In the lead up to elections, tribes fight for what is left
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies more than 40,000 people have fled clashes between two northern Kenyan tribes over access to water and pasture. “We have never seen before what we are seeing this time, entire villages, entire schools destroyed, water points sabotaged,” said Alexander Matheou, IFRC head for East Africa.
Clashes between rival cattle herding pastoralists in the region are common, with herders often carrying guns to protect their animals, but the recent fighting has been unusually heavy. The conflict pits two traditional rivals, the Borana and the Gabra, around the town of Moyale on the Ethiopian border.
“Shops in Moyale are closed, houses, schools are empty, there is a very eerie sense like a ghost town,” Matheou said. Food for 15,000 people has been sent to the area, along with plastic sheets and household items for some 3,000, it added.
Fighting over land grazing rights in the remote Moyale region killed at least 18 people last month after two days of intense violence between men armed with automatic rifles and machetes. The Kenyan Red Cross has since been attempting to mediate between the two groups.
Tensions have worsened over the past decade because water points and pasture land are growing scarcer because of global warming. Moreover, the region was hard hit by severe drought in the Horn of Africa last year. “That may explain why you have seen maybe a hundred people killed in the last 10 years but now... the scale is different. It appears that this is more politically motivated,” said Matheou.
Tensions have been raised by upcoming elections due by early 2013 that will usher in for the first time regional bodies with elected members and their own budgets. Jockeying for control of the future institutions is what is behind the latest clashes, Mzalendo Kibunjia, the head of Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission, said recently.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
