Northern Frontier District Research Articles

Kenyan NFD Muslim Communities: The Painful Past and Pending Justice

The political history of Muslim minorities in the world is one of the emerging areas in the Muslim world’s contemporary issues that need to be addressed. This research examines the political history of Muslim communities in Kenya’s former Northern Frontier District (NFD), which was part of Somali Jubaland but annexed to Kenya Colony by British authorities in 1925, and the challenges they confronted during British colony (1895-1963); in terms of isolation measures, political marginalization and disregarding the 1962 referendum which expressed their will to unite with Somalia. Furthermore, the study discloses the harder difficulties that encountered NFD natives after Kenya independence in 1963; which appeared through the Shifta War (1963-1967), human rights violations, chronic marginalization and pending justice over historical grievances. The research will contribute to discovering the political and social history of Muslim communities in NFD and its impact on the current situation of former NFD’s residents in Kenya towards gaining a long-lasting stability in Kenya.

Demography, Epidemiology, Current Profile and State of Management of Acute Trauma in Northern Frontier District Kupwara of India, Jammu and Kashmir

Trauma is a major problem in India with severe and wide-ranging consequences for individuals and society as a whole, particularly in light of rapid development and increasing motorization. Emergency management of trauma in rural India is at a primitive stage of development. Emergency medical services are yet to be legally regulated. There is lack of trauma care related infrastructure, self-motivation, standard training, education and operating protocols. Results: Males were 155 (77.5%), females 45(22.5%). M: F ratio of (3.4:1). There was significant preponderance of male victims in our study. Patients were of the age group between 3 to 80 years with means age of 36.65 and median 31 years. Youngest patient studied was 3 and eldest 80 years old. 152(76%) were married and 48(24 %) unmarried. Married to un-married ratio was (3.16:1 Educational status of the victims showed that 64(34%) of injured belonged to formally un-educated class Commonest mode of injuries, 93(46.5%) were due to fall from height, 2nd being 62(31%) road traffic accidents (RTAs). Mode of injury had no statistical significance to injury severity or severity of neuro-trauma in our study. Family members accompanied 119 out of 200 (59.5%). 183(91.5%) were transported by common means of local non-ambulance transportation. Time interval from pack and go of the victim from its place near the incident to arrival in our emergency room was considered care delay. Care delay of the study patients showed that only 65(32.5%) patients reported to our hospital within one (Golden) hour and about two third, 135(62.50%) reported after one (Golden) hour. Study of the pre-hospital life support-stabilization showed that only 53(26.5%) out of 200 patients received some elementary first aid before arriving to our hospital. Incidence of accidents was slightly more in country side 77(38.5%). Country side was mostly near to home. Road was second 62(31%) and home third 61(30.5%) location of injury. Poly-trauma and the Injury Severity Score (ISS) showed that 140(70%) out of 200 had 2 and 3 body regions injured, 36(18%) had more than 3 body regions injured and 24(12%) had only one body region injured. Higher scores were associated with worse outcome. Brain injury and neuro-trauma severity scaled by (3–15 point) Glasgow coma scale with severity score (0–4) showed that only 3(1.5%) study patients had severe brain trauma while 30(15%) had moderate brain trauma and 167(83.5%) had only mild to no neuro-trauma. Conclusion: The civilian population in northern rural Indian Kashmir is exposed to high levels of trauma and the principal cause of life-threatening injuries is blunt trauma and fractures. Our study shows that skids and falls from height, mostly falls from trees, buildings and hillocks and RTAs are the predominant causes of acute traumatic injuries. Increasing awareness and proper training of the field staff about pre-hospital management of trauma are the urgent need of the time.

The South African Offensive Operations in Southern Abyssinia, 1940–1941

The Italian declaration of war in June 1940 placed the British possessions in East Africa under threat of invasion from the neighbouring Italian colonies. In July 1940, the Italians launched limited offensives towards the frontiers of Kenya and the Sudan, and completely overran British Somaliland by August. By November 1940 the First South African Division (1st sa Div) deployed to the Northern Frontier District (nfd) of Kenya, ready to launch offensive operations into Southern Abyssinia against the Mega-Moyale complex. The South African belief in mobile warfare found expression in the ensuing operation, where Maj Gen George E. Brink, the Division’s commander, essentially manoeuvred to fight during the offensive operations. This article critically discusses the objectives allotted to Brink for his offensive operations in Southern Abyssinia. The objectives allocated to the Division are measured against the overall successes of the South African operations in the south of Abyssinia during 1941.

