How to Talk About Terror Attacks

The attack on the Dusit D2 hotel complex seems frighteningly familiar. From the images of people crouching along flower beds as gunshots ring out, to the smoke billowing from the top of the building, to the report of people hiding in rooms from terrorists, it feels like a rerun of the attack on the Westgate Mall in September, 2013.

There are crucial differences though. The government's response was much faster and appeared much better coordinated than it was at Westgate. The government communications are also much better managed, if not exactly more informative - at least the confusion of five years ago has not been repeated.

However, some things have sadly remained the same. The media coverage, for example, has largely consisted on regurgitating the government line and especially urging Kenyans to desist from sharing information that the state has not verified. This has been taken to ridiculous extremes, with analysts on one TV news station warning that terming the attack a terrorist act before the government declares it to be one is aiding the terrorists. On social media, there is talk of the circulation of fake pictures and news as well as constant admonitions against sharing anything. As KTN's Lindah Oguttu put it, "the less you say, the better". 

Given the country's long familiarity with attacks, especially since 2011, you would think that Kenyans would have figured out a way to talk about and around ongoing operations against terrorists. Yet across both mainstream and social media, the message is the same - follow the government's lead. This is despite the state's equally long record of lying and obfuscation during and after terrorist attacks. Rather than keeping the public informed, its primary goal has been to deflect any criticism and pre-empt any calls for accountability.

For example, nearly everything government officials said about Westgate turned out to be false. In fact, while the attack itself was done and the attackers either dead or had escaped by the evening of the first day, the security forces maintained an elaborate fiction of fighting terrorists while they systematically looted the mall for three days.

Today's attack comes on the third anniversary of the sacking of a camp manned by the Kenyan contingent of the African Union Mission in Somalia during which at least 173 Kenyan troops were killed. Once again, the government's rendition of the facts surrounding the attack turned out to be largely a work of fiction. To date, it has refused to disclose the exact number of casualties and its initial descriptions of facing 3 massive truck bombs and "truckloads of suicide bombers" were designed to exaggerate the scale of the attack  in order to explain away the fact that the camp had been overrun.

It is thus clear that the government cannot be trusted to provide accurate information on terror attacks. While it is equally true that the unmitigated spread of information among citizens, especially through  social media, can harm security operations, when the government makes appeals for restraint, it is hard not to think of its past lies and to wonder what it is trying to hide this time.

Thus a discussion of how better to report on, or speak about, ongoing operations against terrorists must begin with addressing the state's mendacity. For as long as the government refuses to consistently deal truthfully and honestly with its citizens, it will be folly to ask them to ignore their suspicions of its motives. In any case, the idea that following an attack, citizens must suspend their thinking faculties, and blindly and unquestioningly support the government's every whim, is the very definition of being terrorized.

And it is not a very smart thing to do either.

Death, Lies and Videotape - Why KDF Must Tell TheTruth About Casualties In Somalia

In the wake of last week’s sacking of a Kenya Defense Forces base in Somalia by the al Shabaab terror group, the Kenyan government’s communications effort have once again come under a spotlight.

The country had just marked the first anniversary of a similar attack on another KDF camp in the Somali town of El Adde in which close to two hundred Kenyan soldiers were estimated to have been killed. Estimated because the government has never released an official tally of dead, injured and captured. Instead, after initially issuing a few statements offering a chronology of events and promising to answer queries later, it has subsequently maintained a studious silence.

This time, after news of the Kulbiyow attack broke on Friday, the KDF initially put out a statement stating categorically that the attack had been repulsed and that the camp had not been overrun. A second statement later in the day asserted that nine soldiers, including two officers, had lost their lives and another 15 had been injured. It also claimed that at least 70 al Shabaab militants had been killed.

The full Press Release on #KDFKulbiyow incident @amisomsomalia .#Kulbiyow #NgaoYaTaifa #TukoImaraAngani #OnTimeOnTarget #ThisIsKDF #WeAreKDF pic.twitter.com/Y2OOOCo9D4

— Kenya Defence Forces (@kdfinfo) January 27, 2017

Follow up Operational Update Press Release on #KDFKulbiyow. Our Quick Reaction Force soldiers killed over 70 Al Shabaab terrorists.#WeAreKDF pic.twitter.com/nM69Pckpdp

— Kenya Defence Forces (@kdfinfo) January 27, 2017

However, subsequent news reports, some of which claimed to have interviewed survivors of the attack, have raised serious doubts about the veracity of the KDF account. The al Shabaab, who run a pretty sophisticated propaganda machine, initially claimed to have killed over 50 soldiers and subsequently revised that figure upwards. Earlier this week, the group released gruesome pictures purportedly taken after the attack to back up their claims. The Standard newspaper, citing sources within the KDF, also reported that at least 68 Kenyan troops had died. A more detailed account in the Daily Nation also painted a grim picture of the camp being overrun and “pandemonium” as soldiers fled into the bush.

Following these revelations, the KDF and government communications appear to have retreated into silence. No further statements have been issued and, unlike El Adde, there has been no public comment from either their Commander-in-Chief, President Uhuru Kenyatta, or the Chief of Defence Forces, General Samson Mwathethe.

In both attacks, government communications have sought to minimize the scale of defeat specifically by either distorting or keeping mum about casualty figures, details of the incidents and the outcome of any investigations.

But does that matter? Not if you ask the pro-government online army on Twitter. Any attempt to seek clarification is met with accusations of propagandizing for the al Shabaab and having a morbid interest in death counts, as well as patently false claims that militaries across the world never reveal the true extent of their battlefield losses. It is not important to know how many died, so the argument goes, since even one is too many. Telling the truth about casualties, it is claimed, is demoralizing to our soldiers and gifts the terrorists a propaganda coup.

Yet the trouble that the government and the KDF go to to hide them itself demonstrates that the numbers do matter. The fact is, they are not being hidden from al Shabaab but from Kenyans and it is the official silences and mendacity, not the truth, that allow the terrorists’ propaganda to rule the airwaves unchallenged. 

Similarly, the tendency to spin rather than provide accurate information means that KDF accounts of incidents lack credibility. For example, in the aftermath of the El Adde attack, Gen Mwathethe briefed the press on the battle and response. Many of the details he gave, including claims of three suicide trucks, each with the explosive force of the 1998 US Embassy truck bomb as well as "truckloads of suicide bombers", have proven to be either gross exaggerations or outright falsehoods. The same pattern can be seen in the statements issued on Kulbiyow.

