A TALE OF TWO EL WAKS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NAIROBI 002610

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/12/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL ASEC KCRM KE SO
SUBJECT: A TALE OF TWO EL WAKS

REF: A. NAIROBI 2563

B. NAIROBI 2551

Classified By: Political Officer Rachael Doherty, reasons 1.4 (b,d).

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Summary
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1. (SBU) El Wak, Kenya lies just across the border from El
Wak, Somalia. Both towns are dominated by the Garre clan,
which is now engulfed in a violent struggle for dominance
over the Murulle clan. The conflict has spread into Somalia
and has exacerbated relations between the Garre and Marehan,
longtime allies of the Murulle. Since the beginning of the
clashes, the Kenyan government (GOK) has attempted to stem
the violence by encouraging dialogue, pressuring the Garre
and Marehan to stop fighting, and ultimately staging
operations to disarm the militias. So far, these efforts
have not been successful. On November 9, a Somalia-based
militia group staged a raid in El Wak, Kenya, kidnapping two
Italian nuns and stealing three vehicles. The November 9
incident reflects a dangerous marriage of violent clan
politics and criminal thuggery, and we expect the situation
to get worse before it gets better. End Summary.

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Origin of the Garre-Murulle Clashes
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2. (SBU) Like many conflicts in Kenya's arid north, the most
recent clash between the Garre and Murulle clans began in May
with a disagreement over scarce resources -- in this case,
water from a newly-sunk borehole. The Garre perceived the
placement of the borehole in Alango as a political move by
the Murulle to undermine a 2005 Garre-Murulle peace agreement
and encroach on Garre land. (Note: While the borehole site
in Alango was previously used as shared pasture between the
Garre and Murulle, it is located in Mandera East
constituency, whose member of parliament is a Murulle. The
Ministry of Water official who purportedly oversaw the
project was also a Murulle. End Note.)


3. (SBU) When the Garre began to deny Murulle pastoralists
access to the borehole, the Murulle moved their herds into El
Wak, Somalia searching for water and pasture and received
support from the Marehan. The Marehan are traditional allies
of the Murulle, and the inter-clan relationship is
strengthened by a number of joint business ventures by
Murulle and Marehan living in Nairobi. When the Garre-Murulle
clashes broke out in Kenya, Murulle militias used
Marehan-dominated areas in Gedo region of Somalia as safe
havens.


4. (SBU) In September, a militia group who call themselves al
Shabaab took over El Wak, Somalia. (Note: A mix of Garre and
Marehan comprise El Wak, Somalia's population, but the
majority of the population is Garre. End Note.) The group
appears to be simply a Marehan criminal gang who have adopted
the al Shabaab moniker, using the name to induce fear and
compliance among the local population. This local criminal
militia is distinct from the larger al Shabaab Islamist
insurgency group, which developed from hardline factions
within the former Islamic Courts Union and is currently
fighting against Transitional Federal Government and allied
Ethiopian forces in Somalia. While the El Wak, Somalia, al
Shabaab claimed that its aim was to impose sharia law (one of
the main al Shabaab group's primary objectives),the
Baidoa-based al Shabaab has reportedly rejected their
legitimacy, calling them a "federation of thugs."

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Kenya Cracks Down
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5. (SBU) Since July, Garre-Murulle clashes have occurred in
Mandera Town, Wargadud, Garri, and Alango (the site of the
controversial borehole). So far, approximately 100 people
have been killed. While most of the deaths have occurred
among the militia fighters, approximately 30 civilians have
died in clashes in Mandera town. Emotions among the Garre

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have been heightened by a surge of road banditry committed by
Murulle, which appears to be of a more directly criminal
nature.


6. (SBU) Since the controversy over the Alango borehole
arose, the Kenyan government (GOK) has tried to facilitate
dialogue between the Garre and Murulle with little success.
Similarly, attempts by security forces to crack down on the
militias have only succeeded in temporarily driving them to
safehavens in Ethiopia (Garre) and Somalia (Murulle).


7. (SBU) Beginning on October 27, Kenya military and police
launched operations in Wargadud and then El Wak, Kenya to
collect weapons from the militias. El Wak, Kenya residents
told PolOffs that security forces (reportedly including
elements from the military, Kenya Police Service, and Kenya
Administration Police) rounded up adult men and brought them
to a central point. Some accusations of physical abuse were
made. In the meantime, security officials conducted house to
house searches for hidden weapons. There were some
acccusations of abuse of women.


