INSIGHT-Separatist storm brewing on Kenya's coast
Mon, Jul 23 17:11 PM IST
* Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) wants coast to break away
* Threat to disrupt March elections if secession refused
* Analysts see possible al Shabaab links in restless youth
* Grievances over land, jobs swell separatist spirit
By James Macharia
MOMBASA, Kenya, July 23 (Reuters) - Near the white sandy
beaches along Kenya's coast where tourists sip cocktails in the
sun, graffiti scrawled on walls proclaims 'Pwani si Kenya' or
'The Coast is not Kenya'.
The Swahili slogans are a call by an outlawed group for the
coastal region, including a booming tourist industry and
Mombasa, Kenya's oldest city and biggest port, to secede from
East Africa's largest economy.
The separatist message preached by the Mombasa Republican
Council (MRC) has spread through mosques, churches, markets,
coffee houses, text messages and Facebook.
MRC wants the coast, where centuries of Arab trade and
influence left their mark and minarets show the predominance of
Islam, to have its own flag, currency and president.
The campaign taps into deep local grievances over land
ownership and employment being in the hands of outsiders, who
have settled at the coast over the years from other regions of
Kenya, west of the contested coastal belt.
"I am coastal by birth and right, yet I can't benefit from
our own resources ... all the jobs are taken by them, people
from upcountry," Joram Kahindi, 26, and a father of three, said
at a rundown barber shop north of Mombasa.
"We need to be in control of our region," he said, turning
up a Bob Marley reggae tune playing on his transistor radio.
MRC supporters threaten to boycott and disrupt voting on the
coast in national elections scheduled for March if their demand
for secession is not met by authorities in the capital Nairobi.
This could turn one of Kenya's best-known tourist havens
into a potential flashpoint, fuelling wider fears of ethnic
violence and riots during the elections.
More than 1,200 people were killed in bloody tribal clashes
in Kenya that followed a disputed presidential vote in 2007.
"The MRC threat is the single biggest risk in next year's
election," said Mzalendo Kibunjia, who heads a national agency
formed to reconcile tribes after the violence five years ago.
The outlawed group's partisans, believed to number
thousands, s ay while the coast is a jewel in Kenya's economy,
many locals remain jobless and landless. Local schools and
hospitals are run down and roads pitted with potholes.
If the coast were to secede, it would deny Kenya access to
the Indian Ocean and transform it into a landlocked country.
President Mwai Kibaki has flatly rejected the MRC demand for
secession, refusing any negotiations on this point.
Not far from Kahindi's barber shop, local businesswoman
Phyllis Njeri, who is originally from central Kenya but has
lived on the coast for more than 30 years, said she was afraid
of becoming a target of the threatened MRC violence.
"If they come chasing people from upcountry, you can imagine
how this wood will burn," said Njeri in her workshop crammed
with timber and roofing sheets.
"Most of the local people at the coast support the MRC, and
this makes us people from upcountry very anxious."
"MOB JUSTICE"
The MRC takes its name from Mombasa, the commercial hub of
the coast and Kenya's second-largest city after Nairobi.
Mombasa draws tourists to its sun-drenched beaches and
quaint old town, with its winding streets and Arab architecture
of ornately carved doors and window frames.
Men wander into mosques clad in flowing white robes, while
women wearing traditional black garments fill the busy markets.
The MRC, which says Mombasa would be the capital of
independent 'Pwani', was outlawed in 2010 by Kenyan authorities
along with 33 entities described as "organised criminal groups".
It has asked Kenya's courts to block the March elections and
to reverse the ban on its activities, its leader told Reuters.
"There will be no peace, this I cannot hide from you. The
coast will have no peace at all. Voting in the coast will not
happen if there is no secession," MRC chairman Omar Mwamnwadzi
said, speaking at his home south of Mombasa.
He spoke in Swahili, the national language of Kenya, where
English is used for business. Swahili originally developed on
the coast and borrows words from other languages such as Arabic.
"We will not allow elections here. It will be mob justice
using rocks. Many will die," Mwamnwadzi said, surrounded by
white-bearded elders and sitting barefoot on a mat under swaying
palm trees. He wore black trousers and a faded blue T-shirt.
The MRC partisans have shown they are capable of violence.
In March, police at the coast arrested people it said were
MRC members when they disrupted a mock poll exercise in Malindi,
a tourist haven at the coast, injuring officers. Mwamnwadzi
denied issuing orders for the attack.
The following month, a man said to be a supporter of the MRC
was killed after being hit with a rock by a fellow protestor
when dozens of its members stormed a Mombasa court hearing a
case in which the separatists want to reverse a ban on its
activities.
A ruling on MRC's court challenge is due on July 25.
Kenya has once before faced demands from separatists, when
in the 1960s, ethnic Somalis in the northeast pushed for
secession, seeking to be part of a 'Greater Somalia'.
Kenya's founding president Jomo Kenyatta ended their claims
with a tough military crackdown that left many dead.
"We are also ready to die, we have suffered too long,"
Mwamnwadzi said, speaking calmly in a deep voice.