Further, as an article by Nyambega Gisesa to be published this weekend in the Daily Nation states, "since Kenya first went to Somalia in October 2011, no single commander has ever been suspended or fired". At the end of his press briefing on El Adde, Gen Mwathethe promised to provide further details once a Board of Inquiry had completed its work. Nothing has been heard from him since.

Into the void created by the KDF's unwillingness to give forthright and credible information steps the al Shabaab propaganda machine, inundating the media and internet with impeccably timed press releases, interviews, caches of (often graphic) photos and slickly produced video footage of incidents. For a while now, it has been clear that Kenya's official communications on its actions in Somalia have been no match for al Shabaab's. And there is a very good reason for this. KDF and government communicators have been preoccupied with the wrong "enemy"- the Kenyan people.

The overriding objective of government communications ever since the debacle at Westgate has been to keep Kenyans from asking uncomfortable questions. Rather than protecting soldiers’ morale or debunking al Shabaab falsehoods as is sometimes claimed, government propaganda has been focused on protecting senior officials' and officers' backsides. Revealing the real extent of deaths risks rousing public anger, stoking uncomfortable questions and demands for people to held to account. 

Yet, questions should and must be asked. Why did the KDF succumb to an attack that was a carbon copy of the El Adde incident, where it had suffered its biggest ever military loss? Why were lessons seemingly not learnt? What are the systemic failures that led to this and who should be held to account? As the Standard editorialized, “losing more than 250 soldiers in 54 weeks in two identical attacks speaks not to the consequence of going to war but the utter incompetence of the high command.”

The numbers matter. They may not tell the whole story, but they do tell an important part of it. The truth matters. The constitution subordinates the KDF to civilian authority and, in the end, its commanders and civilian overlords are ultimately answerable to the Kenyan people. There is an implicit bargain we have with the troops. They will follow orders and risk their lives to defend us and accomplish the mission they are given but we will hold their bosses to account to ensure that those orders and missions are reasonable and that they are properly equipped and facilitated to achieve them. That requires us to have an accurate understanding of the realities they face and the consequences these have. The silence over the needless waste of lives violates that bargain.

Why Kenyans Must Not Take The Government At Its Word On Terror Attacks

It was a strange incident by any description. According to the police, on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US, three women entered the Mombasa Central police station pretending to  report a stolen mobile phone. The police say one jumped over the counter and assaulted officers with a knife before dousing herself in petrol and setting herself alight. The others, one of whom was said to have a suicide vest, threw petrol bombs. All three were shot at killed at the scene and within a few hours, three other women, all refugees from Somalia apparently staying at the house of one of the terrorists, had been arrested for links to the attack.

Nine days later, a human rights group accused the police of manufacturing the incident and murdering three innocent women. Coming on the eve of the anniversary of the attack on an upmarket mall in Nairobi in which at least 67 people died, the accusation struck a chord.

Like with the Mombasa incident, much of what exactly happened inside the Westgate Mall three years ago continues to be shrouded in mystery. An award-winning reconstruction of events by Tristan McConnell,  a foreign correspondent based in Nairobi, concluded that “far from a dramatic three-day standoff, the assault on the Mall lasted only a few hours, almost all of it taking place before Kenyan security forces even entered the building.” Much of the information issued by the authorities both during and immediately after the attack turned out to be misleading and blatantly false.

From claims of 10 to 15 attackers led by the famed “White Widow”, Samantha Lewthwaite and armed with belt-fed machine guns that had been secretly placed in the mall a few days prior, to allegations of hostages being held and subsequently freed by heroic security agencies, to the much-ridiculed accusation of the terrorists setting mattresses on fire to distract the advancing forces, much of the government tale turned out to be untrue.

When shop owners returned to find their stores empty and vandalized, and pictures of rows of empty beer bottles in the mall’s bars as well as CCTV footage of Kenya Defence Forces soldiers carrying laden plastic bags out of the Nakumatt supermarket- where most victims perished- emerged, there was little doubt that the “siege” had been a cover for massive looting by the very teams supposedly deployed to save them. A promised public inquiry into the attack never materialized and a report prepared by a joint parliamentary committee, which purported to clear the KDF of involvement in the looting, was tossed out for being “incompetent”. The rub of it is that three years later, there is still no official account of what transpired.

A similar darkness envelopes the Al Shabaab attack in January this year on an AMISOM military base manned by KDF soldiers in which an estimated 200 troops were killed. As with the Westgate incident, again much of the information the government and the KDF put out was later revealed to be false. An Al Shabaab propaganda video of the attack showed no indication of the three truck bombs, “each [with] a force equivalent to the terrorist attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998” as well as “truckloads of suicide bombers” as claimed by the Chief Of Defence Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe. Further, his promise to answer lingering questions once a Board of Inquiry had carried out a full investigation remains unfulfilled eight months later.

There is thus good reason for scepticism about official accounts of alleged terror incidents, which mostly seem geared to cover up the incompetence and culpability of senior officials and officers. The fact that the police have been unable to produce the suicide vest supposedly worn by one of the alleged attackers in Mombasa as well as the emergence of a video apparently showing two of the women being shot outside the station, even as one of them appeared to have her hands raised in surrender, give credence to such doubts.

This is not to say that there was no attack. Rather it is incumbent upon all of us to be much more critical of the overnment's offerings on terror and to demand independent and public investigation of the attacks that have occurred in the past five years. We must insist that all officials and officers found either negligent or complicit in the commission and cover up of crimes are held to account. Only by doing so, can we ensure that government learns the lessons it needs to learn in order to do a better job of keeping us all safe.

Covering or Covering Up ? How Kenyan Media Betrays Kenya

On the eve of Madarka Day, CNN’s Robyn Kriel dropped bombshell. Her investigations had revealed that the Kenya government was engaged in covering up the truth surrounding the deaths of at least 141 Kenyan troops in El Adde, Somalia. The story made headlines around the world. However, here, where it should have mattered most, it was mostly ignored by the local press.

Why? In January when the slaughter happened, it was on the front page of every newspaper. But soon thereafter, it became clear that the media was being careful not to raise too many uncomfortable questions. Over the course of the last 6 months, even as further revelations, including Al Shabaab’s release of footage of the attack, showed gaping holes in the official version of events, the press has demonstrated little inclination to pursue the story. Though long whispered in newsrooms, that it took a foreign journalist to provide the first serious look at potential casualty numbers is most telling.

As I wrote this, news broke of yet another Al Shabaab attack, this time on an Ethiopian-manned base in Somalia. This time, the Kenyan media had few qualms about speculating on casualties or handing the terrorists a propaganda coup, the very excuses it has offered for not pursuing the El Adde story. That the coverage of the attack on the Ethiopians was carefully scrubbed of any mention of El Adde despite the obvious similarities, betrays their real concern: sparing KDF and government blushes.

