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Women Take the Peace Lead in Pastoral Kenya
Back to the Future
In the early 1990s, a group of women were having a good time at a wedding in Wajir district, a remote and violent area in Kenya. ‘We looked around,’ recalls Fatuma Sheikh Abdulkadir, ‘and realised that a cross-section of all the clans had attended the wedding and we were feeling good. But outside this small compound, the happiness and the mixing was not there. So we discussed at length - what is happening with our society?’
In the remote regions of Africa over which they roam, the weather sets the pattern of the nomadic pastoralists’ movement: rainfall dictates the pace of life. Movement is constant. Pasture must be sought.
Past conflicts have left a legacy of suspicion. The blocking of access to an animal water pan, or a problem between market vendors, can be like a match applied to dry leaves. Political interference by outsiders doesn’t help.
In Wajir, the second largest district in Kenya, rainfall averages just 200 mm per year. Some 275,000 people occupy 56,600 square kilometres of largely barren landscape bordering Ethiopia and Somalia. This is a recipe for conflict. So too is the composition of the population. Three major clans - Ogaden, Ajuran and Degodia - and several smaller clans, battle to make a living. Eighty percent of them have a source of livelihood from herding camels, sheep and goats.
In 1992, there was yet another drought. Most of pastoralist families had little or no access to essential services. Childhood immunisation was 23 percent compared to 71 nationally in Kenya. There was inadequate healthcare. Low livestock immunisation. Seventy percent of cattle and thirty percent of camels were lost.
Violence became the order of the day. Deaths followed incidents between the Ogaden and Degodia clans over alleged land encroachment and violation of political space. In one, near Lagbogol, over 20 people lost their lives. Homes were destroyed and livestock taken. Members of the security forces were killed. Refugees and weapons were shifted across the border from conflict-ridden Ethiopia and Somalia. Thieves went on the rampage. There were hijackings, looting and arson, rape, murder.
But there were still normal things. Like weddings.
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| Dekha Ibrahim Abdi |
It was after a wedding that the Wajir Peace Group was born. One thing led to another. Discussions began, first at the workplace and in the homes of other women and men.
The violence continued. At Wagalla, a small trading centre outside Wajir town, two herders from the Degodia clan were killed. Women from that clan refused to sell or buy from women of the Ajuran clan, and would not allow them entry to the market. More fighting. More injury. More police in action. Heightened tension.
These incidents provided a major test for the nascent peace group.
When they encountered more police indifference, the women went to see the District Commissioner. They asked for his co-operation. The District Commissioner approved their plan to intervene and asked for feedback as to the outcome. Meetings were held with professional women from all the clans. They were informed about the problems and of the group’s intention to bring the key women leaders together.
Contact was made with other women from different strata. Sixty people attended one of the meetings arising out of this overture. After a freeflowing discussion, they agreed to form a Joint Committee of the clans. This group would act as a kind of vigilante body, defusing tension and reporting incidents to the police.
‘The formation of the committee helped a lot to put off the fire before it spread far,’ says Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, one of the founders of the Peace Group.
In essence, the Wajir peace initiative has taken the region back to the future, by reviving basic methods of conflict resolution used in pre-colonial times to encourage the equitable sharing of the region’s limited resources. Under the old Somali clan system, what appears on the surface to be a recipe for problems over access to land and water was regulated in a basic way, even during times of drought.
Within five years, the Peace Group has touched almost everyone in this remote region; its basic approach - community involvement, and the use of dialogue as a counterpoint to conflict. Participation was eventually widened to include young men working with NGOs, government departments and schoolboys. Elders were approached. Seventy of them attended a meeting on August 13, 1993. They agreed to the setting up of a standing committee of fourty, with ten elders from each of the three major clans, and ten from minority groups. The decision of the fourty to agree to a peacemaking role marked a new stage for the initiative.
During British colonial rule, and continuing into Kenyan independence,
the pastoral lifestyle of Wajir’s people -and the traditional
system underpinning it- were undermined by setting of administrative
boundaries leading to fresh conflict over access to natural and
political resources. In the two world wars of this century, Somalis
were pitted against Somalis, fighting on the sides of warring
European powers. More bitterness and artificial rivalries were
instilled. An attempt to secede from Kenya led to the Shifta War
(1963-69). Negative feelings against the people of the Northeast
were reinforced in ‘down country’ Kenya, and remain strong even
today. Clan boundary disputes, inter-clan conflicts, and violence
based on electoral politics wracked Wajir district during the
post-independence period. A state of emergency was kept in place
until 1992. The authorities used powers of arbitrary arrest to
keep the Somalis in check. All ethnic Somalis were required to
have special ID cards. Neighbourhood wars (Ethiopia-Somalia) and
internal conflicts in the two countries spilled over into the
region. Refugees, weapons and fighters realigned clan alliances
and caused further instability.
