•The teams are relying on intelligence and technology and focusing on mapped out areas believed to be hosting gunmen behind a series of attacks witnessed in the area.
•Security teams have been talking to leaders and villagers to know who was behind the attacks and arming the goons.
Image: CYRUS OMBATI
Special forces from different police units are among troops deployed to parts of Marsabit to conduct a month-long operation for illegal guns and ammunition.
The teams are relying on intelligence and technology and focusing on mapped out areas believed to be hosting gunmen behind a series of attacks witnessed in the area.
Further, they are liaising with their Ethiopian counterparts across the border to tame any crossings by the goons who may be fleeing.
Officials aware of demonstrations that a team of security officials were seen at the General Service Unit headquarters said the teams in the operation seem to be aware of what and who is behind the attacks.
“They are relying on intelligence and technology to pursue people behind the attacks and have been deployed to areas believed to be hosting them for the exercise,” an official aware of the operation said.
Security teams have been talking to leaders and villagers to know who was behind the attacks and arming the goons.
Monday night marked the first day of the 30-day dusk-to-dawn curfew and a special security operation period.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i said the 6 pm-6 am curfew that will last for 30 days with an extension option, will run in tandem with a disarmament exercise targeting illegal guns and ammunition.
He said the National Security Council had decided to launch “Operation Rejesha Amani Marsabit” following incessant inter-ethnic attacks that have defied peace initiatives and the lapse of the 30-day window sought by county leaders to reconcile.
In the latest incident in Yanish, Laisamis constituency in Marsabit last Friday, bandits linked to a local ethnic militia shot dead six people including a chief and his assistant and wounded four others.
“The security challenges in Marsabit have been costly. We are counting losses almost every other day. We will stay on this operation until sanity prevails and until we stop the senseless loss of lives,” Matiang'i said.
The animosity between the Borana and Gabra communities has progressively boiled over and Matiang’i has expressed concerns over leaders who have frustrated previous attempts to pacify the area.
The CS said rival groups have been armed and transformed into competitive political militias meting out violence on innocent civilians.
“The leaders have been less than truthful, and none is innocent. Each one of them accesses illegal firearms because they are in the neighbourhood of a conflict area and a conflict region,” he said.
“They have constantly taken advantage of that to arm large groups of bandits and thugs. The unfortunate result has been the loss of lives of innocent people.”
He made the remarks at GSU headquarters, Ruaraka, when he ordered an immediate ban on unlicensed mining activities in the Kom region of the Merti subcounty of the neighbouring Isiolo.
The CS said a security operation will be launched in the area to flush out criminals hiding in the mines.
He said intelligence reports pointed to a nexus between the illegal minings and the funding of conflicts in Marsabit and other crimes including terrorism activities.
Matiang'i was flanked by Interior PS Karanja Kibicho, Inspector General of Police Hilary Mutyambai, senior security chiefs and the National Cohesion and Integration Commission chairman, Samuel Kobia.
The operation by security teams drawn from the GSU, the Rapid Deployment Unit, the Quick Response Unit, and the Anti Stock Theft Unit among others will be extended to Sololo where suspected Oromo Liberation Front militias are active.
“Recently our security forces intercepted explosives in Merti, meant for Nairobi. They were being moved by a terrorist cell, and that route has become worrisome over the recent years,” he said.
“I cannot count the number of times our police officers have disrupted planned terror activity that is being channelled through that route.”
The government will also dispatch more relief food and water to Marsabit.
The county has experienced long spells of drought and famine that have wiped large herds of livestock, which is the economic mainstay of many residents.
The government had given the residents three months to come up with a solution or an operation will be launched in the county.
The CS said more than 25 per cent of national government resources are committed to securing the areas.
“The situation is aggravated by politics of expansionism, drought, rough and vast terrain and proliferation of arms sneaked in through porous borders,” he said.
“Political instability and troubles in neighbouring countries also make it easy to access weapons.”
The CS said the perpetuation of retrogressive practices such as cattle rustling and moranism worsens the conflict.
On February 22, President Uhuru Kenyatta gave Marsabit leaders two weeks to come up with a lasting solution to the communal conflicts that have bedevilled the county.
The President said if the leaders failed to find a strategy to stop the conflicts, he will push the government to deploy security agencies with strict instructions to forcefully end the insecurity.
Uhuru said Marsabit leaders ought to change their approach and work together to promote unity instead of fuelling conflicts among residents.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris