mzeiya
Elder Lister
Thread unrolled by yours truly....
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INTRODUCTION
Wagalla town is located in wajir which is in Northern Kenya. Northern Kenya is what was formerly known as the Northern Frontier District (NFP).
At first the colonialists called northern Kenya their protectorate then later a colony.
Much later it became a buffer zone between Kenya and somalia. It was during this time that it was given the operative term "Northern frontier district". Later in the years, legislations were passed by the Parliament to control and isolate NFD further.
In 1902, movement in and out of NFD was restricted and in 1932,the British bestowed the NFD administrators with extensive powers to arrest,restraint and detention. Finally, collective punishment of tribes and clans was legalised in NFD.
By 1963, Kenya was practically divided into two. That is the north and the south (the people in the north called the south, down Kenya--- to them, they were not part of Kenya)
In the 1980s, conflicts and fights between the Degodia and Ajuran clans rocked wajir.
In one incident, the Degodia clan attacked the Ajuran clan killing one man and five women.The ajuran started blaming the Moi govt for failing to protect them as if they were not Kenyan citizens.
As a result,the govt demanded that both clans should surrender all their weapons.
When the Degodia clan surrendered just 8 guns, the govt decided to mount an operation that would see the Degodians disarmed.
The stage had long been set for what followed next.
A bloodbath, loss of lives and property, psychological torture and life time scars followed.
To understand the anatomy of the wagalla massacre, I will divide the operation in days. Each day will carry the activities that were conducted by our forces.
Day One (Friday, 10th Feb 1984::: the time is 5:00am EAT)
Before day break, the soldiers arrived at Wagalla village in wajir town. There was no time to knock at the doors. They started breaking into each house in the village, searching for every male human species.
The soldiers who were in army trucks, started beating men and throwing them in the trucks ready for transportation.
Whenever they found a man, the only question they asked was your clan. A mention of Degodia clan was a direct ticket to beatings and being bundled in the truck.
The operation to round up all Degodia men was carried out from that morning all the way to around 1pm. Every lorry that was full transported the men to the wagalla airstrip. By afternoon, the airstrip was full with over 5,000 men. At the airstrip, more beatings awaited them.
In the afternoon, police officers from garissa started addressing the men at the airstrip and told them that they were all suspected to be having guns. And that they were expected to cooperate and surrender their guns.
When the military officers arrived at the airstrip, normalcy and peace was suspended. They started beating up the men and continued doing so for over 2 hours.
By 2pm when the sun was scorching the ground, the army through their commanding officer major Mudogo commanded the men to strip naked and lie down on their stomachs at the hot murram.
When the burning sun became unbearable, one boy who was a camel herder tried to run. The boy who was later known to be Ishmael became the first casualty. He was shot and one of the soldiers laughed saying that the hyenas have had their first meal of the many to come.
Back in the village,after all men were rounded up & taken to the wagalla airstrip,the soldiers left behind started threatening women. What followed later was massive heinous acts meted on those women by the soldiers.
Many were raped,from young girls as 8 years to pregnant women.
As some of the soldiers were busy raping innocent Degodia women, others started burning the houses. Between 2pm and 3pm over 100 houses were up in the flames. It was reported that more than 15 children were burnt alive in the burning houses.
Back to the raping soldiers, the soldiers by the time evening was clocking they had raped more than 500 women. Some of those who were willing to talk includes the likes of Abdiya Abei,Sekawa samwai,mariansha Abdilahi,Abdia Warmoge among hundreds of others.
Any woman who resisted rape was either stabbed or shot to death. Others were broken their legs so that they could not move or resist and then they were gang raped by the soldiers. One woman by the name Zainab Hussein who was 8 months pregnant was gang raped until she miscarried.
Others like Abdia Warmoge who we named earlier would be left with life time scars. Abdia was a business lady at wagalla when the operation was being carried out. When the soldiers got to her they took all the money she had and one of the soldiers was left behind to rape her.
Out the pain she felt she tried to bite the soldiers who was raping her, the soldier hit her so hard with the gun that all her front teeth were knocked out. Out of the pain she felt when her teeth were knocked out, she tightly grabbed the soldier.
In retaliation, the soldier used his gun and hit her for the second time but this time aiming at her eye. The land on the eye was so big that one of her eye literary fell off instantly.
(Photo of Abdia Warmoge and her gouged off eye)
