Northeastern Province (Kenya) - History

History

Throughout much of the 20th century, the North Eastern Province used to be a part of British East Africa. However, after the dissolution of the former British colonies in East Africa, Britain granted administration of the region to Kenya despite a) an informal plebiscite demonstrating the overwhelming desire of the region's population to join the newly-formed Somali Republic, and b) the fact that the NFD was and still is almost exclusively inhabited by ethnic Somalis.

Led by the Northern Province People's Progressive Party (NPPPP), Somalis in the NFD vigorously sought union with the Somali Republic to the north. In response, the Kenyan government enacted a number of repressive measures designed to frustrate their efforts:

Somali leaders were routinely placed in preventive detention, where they remained well into the late 1970s. The North Eastern Province was closed to general access (along with other parts of Kenya) as a "scheduled" area (ostensibly closed to all outsiders, including members of parliament, as a means of protecting the nomadic inhabitants), and news from it was very difficult to obtain. A number of reports, however, accused the Kenyans of mass slaughters of entire villages of Somali citizens and of setting up large "protected villages" -- in effect concentration camps. The government refused to acknowledge the ethnically based irredentist motives of the Somalis, making constant reference in official statements to the shifta (bandit) problem in the area.