Conflict Assessment / 2014 Northern Kenya and Somaliland WRITTEN for DANISH DEMINING GROUP by DR
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Conflict Assessment / 2014 Northern Kenya and Somaliland WRITTEN FOR DANISH DEMINING GROUP BY DR. KEN MENKHAUS, FINAL, CORRECTED VERSION, MARCH 2015 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............ 1 7. APPENDIX / NORTHERN KENYA COUNTY CASE STUDIES ..................... 86 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............ 2 APPENDIX A / ISIOLO COUNTY .......... 86 1. INTRODUCTION ....................... 5 APPENDIX B / MANDERA COUNTY ..... 93 2. CONTEXTS ............................. 9 APPENDIX C / WAJIR COUNTY ......... 104 3. CONFLICT ASSESSMENT / APPENDIX D / GARISSA COUNTY ..... 111 NORTHERN KENYA ................ 16 4. CONFLICT ASSESSMENT / APPENDIX E / MARSABIT COUNTY .... 117 SOMALILAND ........................ 54 5. CONCLUSIONS ...................... 76 APPENDIX F / ELECTED OFFICIALS ....123 6. POLICY CONSIDERATIONS ..... 81 REFERENCES ................................... 126 DANISH DEMINING GROUP Founded in 1997, the Danish Demining Group (DDG) is a specialised unit within the Danish Refugee Council. DDG works in more than 17 countries with the mission “to recreate a safe environment where people can live without the threat of landmines, explosive remnants of war, and small arms and light weapons”. Since 2008, DDG is applying a comprehensive approach to armed violence reduction under which the increasing problem of armed violence is addressed in five areas of intervention at mainly community, local and national levels. Each intervention area has a clear outcome and impact focus: • Security Governance: Enhancing Civic engagement in and influence over security governance • Security Provision: Strengthening effective, accountable and responsive security provision • Small arms and light weapons (SALW) management: Reducing the incidents with SALW • Mine Action: Reducing the incidents with mines and explosive remnants of war; and increasing the use of productive land • Conflict Prevention and Transformation: Strengthening effective conflict prevention and transformation. Photographs by Axel Fassio / Pete Muller ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study could not have been completed without the help of a great many people. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the field researchers Abdul Haro (DDG Kenya AVR Manager); Ahmed Hassan (DDG South Central Somalia AVR Manager); Gerald Wandera (Kenya School of Government); Mads Frilander (DDG Country Director, Kenya), Lucian Harriman (DDG Deputy Country Director for Somalia/Somaliland) and the DDG Somaliland field team (Abdirahman Warsame Nur (DDG District Safety Coordinator) and Muse Mohamed Muse (Monitoring and Evaluation Facilitator) in addition to four data collectors Abdirahman Ali Ahmed, Hamda Dahir Hassan, Abdiasiz Jama, Ased Mohamoud Mohamed), peer reviewers Sarah Bayne and Patricia Vasquez; and research managers Mads Frilander (DDG Country Director, Kenya) and Simon Rynn (DDG Regional Director, Horn of Africa and Yemen). Thanks as well to DDG’s Communications Assistant Angela Wachira for assistance with layout, DDG’s Victor Laktabai for the development of maps, and DDG’s Anab Hassan for administrative support. DDG and the author would further like to thank the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for their patience and generosity in support of this effort and the Kenya School of Government for its support. Finally, thanks to the many civic and political figures in Somaliland and Northern Kenya who generously shared their time and ideas with us, and to the dozens of regional analysts on whose work we drew. The author is solely responsible for errors of fact or interpretation in this study. 1 | CONFLICT ASSESSMENT | NORTHERN KENYA AND SOMALILAND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • Both eastern Somaliland and northern Kenya are experiencing spikes in political and social tensions, armed conflict, and communal clashes, and, in the case of northern Kenya, violent extremism. • Available evidence suggests that the trend toward greater levels of armed conflict is likely to intensify with the arrival of a combination of transformational changes in the regional political economy, including new county budget lines in northern Kenya and possible oil windfall revenues in both northern Kenya and Somaliland. • These changes are injecting or may inject substantial levels of new revenue into the national and regional economies, dramatically increasing the stakes over who controls local and national governments. • This anticipated influx of new revenue into state coffers is occurring in a context of poor economic governance, contested communal claims over rights to resources and revenues, and, in the case of northern Kenya, a new devolved political system with no established “rules