Source: Sunday Nation.
Unknown to Kenyans, Kenya and Somalia have this nagging, little-talked about matter of Jubaland, which generates a lot of heat and little light. This is another story of British colonial adventure that left Kenya with a historical problem and which has always been the source of suspicion between the two nations.
There is a history to it.
Until 1926, Jubaland was part of Kenya and the residents there, then, had always considered themselves as part of Kenyan territory. That explains why the likes of Harry Thuku were exiled to Kismayu after the 1922 riots outside Nairobi’s Kingsway (now Central) Police Station.
[SIZE=6]Defended deportation[/SIZE]
To digress, this banishment was justified by then Secretary of State, Winston Churchill, who defended the deportation without trial, saying the law does not provide for trial or hearing. He said: “In a country where there is a large and primitive native population, some provision of the kind is required, and the efficacy of the ordinance in restraining seditious or violent tendencies would be seriously weakened if the procedure of an ordinary trial were required.”
That was Winston Churchill’s classic racist reply.
So how did we lose Jubaland? It happens that when the World War I started, Italy signed a secret treaty with Britain and was asked to abandon its former allies to join Britain, France and Russia. For that, Italy had been promised under Article 13 of the Treaty of London that once Germany was defeated by the allies, Great Britain would cede Jubaland to it. In the same agreement, Italy’s sovereignty over the Dodecaneso Islands in Greece was to be fully recognised and there would be a revision of the frontiers of Italian colonies in Africa and where they bordered either French or British colonies…
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