Meantime, official statements about other events in Somalia continue to rampage across the headlines unchallenged. Kenya Defence Forces’ claims about battlefield successes against the Al Shabaab are reported as gospel truth, even when the facts are in dispute. It is a most curious and intriguing stance taken by a media fraternity that is widely acclaimed as one of the most vibrant on the continent. In truth, the accolades have routinely tended to overstate our media’s autonomy and gusto while underplaying its short memory and its marked tendency to kowtow to politicians and officialdom.

The coverage of the current impasse over electoral reforms and over the fate of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission also highlights some of these shortcomings. Since the 2013 general election, it has been obvious to anyone who cared to look into it, that the electoral system is in dire straits. Its performance (as well as that of the Supreme Court) in that poll left plenty to be desired and a sharply divided country. Yet in the last 3 years, the media has not prioritized the telling of this story. This despite the fact that a clear public interest exists: violence has accompanied all but one election in the multiparty era and the bungled 2007 contest almost tipped us into the abyss of anarchy and civil war.

Indeed, it was not until politicians exploited the situation to create a crisis that the media collectively took note. And even then, the reporting has been little more than an uncritical regurgitation of the opposing sides’ statements. Little energy is expended in articulating the issues of disagreement and whether these reflect simple party political and individual interests or are driven by a serious desire and plan to protect the national interest. Is the dispute about acquiring or preserving jobs for politicians or about fixing the broken system?

The media’s preoccupation has been with the political battles, with picking the winner and losers, rather than with the substance of the fight. A consequent failure to distinguish smoke from fire has allowed the politicians to shape the public discourse in self-serving ways that obscure what’s really at stake. This is how we have ended up with a national debate about the rather absurd proposition that the constitution somehow forbids dialogue or the equally preposterous idea that IEBC commissioners can be fired by physically ejecting them from their offices in Anniversary Towers.

Just as with the tragic El Adde debacle, Kenyan media has mostly been a forum for obfuscation and misdirection rather than a source of light and understanding. It has betrayed the Kenyans who, at great cost in lives, took on autocrats to defend the freedom it profits from and sadly abuses. When it abdicates its agenda-setting role and conspires in the silencing of voices critical of government; when it would rather cover up than expose official misdeeds; when it becomes a megaphone for Orwellian doublespeak; then a free media becomes an instrument of oppression and tyranny rather than a necessary bulwark against it.

Why Kenya Thinks It Wins When It Loses

As is the case with other nations, the Kenyans memorial landscape is littered with moments of heroic triumph and unspeakable horror. Within its contours, one will find the anniversaries of murders and massacres as well as achievement and acclaim.

Today marks the three-month anniversary of a terrible tragedy -  the slaughter of nearly 200 Kenyan soldiers by the Al Shabaab terror group at El Adde in southern Somalia. Two weeks ago we observed another tearful memorial for a remarkably similar atrocity – the slaughter last April of nearly 150 people in another Al Shabaab attack, this time on the Garissa University College.

These two horrors are united by more than the fact that they were committed by the same terror group, the large numbers of casualties involved and the unspeakable grief they brought to our shores. For the last three years, there has been a remarkable, and remarkably successful, attempt to dress up nearly all major Al Shabaab atrocities as Kenyan glories.

From President Uhuru Kenyatta declaring the defeat and shaming of our enemies at Westgate to KTN speaking of the triumph at Garissa and the ubiquitous reference to the heroism of El Adde, we have appeared to be a society determined to turn tragedies on their heads and to snatch victory from the jaws of disaster.

This is more than the celebration of individual heroic behaviour as the tragedies unfolded. While there has been some articulation of this, most notably at Westgate, the main thrust has been to paint the events themselves as showcasing the conquest of the “Kenyan spirit” over adversity. In short, we won every time we lost.

But in these contexts, what do words like "victory", "triumph" and "heroes" mean? What work do they do?

I think it is clear that such double-talk is meant to obscure more than it illuminates. It is remarkably similar to the doublethink in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like in Oceania, today’s doublethink is created and perpetuated by official newspeak and designed to make all other modes of thought traitorous and shameful if not impossible.

In this brave new world, those who today insist on truth and accountability for the failures at Westgate and Mpeketoni are accused of being Al Shabaab sympathizers; or of indulging morbid fantasies when they demand to know the actual number of “heroes” being feted at El Adde and details of what actually happened. This official discourse pretends to honor “sacrifice” while devaluing the lives that have been sacrificed by the official negligence and incompetence it is trying to cover up.

Today’s newspeak goes beyond describing tragedies as triumphs. It is constantly being deployed in the service of an empty, unthinking and unquestioning "positivity". The government and its lackeys in the press and on social media are fond of categorizing criticism as either positive or negative. These categories respectively roughly follow the contours of what they are willing to admit and respond to, and what they are not. “Negative” criticism is demonized as soul destroying.

In this scheme of things, it was not the government’s inability to provide lucid answers to questions about how it spent the Kshs 275 billion it borrowed via a Eurobond two years ago that causes investor jitters. Rather it is the very fact that these “negative” queries are raised in the first place that is the problem.

Similarly, it is not official laxity and ineptitude that exposes us to terrorist attack; it is the demand to audit and fix such laxity and ineptitude that emboldens the enemy. It is thinking that seeks silver linings but ignores the cloud.

But why do so many Kenyans buy into it? My guess is it is because it is comforting. People engage in spin to hide or hide from truth. Those hiding truth are running away from accountability. The rest of us are running away from vulnerability. It is, after all, a profoundly scary thing to admit that those we have charged to protect us are failing.  It is much more comforting to insist we are feeling safer even as loud noises routinely terrify students into leaping out of windows and soldiers into firing aimlessly.

We would thus rather proclaim and commemorate empty triumphs than acknowledge our vulnerability and ask the hard questions.

Why The KDF Lion Must Learn To Speak

Until the lion learns to speak, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. The truth of this statement is today being demonstrated in the aftermath of the devastating attack by the Al Shabaab terror group on the AMISOM base at El Adde in southern Somalia.

With over Kenyan 100 troops feared dead, this is turning out to be not just a tactical victory, but a propaganda coup as well for the Al Qaeda linked militants. Panicked Generals in both AMISOM and the KDF have effectively shut down their public communications, effectively handing the airwaves to the enemy. And Al Shabaab has not been slow to exploit this opportunity. For nearly a week its tale of the hunt has been propagated around the world pretty much unchallenged.

