The Second Image? Incompatibilities, Violence and Regional Foreign Policy Implications

This chapter examines two major issues. The first was internal government actions such as political assassinations that invoked some foreign (policy) reaction, whether it was investigations or condemnation. The first—Tom Mboya’s assassination—did not attract foreign investigation while the latter, the murder of the well-regarded Dr. Robert Ouko and the government’s implausible theory of self-torture did, even though the investigations were largely inconclusive even with the assistance of the UK’s Scotland Yard. Secondly, there were ‘domestic issues’ (read massacres) that attracted foreign ‘concern’ and an overt threat of invasion by Somalia. Somalia objected to Kenya’s treatment of Kenyan Somalis. The Kenyan government seemed to have a proclivity to murdering mass groups of the community. Whereas the appeal to sovereignty and the use of military forces to address insecurity in the ‘restive’—and by government’s definition, banditry-prone—areas of North and north-eastern Kenya, primarily occupied by the Somali ethnic group held some appeal, Somalia was known to fight everyone in the region, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia, over Somali populations in their territories. In the post Shifta-War period, government was accused of (and was likely responsible for) three significant massacres of members of the Somali community. These occurred in Isiolo in 1967, Garissa in 1980 and Wagalla in 1984. More egregiously, in 2007, the country descended into ethnic conflict with 1,133 victims and more than half a million displaced after the General Elections. The government was accused of being complicit in the bloodletting that subsequently occurred, and of failing to prosecute those deemed most responsible for what amounted to crimes against humanity. This chapter highlights particularly the political assassinations and massacres that attracted the ire of Somalia and the broad condemnation by various foreign governments, INGOs and human rights concerns. It also focuses on the 2008 post-election violence. It hones in on the foreign policy elements of the humanitarian intervention that occurred in Kenya after 2008 and its ultimate implications for the country and for Africa.