Kenyan Ogadeni reaction to Marehan fleeing to Kenya
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:37 pm
It is an older article from about 8 years ago but it shows the extent to which our Ogaden cousins are threatened by the idea of Marehan as refugees in Kenya. From the mayor of Garissa to even the Northeastern commissioner, Marehan are considered to be existential threat whose refugees will settle and claim the land as the Ogaden are thinking. 
There are over a hundred thousand Somali refugees there but couple thousand Mareexaan were objected to because they would cause "instability".Kenyan Somali leaders reject govt's refugee relocation plan
GARISSA, Kenya, June 17 (AFP) - Kenyan leaders of Somali origin on Monday rejected a plan put forward by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Kenyan government to relocate some 2,300 refugees from Somalia to camps in northern Kenya, saying they feared such a move could spark factional fighting.
Kenyan Somali spokesman Ahmed Nunow, who is also the leader of the Ogadeni Somali community here, told AFP on Monday that bringing "Marehan people to Dadaab Camp means they would soon be joined by other Marehans and would establish a link with militia forces in Somalia."
The Ogadenis, who are predominant in the Kenyan Somali-populated northeastern province, and the Marehans both belong to the larger Somali Darod clan.
They have been battling each other for control of southern Somalia's Lower Juba region since the overthrow in January 1991 of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, himself a Marehan.
"We cannot gamble with our security," said Nunow, who is also the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) party's Garissa district chairman.
"Unless the Kenyan government and the UNHCR drives the Maheran back home, residents of Garrisa town -- the northeastern provincial headquarters -- would resist the efforts to settle them in the camps," he added.
"This relocation plan can create ethnic tension, increase banditry and worsen environmental degradation," said North Eastern Provincial Commissioner Mohamud Saleh, himself an ethnic Somali.
Up to 11,000 Marehan refugees who originally crossed the border into Kenya have returned to Somalia due to pressure from the Kenyan government and local residents, but 5,000 of them have already come back to Kenya because of the continuing insecurity in Somalia.
Kenya hosts some 231,000 refugees at Dadaad and Kakuma refugee camps. An additional 10,000 who had escaped factional fighting in Somalia's southern Gedo region were transfered to the two camps last week.
str-lto/kdz AFP
http://reliefweb.int/node/103854
