At the Crossroads of Cultures? A Historic and Strategic Examination of Kenya-Somalia Relations

Abstract

Kenya shares borders with five countries, all of which have been plagued by postcolonial instability. Of those neighboring nations, relations with Somalia have proven to be the most troublesome for Kenya in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. Border disputes, religious tensions, and internal power struggles intensified the strained relationship between the two nations in the postcolonial era. This article explores the relationship between Kenya and Somalia, in both historical and strategic terms. Tracing Kenyan-Somali relations from their pre-independence days, through numerous regime changes, and up to the present day, it illustrates an awkward uneasiness between the two countries and also reveals the many continuities and discontinuities at work in East Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• history
• Kenya
• shifta
• Somalia
• strategy
• terrorism

Notes

¹For an overview of Hassan, also known as the “Mad Mullah,” see the seminal I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), 63–91. But Hassan was not the first to call for a religiously inspired war of expansion. According to an Arab chronicle of Zeila, the Sultan of Ifat, Haq ad-Din, in the fourteenth century “couched his call to arms in terms of a religious war against infidels.” Ibid., 222.

²Britain and Italy agreed to attempt to restrict trans-migratory movements across borders. Turton also refers to the secession as a “secret obligation” of the British for the Italians. E. R. Turton, “Somali Resistance to Colonial Rule and the Development of Somali Political Activity in Kenya 1893–1960,” Journal of African History 13, no. 1 (1972): 121.

³Vincent B. Thompson, “The Phenomenon of Shifting Frontiers: The Kenya-Somalia Case in the Horn of Africa, 1880s-1970s,” Journal of Asian and African Studies Volume 30, no. 1–2 (1995): 24.

⁴According to Turton in the late 1930s and 1940s, “It was well known that a number of Isaq [Somalis] were in the pay of the Italian Consul at Nairobi and there was the usual fear that their agitation was being manipulated from outside sources.” E. R. Turton, “The Isaq Somali Diaspora and Poll-Tax Agitation in Kenya, 1936–41,” African Affairs 73, no. 292 (July 1974): 340.

⁵The Northern Frontier District comprised a small portion of current-day Coast Province, a majority of Eastern Province, and all of Northeastern Province.

⁶For the British, the clashes were reminiscent of the military campaigns of the “Mad Mullah.” For a detailed account of Hassan's exploits from his time period, see Douglas Jardine, The Mad Mullah of Somaliland (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1923).

⁷Somalia's flag at independence and to this day contains the five-pointed star that represents the Somali peoples in Djibouti, former British Somaliland, former Italian Somaliland, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Samuel M. Makinda, “From Quiet Diplomacy to Cold War Politics: Kenya's Foreign Policy,” Third World Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1983): 306. Though not on the same scale as the great migrations earlier in history, Lewis wrote in 1960 that Somalis continued to expand and “penetrated as far south as Tanganyika, and in a few cases even reached the Rhodesias and the Union of South Africa” as merchants and traders. I. M. Lewis, “The Somali Conquest of the Horn of Africa,” Journal of African History 1, no. 2 (1960): 227.

⁸Thompson, 28; and Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 184. It was British policy to use NFD as a buffer against Ethiopian-Somali incursions into the East Africa Protectorate.

⁹Korwa G. Adar, Kenyan Foreign Policy Behavior Towards Somalia, 1963–1983 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 55. Adar quotes from a May 1963 Somali white paper on the NFD.

¹⁰British opinions were derived from the Regional Boundaries and Constituencies Delimitation Commissions.

¹¹D. Katete Orwa, “Kenya's Relations with Its Neighbors: The Search for a Regional Equilibrium.” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1989; 11(4):118.

¹²Thompson, 29.

¹³“Big Army Exercise in Kenya,” The Times (London), February 23, 1963, 7.

¹⁴Norman Miller and Rodger Yeager, Kenya: The Quest for Prosperity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 38.

¹⁵Norman N. Miller, “The Other Somalia,” Horn of Africa Journal 5, no. 3 (1983): 4.

¹⁶Kenyatta quoted from Adar, 66–67.

¹⁷Adar, 66–67.

¹⁸The estimated monthly cost was 50,000 pounds. “Somalia Unappeased,” The Times (London), March 9, 1964, 11.

¹⁹“Memorandum Put Forward to the World Muslim Conference by NPPPP on Behalf of NFD,” Somali News (Mogadishu), December 30, 1964, 2. Somali delegates may have responded to the recent transformation of Kenya to a de facto one-party republic, which unified Nairobi's views of sovereignty and territorial integrity within the KANU.

²⁰The trade ban prohibited all commercial transactions and movement between the two countries, whether by land, sea, or air.

²¹“Kenya Acts Against Raiders,” The Times (London), September 7, 1966, 10.

²²In the mid-1970s, Kenya required all citizens to obtain identity cards. As in the mid-1960s, Somalis crossed the border and posed as Kenyans; in addition, they used relatives in Kenya to falsely obtain identity cards. Adar, 172, footnote 46.

²³Anthony Clayton, Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa since 1950 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 110.

²⁴Because Somali society is based on oral traditions, such means of propaganda were no doubt useful for the shifta.

