Colonial Deal and Oil Factor in Kenya-Somalia Border Row

The Somalian coast guard on patrol in the sea. Petitioners have filed a case at the High Court in Nairobi to stop the Attorney General and Foreign Affairs Ministry from participating in the Somalia border dispute at ICJ. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

By JOHN KAMAU
Kenya Daily Nation

IN SUMMARY
Kenyans have been treated to much more border drama on the Somalia side than on any of its other neighbours.
These two diplomats sat in boardrooms in Europe and determined what their African territories would look like in the post-war period.
Kenya has reason to get worried and it doesn’t seem to be getting luck at the ICJ, where this row is being played out.

It looks like the Kenya and Somalia border issue is throwing us back to an issue historians tend to think was settled in 1920. Right? Yes.

Kenyans have been treated to much more border drama on the Somalia side than on any of its other neighbours.

There was even the post-independent secession bid in which Somalia wanted to get Kenya’s North Frontier District. The end result was the bitter shifta war. But let me unpack this issue.

DEAL

For starters, the straight lines in the Somalia border with Kenya were for a long time referred to as Milner-Scialoja lines because they resulted from a deal reached between British Lord Alfred Milner, by then the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Italian Foreign Minister Vittorio Scialoja.

These two diplomats sat in boardrooms in Europe and determined what their African territories would look like in the post-war period.

What we have had is a colonial problem that started during the First World War when Britain agreed to reward Italy with some territories if it agreed to fight on its side. Italy agreed to enter the war, but then took advantage of peace-time negotiations to ask for more land, especially the oasis in Jubaland.

The Jubaland Question, as it was known, was always problematic but by then it only concerned the land boundaries since the seas were not of concern to nations.

Actually, from the outset, Lord Milner argued that Britain was ceding more land territory than the French to appease Italy. He was afraid that Britain would lose its strategic position and that explains why he didn’t draw a straight line from Elwak to the Indian Ocean. It was this arrangement that saw the creation of what was known as British Somaliland (now the unrecognised state of Somaliland) and the Italian Somaliland — the chaotic part of Somalia.

SEA BOUNDARIES

That chaos is now returning to haunt us, and as documents filed in a Kenyan court say in part, Somalia is now a “client state” and multinational oil buccaneers appear to be calling the shots and want to redo the colonial sea boundaries that had been accepted as following a line of latitude on entry into the ocean.

Somalia has revisited the issue and has sued Kenya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), seeking to redraw the maritime boundary from the current eastwards flow from the land border south of Kiunga, to a diagonal flow. This means that Kenya could lose 100,000 square kilometres of sea thought to contain huge amounts of hydrocarbons.

The current row between Kenya and Somalia is, however, much deeper — there are worries that multinational buccaneers could be inciting Somalia in order to get some oil blocks. There could be some truth in that.

Kenya has reason to get worried and it doesn’t seem to be getting luck at the ICJ, where this row is being played out.

First, some pundits believe that since the court is being chaired by a Somali, Kenya cannot get justice and risks giving the court jurisdiction to undo its borders — a matter than can only be tackled through a referendum.

Actually, a case has been filed in court to stop Kenyan officials from participating in the ICJ case.