Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.
MEMBERS of Kenyan Parliament have come out in full force in wholesale condemnation of the government’s insensitiveness on its neighboring countries violating the country’s international boundaries with impunity.
Kenya has one of the strongest and boasting the most efficient military powers in the East African region, though untested in combats, but its neighboring countries of Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia have been violating its international boundaries unchallenged either militarily or diplomatically.
The legislator who spoke in unity in total disregard of political parties divides cited the recent seizure of Migingo fishing Island in Lake Victoria and the latest reports that Uganda has further seized another nearby fishing island called Ugingo and posted its security forces there.
The massacre of close to 50 Turkana tribesmen living along the Kenya Ethiopia border at a place called Todonyang by the Rendille tribesmen. On the eastern border with the Ethiopia at Moyale, members of the Oromo Liberation Army fighting to dislodge the Ethiopia regime of the Prime Minister Meles Zenawi have intermittently crossed the border into Kenya unchallenged and harassed peace loving Kenyans.
The same has happened along the Kenya border with Southern Sudan, where members of the Sudan Liberation Army {SPLA} have crossed into Kenya at will and harassed inn0cent Kenyans.
And on the Kenya-Somalia border, the al-Qaeda backed al-shabaab militia have incurred into Kenya and killed Kenyans at will. The al-Shabaab terrorist is also said to be conducting recruitment exercise inside Kenya and enlisting jobless youths into its militia forces that is fighting to dislodge the UN/AU backed Provisional Transitional Government of Somalia in Mogadishu.
Speaker after speaker blamed the government for keeping large military force that is only idling in the army barracks, but cannot effectively defend the country’s territories even when it is being threatened by aggressors from the neighboring nations..
The MP expressed concern over the recent killing of over 50 Turkana tribesmen at Todonyang. Those massacred included men, women and children.
The Kenyans had crossed the border mainly to buy some food commodities in market across the border when they were ambushed and shot at random by heavily armed Rendille tribesmen from Ethiopia
Both Rendille and Turkana are pastoral communities and herders who whose historical past have been shrouded with violence cattle rustling operations which resulted in the massive loss of lives. The two communities live across the internationally accepted common borders facing each other. The Rendilles are believed to have crossed into Kenya and settled along the border villages after vandalizing beacons marking the exact border between Ethiopia and Kenya.
The Prime Minister Raila Odinga visited the border areas and was shocked to learn that the Rendille tribesmen living inside Kenya have gone as far as uprooting the beacons marking the common border. The Prime Minister was also prevented from visiting the border area by his security details following advice of the police that it would go against his personal safety.
Officially and diplomatically, Kenya and Ethiopia have no known or reported boundary dispute and the two neighboring nations are serving in various regional organizations such as IGAD, AU, Nil Basin Commission, Comesa and several other regional bodies. There has never been any diplomatic thaw between the two countries, which share many things in common. So the massacre of close to 50 Kenyan Turkana tribesmen by the Rendilles came as a shock to both governments.
Residents of the Turkana region maintains that the recent disarmament exercise carried by the Kenya government in which thousands of guns from the Kenyan tribesmen has exposed them and made the community vulnerable to their enemies from neighboring pastoralist communities. It deprived the impoverished Turkana of their weapons which they could use in defending themselves and their properties from external aggressors.
The Turkana people had consented to the disarmament exercise on the understanding that the government would post Kenyan security personnel along the common border to protect them. But nothing like that has come.
There are several security personnel at the Todonyang border post, but the few who are there are ill-equipped and could not match the Rendilles tribesmen armed with much more sophisticated weapons with higher fire power.
The disarming of Turkana herdsmen appear to have given their hostile neighbors from both Ethiopia and Southern Sudan courage to carry out attack in their territory.
This is what happened at Todonyang Massacre on May 2,2012.The disarmament operations netted a total of 737 illegal guns..And in the last two weeks to the end of an amnesty period issued by the government, Turkana residents voluntarily surrendered a record 250 illegal firearms.
The government carried out the exercise despite the fact that neighboring Ethiopia and Sudan had no pan to disarm their equally armed border residents
Before the disarming the Turkana, the government should have beefed up security along the border areas separating the two countries. Apart from Rendille tribesmen, there are also the heavily armed Oromo Liberation Army across the Ethiopia-Kenya borders operating around the border town of Moyale.
Since independence in 1963, the Turkana tribesmen have been defending themselves from their hostile neighboring communities, which are equally pastoralists’.
Reports from the region say that during the disarmament the government through the Deputy Provincial Commissioner in the Rift Valley Province Christopher Musumbu is reported to have promised the Turkana community of the maximum security protection. Musumbu said the government had mapped out areas prone to insecurity along the border areas where more security personnel would be deployed and stationed on permanent bases.
The Turkana residents have been equally facing internal aggression from their hostile and much drilled Pokots tribesmen in the South who intermittently attack or cattle rustling. But the Pokots were also recently disarmed thereby minimizing the threats to the Turkana.
In Parliament there were heated exchange between MPs and front benches during which an Assistant Minister for Internal Security Joshua Orwa Ojpde readily admitted that there was a total collapse in security adding that although neighboring countries had beefed up security along the border military personnel, Kenya was still dragging its feet.
Ojode said the setting of military bases in Turkana region has been in the drawing board for along time.
In parliament the legislator decried insecurity along Kenya’s border with its neighboring nations. One core function of the military and all other armed forces is primarily to protect the country’s territorial against any external aggression from foreigners, but this has not been the case in Kenya.
It was only Uganda which jointly carried out similar disarmament exercise with Kenya in an operation that has since yielded in the relative peace between Kenya’s Turkana and Uganda’s Karamojong pastoralists’ after the recovery of 27,000 illegal guns.
The MPs blamed the government for keeping members of Kenya armed forces idle in army barracks while the country’s boundary is being violated lft, right an center by the neighboring states with impunity.
In the Western front, Kenya has lost fishing islands in lake Victoria one after the other. Uganda this week announced that it has seized Ugingo Island which is only a few kilometers from the controversial Migingo Island it seized five years ago.
Kenya residents were told by the Ugandan armed forces to keep off the Island. Speed boats were seen ferrying building materials from Bugiri district in Easter Uganda to the island, where Ugandan traders were seen constructing makeshift corrugated iron {Mabati houses}.
And those Kenyans resident fishermen who were previously operating on the island were expelled and warned to keep away. Ugandan police official told the Kenya that they had come to the island in order to keep the pirates who in the past have been raiding the island and robbed the Kenyans at will at bay.
At least 30 makeshift houses were put up at the weekend by Ugandan traders under close supervision of the Ugandan armed security personnel.
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