalla massacre was a massacre of ethnic Somalis by Kenyan security forces on February 10, 1984 in Wajir District, North Eastern Province, Kenya.-Overview:The Wagalla massacre took place on February 10, 1984 at the Wagalla Airstrip...

 took place in 1984, when the Kenyan provincial commissioner ordered security forces to gather 5000 men of the Somali Degodia clan onto the airstrip at Wagalla, Wajir
Wajir
Wajir is a town in the North Eastern Province of Kenya. It is the capital of Wajir County.-History:A cluster of cairns near Wajir are generally ascribed by the local inhabitants to the Madanle, a semi-legendary people of high stature, who are associated with the Somali Ajuuraan. A. T...

, open fire on them, and then attempt to hide their bodies. In the year 2000, the government admitted to having killed 380 people, though independent estimates put the toll at over 2000.

Not until late 2000 and the administration of Provincial Commissioner Mohammoud Saleh -- a Somali—was there a serious drop in violent activities, partially attributable to Saleh's zero tolerance policy towards abuse by security forces. Ironically, Saleh himself was the target of the local police, having been arrested and booked several times during the wee hours of the night. Wearing plain clothes, Saleh was apparently mistaken for an ordinary inhabitant of the NFD.
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