The modern media operation is a 24-hour beast that needs to be fed round the clock. National and international mass media is the most important disseminator of news for the vast majority of people and what it carries shapes opinions and influences decisions. It is for this reason that terrorists make every effort to maximize coverage of their attacks.

And perceptions do matter. Especially in war, which the great Prussian general and military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz described as “the continuation of politics by other means.” Politics, as is readily apparent, is a game of perceptions and opinions. To a great extent, wars are too. They end when the losing side acknowledges it cannot win (except on the rare occasion when it is entirely eliminated).

So war itself can be seen a great communications effort, albeit one where the message is transmitted via bombs and bullets. Sun Tzu’s advice that “victorious warriors win first and then go to war” can be paraphrased thus: “Win first, then go tell your opponent about it.”

In today’s world, the fight against the terrorists is not only waged on the ground, but on newspaper pages, TV and radio broadcasts and on internet as well. This is especially true of the struggle against Al Shabaab.

Most Kenyans tend to mistakenly think of the group as a rag-tag militia with little in the way of effective organisation. In reality, Al Shabaab is well organized and resourced, and what it lacks in tanks and armour it makes up in communications capabilities.  It has established a media department which is adept at producing slick propaganda videos and churning out pictures and footage to feed the media beast with its version of events.

Now, it is true that wars are not won by press releases. But it would be a great mistake to conclude that effective communications don’t matter. In its first three years, AMISOM struggled to find its voice. Its tale was told by others, including by its enemies and detractors. As a result, it struggled to convince Somalians of its intentions, to get countries to deploy troops and to articulate its need for more and better equipment. By 2010, there was talk of “constructive disengagement” and winding up the “failing mission”.

It was in recognition of this, and at the request of the AU, that in 2009 the UN provided AMISOM with a team of civilian communications consultants as part of a wider logistical support package. I was a part of this team, which is based in Mogadishu, for nearly four years and witnessed fist-hand how well-executed communications strategies made AMISOM more effective on the ground.

From countering Al Shabaab propaganda to explaining its mandate and operations to a sceptical international audience to communicating successes on the ground, AMISOM became more adept at influencing local and international perceptions and managed to turn its reputation around. By the end of 2012 this effort- combined with the success its troops delivered on the ground- had countries competing to contribute troops and the UN Security Council voting to beef up its support for the Mission.

One of the many important lessons I learnt is that to compete effectively in the media arena, one has to be fast, first and provide accurate facts. Even, and perhaps especially, when it was bad news, you would rather the public heard it from you and not from the other side. It is a race to get your side of the story out first and to control the narrative. Another lesson was the critical need always to preserve your credibility by never putting out information that one knows to false.

On both these counts, the Kenyan Government has performed poorly. AMISOM has a long standing policy of letting its troop contributing countries speak on casualties and so its silence is somewhat understandable. The Kenyan state and its defence forces, on the other hand, has worked to prevent any details on the operation leaking out, including by prosecuting people who forwarded purported pictures of the dead Kenyan soldiers issued by Al Shabaab. It has also now provided a provisional version of events via the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Samson Mwathethe, elements of which not only contradict its earlier statements, but also fly in the face of the few facts that have already been established.

This sadly fits into pattern that the Government has followed whenever confronted with failure. It has done little to shore up its credibility in speaking on matters security since the Westgate disaster. It has tried to impose its “Official Truth” and refused to address any holes in yarn that it has spun. More than two years later, there has been no credible official account of what happened inside that mall for four days. It is a curious position for a government famous for its formidable public relations machine to be in.

Regardless, it is clear that we can ill afford to cede the media space to Al Shabaab without a fight. Our lion must learn to speak.

El Adde Shows How Not To Fight Al Shabaab

In the wake of the Al Shabaab attack on a base manned by the Kenyan contingent of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in the south Somalia town of El Adde, many of our returning soldiers, as well as the many who died, are being hailed as heroes. On social and mainstream media it has become de rigueur to declare love for the Kenya Defence Forces, to hail their bravery and martyrdom. Questioning the details of the incident only invites appeals to national mourning or accusations of spitting on their sacrifice.

Yet the questions must be asked. If, as seems likely, reports of tens, perhaps over a hundred killed turn out to be true, it would be the highest one-day toll both the KDF and AMISOM have suffered in their history. It would also demonstrate that reports of Al Shabaab’s imminent demise may be greatly exaggerated. The immediate as well as wider reasons for both the catastrophe and for Al Shabaab’s ability to inflict such pain must be explored if we wish to prevent similar disasters in the future.

The facts of what happened at El Adde should give us all pause for thought. Newly deployed and inexperienced troops came under attack, their camp was overrun, their commander captured and the soldiers scattered to the wind in disarray. Many died, others fled to the bush or requested shelter from local civilians, from where we are now trying to recover them. This is not how we should be fighting our wars.

Especially worrisome is the fact this attack did not come out of the blue.

The troops in El Adde had only been there for two weeks, many coming fresh from their base in Eldoret. Al Shabaab have been known to attack AMISOM positions immediately after troop rotations, knowing that AMISOM’s practice of replacing units of experienced soldiers with entirely fresh soldiers guarantees they would face inexperienced opposition.

Further, despite losing much of the territory it once controlled across Southern Somalia, the Al Qaeda-affiliated terror group has shown time and again that it remains capable of mounting devastating attacks across the country.  Of late, the group has developed an appetite for taking on AMISOM’s Forward Operating Bases.

The El Adde attack was the third such attack in the last seven months. Over 50 Burundian AMISOM soldiers were reported to have been killed when the group overran their base at Leego, 62 miles north-west of Mogadishu. Then four months ago, they sacked the Ugandan contingent’s base in Janale, again killing at least 19 soldiers, though media quoted a briefing note sent to diplomats by Western military officials claiming that around 100 soldiers were "unaccounted for" after the attack.

The tactics Al Shabaab has employed across the last two assaults are also remarkably similar to those used in the El Adde attack, both coming immediately after troop rotations and involving use of suicide car bombs and large swarms of fighters to overwhelm resistance.

Even more damning are the reports that the El Adde attack was widely anticipated and that locals had left their homes in advance of it. It is curious that little has been said about the Somali National Army troops that were co-located with the AMISOM troops. They appear to have not taken part in the fighting which probably means that they too had evacuated the area in advance of the attack. The reports indicate that this information may even have been shared with the Kenyans!

