Kenyan Border Towns on Edge as Somali Fighters Cross into Mandera After Jubaland Clashes
What we know
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NAIROBI—A tense calm has settled over Kenya’s northeastern frontier after armed Somali regional fighters reportedly crossed into Mandera County, fleeing clashes with Somalia’s federal forces in the neighboring state of Jubaland. Residents say schools are shut, shops are shuttered, and families are on the move, unsure if the gunfire drifting across the scrubland will stay on one side of the border—or spill deeper into Kenya.
Local elders and officials in Mandera describe a steady presence of armed men for several weeks, following the federal government’s seizure of a strategic town inside Jubaland late last month. The fighters appear to have pulled back across the porous frontier into Kenya’s Mandera County, which hugs the Somali border and the Ethiopian frontier—a remote triangle where the state often feels thin and far away.
Voices from the border
“There is a lot of fear in the area… Most people have run away,” said Urgus Shukra, a Mandera elder, speaking by phone. He said armed Somali forces had occupied a key farming belt, adding, “They are always firing their guns. They have even trained there.” His description matches a pattern the border communities know too well: when fighting intensifies in Somalia, the frontier becomes a release valve and a risk.
Kenyan Senator Ali Ibrahim Roba, who represents Mandera, warned on social media that the situation had paralyzed daily life. “Jubaland forces are now inside Mandera town,” he wrote on X, saying schools had closed, businesses had halted, and families were fleeing over fears of stray bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and unexploded ordnance.
Nairobi’s response
Kenyan authorities urged calm. Cabinet minister Kipchumba Murkomen dismissed alarmist statements as politically motivated, telling reporters there was “no cause of alarm” and that officials could not yet confirm whether those in Mandera were fighters or civilians. Mandera’s governor, Mohamed Adan Khalif, has publicly raised the alarm, warning that the border incursion, if confirmed, undermines Kenya’s sovereignty. Residents held a small protest Tuesday, demanding stronger protections.
Opposition figures in Nairobi criticized President William Ruto’s silence and called for the immediate removal of any foreign fighters from Kenyan soil. Such calls are not unusual when the border heats up. But they come at a delicate moment: Kenya has long kept troops in Somalia—particularly in Jubaland—both to shore up the regional government of Ahmed Madobe, a political ally of Nairobi, and to create a buffer against Al-Shabab, the Islamist insurgent group that has struck inside Kenya with devastating effect.
Why Mandera matters
To outsiders, Mandera may look like the end of the road. To those who live here, it is a crossroads—of clan ties, informal trade and long memories. This is where Kenya’s hard-baked highways give way to gravel and dry riverbeds, and where the community’s rhythm rises and falls with the security situation in Somalia. When the shooting starts in Jubaland, Mandera often feels the echo.
Kenya’s counterterrorism posture has been shaped by painful lessons: Westgate in 2013, Garissa University in 2015, and the DusitD2 complex in 2019 are etched in the national consciousness. Mandera itself has suffered: quarry workers and bus passengers were targeted in deadly attacks earlier in the last decade. Officials worry that any chaotic movement of armed men across the border—even if they are not Al-Shabab—creates opportunities for the militants to hide, recruit or confuse local responses. A miscalculation on a dusty road can have outsized consequences.
The regional fault line
The current flare-up centers on the political tug-of-war between Jubaland’s regional administration and the federal government in Mogadishu. Jubaland’s president, Ahmed Madobe, has long clashed with the center over security, elections and control of revenue and ports. Mogadishu has refused to recognize parts of Jubaland’s leadership arrangements, while Jubaland accuses the federal authorities of trying to undermine its autonomy.
When Somali federal forces seized a key town in Jubaland last month, local fighters retreated toward the border. Kenya’s frontier, which is at once highly militarized and surprisingly permeable, is often where such reshuffles end up. For residents, the distinctions between “federal force,” “regional militia” and “security ally” can blur quickly when armed men pitch camp in a maize field within earshot of Kenyan villages.
What comes next
Nairobi is under pressure to clarify the situation. If the armed men are Jubaland forces, will Kenya allow them to remain, disarm them, or escort them back across the border? If they are civilians or unarmed supporters escaping the fighting, how will screening and humanitarian support be organized to ensure militants don’t slip through? The answers are muddied by politics—and by a long, heavily patrolled border that is still, in many parts, just a line on the map.
This moment also intersects with broader changes. The African Union’s transition mission in Somalia has been drawing down, shifting responsibilities to Somali security forces. As external scaffolding recedes, local power struggles—like the one between Mogadishu and Jubaland—can spill over. Kenya’s balancing act, supporting a friendly regional authority in Jubaland while maintaining cordial ties with the Somali federal government, grows more complicated with every cross-border incident.
On the ground, unease
In Mandera town, teachers are sending students home, and traders speak in lowered voices. A shopkeeper near the market square described a familiar routine: keep the doors half-open, keep the radio on, keep a bag packed. In borderlands across Africa, people do not wait for official declarations to sense when to move. It’s the sound of distant shots, the sudden quiet of a road, the rumor that a checkpoint has changed hands.
While Nairobi insists there is no need to panic, experience has taught Mandera that vigilance can be the difference between a scare and a tragedy. At the same time, a heavy-handed response can generate its own risks—fueling grievances and disrupting the cross-border commerce that keeps households afloat.
What we’re watching
- Verification: Will Kenyan authorities confirm the identity, numbers and status of the armed men inside Mandera County?
- Civilian safety: Do schools and clinics reopen, and can displaced families return without fear?
- Diplomacy: Does Nairobi quietly coordinate with Mogadishu and Jubaland to defuse the standoff, or does it escalate into a public spat?
- Security trendlines: Do Al-Shabab activities increase under the cover of confusion along the border?
- Regional posture: How does this episode shape Kenya’s military footprint in Somalia and its domestic political debate on border security?
For a region accustomed to living between lines—clan and state, pasture and town—the immediate appeal is simple: let the guns fall silent, and let the border be a boundary again, not a corridor for armed men. Whether that happens quickly will depend on choices made in Nairobi and Mogadishu as much as in Mandera’s dusty lanes.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
