Why Kenyans Die In Vain

147.

The figure was a blow that sent one’s senses reeling. I was expecting a high number but 147 left me numb. I47 lives brutally snuffed out in a horrific, day-long orgy of killing. It is almost too much to grapple with, to ponder.

Yet ponder it we must. For even as the Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security, Joseph ole Nkaissery, solemnly announced the number that would make this the worst terrorist attack on Kenyan soil in nearly two decades, questions were already forming about whether this was just the latest in a series of eminently preventable terrorist atrocities that have now claimed more than 350 lives in the last two years.

The attack had begun about 16 hours before NKaissery’s announcement. Before dawn, four gunmen had stormed the Garissa University College, located within the eponymous county, killing two guards and then opening fire on students who had gathered for morning prayer. Then, as panic and terror spread, they moved to the four student accommodation buildings, killing at will.

By the time most Kenyans were getting the news, a coordinated response by the Kenya Police and the Kenya Defense forces was already underway and for once the security forces seemed to have learnt the lessons from the shambolic responses to previous attacks. Unlike the attacks in Mpeketoni in June 2014 in which more than 60 people were killed, it did not take more than six hours for the first security agencies to arrive. Some reports suggest a KDF unit was on the ground within an hour although they were largely ineffective in stopping the killings.

In contrast with the confused response to the September 2013 attack on the upmarket Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, at first glance the coordination between police and military units seemed much smoother. Certainly the media statements were much better choreographed. But there the differences end.

Like most other attacks, there was prior warning that this might happen. Along with other universities in Nairobi, the Garissa University College had warned students about a possible attack and police presence there had been doubled to four officers. A few days prior, the British government had issued a travel advisory to its citizens advising against travel to Garissa, among other counties. Such advisories, which the Kenya government continues to blame for the collapse in the tourism industry, were rubbished by President Uhuru Kenyatta the day before the attack.

Further, though it boggles the imagination that four gunmen could hold off police and military units for many hours while systematically massacring “hostages”, it is hardly unprecedented. Pretty much the same thing happened at Westgate where 4 gunmen supposedly kept hundreds of cops and soldiers at bay for four days, apparently taking time off to pray and relax while the security agents looted the mall.

Also, at Westgate, the famed elite police unit, the Recce Company, was forced to pull out early in the operation after their commander was shot by the KDF, allowing the terrorists to kill many more people than they otherwise would have. This time, their arrival at the Garissa University College was delayed by up to 11 hours, even though it apparently took them less than half an hour to end the siege. Just as it was stunning two years ago to hear the then Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security, Joseph ole Lenku, dismiss claims that the operation at Westgate was botched, so it is dumbfounding to today hear a spokesman for the Ministry describe the delay in deploying the Recce Company as “reasonable”.

Following that attack, the government responded with a crackdown that targeted the ethnic Somali population within Nairobi and was little more than an exercise in scapegoating and extortion. Similarly, Garissa itself, which is populated mainly by ethnic Somalis has been the site for “security operations”, the favoured official euphemism for collective punishment, for well over half a century. One such operation in 1980 resulted in an estimated 3000 deaths. Two years ago, a week into the Kenyatta presidency, another security operation saw the indiscriminate arrest of over 600 Garissa residents, including newly elected local leaders, by a security team the government itself had described as “rotten”.

Even worse, last year, under the pretext of responding to terror attacks, the government forced through Parliament draconian legislation to curtail fundamental rights to privacy, expression and a fair trial, which was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Similarly, after the latest Garissa atrocity, President Kenyatta has once again responded with another directive of dubious legality, directing the police to ignore a court order that had frozen police recruitment following a corruption-riddled exercise last year.

Predictably, and as they did after Westgate, Kenya’s rapacious political elite has closed ranks to frustrate any prospect of accountability, with the leader of the opposition CORD coalition, Raila Odinga, coming out in support of the President’s illegal directive.

So, while on the surface it may have seemed that the Kenyan government had learnt some lessons, a closer inspection reveals that this is little more than window dressing. Fundamentally, nothing has changed except the government’s ability to project change. It is still treating security challenges primarily as public relations problems.

On Tuesday, the President’s spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, was asked about his boss’ promise in the aftermath of the Westgate attacks to institute a comprehensive inquiry into the security failures. He said that the President had concluded that a Parliamentary committee report (which Parliament itself through out as incompetent) and a forensic audit (which no one has seen) had provided all there was to know about the affair.

In truth, the President had deemed the country’s security less important than the egos and jobs of his top security officials. If you want to understand why 147 people died at the hands of terrorists two days later, and why for the last two years Kenyans have continued to regularly perish in large numbers at the hands of terrorists, that tells you everything you need to know.

Why I Don't Think Kenya Is Serious About National Security

A version of this article was published in The Star

Security is now firmly back on the agenda in Kenya. The news media is today awash with coverage of the response to the weekend attacks on police and military installations at the coast and the murder of 24 policemen in the marginalized and restive North East. TV and radio talk shows, as well as newpaper column inches are devoted to a discuss ion of the possible reasons for the security failures and with questions over the future employment of the officials in charge of the security system. 

Curiously missing from this explosion of opinion is any reference to an address to “a high level seminar on national security strategy”given by President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday, just hours before the Kapedo attack. In the speech, the President laid out his analysis of the security threats that the country is facing and the priorities that should occupy his government in defending against them.

Granted the speech is not his best effort. Convoluted and rambling, it appears to be more about being seen to say something clever than actually providing clear and succinct analysis and articulation of strategic priorities. Filled with fluff rather than serious policy choices, it is a major speech to senior security officials that reads like a first year undergraduate paper.

