The socioeconomic dynamics of the shifta conflict in Kenya, c. 1963-8

Journal of African History

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 391-408

  Whittaker, Hannah Alice ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Kenya; postcolonial; Somalia; war

Indexed keywords

ADMINISTRATIVE FRAMEWORK; CULTURAL HISTORY; ETHNIC CONFLICT; POLITICAL CONFLICT; POLITICAL HISTORY; POST-COLONIALISM; SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS;

KENYA;

EID: 84872340955     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853712000448     Document Type: Review

References (43)

1. Command Paper 1900, Kenya: Report of the Northern Frontier District Commission (London, 1962), 2;
2. N. Mburu, Bandits on the Border: The Last Frontier in the Search for Somali Unity (Trenton, NJ, 2005), 8.
3. K. G. Adar, Kenyan Foreign Policy Behavior Towards Somalia, 1963-1983 (Lanham, MD, 1994), 85.
4. See S. Touval, Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge MA 1963);
5. J. Markakis National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa (London, 1990);
6. M. I. Farah, From Ethnic Response to Clan Identity: A Study of State Penetration among the Somali Nomadic Pastoral Society of Northeastern Kenya (Uppsala Sweden 1993);
7. Adar Kenyan; Mburu Bandits.
8. M. Berdal, 'Beyond greed and grievance - and not too soon⋯', Review of International Studies, 31:4 (2005), 690.
9. See Markakis, National; Farah, From Ethnic Response; Mburu, Bandits;
10. D. Branch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2011 (New Haven, CT, 2011).
11. G. Schlee, Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (Manchester, 1989);
12. G. Schlee, 'Gada systems on the meta-ethnic level: Gabra/Boran/Garre interactions in the Kenya-Ethiopian borderland' in E. Kurimoto and S. Simose (eds.), Conflict, Age and Power in North East Africa: Age Systems in Transition (Oxford, 1998), 121-46;
13. G. Schlee, 'Brothers of the Boran once again: on the fading popularity of certain Somali identities in northern Kenya', Journal of Eastern African Studies, 1:3 (2007), 417-35.
14. See also G. Oba, 'Shifting identities along resource borders: becoming and continuing to be Boorana Oromo', in P. T. W. Baxter, J. Hultin, and A. Triulzi (eds.), Being and Becoming Oromo: Historical and Anthropological Enquiries (Lawrenceville, NJ, 1996), 117-31;
15. H. W. Arero, 'Coming to Kenya: imagining and perceiving a nation among the Borana of Kenya' Journal of Eastern African Studies 1:2 (2007) 292-304.
16. The conceptualisation of the border as a resource is drawn from D. Feyissa and M. V. Hoehne (eds.), Borders and Borderlands as Resources in the Horn of Africa (Rochester, NY, 2010).
17. D. Branch, Defeating MauMau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009), 8.
18. See B. A. Ogot and W. R. Ochieng (eds.), Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, 1940-93 (London, 1995); Branch, Kenya.
19. D. Crummey, "Banditry and resistance: noble and peasant in nineteenth-century Ethiopia', in D. Crummey (ed.), Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa (London, 1986), 133-5;
20. R. Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1041 - 1003 (Cambridge, 1995), 72.
21. Kenya National Archive, Nairobi (KNA) BV/III/70, N. Cossins, North East Province Kenya: A study of its pastoral Somali' (Aug. 1970), 75 - 6; Interview with Abdo Barre, Garissa, 17 Dec. 2008; Interview with Gufu Arero and Fugich Dabassa, Isiolo, 6 Oct. 2008.
22. Hansard, Republic of Kenya, House of Representatives Official Report Volume I (Part II), 23 July-2() November 1963, (Nairobi, 28 Nov. 1963), Cols. 2400-28.
23. Interview with Fatuma Gabow, Garissa, 16 Dec. 2008. Her husband defected from the administration police to become a shifta group leader; Interview with Wario Tadicha, Isiolo, 6 Oct. 2008, the son of a Boran chief and the brother of an active shifta leader.
24. KNABB/12/26, 'Operations against shifta an appreciation and statistics. The fourth year', Police Headquarters, Nairobi, Jan. 1968.
