Kenya appears to be drifting toward a violent break-up

There is another Kenya, however, which is marked by debilitating poverty and a lack of opportunity. Especially poor and especially neglected is the vast, arid swaths of territory in the north-east of the country, next to the Somalian border — the area where al-Shabaab has been running more or less free in recent years.

In a statement al-Shabaab release on Friday, a day after the attack, the militant group claimed the territory as its own, calling on non-Muslims to vacate what they described as a “colonized land.”

If the goals of al-Shabaab are similar to those of Boko Haram, the source of its appeal in north-east Kenya is also similar to the appeal of Boko haram in north-east Nigeria. Al-Shabaab is exploiting the staggering economic disparities between Nairobi and the lush highlands around the capital, on the one hand, and the long-neglected, marginalized north.

One measure of that disparity is health: In Central Province, Kenya’s wealthiest region and agricultural heartland, which neighbors Nairobi, there is one doctor for every 20,715 residents. In the poor north-east, one doctor serves 120,823 residents. There are hardly any paved roads in the north, and government figures show that about 74 percent of people in the north-east live below the poverty line, compared with 30 percent in the central belt.

Students of Kenya trace the disparity between central and northeast Kenya to the colonial era – and to the fact that since independence in 1963, successive governments have failed to reform the structure of the economy to make it more inclusive.

The British settlers, when they came to Kenya at the start of the last century, made their home in the comfortable areas around Nairobi, where the weather is mild, water abundant, the soil is rich, and malaria-carrying mosquitoes scarce.

The arid, harsh north-east of Kenya was left largely ungoverned. It served mainly as a buffer zone against the French, Italian, and Ethiopian forces which had seized other parts of Somali territory to the north.

At independence in 1963, leaders of the Somali elites in north-east Kenya wanted to secede from Kenya in order to join the greater Somalia, and the British considered their plea. Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, was adamant, however, in his opposition to any break up of Kenya.

The effort by leaders in the north-east to secede from the newly independent Kenya left a bitter legacy. The government of Jomo Keyatta launched a series of bloody raids against pro-secession communities, indiscriminately killing thousands of Muslim civilians, razing villages, and destroying crops. The government’s heavy-handed, scorched-earth approach, which was followed by decades of intentional neglect, left people in the north-east with a deep sense of exclusion, resentment, and alienation.

Al-Shabaab kills dozens of Muslims in Somalia every week. Some of the killings involve public beheadings and stoning of those who do not adhere to the organization’s harsh ideology. The organization also targets educated Muslims, and those trying to gain education: two years ago it exploded a missive car bomb at a graduation ceremony for medical students in Mogadishu.

In Kenya, though, the organization has so far spared Muslim lives, focusing instead on killing Christians and presenting itself as a champion of Muslims.

In the last four years, the Kenyan government has finally come to the conclusion that a continuation of the neglect and marginalization of the north-east is not a winning strategy. The Guardian reports that there has been a massive outflow of funds to marginalized areas in the north-east under the terms of the country’s new constitution, which mandates the distribution of resources from the center to locally elected governors who, in turn, are responsible for basic healthcare provision, water distribution, road building, and early education services.

Rashid Abdi, an independent Horn of Africa analyst, says the reaction by authorities in Nairobi to the latest al-Shabaab attacks will be pivotal. “The advantage Kenya has over Nigeria or Syria is that there is no incipient local movement demanding secession from Nairobi. People in the north, because of the experience of the war in the 1960s and 1970s, no longer have an appetite for conflict. But mass punishment of locals could tip the scale to the other side quite easily. The government should seek to make partners of the local population to help them fight the Shabaab, who currently extort loyalty through violent retribution on anyone that opposes them,” he told the Guardian.

Observers say, though, that the biggest danger is that Kenya is slowly but decidedly drifting apart. The Christian students at Garissa who survived last week’s attack, and Christian staff members at the school, demanded to be moved to schools in central Kenya – and the government agreed. Over the past four years, thousands of Christians, many of them professionals – teachers, medical personnel, engineers, agronomists – have left Kenya’s north-east for safer places in central and south Kenya.

The steady departure of thousands of trained professionals from the north-east fits al-Shabaab’s goal to slow down, if not prevent, the integration of north-east Kenya into the larger Kenyan economy, and deepen the marginalization and alienation of the north-east, thus allowing the Islamist militants more space in which to operate.

President Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya and who travelled through the country as a young student, commented on the massacre at Garissa, saying that “The future of Kenya will not be defined by violence and terror; it will be shaped by young people like those at Garissa university college — by their talents, their hopes, and their achievement.”

The majority of Kenyans share Obama’s hope, but they are not so sure anymore that that the country’s violent break-up can be prevented.