ABSTRACT
In the second week of February 1984, the town of Wajir, in Kenya’s North Eastern Province, was subjected to a military curfew. Forces of the Kenya army, assisted by the General Service Unit and the Kenya Police, surrounded the town at dawn on the morning of 10 February and detained all of the Somali male members of the Degodia clan. The men, initially numbering perhaps as many as 5000, were removed to the newly constructed military airfield at Wagalla, a few kilometres to the west. There the men were screened to exclude non-Degodia, the very elderly, and those who held government offices, while interrogations of the younger Degodia clan members got underway.1 Over the next four days, Wagalla became the scene of the worst atrocities and slaughter to be witnessed in Kenya’s modern history – far out-weighing in scale and duration anything carried out during the notorious anti-Shifta campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s,2 or even under British colonialism during the anti-Mau Mau counter-insurgency of the 1950s.3
This was state violence: planned, pre-meditated, targeting a specific community, initially conducted openly and without fear of retribution and carried through with a ruthless brutality that would scar the memories of all Wajir’s residents for what remained of their lives.