Planning, property and plots at the gateway to Kenya’s ‘new frontier’

ABSTRACT As the gateway to the former Northern Frontier District, Isiolo town has long been viewed as marking the beginning of a ‘Kenya B’ – a ‘low potential’ desert region of communally owned land – set in contrast to more economically productive and individually owned land to the south. In recent years, however, Isiolo has been reframed as the gateway to a region of economic potential with the announcement of the ambitious Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project, which seeks to transform the town into an economic hub along an infrastructure network spanning the north. While ‘new frontier’ discourses portray the transformation of Isiolo and northern Kenya as a process of conversion and integration into the ‘nation proper’, and in particular through the formalisation and privatisation of its land, this article argues that transformations in Isiolo town are rather occurring through the articulations or ‘frictions’ between the anticipation of the projects and Isiolo’s historical politics of land and settlement. Since the town’s establishment in the early twentieth century, questions over who ‘owns’ the town have manifested in inter-ethnic competition over territory. The focus of this competition shifted to residential plots during the 1990s, when ownership of land at the town’s edges began to be re-written through ‘town planning’ initiatives and the formal allocation of plots. Between 2014 and 2015, the anticipation of LAPSSET and the increased demand for plots that accompanied it was amplifying the politics of land, settlement and ethnic identity in the town. Through tracing the historical micro-politics of settlement and the making of plots, the article illustrates how transformations in the town are occurring through the anticipation of LAPSSET, its articulation with historical politics of belonging, and local agency as people seek to secure a place in the anticipated city of the future.

Colonial resource capture: triggers of ethnic conflicts in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, 1903–1930s

This article uses the resource scarcity-violence model of Homer-Dixon (1999) to analyse the drivers of conflicts between ethnic groups that shared the pre-colonial ethnic frontiers of trans-Jubaland–Wajir and competed over water sources during the colonial period in the Northern Frontier District (NFD) of Kenya from 1903 to 1939. The article shows that pre-colonial ethnic conflicts were not induced by resource scarcity. Rather, extended periods of peace punctuated by conflicts were associated more with social and political relations. By contrast, the colonial period, with far more restrictive resource access to wells and the grazing lands, resulted in structural changes in resource scarcity. Colonial resource governance was incapable of stopping the pressures from migrants threatening resident populations. Residents were finally displaced and former alliances broken up. The competition resulted in violent conflicts due to structural changes that altered rights to resources.

Slam-Dunking and the Last Noble Savage

Prior to the 1970s few Westerners came into contact with the cattle and camel-herding pastoralists living in the then-closed Northern Frontier District of Kenya. The Maa-speaking Samburu were known to their allies and rivals, the Rendille, Turkana, Borana and Pokot, and by a few district administrators. Their recent representation in feature films and some of the ways the Samburu have learned through this experience to trade on their own objectification form two aspects of a complex story which are explored in this article. In addition Samburu perceptions of the films and their making were markedly different from those of the filmmakers. These contrasts in interpretation will be examined for what they reveal about cultural identity and its volatility.

Geology of the Mesozoic-Tertiary sedimentary basins in southwestern Somalia

Two main sedimentary basins can be recognized in southern Somalia, the NE–SW trending Mesozoic-Tertiary Somali coastal basin, and the NNE–SSW Mesozoic Luuq-Mandera basin. The two basins are separated by the Bur region where the Proterozoic-Early Paleozoic Metamorphic basement of southern Somalia outcrops. The investigated area covers part of the Metamorphic basement of southern Somalia and of the Luuq-Mandera basin, although this basement is not described in details in this paper. In the Bur region the basement outcrops discontinuously near inselbergs and monadnocks, which stand out of a blanket of recent sediments. Because of this patchy distribution and the limited areal extent of the outcrops, the structure of the metamorphic basement is difficult to reconstruct. A NW–SE trend of structures prevails and two metamorphic complexes (the Olontole and Diinsor complexes) can be recognized. The Luuq-Mandera basin is a wide NNE–SSW synclinorium, delimited to the SE by the basement high of the Bur region, and to the west by the crystalline basement high of NE Kenya (Northern Frontier district). The extreme thickness of Triassic sediments in the axial part of the basin, and the thinner and younger succession on both sides of the basin suggest that the Luuq-Mandera basin was a subsiding elongated area that was invaded by the sea in the early Mesozoic, during the dismembering of Gondwana. The Jurassic–Cretaceous succession that followed comprises two main cycles of transgression and regression; the carbonate sediments that lie at the bottom pass up section into shales, evaporites and sandstone deposits. Since late Cretaceous, continental contition prevaled, with a long phase of peneplanation, and then a general uplift, which brought about the creation of lake depressions and the capture of the Dawa river, with formation of the present Jubba valley. The main tectonic events in the study area, and throughout SW Somalia, are represented by strike-slip movements along vertical faults in the Sengif and Garbahaarrey belt. Deformation is localized within a narrow belt that extends for more than a 100 km in a NE–SW direction. The near parallelism between the fold axes and the regional orientation of faults indicates a right-lateral movements along faults. The structure of the Garbahaarrey belt consists of an anastomosing fault system that delimits elongated folded blocks, arranged in anticline–syncline structures, with subvertical axial surfaces and fold axes parallel to the main wrench faults. The orientation of folds and the typical “positive flower structure” profile of the anticlines indicate that shortening was perpendicular to the strike of the wrench, i.e. in a SE–NW direction. In the Garbahaarrey belt, strike-slip and shortening, therefore, occurred contemporaneously and led to a relative transpression between the NW and SE blocks. The observed parallelism between fold and fault orientation cannot be explained with a simple rotation of pre-existing fold axes during transpression, but can be regarded as an example of folding and strike-slip movements that occurred simultaneously but independently along frictionless faults. The faults delimiting the anticlines accommodated the strike-slip component of transpression only, whereas the compressive component led to the generation of fold axes parallel to the wrench zone. Results of the field work are summarized in two geological maps of the Gedo, Bakool, and Bay regions (1:250,000) which accompany this report (maps are attached with this issue).

