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How Kenya Averted War With Somalia
By John Kamau
Sunday, January 18, 2004
East African Standard
Intelligence notes and recently declassified "Top Secret" files show
that Kenya almost went into full-scale war with Somalia in 1967 over
banditry in the North Eastern Province.
The notes and files reveal the internal squabbling within the
Government on how what came to be called the Shifta (Somali for
bandit) war would be handled.
Although Kenyan officials – at least in public – boasted of their
military might, there was a behind-the-scenes political desperation
that forced President Jomo Kenyatta to call a full Cabinet meeting
that approved a recommendation by the Internal Security and Defence
minister, Dr Njoroge Mungai, for the military to be "fully prepared".
And when the war began, the Cabinet recommended, "Kenya should not
rely much on assistance from neighbouring countries."
Declassified minutes now show that the Cabinet agreed that besides the
military preparation, the National Youth Service (NYS) recruits and
servicemen were be trained in handling arms and some of them taken
into the army, the regular police and administration police" as part
of the build-up.
Thus, what was often referred to as "banditry" in public was
acknowledged as a serious border issue with Somalia, although the
Voice of Kenya, now Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, had been warned
not to use the term "border dispute" in its broadcasts.
The July 13, 1967, a Cabinet meeting also ordered, for the first time,
that from then on, "all private airstrips must be registered with the
Ministry of Home Affairs and their use effectively controlled".
As part of the psychological warfare against the Shifta, the Kenyatta
inner circle — led by Peter Gachathi, the Permanent Secretary in the
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the man in charge of
propaganda, was toying with the suggestion that they "take a leaf from
the (British) operations carried out during the emergency against the
Mau Mau movement which, I am sure you will agree, were considerably
effective."
Gachathi’s letter to Geoffrey Kariithi, a PS in the Office of the
President, was copied to John Michuki, then the Permanent Secretary at
Treasury, Andrew Omanga (PS, Home Affairs) and L.M Shako (PS,
Defence).
This was the group behind the hiring of Lt. Col R.S. Richmond, a
Briton who drafted a "limited circulation" document, Psychological
Operations in Kenya, which was to be the blueprint on how to win the
Shifta war.
This group, it can now be revealed, was sharing all intelligence
information on the Shifta campaign and how the war was progressing.
Others in the picture included the Director of Intelligence James
Kanyotu, and on the periphery James Kangwana, then director of
broadcasting.
Kangwana, who is now chairman of Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, had
on November 3, 1966, been "granted security clearance for access to
top secret material" by Kanyotu.
It was he and Gachathi who were to manage the psychological war.
The circle agreed that the "army can do a lot to protect life and
property, but we cannot consider the battle won until we have got all
our Somali citizens supporting the government," Gachathi told his
colleagues.
Before he was replaced, Defence PS Danson Mlamba had refused to share
information with Gachathi, a close ally of Mbiyu Koinange, the
Minister of State in the Office of the President and a Kenyatta
confidante. Mlamba told Gachathi: "You will appreciate that a great
deal of secrecy is required in this manoeuvre at this stage" – a line
that the latter refused to buy.
Mlamba was later replaced in the intricate power-play of the time.
The term Shifta — meaning bandit — was deliberately coined by this
inner circle to describe the secessionists in the 1960s and downplay
the political significance of the movement.
The word was later adopted to describe any ethnic Somali criminal in
Kenya and has acquired a derogatory connotation ever since.
It was the use of landmines by the secessionists that worried the
Kenyatta government. Writing to Gachathi on July 29, 1966, Mlamba said
he was worried about the "mounting casualties to the army and police
... and the last incident, which we are keeping quiet about, when a
police Land Rover was blown up by a mine which killed two officers and
wrecked the vehicle is a very serious development."
Mlamba told Gachathi that "any method of carrying the war to Mogadishu
is worth considering."
The feud between Gachathi and Mlamba was so intense that by September
6, Mlamba told Gachathi that "VoK is not capable of conducting
[psychological warfare] ... One gets the impression that VoK is
waiting for the material to drop on its lap."
Mlamba wanted his ministry takes over the psychological aspect of the
war, too, but Gachathi wanted an expert seconded to his ministry, and
by extension to VoK, to help. Gachathi had suggested that they get an
expert from Ethiopia who had "succeeded in their psychological war
against Somalia".
But Mlamba disagreed: "The Ethiopians can help you to a limited extent
but I do not for once think they will make their experts available to
you. It would appear you await on somebody else to take the initiative
while Shifta continue to harass us in North Eastern Province."
It was a war of words that had been going on for more than six months,
which had forced an assistant secretary in the Ministry of
Information, J. M Mwakio, to write a secret note to Gachathi saying:
"His (Mlamba) letter seems to be based on misunderstandings regarding
our stand in the matter. We should, therefore, seek his understanding
by showing him that in trying to intensify our propaganda against
Shifta activities we are only trying to add to the efforts of his own
(Defence) ministry to overcome the Shifta. We should try to convince
him that it is not enough to fight the Shifta and conquer them by arms
... we must insist on planned propaganda through a special unit in our
ministry in co-operation with their ministry."
Although at independence Somalia had a weak army of 5,000 men, a force
too inferior to meet her political objectives, the country had
approached the Soviet government in 1963 for assistance.
The Soviet government responded by lending Somali the equivalent of
$32 million. By 1969, Somalia had trained about 800 officers in Soviet
military schools. She had recruited, trained and equipped 23,000
regular men, which scared the Kenyatta government.
The intelligence in Kenya agreed that the movement known as the
Northern Frontier District Liberation Movement (NFDLM) was ahead in
terms of propaganda. But Kanyotu, in a letter to Andrew Omanga,
dismissed the notion that the Shifta would conduct a campaign on the
Algerian model in Nairobi and Rift Valley, miles from their home areas
and without local knowledge or support as "frankly absurd".
But he agreed that after the Daily Nation carried a news item on NFDLM
on its front page "it cannot be denied that Mogadishu has achieved a
minor coup".
But even as the Cabinet was approving the war, there were doubts in
the war "inner circle" that a military campaign would crush the
rebellion. Geoffrey Kariithi, a PS in the Office of the President, had
even told Gachathi: "Our success in this war is very limited by
shortage of funds ... our aims must be to demoralise the Shifta
bandits and to maintain the morale of our forces at the peak at all
times."
So, even as President Kenyatta signed a six-point memorandum of
understanding with Somalia’s Prime Minister, Mohamed Egal, in 1967 in
peace talks mediated by Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, Kenya was in
a fix on how to handle the war it was preparing against Somalia.
The Somalis in Ogaden and the Haud in Ethiopia initiated the whole
campaign by forming an irredentist movement during the pre-colonial
era. The primary purpose of the movement was to fight for a unified
Somalia comprising all Somali speaking people in the Horn of Africa.
Continued next week
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