Youth in Isiolo display documents used for vetting before they can be issued with IDs when they held protests on January 24, 2017.
A significant outcome of President William Ruto’s four-day election campaign blitz through north-eastern Kenya was his declaration lifting special vetting requirements for applicants of national identity cards from the border region.
The campaign promise was, as expected, welcomed by leaders from the region led by the Cabinet Secretary for Environment Aden Duale, who in turn pledged that their votes would go to President Ruto come the next elections.
However, there were also many who saw in the President’s gesture brazen politicisation of a serious security issue.
The former North Eastern Province or the Northern Frontier District, comprising the counties of Garissa, Wajir and Mandera, has long suffered instability and insecurity. From the early years of independence, it was the theatre of the Shifta War, a violent secessionist campaign waged by militants who wanted to unite with their kith and kin in neighbouring Somalia.
Even up to the 1980s, long after the Shifta War officially ended, there remained many who still harboured secessionist tendencies openly encouraged by the government of Somalia then headed by Mohammed Siad Barre.
Somalia irredentia, the dream to unite all Somali-speaking territories in the Horn of Africa, if necessary by forceful conquest of Kenya’s north-eastern and Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, is a dream that has never really died.
Chaos
In more recent times, after President Barre was overthrown and the country descended into chaos, the vision of a Greater Somalia has taken a back seat to terrorist ideology—exemplified by the Al-Shabaab militant group—that draws its inspiration as well as funding and arms from globalisation of the Middle East conflict.
But there is still very much a local component. We have in Somalia, and spreading into Kenya, a merger of local grouses and the global spread of violent Islamic extremism. What has made Kenya so vulnerable is that stupid government policies have offered a significant part of the population justification for deep-seated resentment.
The Shifta War was brutally put down by a scorched-earth military campaign. Collective punishment was the military doctrine that subjected the entire population of the region to untold suffering. Entire villages were razed to the ground, and helicopter gunships raining fire and brimstone from the skies spared neither women nor children.
The government also instituted polices that deliberately starved the entire region of development resources. The residents were denied the right to education, healthcare, shelter, water, electricity, communications, roads and other economic, social, and infrastructure necessities.
The Somali were reduced to second-class citizens, facing neglect, marginalisation and discrimination not just from the government, but also from fellow Kenyans who treated them with suspicion.
Then there was the indignity of facing special vetting panels to prove your Kenyaness on applying for identity cards and passports, instituted by the regime of the first President Jomo Kenyatta and strengthened by his successor President Daniel Moi.
Every president since has pledged during campaign forays in the north-eastern region to relax or abolish the vetting requirements, but never made good on the promise. Even President Ruto’s pledge last week will be seen as just the routine campaign promise until it is actualised. That will be easier said than done.
Somali border
However unfair and discriminatory it may seem, vetting was established specifically to deal with the spectre of large-scale infiltration from across the Somali border. Whether fleeing hunger and insecurity at home or coming across for more ulterior motives, the illegal acquisition of Kenyan national identity cards and passports— often aided and abetted by those in positions of authority who are President Ruto’s eyes and ears in the region—presents serious national security threats.
President Ruto knows this, as do all the top officers in his security establishment. One will of course ask why vetting is required of Somali, but not the other ethnic groups that straddle our borders with Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan. Simple: the others have no history of secessionist aims or capture by violent extremist ideologies.
Today, much of north-eastern Kenya is under the grip of militants. Indeed, as President Ruto embarked on his campaign jaunt in the region, five government chiefs were abducted by Al-Shabaab and reportedly spirited across the border.
Under such circumstances, it would be treason to allow free-for-all acquisition of Kenyan identity documents for political gain. The circumstances that informed the need to double-check nationality must first be tackled. It must also be clarified that abolishing the special vetting does not translate into opening our borders for all and sundry so as to enrich the voting basket in President Ruto’s favour.
