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Water the Only Key to Peace, Says Official

The Nation (Nairobi)
NEWS
July 16, 2005
Posted to the web July 17, 2005

By Mugumo Munene
Nairobi
On arrival in any of the northern frontier towns, a kanzu-clad villager is
likely to saunter and ask you: "How is Kenya?"
It is their tongue-in-cheek way of acknowledging how far you have travelled to
reach their hometown - the land that the rest of Kenya forgets.
The northern region stretches from West Pokot and Turkana in the west to
Mandera, Wajir, Ijara and Garissa districts to the east. The area is generally
sandy, wild, harsh and lawless.
Expansive as it is, hardly any infrastructure exists there and communication
with the rest of the world is minimal because roads are poor and are reduced to
camel tracks in the more remote areas.
As rare as oases
Centres of business are as rare as oases in a desert and comprise
administrative offices which host a handful of Government officers.
Between the trading centres are patches of grasslands on sandy terrain,
punctuated by bushes and occasional rocky hills.
Church mission stations and NGO-run relief centres - where residents find help
in times of famine or other crises - provide the alternative centres.
Schools are few and far between and thousands of children stay out of school.
Those who attend classes have to walk for hours to get to a learning centre.
Classes are simple structures, mainly rough-hewn semi-permanent buildings.
"Doctor" is an alien word to many sick people who often resort to traditional
medicine for a cure.
Those injured in the Marsabit massacre had to be ferried on pick-ups for about
130 kilometres to the district hospital.
Despite these hardships, the region produces about half of all the proteins
consumed in Kenya - through the sale of camels, goats and cattle.
Displaced by conflicts
According to the Intermediate Technology Development Group, 164,457 people were
displaced by conflicts in the pastoralist districts last year. Seventy per cent
were women and children aged below 14 years.
Turkana District, the largest in the country, had the largest number of
displaced persons - 41,097.
Wajir in North Eastern Province was second with 32,914 and West Pokot third
with 30,361.
The rest were displaced in Kerio Valley and Samburu district where conflicts
between the Marakwet, the Pokot and the Turkana erupted sporadically.
And although it is the second largest district in the area, Marsabit had the
least number of displaced people with 4,378, according to the NGO records.
But a report prepared by the Centre for Minority Rights said: "Statistics alone
have a numbing effect that increases with repetition and reduces the real human
tragedy of the conflict." The British colonialists kept off the north because
the climate was hostile and the land far less arable than in the White
Highlands around the Aberdare ranges and Mt Kenya region. The north, which was
then referred to as the Northern Frontier District, was administered as a
buffer zone.
Due to colonial neglect, residents entered the post-independence era a
marginalised community.
Large areas of pasture were later alienated as parks and wildlife reserves.
Tourist lodges straddle strategic water sources, leaving the pastoralists with
their thousands of livestock to compete for the little that remained, often
with fatal results.
The conflicts that erupt in the region are related to livestock raids,
retaliation, clan and ethnic hostilities and competition for political power,
says Mr Daudi Ekuam, a conflict and peace-building consultant at the Centre for
Minority Rights.
The violence is fanned by the availability of guns, which originated from the
shifta war in the 1970s and on the Kenya-Somalia border.
Later, the conflicts in Uganda led to a proliferation of guns from the west as
the Pokot and Turkana sought arms to defend themselves and their livestock from
raiders crossing over from neighbouring countries.
To the north, the activities of the Oromo Liberation Front, a military outfit
backed by Oromia-speaking communities, produced another leakage of weapons into
the region.
The OLF believes in the formation of a Borana State and are a thorn in the
flesh of the Ethiopian government.
The Oromo (Ethiopian), the Borana and the Gabra are part of the wider Oromia
community which straddles across Kenya's border with Ethiopia.
"In Ethiopia, the Oromia community feel marginalised and have always wanted a
Borana state. The trouble is that the Gabra refused to join in the initiative
while the Borana agreed and this has created enmity that spills across the
border and involves their brothers on the Kenyan side," Mr Ekuam told the
Nation.
According to him, disarmament is not the solution to the conflict but providing
area residents with water, schools, hospitals and a road network, in other
words a development-driven peace initiative.
"This will reduce movement and conflict over pasture and watering points," he
said.

   

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