8. (SBU) Few, if any, weapons were collected during these
operations. In El Wak, a local chief reportedly stood up
while in detention and offered to make lists of those holding
weapons and compel them to hand them over in exchange for an
end to the security operation. The GOK agreed, but the
operation has damaged relations between the local community
and the government and some people have left El Wak. Local
chiefs, who appear to have been singled out for particularly
harsh treatment, are in no mood to help the security forces
even though they are government employees. (Note: The
Garissa-based head of police operations told PolOffs that
extra pressure had to be put on the chiefs to get them to
agree to reveal the location of the militias' weapons. End
Note.)

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The El Wak Raid
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9. (SBU) At approximately 0100 on November 9, members of a
Marehan militia from El Wak, Somalia raided El Wak, Kenya.
During the raid, the Marehan militia members went from
compound to compound knocking on gates and posing as police.
The night watchman at the compound where the government
vehicles were parked, unfortunately, opened the gate.
Brandishing automatic weapons, the raiders kidnapped two
Italian nuns and stole three vehicles, two of which belonged
to the GOK. The raiders escaped unharmed despite a quick
(and loud, albeit ineffective) reaction by the police.


10. (SBU) Before the raid, El Wak residents knew something
was fishy: a couple of strangers had been hanging around a
local restaurant for days making frequent phone calls and
seeking information about vehicle movements. No one notified
the police. As a sign of the seriously deteriorated
police-community relations, after the raid local elders
initially declined the District Commissioner's request to
approach the Marehan and negotiate the return of the
government vehicles. (Note: Police have arrested one of the
strangers reportedly casing El Wak and are planning to
transfer him to the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit for
interrogation, and elders have since agreed to talk to their
counterparts in El Wak to secure the return of the nuns and
the vehicle. End Note.)


11. (SBU) The abduction of the two Italian nuns has hit the
local community hard. The women were well-liked and
respected in El Wak and had been working in the country since

1984. A local sheikh told PolAsst that he was encouraging
those remaining in El Wak to rally in support of the nuns'
release.

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The State of Play
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12. (SBU) By applying pressure directly on clan chiefs to
surrender arms and end the militia clashes, the government is
using a time-honored strategy of clan politics, which relies

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on the assumption that the chiefs exercise control over the
militias. However, this social dynamic appears to have
changed: in a pattern similar to the post-election violence
described in the Waki Report (ref B),clan militias appear to
be more directly funded and controlled by members of
parliament and the businessmen who helped put them in office.
The El Wak chiefs who agreed to compel the militias to
disarm, therefore, were likely in no position to do so. Many
people told us that the names appearing on the chiefs' lists
were arbitrary and only spurred the purchase of black-market
weapons from Somalia for the handover to the government.


13. (C) Note: The weapons received during the turn-in --
whether they belonged to the militias or not -- were an
interesting mix. According to the police, nine of the 173
weapons turned in to date have been M-16s. We have forwarded
the serial numbers of these weapons to relevant mission
elements for further analysis. End Note.


14. (C) The GOK has now become a party to the inter-clan
conflict. Not only have they suffered a number of casualties
(possibly more than they care to admit, according to one
source familiar with a reported GOK raid that reached into
Somalia a few days ago),they are also interpreting the theft
of the government vehicles as retaliation for the raid into
Somalia. (Comment: The government vehicles may have been
taken in revenge for the GOK's harsh treatment of the
militia's fellow clansmen. However, we have also heard
conflicting reports that the theft was more a crime of
opportunity. End Comment.)


15. (C) Comment: The story of the Garre-Murulle-Marehan
conflict, and the government's efforts to quell it, is far
from over, and the November 9 incident reflects a dangerous
marriage of violent clan politics and criminal thuggery. By
all appearances, the conflict will get worse before it gets
better. We expect to see a massive government operation in
the near future targeting local militias that may even extend
into Somalia. Although the government has publicly hailed
the success of its security operations to date and has
declared it is in "full control" of the situation, an El Wak
District Officer admitted privately that the government had
not succeeded in disarming the militias and had not yet
figured out how to do so. End Comment.
RANNEBERGER