Breakdown of the Pastoral System
A further effort was made to deepen the peace and reconciliation process with the convening of talks between the Christian and Muslim religions. It was about that time that Unicef’s compound in Wajir was attacked. The upshot: Wajir was declared an unsafe zone by the international community. Several NGOs moved out, though basic humanitarian services were maintained after intensive lobbying efforts by the women’s peace group.
In the meantime, at the urging of Member of Parliament, Ahmed Khalif, all the Wajir elders who had joined the Wajir Peace Group attended a major conference in Wajir town. They agreed to form a 28-member committee comprising representatives of various clans. A declaration was issued, taking stock of the increasing intensity of inter clan fighting. Condemnation was made of the murder of the Unicef pilot and serious injury to a staff member. It was acknowledged that banditry and clan clashes posed a danger to the whole district.
Twenty-five leaders from the major clans and five from two other clans met to deliberate on the cause of the continuing internecine strife. A cessation was urged to the inter-clan fighting and stock theft. Agreement on a cease-fire, to take effect on September 29, 1993, was among a 14-point resolution passed by what has become known as the Al Fatah conference.
Thereafter, the peace initiative took on a brisk momentum. Infrastructure support was provided with help from the donor community. Public meetings and discussions involved a full range of community leaders. A new, more consultative atmosphere prevailed. Workshops delved into the roots of conflict, and how it related to the actual economic conditions facing the people of the region.
In July 1998, while a continent away, in France, nations battled
towards the final stages of the football World Cup in France,
the north-eastern region of Kenya was wrapped in tension of a
different kind. A fragile peace, painstakingly forged and monitored,
was in danger of breaking down.
Referees’ Rapid Response - An Example
Quickly, the Wajir Peace and Development Committee sprang into
action. Two clans were involved in the conflict that erupted on
July 6 - Degodia Fai and Murrulle clan. The Committee activated
its equivalent of a football referee to blow the whistle on the
two groups and find a middle-ground. The Rapid Response Team comprised
three elders, two women and two government representatives. Travelling
90 miles to the village where the dispute had developed over access
to an animal water pan, they sat down, prayed and listened.
Those blocking access of the animals to the water - the Fai clan
- said there was no ‘clan problem’, as such; the camels of the
complainants were sick and could not be allowed access to a common
animal pan. After talking to members of the nomadic family whose
herd had been at the centre of the dispute, the team asked one
of its members - a trained veterinarian - to investigate the condition
of the camels. They were found to be healthy. A second opinion
was sought from the secretary of the Wajir Peace and Development
Committee, Mrs Nuria Abdullahi, also a qualified vet. She also
found no signs of surra, the disease mentioned.
When that failed to satisfy the Fai clan, resolution strategies
were activated. Each group was invited to sit separately, discuss
the problem, and to find a solution. Out of this exercise came
an initiative from the Murrulle family members themselves - that
of moving their ‘sick’ animals out of the area within four days,
with provision for family members to receive water during the
period they were in-transit, and that they be protected from physical
attacks as they depart.
This agreed, the Rapid Response Team members also suggested that,
in the interest of future peace, a member of the minority Murrulle
clan be added to the Water and Peace committee, thus making them
feel part and parcel of the area, Ber Janai. Then details of the
measures to resolve the conflict, and avoid the community scoring
an own goal, were announced to the public.
By 1994, the atmosphere had healed sufficiently for discussions to move to a new stage. To ensure the peace was not a temporary affair, the Wajir Peace and Development Committee was established. It comprised Members of Parliament, religious leaders, businessmen, NGO workers, the security committee, women and clan elders. Its key instrument is the Rapid Response Team, made up of community leaders - elders, religious leaders, and security officers.
Charged with moving into any part of the district to diffuse tension and mediate in case of conflict or violence, the Rapid Response Team’s fire-fighting role buttresses measures taken to go beyond just keeping the peace. In other words, economic and education deprivation are seen as part of the underlying reason for conflict.
Extensive research into ways of achieving permanent peace in the district led to another initiative. When elections approached, the peace group organised discussions involving elders, chiefs, parliamentarians and candidates, so as to reduce the tension normally associated with campaigning. Attention was paid to youth training schemes. Workshops were held. There were peace festivals. Peace Days. Preventive measures were instituted. At the core of the group’s activities was an effort to improve the underlying causes of conflict, which were mainly economic, having to do with the sharing of resources.
Thus, by 1996, what had begun as an attempt to give form to throwaway comments, made at a wedding, had evolved to a new stage. Analysis of drought monitoring data concluded that the next one would be particularly severe in Wajir South and East. By September 1996, food was distributed to the affected area.
As Dekha puts it: ‘Drought is one of the major contributors to poverty, and poverty is also one of the contributors to the escalation of conflict to violence. Anticipating the drought and early intervention has saved lives and also livelihood of the people affected.’
This story has largely been based on an article by Dekha Ibrahim Abdi: ‘Citizen’s Peace - Peacebuilding in Wajir, North Eastern Kenya’.
Feedback please to
j.verhoeven@euconflict.org