Writing Biographies of Boorana: Social Histories at The Time of Kenya's Independence

In June 1963 Daudi Dabaso Wawera, who at that time was District Commissioner of Isiolo, and Chief Hajji Galma Diida were killed in a Somali ambush near Mado Gashi, fifty kilometers from Garba Tulla, in the area surrounding the Waso Nyiro river in Eastern Kenya. While both of them were killed, their companions and escorts were not touched, in an ambush that was premeditated and calculated. It was a political assassination, insignificant for the processes leading to Kenya's independence later that year, but quite significant for the subsequent historical responses offered by the Boorana of the area, to their eventual integration into a newly-created independent African nation.That integration was not at all easy; in particular, the time leading to Kenya's independence was a turbulent one for the Waso Boorana. They were part of a larger group of semi-nomadic pastoralists who made up most of the population of that colonial administrative segment of northern Kenya, known as the Northern Frontier District (N.F.D.) As a result they lived in a territory claimed by ethnic Somali to be part of the newly created Somali republic, and who still wanted the actual constitution of a Greater Somalia, a political and symbolic construction that would include all Somali living in northeast Africa.While support for the Somali cause was not unified among the peoples of northern Kenya, the Muslim Boorana of the Waso area of the Isiolo District in particular showed an immediate support for the claims of secession expressed by their Muslim Somali brothers.

Kenyan Foreign Policy Behavior towards Somalia, 1963-1983

In an examination of Kenya's foreign policy towards Somalia, this book studies the economic and military relations between the two countries. The author discusses Kenya's display of respect for territorial integrity towards Somalia between 1963 and 1983. There are figures, maps, and tables throughout the book. Contents: Introduction; Application of the Principle of Territorial Integrity and Self-Determination in International Relations; Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces: The Question of Kenya's Northern Frontier District; Somalia and the Issue of the Former Northern Frontier District of Kenya; The External Factors as Determinants of Kenya's Foreign Policy Behavior towards Somalia; Territorial Integrity as the Basic Mode of Foreign Policy Behavior: Kenya vis-a-vis Somalia; Summary and Conclusion.

Factors Affecting the Treatment of Kenyan-Somalis and Somali Refugees in Kenya: A Historical Overview

This paper is an attempt to explain Kenyan authorities' inhumane treatment of Kenyan-Somalis and Somali refugees in terms of long-standing conflicts between Kenya and Somalia, and Kenyan authorities' reaction to what they perceived as a credible threat from North-Eastern Rovince. This long history of conflict and tension has created a distorted and hostile image of Somalis as enemies of Kenyan state. The image, real or imaginary, has continued to influence Kenyan authorities' behaviour towards Somalis, which has led to gross violations of human rights.' This, however, is not an exhaustive explanation for treatment of two groups. Other variables, not directly examined here include nature of postcolonial state, broader question of political legitimacy, nature of ruling class and role of violence as a response to state repression. In order to understand development of this image andits implications for Kenyan Somalis and Somali refugees in Kenya, it is .imperative to highlight some of critical elements of conflicts between Kenyan government and inhabitants of North-Eastern Rovince of Kenya (which is major part of what was formerly Northern Frontier District), and between Kenyan government and government of Somalia. The conflict has its origins in colonial era. At turn of century, Britain extended her control over this semiarid area. One of foremost scholars on region, A.A. Castagno, cites three reasons for this action: 1) to provide a buffer between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia on one side, and East African railway Ogenga Otunnu is a doctoral candidate in Department ofHistoty at York University and a Researcher in Centrefor Refugee Studies. andthe white settlersin highlands on other; 2) to deter Ethiopian imperial power from annexing Boran and Gabro; and 3) to check the Somali south-westward expansion. To effect some of these policies and minimize ethnic and clan conflicts, administrative borders were redrawn, and in 1909 Somalis were not allowed beyond Somali-Galla line. However, these policies caused Somaliresistance to British colonialism to es~alate.~ The colonial regime responded by declaring (through its Outlying District Ordinance) Northern Frontier District (NF'D) a closed district in 1926. By this draconian ordinance, colonial administrators were given sweeping powers to deal with any form of dissent or This long history of conflict and tension has created a distorted and hostile image

