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). -------------- Summary -------------- ¶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. -------------- Origin of the Garre-Murulle Clashes -------------- ¶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." -------------- Kenya Cracks Down -------------- ¶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 NAIROBI 00002610 002 OF 003 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.) -------------- The El Wak Raid -------------- ¶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. -------------- The State of Play -------------- ¶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 NAIROBI 00002610 003 OF 003 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