Further, the obviously poor state of relations and distrust between the Kenyan contingent and local people is another source of concern. Somalia’s fractious clan divides are a dangerous minefield that would be peacekeepers must navigate carefully. The KDF’ support for Ahmed Madobe in Kismayo has inevitably earned Kenya the suspicion, if not hostility, of clans rivalling the Ogadeni, including the Marehan who dominate El Adde.

All this is most troubling. There is a clear and massive failure of leadership which left our troops at the mercy of our enemies and that should not be swept under the carpet of a jingoistic patriotism. Once the current search and rescue operations are done, we must set up an inquiry, learn lessons and hold senior officers to account. We failed to do this following similar KDF failures at Westgate and at the Garissa University and are once again paying the price for it in blood.

The above also invites a serious debate about Kenya’s and AMISOM’s objectives in Somalia and what it will actually take to achieve them.

Kenya’s invasion of Somalia in October 2011 was in response to a spate of kidnappings for ransom by Somalia-based bandit gangs which threatened the lucrative tourist industry. Although the goals of Operation Linda Nchi were not well articulated at the time, at the very least it was meant to make the country safe for tourism. By that measure, the invasion was a spectacular failure. In the time since the invasion, attacks by Al Shabaab (which by the way had denied responsibility for the kidnappings but was targeted by the KDF anyway) on the Kenyan homeland multiplied exponentially, almost obliterating the tourism Linda Nchi was meant to save.

Today, little is heard about this. This is because Linda Nchi was hurriedly would up and the Kenya forces in Somalia rehatted as AMISOM less than a year later. They thus acquired a different set of objectives. AMISOM is a peace support mission mandated to help restore the Somalia National Security Forces, fight Al Shabaab and help extend the writ of the government in Mogadishu. It does not exist to secure Kenya.

However, it is true that a stable Somalia would be a boon for security across the region and there is no doubt Kenya would be a major beneficiary. It is important then, as a contributor to AMISOM, that Kenyans examine how that effort is doing.

On the surface, there is reason for hope. Since 2011, as noted above, Al Shabaab has been pushed out of nearly all of Somalia’s major towns including all the ports it once controlled. But while the terror group has been degraded, the authority of the Federal Government does not extend much outside the towns and Al Shabaab is still able to operate freely in much of rural south Somalia. Further, as the El Adde attack demonstrates, the Somali forces are far from ready to take on Al Shabaab.

This has critical implications for AMISOM. Its exit strategy is predicated not just on sufficiently degrading Al Shabaab, but also on training up effective Somali troops. The latter’s continued weakness is a double blow to AMISOM. Firstly, it delays the date of an eventual AMISOM exit. Secondly, one of the reasons for the UN Security Council authorising relatively low troop numbers for AMISOM was the expectation that the SNA would fill the gap. The UN Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II) – the second phase of the initial UN intervention, from March 1993 to March 1995 – had a similar mandate to AMISOM and had 30,000 troops. AMISOM has just over 22,000 and for much of its time Somalia has had much less.

The Mission also lacks crucial equipment and support enablers. Although belatedly authorised by the Security Council in 2012, helicopters are yet to arrive in the Mission area. Thus despite the successes it has achieved, there remain serious questions as to whether AMISOM, as currently constituted, can fully deliver on its mandate.

These and other issues should form the basis of an informed public debate on the wisdom and objectives of the KDF deployment in Somalia.  There is an opportunity today for Kenya to begin to seriously examine the options it has in Somalia and for the Kenyan public to finally have an informed say on what course to follow.

Why Obama's Second Coming May (Temporarily) Save Kenyans

Two weeks ago, a team of Kenyan security officers was ambushed while responding to reports of armed militants from the Al Shabaab terror group being sighted in the eastern Kenya village of Yumbis. The security officers apparently escaped without sustaining any casualties, leaving the militants free rein to terrorise residents, hoisting their black flags and forcing them to listen to their sermons, for up to 7 hours. Later that night, the Kenyan government issued a terse statement claiming security forces had “repulsed” the attack on Yumbis after “engaging the militants in gun battle”. The statement urged “Kenyans to continue collaborating with security agents to ensure that members of this group who might have taken refuge among innocent locals are flushed out”.

Four days later, Kenyans woke up to reports that another Al Shabaab ambush in the same area may have killed up to two dozen police officers. The officers were responding to an earlier incident in which a police vehicle had encountered a landmine, slightly wounding the officers on board, all but one of whom had been discharged from hospital. This time the government, after initially telling journalists that up to 30 officers were missing and condoling with relatives of slain officers, reversed itself and declared that no one had been killed then declared one death. 

Even allowing for the inevitable fog that accompanies reports on events in such remote areas, the confused and confusing accounts are depressingly familiar. The media comes in for a bit of stick for rushing for the sensational headline without clarifying either sources or what information they had been able to independently verify. The government has already expressed its displeasure with Cabinet Secretary for Interior and Coordination of National Government, Joseph ole Nkaissery, telling journalists he was disappointed in their performance.

However, the Kenyan government would do well to first attend to the log in its own eye. For as we seen, a major reason for the confused reporting is a lack of reliable, accurate and timely official information. The communication efforts of the self-described “digital” administration have not exactly inspired faith in official narratives. On the contrary, many Kenyans have learnt to take its official pronouncements with a heap of salt. Its tales regarding terrorist attacks have invariably involved scapegoating and diversion, understating of casualties and problems, obfuscation of detail and exaggeration of the effectiveness of its responses.

This was as true during the four-day siege of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi 20 months ago as it was in Yumbis. The most obvious and startling example came on the eve of the attack on the Garissa University College when the President Uhuru Kenyatta pooh-poohed warnings of an imminent attack. This was in itself reminiscent of his shallow and poorly reasoned speech on the causes of insecurity last November which was delivered just hours before 24 police officers were murdered by bandits in the north-western town of Kapedo.

Further, as the attack in Yumbis was unfolding, his Director of Digital Communications was busy on Twitter berating Norway’s government for allegedly “supporting terror” by continuing to fund a Muslim human rights group which the Kenya government has blacklisted. 

Whoever one choses to believe, it is increasingly clear that Al Shabaab is able to operate within the former North Eastern Province with relative impunity despite government assurances to the contrary. It is clear that without a significant overhaul, the security apparatus is unlikely to significantly disrupt and deter similar attacks. One only has to remember that following the Garissa University College attack the then newly appointed Nkaissery, admitted to Parliament that the Kenya Defence Forces could not contain four Al Shabaab gunmen.

In fact, as I write this, there are reports that a group of Al Shabaab militants have been camped near Warankara village in Mandera County unchallenged for a week, causing residents to flee their homes. They have apparently been forcing those who remain to listen to their sermons. 