Aged 61, he can neither read nor speak English, and dropped
out of school in grade four before later joining the army.
To back MRC's claims of a separate historical heritage for
the coast, Mwamnwadzi cites an ancient treaty dating back to its
rule by an Arabian Sultan based in Zanzibar.
MRC says it has documents of a 1963 accord signed by then
Kenyan Prime Minister and later President Kenyatta and his
Zanzibar counterpart Mohamed Shante, granting Kenya a 50-year
lease over the coast. This would expire in June 2013, so
returning the region to its indigenous people, the MRC argues.
But the Kenyan government and historians in Nairobi have
dismissed the treaty as a forgery and MRC propaganda.
The government says that while the coast was ruled by a
Sultan, it reverted back to mainland rule from Nairobi upon
Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963.
Mwamnwadzi says he is inspired by successful past
secessionist movements in South Sudan, Eritrea, Puntland and
Somaliland that brought independence or autonomy to these
territories and also by the ongoing uprising by an Islamist
group in Zanzibar demanding to break away from Tanzania.
AL SHABAAB LINK?
Kenyan officials say MRC is infiltrated by fighters from al
Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group al Shabaab, which has waged
a five-year insurgency against Somalia's government since 2007.
Mwamnwadzi, who retired as a senior private from the Kenya
Army in 1985, denies he has any ties with Islamist militants.
"We are Muslims, Christians and pagans who want social
justice," he said.
He says he would like to set up an army for an independent
coastal state if their campaign is successful.
There is evidence however that al Shabaab, which seeks to
impose strict Sharia Islamic law in areas it controls, has
recruited young men from Kenya's coast as well as in
neighbouring countries.
Phyllis Muema, who runs a youth community group at the
coast, said young men had been trained in Somalia by al Shabaab
and returned to the coast. Many now back MRC, she says.
"They may not have been recruited for the purposes of MRC,
but they are in MRC and they have been trained," she said.
A wide-ranging survey carried out on MRC by researcher Paul
Goldsmith found the movement had "near universal support" among
the indigenous people at the coast.
"The MRC is not armed but could easily become so in the
future," Goldsmith wrote.
LAND BATTLE
Kenyan security agents investigating the origin of the
group, formed in 1999, believe it is backed by wealthy Arabs.
These security sources say the shadowy backers are reported
to be based at the coast, around Africa and in the Middle East.
They pay for the MRC's legal fees and also post bail to free
members of the group arrested by police.
"The ordinary MRC member has been made to believe that the
war is for secession, yet it is for the land. They want to scare
people from upcountry and take control," one Kenyan security
service agent, who asked not to be named, said.
Mwamnwadzi denies any links to Arab sponsors, local or
foreign. Instead, he blames a highly centralised and unequal
system of land allocation for leaving many on the coast
destitute, and so fuelling popular support for the MRC.
Until recently, only the president could sanction the sale
of beach land on Kenya's 500 km (300 miles) of coast.
This has meant that much of the sandy Kenyan shoreline
stretching from Somalia to Tanzania is owned by the country's
political elite, including the family of the late founding
President Kenyatta.
His son Uhuru is a presidential hopeful in next year's
polls.
Politicians at the coast said the MRC's secessionist message
was making many in the ruling class uncomfortable.
"Who are the main owners of the beach land in the coast
region? Now that these questions are being asked, everybody in
government is feeling guilty and panicking," Najib Balala, a
member of parliament and former tourism minister, said.
Balala, a former Mombasa mayor, said he believed violence
was brewing.
INVESTMENTS, TRADE AT RISK
Any trouble on the coast could badly hit Kenya's
multi-million-dollar tourism industry, already damaged by the
kidnappings of Western female tourists from beach resorts at the
coast by Somali gunmen.
It could also knock investment, trade and transport in
Kenya's landlocked neighbours. Rwanda and Uganda rely on Mombasa
port for imports of food, consumer goods and fuel.
Coastal hotel operators are closely watching developments.
"The MRC thing is worrying us big time. They are ... talking
of seceding, that is dangerous talk," said Mohammed Hersi, who
runs the Whitesands Hotel, the largest resort on the coast.
"Our worry is that it is sending negative vibes out there."
MRC leader Mwamnwadzi is fully aware of the potential impact
of any unrest on tourism. "If tourists see chaos in this
country, surely they will have to stay home," he said.
Many on the coast remember past election violence there. In
1997, local men in the south coast area of Likoni killed police
officers and grabbed automatic weapons.
They went on the rampage, killing and forcibly evicting
thousands of people from upcountry who had settled on the coast.
And memories of the inter-tribal bloodletting that shocked
Kenyans and the world after the 2007 polls are still fresh.
Some local business owners from outside the coast region say
they will be ready to fight back if threatened or attacked.
"I'm ready for them. I have two guns, a pistol in the living
room and an AK-47 in my bedroom, let them come," said Tabu
Wandera, 40, a former hotelier who now runs a restaurant and bar
in Likoni.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri; Editing by Pascal