Kenya has a very ungrateful neighbour -Somalia- which is now and just like before daring Kenyans in Border Row and conflicts.
The maritime border dispute with Somalia is something that most Kenyans need to pay attention to because it has very serious implications. It is essentially an unwarranted attack on our sovereignty by an ungrateful neighbour backed by foreign interest that are probably well known by all and sundry.
In fact, Kenya’s pulling out of the international court came with no surprises. There seems to be no evidence that the process is going to be fair to Kenya and a few other countries down south. A little distraction by the international media also presents a fairly interesting picture.
One conspicuous question they keep asking is whether the maritime dispute can escalate to an armed conflict. Why worry about an armed conflict when we are talking about a country whose territory Kenya is helping protect? Under International Humanitarian Law, which deals with ethics in armed conflict that would not even be an ethical war.
The genesis of this dispute is squarely on the selfish interests of a few Somali elites who have sold off their sovereign oil blocks and are now backed by a few foreign interest to lay claim to what has and will forever remain Kenya’s maritime territory.
The truth of the matter is that the whole process of even adjudicating this case in a court of law, is a stub in Kenya’s back, given that Kenya has played a key role in supporting the restoration of Somalia.
For a country with one of the largest coastline in Africa, to now succumb to selfish pressure and try and reinvent demarcation of maritime borders in a fashion likely to spark subsequent border disputes down south, is not only shocking but should be stopped.
This is a country whose Parliament and government the Kenyan tax payers helped set up and hosted here in Nairobi for more than three years. A country whose President and cronies are probably selling oil blocks to support the opulence and their luxurious lifestyle here in Nairobi. These are people who must be stopped otherwise the well-documented Somalia’s expansionist agenda will come for other parts of Kenya.
From the shifta war just after independence, the idea of increasing Somalia’s territory to Kenya and Ethiopia is well documented. Western and Middle East opportunists are evoking this expansionist agenda for their own selfish gains . The people of Somalia and Kenya must resist this neo-structural
imperialism.
Kenya boasts of a sizeable population of Kenyans of Somali descent. Granted, what Somalia is doing has a potential of not only an armed conflict, but of putting a serious strain on the relationship between Kenyans and the thriving Somali community in Kenya. Pushing an illegitimate case against a country that has helped prop your existence is being ungrateful. But doing so in such a callous and unethical manner can only draw the ire of the people.
The context that Kenyans whose sovereignty is threatened need to understand is that Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf who sits at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is Somali. Now, this is a judge whose natural instincts defends Somalia and the ICJ wants us to believe he will preside fairly in the case Somalia has against Kenya!
Kenya subscribing to this is like a goat taking itself to an abattoir. There can be no hope of either the dispensation of justice or of any perception of justice being dispensed. Judge Yusuf has had and is still close to the political leadership is Somalia.
Between mid-1970s and 1980 he represented Somalia as a delegate to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and it is shocking that the international community would imagine Kenyans are not privy to this. Our government has been diplomatic, and rightly so as the beacon of hope in the larger Eastern Africa region, but Kenyans are a fairly enlightened lot.
Our liberal Constitution provides for exercising of sovereign power and this might extend to questioning foreign interest and their roles in the maritime dispute.