Yet in his Madaraka Day speech, President Uhuru Kenyatta could only promise “a major anti-radicalization strategy” had been prepared and would be rolled out “very shortly”. Of course, details on the strategy were conspicuously absent as was discussion on whether counter-radicalization is the same as counter-terrorism. 

It is unclear how the strategy has been developed and who has been involved. At least one prominent journalist has found that his contacts within the Interior Ministry appear to be in the dark about it. Also telling is that the strategy has been developed, and may be implemented, ahead of a planned regional conference on extremism during which, according to the Principal Secretary for the Interior Ministry, Dr Monica Juma, the government hopes to “understand the local architecture of terror networks as well as the narratives that promote ideologies of violence extremism”. It begs the question whether the government’s right hand knows what the left is doing.

This is not new. The Kenyatta administration has dealt with the rampant insecurity afflicting the country primarily as a public relations challenge, and sought to address it using token measures as opposed to fundamental reform of the security services. Many academics and security experts have echoed the maxim that Kenya lacks both the policy and security posture to successfully address the challenges posed by Al Shabaab. More importantly, a ravenous political elite, more interested in protecting its opportunities to “eat” lacks the will to address the systemic problems its greed has caused. 

It is into this maelstrom of incompetence, confusion and wilful negligence that US President, Barrack Obama, is due to fly in mid-July for his first visit as Leader of The Free World to the land of his father. The last time he was here, the then junior Senator described corruption in Kenya as a "crisis" which facilitates terrorism and breeds the "collective exhaustion and outrage" that makes our youngsters vulnerable to extremists.

On that score too, little has changed. Theft of public resources continues to be the touchstone of our politics. Corruption means students are abandoned to murderous thugs and their would-be rescuers stranded as police choppers are used for private joyrides. It means that army units sent into a city mall to rescue civilians instead loot it and when deployed to Somalia to fight the Al Shabaab, instead engage in illicit trade that fills up the militants' coffers. Corruption also means that no one is held to account for any of this and it will be interesting to hear what the US President has to say about it this time around.

However, there is a possible silver lining around his visit. It is not lost to many that pulling off a major attack in Kenya on or around that time would be a massive propaganda coup for the Al Shabaab. And while Kenya is vulnerable at precisely the time when it should be most ready, for an administration obsessed with image, such an attack would be a complete, and completely unacceptable, humiliation. There is therefore reason to imagine that the government will do everything it can to forestall such an eventuality. And in the process, its self-indulgence may afford its long-suffering people a fleeting reprieve from the depredations of the Al Shabaab. Fingers crossed.

Why Kenya Is Not At War

A version of this article was published by Aljazeera Online.

Kenya is at war. This mantra is repeated over and over ad infinitum by government officials and pro-establishment types. At a time of military conflict, we are told, peacetime rules and conventions do not apply and we should be prepared to give up some of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. But really, are we at war?

“We are in a war against terrorists in and outside our country,” declared President Uhuru Kenyatta in December. He was, of course, referring to the confrontation with the extremist and murderous terror group, Al Shabaab, which has killed hundreds of Kenyans in the last 4 years. Most of these deaths have come in the wake of the October 2011 invasion of Somalia, whose goal was initially proclaimed to be the pursuit of kidnappers and to push Al Shabaab away from our borders.

Despite the banner headlines at the time, there was no official declaration of war, either against Somalia or against Al Shabaab. In fact, there has since been no such declaration, which according to the constitution would have required the authorisation of Parliament.

But if Kenya is not exactly a de jure state at war, is it in a de facto state of war? There is no doubt, as the President has noted, that “our country and our people are under attack”. Since 2012, more than 600 people have been killed by the Al Shabaab, who continue to threaten to paint Kenyan cities red with blood.

However, it is far from clear that the country’s response to the terrorists could reasonably be characterized as a military conflict. The troops in Somalia, who neither caught up with the kidnappers nor succeeded in pushing Al Shabaab from our borders, quickly shifted goal posts and declared their objective to be the capture of the Somali port of Kismayo, which was achieved a year later. By then, the troops had been rehatted as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia and were, at least nominally, taking their orders from the Force Commander in Mogadishu and not the Ministry of Defence in Nairobi. Today, with a battalion having been withdrawn to make way for Sierra Leone, under 4000 troops remain in AMISOM.

Although the Kenya Defence Forces are today routinely deployed within Kenya, it is not always or even predominantly fighting against the Al Shabaab. In fact, in many instances, it has been deployed to quell internecine conflict between Kenyan communities. If deploying the KDF is an act of war, then Kenya is as much at war with itself as it is with Al Shabaab.

In truth, the battle against Al Shabaab has been much more a policing than a military action, though it is frequently described, as I have just done, in language from the latter. As a matter of fact, on two occasions –at Westgate where 68 people were slaughtered and most recently in Garissa where at least 148 perished- the deployment of the KDF to do a job the specialized police unit known as Recce Company should have been doing, was cited as a major failure. Reports on other terrorist incidents such as the June 2014 Mpeketoni attacks which left about 70 dead, mainly blamed problems within the police service not the military, from divided command to corruption, for poor responses.

In Somalia too, Kenya is not prosecuting a war against the Al Shabaab in Somalia. AMISOM, where Kenya is one of several principals, is. AMISOM’s objective is not, at least directly, to protect the Kenyan border, but rather to support and protect the government in Mogadishu. Sure AMISOM is mandated to eliminate Al Shabaab. But given the reports of the Kenyan contingent’s involvement in illicit trade that benefits Al Shabaab immensely such as the smuggling of charcoal and sugar, it is debatable whether they are particularly focussed on this objective.

Kenya is at war in the sense Australia or Canada are at war. Both nations have deployed troops abroad to fight as part of a coalition confronting extremists. Both have suffered terror attacks, though nowhere near what Kenya has experienced. Most would immediately see the incongruity of suggesting that Canadians and Australian accept "wartime" restrictions on their liberties (which is not to say such restriction is not attempted). But Kenya, with its much greater familiarity with terrorist attack is an easier target for the argument.

In the 1997 Barry Levinson movie, Wag The Dog, the US administration fabricates a war with Albania to distract the public from a sex scandal on the eve of an presidential election. Similarly, in Kenya today, the talk of war is intended to mask a multitude of sins on the part of the government and security agents. It is thus not unusual for officials to assert “operational security” to avoid public scrutiny. Or to hear that, as one commentator tweeted, “it is incongruous [to] deem it practical that counter-terrorist activities [be] governed by peacetime procedures/rules.”

