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Showing posts from May, 2014

An untold story: Somalis in Kenya are stakeholders, not strangers! Hassan Yusufwaal

I am not posing the influential author Miguna Miguna’s question ; is Kenya a country of apes? But a different one, as I believe apes are peaceful creatures. Is Kenya going down the same path of 1994 genocide in Rwanda? It may sound to you extreme or impossible but it happened in small scale in 2008 Kenyan post election violence. And it can happen now as the people (now in power) who were implicated in 2008 deadly violence are now ethnically targeting Somalis for political expediency. In brief, according to Kenya’s 2009 census, the Somali tribe has a population of 2,385,572 people- a figure disputed as many pastoral people are not accounted for. Over 500,000 refugees from Somalia, live mainly in refugee camps. In addition, large Somali communities from mainly Europe, North America and Gulf countries heavily invested in Kenya.   The Somali tribe lives in North eastern part of the country-the most underdeveloped region in Kenya. The total area of North eastern region is appr