Adeti Maina

The soldier laughed loudly. He had just shot a boy, a camel herder named Ishmael who made the fatal mistake of trying to run from the scorching murram where over five thousand men lay naked on their stomachs like fish drying on a rock. "The hyenas have had their first meal," the soldier said. "Many more to come." It was February 10, 1984. The sun was at its cruelest. And God was looking the other way slightly. Let us begin with geography. Wagalla town sits in Wajir, which sits in Northern Kenya, which the British first called a "protectorate," then a "colony," and then finally settled on something that sounded like a compass direction: "the Northern Frontier District", the NFD. Sounds romantic. But the NFD was never meant to be part of Kenya proper. It was a buffer zone. A human shield between British Kenya and Italian Somalia. A place where you dump the inconvenient. In 1902, their movement was restricted, and in 1932, the British gave their administrators powers to arrest, restrain, and detain,the kind of powers that make a man feel like God. Finally, collective punishment of tribes and clans was legalized. By 1963, when Kenya got its independence, the North was practically a different country. The people there didn't say they were going to Nairobi; they said they were going "down Kenya." In the 1980s, President Daniel arap Moi was at the helm. In Wajir, two Somali clans, the Degodia and the Ajuran, were doing what clans do when resources are scarce. In one incident, the Degodia attacked the Ajuran, killing one man and five women. The Ajuran, understandably upset, blamed the Moi government for failing to protect them. As if they were Kenyan citizens. The audacity. The sheer, breathtaking nerve of expecting your government to protect you! So the government demanded that both clans surrender their weapons. The Degodia surrendered eight guns. The government looked at those eight guns and saw an opportunity ,a chance to teach the North a lesson it would never forget. The stage had been set for hyenas On Friday, February 10, 1984, at 5:00 AM, before daybreak, the soldiers arrived at Wagalla village. There was no time to knock. Knocking is for houses where humans live. These were not houses; these were targets. They broke down doors. They dragged men from their beds. They threw them into trucks like sacks of maize.Just one question: "What is your clan?" Say "Degodia" and you got a beating plus a one-way ticket to the Wagalla airstrip. By 1 PM, the operation was complete. Every lorry was full. Every truck groaned under the weight of human cargo.The airstrip held over 5,000 men. In the afternoon, police officers from Garissa arrived. They addressed the men: "You are all suspected of having guns. Cooperate and surrender them." The men had no guns. They had already surrendered their guns. But logic is a luxury of the free. When the military officers arrived, normalcy and peace were suspended. The beatings began. For over two hours, the soldiers beat the men. The sun blazed. The men bled. At 2:00 PM, Major Mudogo gave the command: "Strip naked. Lie on your stomachs." The ground was hot murram. The sun was a furnace. The men obeyed. What choice did they have? One boy, a camel herder later identified as Ishmael, couldn't take it anymore. He ran. He received his shot and soldiers laughed. "The hyenas have had their first meal." Meanwhile, in the village... The soldiers who remained behind had other duties. They threatened the women and did worse. They mass-raped them, including girls as young as eight and pregnant women. Women who resisted were stabbed, shot, or had their legs broken so they couldn't move and then they were gang-raped anyway. By evening, over five hundred women had been raped. Their names include Abdiya Abei, Sekawa Samwai, Mariansha Abdilahi, and Abdia Warmoge.1/2 For best Investigative & History stories follow @timothyturunga (continuation in comments)