The idea of a literal war on terrorism, and opposed to the figurative “wars” on corruption and drugs, is meant to generate a climate of fear and foster an unthinking and unquestioning patriotism. It is not only the carpet under which government seeks to sweep its failure to fundamentally reform and fix the country’s security system, but also provides justification for a clampdown on dissent.

Andrew Franklin, a Nairobi-based security analyst, notes: “Kenya is not at war. As archaic as it may sound, wars are declared and fought between states or coalitions of states. This is not mere sophistry since declarations of war justify extraordinary – and temporary – restrictions on all manner of normal domestic activities and curbs on many constitutionally protected freedoms. 

“This is why going to war is considered a big deal and not just a matter of semantics.”

A Year Later, Confusion Still Reigns Over Westgate

A year ago, Kenya experienced one of the worst terrorist atrocities on ever perpetrated on her soil. The gunmen who attacked the Westgate mall on that awful Saturday morning may have killed at least 67 people and wounded many more but the real impact of their actions has been in challenging the country’s commitment to protect its people. As the local and international news media gears up to mark the anniversary, indications are that much of the coverage will highlight the horror as well as the undeniable heroism and courage many displayed during the ordeal. That is all good and proper.  But we must not gloss over the many failures witnessed then and since.

The national unity and camaraderie that was expressed at the start of the attack has long since abated. Actually it didn’t last very long. As Kenyans were lining up in record numbers to donate blood for the victims and to cement their commitment to the idea of Kenya, it was revealed that many of those who went into the mall and supposedly risk their lives to confront the terrorists, were actually there for less altruistic motives. “We Are One” turned to “We Are Wondering” as the photos of looted shops and CCTV footage of soldiers from the Kenya Defense Forces carrying paper bags out of the destroyed mall were etched into the national memory. The confused and contradictory statements made by government spokespeople throughout the four day ordeal continue to reverberate to the present day.

In fact, to date, there has been no definitive official account of what transpired in the mall. The Commission of Inquiry promised by President Uhuru Kenyatta in the days following the attack failed to materialize. A report into the attack tabled by a Joint Parliamentary Committee was rejected by the National Assembly. The KDF was reported to have prepared a report on its actions during the siege but this is yet to be published.

Conflicting press reports have added to the confusion about the details of the incident and mirrored the gaps and contradictions in the narrative provided by government officials. A recent documentary by British film-maker Dan Reed has cast doubt on the timeline of events presented in a special investigative report by KTN which now appears to have relied on heavily embellished accounts of the effectiveness of an elite Kenya police anti-terror unit.

Initially, the government said there were up to 15 gunmen in the mall. The attack was said to have been planned over a long period in the Dadaab refugee camp and that ammunition and machine guns had been secretly stashed in the mall in preparation for the attack. The Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Amina Mohammed, claimed that a British woman "who has done this many times before" was among the attackers, as were "two or three" Americans. All this was later contradicted, though recently, a Daily Nation report has once again suggested that there may have been “up to 15 foreigners” involved in the attack. The belt-fed machine gun claimed to be used by the terrorists has never been produced. According to the Daily Nation, “two of the attackers are believed to have flown from Somalia to Entebbe and travelled by road to Nairobi” which contradicts government assertions that they came in via Dadaab. In fact, all four attackers were in November reported to have trained in Somalia and in Nairobi, not in the refugee camp.

On the looting of the mall, the government first denied the reports, then accepted that some looting had happened and said an inquiry into the same, commissioned by the President, was underway. No findings have to date been made public. Parliament did not fare any better, with a committee first rubbished the reports of looting (after supposedly reviewing all available CCTV footage in record time). “KDF soldiers and all the officers who participated in that operation, never, and I want to use the word, never, participated in looting,” declared Asman Kamama, chair of the parliamentary committee on National Security and Administration. Following public howls of outrage, and the airing of CCTV footage showing the extent of the looting and soldiers carrying shopping bags out of the mall, the MPs tried to walk back the claim saying they had not been given access to all the evidence.

On whether the terrorists were killed or escaped, there is still some confusion. The government, now having ascertained that there were only four attackers, despite President Kenyatta earlier declaration that five terrorists been killed, claims all are dead and their remains have been handed over to the FBI for identification. Though the AFP reported last November that Interpol and the FBI were assisting Kenya to identify “four charred bodies recovered from the ruins”, in January Dennis Brady, the FBI’s legal attaché in Nairobi, admitted that only “three sets of remains were found.” This implies that at least one of the attackers is yet to be accounted for.

A January report in the Toronto Star, quoting an intelligence source, claimed that in the midst of the confused response “the attackers are believed to have fled” adding that one of them “is being pursued in southern Somalia.”  The Daily Nation has also speculated on a “theory that most of the attackers had Kenyan IDs and passports and could have simply disappeared into the crowds as the rescue got underway.”

The total number of casualties is also in doubt. A month after the attack, Kenya Red Cross Society secretary general Abbas Gullet said 23 people were still reported as missing. At one point, according to the Society’s annual report, nearly 119 people were reported as missing. The rejected parliamentary committee quoted a “forensic report” that is yet to be made public saying 67 people died and over 200 were injured. However, there was no mention of what happened to the missing persons and whether they were ever found. The fact that a week after the attack relatives of the missing had been asked to report to City Mortuary for DNA profiling following “the discovery of  more bodies from the ruins of the mall,” simply adds to the confusion.

The rub of all this is that as we come up to the first anniversary of the attacks, we are probably no closer to understanding what happened for four days inside that mall. As a consequence, Kenya has not learnt any lessons that might be useful in preventing further attacks. This is evidenced by the many atrocities the country has had to endure since, and the almost predictably shambolic government response.

When terrorists attacked the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenya police were quick to misidentify it as an exploding light bulb, reminiscent of the burning mattresses that supposedly brought the Westgate mall down. To date, Al Shabaab members seem to have no problems passing through the same airport. Just last week, the Daily Nation reported that three of them had flown out of Kenya only to be arrested in Germany. Perhaps the most outrageous of these were the Mpeketoni attacks in June which further exposed the unpreparedness of our security agencies as well as the readiness of some in the government, including the President, to utilize the tragedies for political gain.

Even worse, the government has failed to act on the information it has. Last October, in a piece published in the Wall Street Journal, President Kenyatta identified the illegal trade in ivory as one of three primary sources of funding for Al Shabaab. Yet even as he called for “a global moratorium on ivory trading,” the fact was his own government stood –and still stands- accused of protecting the kingpins of ivory poaching in Kenya. Further, according to the UN, illegal charcoal exports from the Somali port of Kismayo, which exports are widely acknowledged as an important source of revenue for the terror group, have actually increased despite the KDF taking over the port last year.