of the game”. This is a dangerous combination and increases the odds that both regions could suffer destabilising levels of armed conflict. • Oil exploration is already setting in motion local reactions, including speculative land-grabbing, that increase the odds of violent conflict even if actual oil extraction is not viable in some areas. • Oil exploration may aggravate existing conflict issues, including contested communal and political borders, grievances over job and contract allocation, local anxiety over land loss, land-grabbing, disputed allocation of oil revenues to local constituencies, in-migration, and control over elected government positions. • In northern Kenya, large new county budgets have increased the stakes surrounding elections for top county positions. The political elite has successfully mobilised clans and tribes to vote in blocs to maximise odds of controlling county government revenues, and, as a result, elections are more likely to generate politically driven communal violence. • Major new development projects associated with Vision 2030 are generating potential both for expanded economic opportunity and for armed conflict across northern Kenya, as they exacerbate tensions over communal and county claims to valuable land. • Pastoral poverty, urban drift, and high urban unemployment in both eastern Somaliland and northern Kenya contribute to social frustrations that can facilitate recruitment of young men into armed criminal, tribal, or insurgency groups. The enormous refugee population in northern Kenya is an additional site of social frustration and recruitment. • Much of the worst communal and political violence in both regions can be traced back to violence entrepreneurs, including some individuals in positions in the government and others in the diaspora, who stoke communal tension and incite violence to advance their own political and economic interests. • Land disputes – conflicting communal claims over rangeland, private claims on rangeland, land grabbing, disputed and corrupted land titling systems in urban and peri-urban areas, and contested county borders – remain a major underlying cause of conflict. • While local resilience to conflict drivers in these areas has been very impressive over the past decade, it is now under unprecedented strain and is poorly equipped to deal with the new conflict dynamics in play. • In both locations, oil risks becoming a “resource curse” unless stronger social compacts are brokered between communities on land and resources; greater levels of trust are built between peripheral communities and the state; and more robust political regimes governing resource allocation and accountability are forged. • Violent extremism, in the form of Al Shabaab and its Kenyan affiliate, Al Hijra, is a rapidly mounting source of political violence in northern Kenya and a potential threat in eastern Somaliland. Oil extraction sites and related infrastructure, along with security sector personnel, civil servants, foreigners, and non-Muslim Kenyans, will all be attractive targets for these groups. This violence may deter investment in northern Kenya and is already impeding the retention of professional Kenyans engaged in health, education, and other vital sectors. • In the past, government security forces in northern Kenya have at times engaged in collective punishment and abusive behaviour. For local populations, such operations have been more a source of insecurity than protection. • One of the principal sources of resilience to drivers of armed violence in both Kenya and Somaliland has been their vibrant democracies, which allow grievances to be articulated and addressed through non-violent political processes. The governments of Kenya and Somaliland have, however, recently pursued policies and passed laws that risk eroding civil liberties in the name of national security. When abused, expanded state security, for whatever reasons, may exacerbate local grievances against the state and increase the risk of insurgency. CONFLICT ASSESSMENT | NORTHERN KENYA AND SOMALILAND | 2 MAP / NORTHERN KENYA Mandera Marsabit Wajir isiolo Garissa KEY Research Areas 3 | CONFLICT ASSESSMENT | NORTHERN KENYA AND SOMALILAND MAP / SOMALILAND TOGDHEER SOOL WAJIR KEY Research Areas CONFLICT ASSESSMENT | NORTHERN KENYA AND SOMALILAND | 4 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY This study assesses the conflict dynamics in two regions of the eastern Horn of Africa, namely, five counties in northern Kenya1 and Sool and southern Togdheer2 regions of Somaliland. It considers the full range of actual and potential causes of conflict in the two areas, as well as conflict dynamics in the wider region, but pays particular attention to the role of hydrocarbon exploration.3 The study also provides policy recommendations for mitigating the risks of armed conflict and building local resilience to conflict drivers. Both Kenya and