²⁵Adar cited the government publication, Kenya-Somalia Relations: Narrative of Four Years of Inspired Aggression and Direct Subversion Mounted by the Somali Republic Against the Government and People of the Republic of Kenya (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1967); Adar, 153.

²⁶Samuel Decalo, The Stable Minority: Civilian Rule in Africa, 1960–1990 (Gainesville, FL: Florida Academic Press, 1998), 239.

²⁷According to British sources, the Kenyan government expended 4.5 million pounds in 1967 and 6 million pounds in 1968. Roy Lewis, “African Border War at Stalemate,” The Times (London), March 30, 1967, 13.

²⁸Clayton, 111. Another estimate claimed much higher deaths, approximately 5,000 Somalis during the four-year conflict. Said S. Samatar, “The Somali Dilemma: Nation in Search of a State,” in Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations Across Africa's International Boundaries, 1884–1984, ed. A. I. Asiwaju (Lagos: University of Lagos Press, 1985), 182.

²⁹Shermarke was elected president the year before and was considered a militant on pan-Somali affairs. However, he selected Igaal as his prime minister, who was considered a moderate.

³⁰The coup also resulted in a notable “brain drain” of western-educated Somalis, who departed to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Kenya. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 212–213.

³¹The initial Somali advantage may have been due to the qualitative and quantitative advantages due Soviet military support. L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan, Africa South of the Sahara: The Challenge to Western Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1981), 39–40.

³²“Kenyatta Hostile to Land Claim,” The Guardian (London), October 21, 1977, 7.

³³Adar, 129–130.

³⁴Bruce E. Arlinghaus, Military Development in Africa: The Political and Economic Risks of Arms Transfers (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), 30.

³⁵Siad Barre quoted in Makinda, 306.

³⁶Siad Barre quoted in Makinda, 316.

³⁷From The Standard, September 8, 1981, cited in Makinda, 317.

³⁸Moi quoted in Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 266.

³⁹For more on U.S.-Kenya strategic relations, see Donovan C. Chau, Global Security Watch—Kenya (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, forthcoming).

⁴⁰For more on the UN missions in Somalia and U.S. Operation Restore Hope, see Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999); Scott Peterson, Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda (New York: Routledge, 2000); and I. M. Lewis, “Why the Warlords Won,” The Times Literary Supplement (London), June 8, 2001, 3–5.

⁴¹Gregory Alonso Pirio, “Radical Islam in the Greater Horn of Africa,” Foreign Military Studies Office paper, U.S. Army Command and Staff College, 2005, 22.

⁴²For a more detailed look at AIAI's history, see, International Crisis Group, Somalia's Islamists, Africa Report No. 100 (Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group, December 12, 2005), 3–11.

⁴³Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam (New York: Algora Publishing, 2000), 364.

⁴⁴During colonial times, the British faced similar challenges as the Kenyan government. For historical accounts, see James Barber, Imperial Frontier: A Study of Relations Between the British and the Pastoral Tribes of North East Uganda (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971); and G. H. Mungeam, British Rule in Kenya, 1895–1912: The Establishment of Administration in the East African Protectorate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

⁴⁵International Crisis Group, Counter-Terrorism in Somalia: Losing Hearts and Minds?, Africa Report No. 95 (Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group, July 11, 2005).

⁴⁶Ugandan peacekeepers arrived between March and April 2007; they were followed by Burundi peacekeepers the following January.

⁴⁷Ethiopian forces were officially withdrawn in January 2009 but continued to maintain a presence in the country.

⁴⁸UN estimates cited from Macharia Gaitho, Muchemi Wachira, and Issa Hussein, “Somali: The Threat Next Door,” Daily Nation (Kenya), May 31, 2009, http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/605254/-/view/printVersion/-/6dts3tz/-/index.html.

⁴⁹“Somali Rebel Group Threatens to Invade Kenya,” Xinhua, April 26, 2009, news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/27/content_11262970.htm; and Reuters, “Somali Islamist Threatens ‘Invasion’ of Kenya,” Mail and Guardian Online, June 11, 2009, www.mg.co.za/article/2009–06-11-somali-islamistthreatens-invasion-of-kenya.

⁵⁰Peter Leftie, “Raila Hints at Military Action,” The Nation (Kenya), June 22, 2009.

⁵¹Bogita Ongeri quoted in “Kenya Boosts Somali Border force,” BBC News, July 21, 2009, news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8161967.stm.

⁵²For example, see Jeffrey Gettleman, “Radical Islamists Slip Easily Into Kenya,” New York Times, July 22, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/world/africa/22shabab.html?hp=&pagewanted=print; and Shashank Bengali, “Among Somalis Worldwide, Jihadists Find Fertile Recruiting Ground,” Kansas City Star, August 4, 2009, www.kansascity.com/451/v-print/story/1364262.html.

⁵³“Somalia's al-Shabaab Proclaims Allegiance to Bin Laden,” Mail and Guardian Online, September 22, 2009, www.mg.co.za/article/2009-09-22-somalias-alshabaab-proclaims-allegiance-to-bin-laden.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donovan C. Chau

Donovan C. Chau is assistant professor of political science and a core faculty member in the master's program in national security studies at California State University, San Bernardino. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Middle East and Africa.