The truth is, the government has primarily sought to deal with terrorism as a public relations, not a security problem. The dominant political elite has viewed security challenges not only as an opportunity to loot the national treasury through dubious contracting, but also to intimidate the opposition. It has been reluctant to address the root causes of disaffection and corruption which groups like Al Shabaab have exploited to perpetrate their atrocities.

If Kenya is serious about protecting its population from terrorists, then we must dispense with the meaningless declarations of victory which government spokespeople like to spew in the aftermath of attacks. We must stop the scapegoating of Somalis which today passes for policy. Rather, we should work to deconstruct the narratives that have kept us blind to our vulnerabilities and that have allowed us to pursue red herrings at the expense of attending to the real historic and systemic failures which have left us open to attack.

To do this, we must begin with an honest account of how we got here. As Ndungu Gethenji put it, with reference to Westgate, "people need to know the exact lapses in the security system that possibly allowed this event to take place.”

The Religion of Development

A version of this article was published in The Star

A month ago, despite having failed to qualify for the biggest party on earth, members of Kenya's hapless national soccer team had a reason to smile. They were, after all, joining the other 32 national squads in Brazil 2014 courtesy of the (hopefully personal) generosity of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The Stars had to settle for a seat in the stands but what the heck! It was still the closest they have ever been to joining the spectacle.

Last weekend, however, that little joyride didn't seem to have done them much good as lowly-ranked Lesotho bundled them out of the 2015 African Nations Cup. Still, painful as it may be, the spectre of Harambee Stars coming from watching the World Cup only to suffer humiliation at home is a useful metaphor for Kenya’s obsession with symbolisms and the terrible realities these symbolisms are employed to mask.

Take “development” for example. What really is it? What do we mean when we speak it? Is it having tall buildings, roads with multiple lanes and standard-gauge railways? For many, this is what it signifies. Mwai Kibaki, till recently, was regularly feted for having presided over the construction of the Thika “SuperHighway” and Kenyatta is busy promising railways, ports and laptops. But is this really, what development is? One would assume that it is about solving problems, about bettering lives. But, in a nation that primarily walks to work, or indeed to anywhere else, one must wonder about the obsession with roads but not walkways in the city. Who are they for?

Now, this is certainly not to say that we do not need roads or railways. But it is meant to question the rationale for them. Throughout much of our history as a nation, we have been treated to herds of white elephants, each one trumpeted under the banner of development and few delivering any tangible benefits to the populace. There is little public discussion about the benefits and costs of “development” and for whose benefit it is carried out. 

So when Governor Alfred Mutua rolls out 70 ambulances, we don’t bother to ask what’s in them or where they’ll be ferrying the patients to. Or why they carried under 4,000 people to hospital in 7 months - which works out, on average, to just one trip per ambulance every 4 days. What are they doing the rest of the time? Is it believable that in a county of over a million people and 264,500 households, only 520 people per month needed ambulance services? And if so, why buy 70?

Similarly, few questions are raised when the government takes a massive loan and employs 5000 foreign workers (in addition to 30,000 locals) to build a railway that the World Bank says we don’t need. Or pledges laptops to kids who have to row across crocodile and hippo-infested rivers or have to risk death on makeshift bridges to get to schools that neither have electricity, nor classrooms, nor basic furniture and where teachers are absent almost half the time.

“Development” has become some sort of religion whose creed we mindlessly regurgitate without ever seriously contemplating its meaning. It is a faith whose promises are never seriously questioned, whose dogmas are sacrosanct and which tolerates no heresy. And like most other blind faiths, it has led us unfailingly down the path of ignorance, poverty and misery.

At independence, like many newly liberated African “nations”, we rushed to acquire the symbols of nationhood and development, assuming the substance would follow. “Fake it till we make it” seemed to be the national ethos. So we got ourselves a flag and an anthem and our President got a limousine and outriders and entourage. We built monuments to the great leaders while the people starved and worshipped the growth of something called the economy and Gross Domestic Product even as that produce was stolen and its producers impoverished. 

And so we have carried on to this day. It is why our politicians fight for the right to be called “Your Excellency” or to sport a flag on their car. Why the governor of the poorest county in the republic thinks it a good idea to spend Kshs 115 million on his mansion and another Kshs 50million on “entertainment” while his subjects starve. Why the government spends Kshs 437 million on traffic lights and cameras that don’t appear to work. It is all about the symbols and not the substance.

Another example of how the superficial has pervaded our thinking is the reluctance to even question the sources of the fabulous wealth our political and business elites love to flaunt. When the media last week reported on the sale of a house for over half a billion (yes, billion with a “b”), there was little mention of the reasons for the skyrocketing property prices in the capital which have made the idea of owning a home a distant dream for most.

Few journalists bother to discuss the fact that our country is quietly turning itself into a major money laundering centre, that over the last decade, according to Global Financial Integrity, a US-based financial watchdog, “the amount of illicit money entering Kenya from faulty trade invoicing, crime, corruption and shady business activities has increased more than five-fold in a decade to equal roughly 8 percent of Kenya’s economy”. We prefer to hush up the fact that many of the people either holding the levers of power, or competing for the privilege, as well as their friends and relatives, have been implicated in the illegal activities like wildlife poaching, charcoal trading and narcotics which are not only flooding the country with dirty money, but also filling up the coffers of the Al Shabaab terror group which is responsible for the murders of hundreds of Kenyans.

We demonstrate our shallowness when an interview of the President is not taken as an opportunity to seriously challenge him on the specifics of his counter-terrorism strategy, or his mandarins interfering with the land chapter of the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, or his administration’s subversion of Article 143(4) of the constitution that expressly provides for his prosecution. In fact, much of the media nowadays behave like the elite’s Poo-Pourri, allowing them to take a dump on us and still leave the place smelling of roses.

Like the Harambee Stars, we are discovering that pretending to eat at the cool kids’ table will only get us so far. When we refuse to do the real work of thinking through and questioning what our governments tell us, when we allow our rulers to replace policy with politics and our journalists to pretend public interest is the same thing as what the public is interested in, then we are, inevitably, setting ourselves up for tragedy.

However, last week did also bring a small ray of hope. Julius Yego, who taught himself to throw the javelin by watching YouTube videos, became the first Kenyan athlete to win a Commonwealth title in a non-track event. Yego’s win demonstrated what is possible when we put in the work. When we stop faking it and actually get down to the business of making it.