A new species ofChamaeleoLaurenti 1768 (Reptilia Chamaeleonidae) from a relict montane forest in northern Kenya

A new chameleon is described from Marsabit Mountain in the northern frontier district of Kenya. On the basis of external morphology it becomes an additional member of the Chamaeleo bitaeniatus complex as defined by RAND (1963). However an annulated rostral horn which is present in male specimens, provides further evidence of the close relationship between this group and the east and central African three horned chameleons, a hypothesis suggested by HILLENIUS (1959), and supported by studies on lung and hemipenal morphology by BÖHME & KLAVER (1980), KLAVER (1981), and KLAVER & BÖHME (1986).

The Somali Role in Organized Poaching in Northeastern Kenya, c. 1909-1939

For centuries the peoples of the Horn of Africa have supplied foreign consumers with game products and trophies. Due to the introduction of colonial governments, however, these peoples, such as the Somali of Kenya, faced restrictions on such activities Although some scholars have written about this trade in the area tc the south of the Tana River, very little is known about what occurred to the north. Organized poaching1 played an important part in the economic life of the Somali of the Northern Frontier District (NFD) of Kenya. From the earliest days of the establishment of administration until the eve of World War II, Somali pastoralists, livestock traders, and shopkeepers were major participants in a network which operated north of the Tana River. Cooperating with many other ethnic groups, they dealt in game trophies such as ivory and rhino horn, and game products such as leopard skins, giraffe and oryx hides, hippo teeth, and ostrich feathers. This activity led them into direct conflict with British colonial interests. The Somali arrived in what became northern Kenya before the British. They entered the area as a result of a centuries-long movement in the Horn. By mid-nineteenth century, they successfully challenged Galla-speaking nomads such as the Orma and the Boran for leadership in the vast semi-desert area between the Juba and Tana rivers.2 Although primarily interested in seeking pasturage and

Rickettsia-like organisms in the blood of Turdus abyssinicus in Kenya.

Rickettsia-like organisms are described from erythrocytes of Turdus abyssinicus from the Northern Frontier District of Kenya. Similar organisms from captive Balearica pavonina in England have been transmitted by blood inoculation to laboratory birds.

Observations on the haematozoa found in birds from the Northern Frontier District of Kenya

African Journal of EcologyVolume 8, Issue 1 p. 208-212 Observations on the haematozoa found in birds from the Northern Frontier District of Kenya M. A. Peirce, M. A. Peirce East African Veterinary Research Organisation, Muguga, P.O. Kabete, KenyaSearch for more papers by this authorG. C. Backhurst, G. C. Backhurst P.O. Kabete, KenyaSearch for more papers by this author M. A. Peirce, M. A. Peirce East African Veterinary Research Organisation, Muguga, P.O. Kabete, KenyaSearch for more papers by this authorG. C. Backhurst, G. C. Backhurst P.O. Kabete, KenyaSearch for more papers by this author First published: August 1970 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2028.1970.tb00852.xCitations: 7AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume8, Issue1August 1970Pages 208-212 RelatedInformation

The Somali-Ken yan Controversy: Implications for the Future

Since 1960, the Northern Frontier District of Kenya (N.F.D.) has become the centre of controversy between two African nations—the Somali Republic and Kenya. The area, about 102,000 square miles, includes the dominantly Somali-inhabited Mandera, Wajir, and Garissa Districts and the non-Somali (mainly Galla) districts of Marsabit, Isiolo, and Moyale.1 It consists of a vast, low plateau sloping rather uniformly from 2,000 feet east of Lake Rudolph towards Lamu on the Indian Ocean. Except for the Marsabit mountain region, it is semi-desert, covered by thornbush and useful only for grazing camels, cattle, goats, and sheep. The climate is hot, and the average annual rainfall is less than 12 inches. No commercially exploitable minerals have been found, and the flatness of the land often causes flash floods during and after the two rainy seasons.

Somali Liberation Songs

The Republic of Somali has recently been conducting a militant campaign for the reunification of ‘the five parts of the Somali nation’—British Somaliland and Italian Somalia (already united), French Somaliland, the Ethiopian regions of the Ogaden, the Haud, and the Reserved Area, and the Northern Frontier District (N.F.D.) of Kenya. The two principal weapons in this campaign have been diplomacy and the radio. This article is concerned with one aspect of the radio war—the series or Somali songs and poems broadcast regularly between September and December 1963 from Mogadishu, and to a lesser extent from Radio Cario.

The Problem of the Northern Frontier District of Kenya

The Problem of the Northern Frontier District of Kenya