25. For instance, shifta activity was high during February 1964, after the Somali Republic received an estimated £11 million investment in the Somali army from the Soviet Union. See Markakis, National, 180. However, in mid-1964 shifta activity declined. This coincided with a period of open war between the Somali Republic and Ethiopia over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. See I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa (Oxford, 2002), 201.
26. Lewis, Modern History, 30.
27. KNA Provincial Commissioner (PC)/NFD 4/1/1, R. G. Turnbull, 'The impact on East Africa of the Somali and Galla' (1953), 6.
28. KNA PC/NFD 4/1/1, R. G. Turnbull, 'The impact on East Africa of the Somali and Galla', (1953), 6;
29. E. R. Turton, 'The pastoral tribes of northern Kenya, 1800 - 1916' (unpublished PhD thesis University of London 1971) 440-6.
30. A. A. Castagno, The Somali-Kenyan controversy: implications for the future', The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2:2 (1964), 170;
31. P. T. Dalleo, 'Trade and pastoralism: economic factors in the history of the Somali of northeastern Kenya, 1892 - 1948' (unpublished PhD thesis, Syracuse University, 1975), 262-4.
32. KNA BB/12/49, Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President to Provincial Commissioners Eastern Province, North Eastern Province, and Coast Province, Reference GEN.390/365/06/1A, 24 Jun. 1966. For details of the villagisation programme see H. Whittaker, 'Forced villagization during the shifta conflict in Kenya, c. 1963 - 8', International Journal of African Historical Studies, 45:3 (forthcoming, 2012).
33. For details of the British anti-Mau Mau campaign see D. Anderson Histories of the Hanged: Britain's The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London, 2005);
34. C. Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York 2005).
35. Hansard, Republic of Kenya: House of Representatives Official Volume II, 13 December 1963 - 18 March 1964., (Nairobi, 26 Feb. 1964), Cols. 142-84.
36. KNA BB/12/49, Provincial Commissioner NER to District Commissioners Garissa, Mandera, and Wajir, Ref. B.61/11/(96), 9 Feb. 1967.
37. KNA BB/12/50, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Marsabit to Regional Commissioner of Police, Eastern Region, 20 Jun. 1963.
38. A substantial scholarship has argued that independent Kenya did not effect a major ideological or structural break with the colonial state: see for example W. R. Ochieng' and E. S. Atieno-Odhiambo, 'On Decolonization', in Ogot and Ochieng' (eds.), Decolonization, xiii.
39. D. M. Anderson, "Rehabilitation, resettlement, and restocking: ideology and practice in pastoralist development' in D. M. Anderson and V. Broch-Due (eds.) The Poor Are Not Us: Poverty and Pastoralism (Oxford, 1999), 245.
40. Interview with Abdo Barre. This memory is also recounted in numerous statements given to the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission, when it visited North Eastern and Upper Eastern Regions (formally part of the NFD) during April and May 2011. See Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), NEP Special Pull-out (Nairobi, August 2011) (http://www.tjrckenya.org/ images/documents/NEP-pullout-22.pdf).
41. R. Hogg, 'The new pastoralism: poverty and dependency in northern Kenya', Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 56:3 (1986), 319-33.
42. M. Doornbos, The African state in academic debate: retrospect and prospect, Journal of Modern African Studies, 28:2 (1990), 181.
43. The Regulations were repealed under Legal Notice No. 540, 29 Nov. 1991. Repeal of the regulations also coincided with the introduction of multi-party politics in Kenya, and can therefore be seen as a political ploy by the government to win political support from northern Kenyans in the face of impending elections. See K. M. Inoti, 'Beyond the "emergency," in the North Eastern Province: an analysis of the use and abuse of emergency powers', The Nairobi Law Monthly, 41 (1992), 37-43.