Mandera’s uneasy morning: Allegations of Jubaland training on Kenyan soil test a fragile border
On a normal school day, the dusty yard of Border Point 1 Primary in Mandera Town would fill with children in blue uniforms and plastic sandals, their chalkboards listing multiplication tables and Swahili proverbs. Instead, the gates are shut. And this week, the school became the unexpected center of a regional security storm when Mandera County officials alleged that Jubaland regional forces from Somalia are training there—inside Kenya’s borders.
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“Mandera cannot be turned into a battleground for Somalia,” Governor Mohamed Adan Khalif said, warning that the closure of the school ahead of national exams in October “threatens Kenya’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” He called for the immediate removal of the forces or promised to “take action ourselves.”
The claim—denied by Jubaland’s vice president, who said the forces are operating within the border—has raised tensions in a tri-border region where the front lines of Kenya’s war against Al-Shabaab, Somalia’s federal politics, and local livelihoods overlap. Nairobi has not publicly confirmed the allegations. Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) continue to operate alongside allied Somali forces across the border as part of ongoing counter-insurgency operations. But the notion of a Kenyan public school doubling as a training ground has jolted a community that has lived through years of cross-border insecurity.
School gates closed, nerves frayed
Border Point 1 Primary sits in Mandera Town, a few kilometers from Somalia. Parents here measure time by the harvests and exam seasons. In Kenya’s Northeast, closed schools are not just an inconvenience—they are a warning sign. Class cancellations ripple through households that already juggle drought, high prices, and sporadic security scares.
“You cannot close schools, farms, and water supplies in the name of supporting a faction in Somalia,” Governor Khalif said. Mandera Woman Representative Umulkheir Kassim called the school’s conversion into what she termed a “militia training ground” unacceptable. Senator Ali Roba posted that “fear and anxiety rocked Mandera residents as stray bullets and rockets hit our soil,” adding: “This is no way for Kenyan citizens to live.” None of those reports could be independently verified, and local police have not released incident logs to corroborate the claims.
Jubaland Vice President Aden Sayid Mohamed pushed back, insisting his forces were on their side of the frontier. It is no secret that KDF has closely coordinated with Jubaland units over the years; the regional state, based in Kismayo, has often acted as a buffer zone against Al-Shabaab. The question here is more precise—and sensitive: where exactly are these units, and under what authority?
A border that never sits still
Mandera inhabits a tough geography. The “Mandera Triangle,” where Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia meet, is a place of kinship ties that ignore colonial lines, a market town where Somali shillings and Kenyan mobile money circulate alongside bundles of khat. People cross the border to sell goats, seek treatment, or visit family; militants cross it to evade patrols and stage attacks. In 2014, Al-Shabaab massacred quarry workers near Mandera; in 2015, gunmen attacked a Nairobi-bound bus, killing passengers and etching the town’s name into the national memory for the worst reasons. That history makes any report of training or stray gunfire more than a rumor—it is a trigger.
That is why public institutions matter. A school is not just a building; it is an anchor. Close it, and the ground shifts. For students aiming at a coveted slot in the national secondary schools or preparing for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education later in the year, the timing could not be worse.
Kenya’s delicate dance with Jubaland and Mogadishu
What happens in a Mandera classroom reflects tensions a long way from the chalkboard. Jubaland’s administration has been at odds with Somalia’s federal government over authority and troop deployments, particularly in the Gedo region that borders Kenya. Mogadishu has sent elite Somali National Army units south, a move that Jubaland views as encroachment. Kenya, which deployed troops into Somalia in 2011 and later integrated into the African Union mission, has often found Jubaland a practical partner against Al-Shabaab.
But practicality collides with politics when Kenyan soil is involved. Ordinarily, the presence or training of any foreign armed personnel inside Kenya requires clear legal frameworks: formal agreements, published protocols, and public accountability. Nairobi has such pacts with traditional partners like the United States and the United Kingdom. With Somali regional forces, the lines are blurrier. The optics of Somali units—even allied ones—using a Kenyan public school would be combustible in any year. They are explosive in one where Somalia pushes to assert federal control over its regions and the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) continues its drawdown.
As African Union troops scale back, frontline states such as Kenya are recalibrating. The fear in Mandera is that “recalibration” may look, and feel, like proxy politics—local citizens swept up in a bigger tug-of-war they did not ask to join.
Security by consent, or by decree?
KDF officers, for their part, are leaning into community engagement. At Diff, in neighboring Wajir South, Kenyan troops convened a Key Leaders’ Engagement with local officials and elders. “Security is a shared responsibility,” Major Martin Kasinga told the forum, echoing a doctrine increasingly favored by militaries in counter-insurgency environments: you cannot protect a place without the consent and active cooperation of those who live there. Omar Hussein, chair of the Sub-County Security Committee, stressed information sharing to keep the peace.
Those are the right words. The struggle is in the execution. Community-led security only works if communities feel institutions—schools, farms, water points—are protected, not repurposed. It only works if legal lines are obeyed, transparency is routine, and public fears are answered with facts.
What needs to happen next
It is tempting to view this as a local dust-up, the kind that flares and fades with the news cycle. That would be a mistake. Mandera is a pressure gauge for the wider Horn of Africa. When it rises here—because of Al-Shabaab incursions, Ethiopian dynamics across the border, or Mogadishu-Jubaland friction—the risk of spillover grows.
Practical steps are available:
- Immediate, independent verification of the school’s status. If Border Point 1 Primary has indeed been repurposed, it should be vacated and reopened to students without delay. If not, authorities must show evidence to calm public anxiety.
- A clear public statement from Nairobi on whether any foreign-aligned forces are operating on Kenyan soil near Mandera, under what agreements, and with what safeguards.
- A cross-border incident hotline—Kenya, Somalia’s federal government, and Jubaland officials—so that allegations of gunfire, training, or incursions can be checked fast, jointly, and transparently.
- Red lines around civilian infrastructure: schools, clinics, boreholes. In a war of attrition with Al-Shabaab, the moral high ground is part of the terrain.
For Mandera’s parents, the question is not geopolitical; it is immediate. Are their children safe? Will they sit their exams on time? For Kenyan authorities, it is about law and legitimacy. How do you fight a borderless insurgency without blurring borders? And for Somalia—federal and regional—the episode is a reminder that internal rifts have external costs. When Jubaland and Mogadishu clash, it is often Kenyan towns like Mandera that hear the echo.
There is a paradox at the heart of this frontier. Security here depends on cooperation that transcends the line on the map. Yet it also depends on respecting that line. Getting both right is hard. But a schoolyard is the wrong place to get it wrong.
For now, Border Point 1’s gate is still. Parents wait. Officials trade statements. The rest of us should pay attention. Because when the Mandera Triangle tightens, the Horn of Africa tends to feel it—and so, eventually, does the world.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