So perhaps it is no surprise that no one is seemingly interested in it. However, given that this was a speech meant “to begin a critical conversation on the identification, articulation and pursuit of Kenya’s national security interests,” it deserves more than just the cursory attention it has received in the press.

Here’s a brief synopsis of what he had to say. He first lays out a shaky case for the historical underpinnings of national security which he appears to understand narrowly as the struggle to resist foreign domination (not surprising given his troubles at the International Criminal Court). The threats to this, he avers, stem from the troubled neighbourhood we live in, the need to manage the youthful exuberance of many of our citizens, the poverty and inequality that is characteristic of our economy, the politicisation of national security, threats posed by global state and non-state actors and the weakness of our own state. The President sees the latter as “the leading cause of insecurity of all forms” and thus his preferred solution is to “build a strong state whose actions will be guided and constrained by the spirit and letter of our democratic constitution.”

But how do we actually build this “strong state”? He does not say. His much-touted 10-point plan turns out to be not much of a plan at all but rather a characterisation of what he thinks “strong state” should be able to do do. What is the role of other actors in the security ecosystem such as the armed private citizens we saw at Westgate and that are prevalent across the northern frontier? Or of the private security companies? That national security is not just a matter for the state but involves all of society appears to elude him as does the multifaceted nature of the subject.

In fact he appears unaware that, as demonstrated by the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, the state’s demonstration of its strength has many times been the main driver of insecurity. Also the fact, as Jeffrey Isima of Cranfield University notes, that “in many countries of Africa [including Kenya], the provision of security has long been private in the sense that it was provided as a private good for the protection of particular groups, such as the ruling elite, to the exclusion of or against others, rather than as a public good.”

Further, his specious prescriptions that the state should “delineate the rights and duties of citizens,” or treat threats against “a single ruler or the democratic multitude” as the same, or treat citizen groups as “actors that may be drivers for other agenda” betray his own personalization and politicization of the security agenda, just as we saw him do in the aftermath of the Mpeketoni attacks.

Security analyst, Andrew Franklin, says “the President failed to recognize our refusal to implement the four security related acts even while spending in excess of Kshs 140 billion.” These include the National Police Service Act, which is meant to create a consolidated police service. Mr Franklin also faults the President for claiming that there is no "elite consensus” on national security aims and objectives. “This is false. There may be differences of opinion regarding tactics, short term strategies, methods and means but ultimate objectives --peace and security--are not seriously questioned,” he declares. Here, President Kenyatta’s speechwriters, in their hurry to take a dig at the opposition and civil society, seem to have confused disagreement over tactics with a row over strategic aims.

This pedestrian and cavalier approach of the President to the weighty challenges posed by insecurity demonstrates that his administration has primarily approached them as public relations issues. However, those in the opposition and many of us in the rest of society have not behaved any better. Mr Franklin notes that “to date the opposition offers only platitudes, clever comments and sarcasm. Nobody wants to express definite opinions about anything either because taking responsibility and perhaps being wrong are not characteristics of our collective leadership. Or they are simply uninformed and ignorant but too insecure to admit to any lack of knowledge.” 

 We seem to have forsaken our thinking caps and are only interested in simplistic “action” such as the resignation of officials or a withdrawal from Somalia. We have failed to create –and more importantly, are not seeking to create- an overarching analytical framework within which to understand the systemic and systematic failures in the security system, how they came about and how they can be fixed.

Thus there is little demand for the government to live up to its promise to establish a public inquiry into the Westgate mall attack or to publish the report of the probe into the fire that almost razed the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport; little interest in understanding the roots of radicalisation and disaffection in the historically marginalized communities of the coast and the north; little thought given to the organisation of our security forces or the proper role of the Kenya Defence Forces and the dangers, wisdom and legality of its extended and indefinite deployment within our borders. Even where we have investigated what went wrong, reports such as that published by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority detailing the police failures during the Mpeketoni attacks do not prompt change.

It is time we took our security seriously. Many of the problems we face have deep roots that will not be resolved by playing dress up or bullying communities as the state is trying to do or simply getting rid of one or two officials. We must go back and examine when the rain started to beat us, which as the Deputy President William Ruto has acknowledged, is many years and many regimes ago. We must strive to understand the causes of and reasons for our vulnerabilities, and ruminate over possible solutions. We must invite and consider the opinion and advice of experts both local and international.

In short, on all sides, we must treat the national security problem as an existential threat, not an opportunity to score a few points politically and publicly. We should insist on a well informed debate and, importantly, a comprehensive and public inquiry into our national security system with a view to identifying and correcting the problems, and where necessary, re-orienting priorities. Above all, let us all put on our thinking caps and figure out how we go about the business of making every Kenyan safe. It’s about time the adults came to the table.

Can We Share The Kenyan Space?

In the 1970s, Dutch traffic engineer, Hans Monderman, came up with the concept of “shared space” after being asked to reduce the speed of traffic in a village in north Holland. He eliminated all forms of regulation on the street and to his nervous surprise, found that average speeds fell by half. According to this 2006 article by Emma Clarke, John Adams, professor of geography at University College London, whose research laid the foundation for Monderman’s work, argues that when protected from hazards, human beings readjust their risk threshold. ‘You fit a car with better brakes, people don’t drive the same way as before and enjoy an extra measure of safety, they drive faster and start braking later.”

This behaviour is based on an assessment of the risks they incurred during their commute, which risks are often ameliorated by the traffic rules and norms. The solution, then, was to remove these rules that work by mainly separating drivers from oncoming traffic and from pedestrians, and by doing so, increase drivers awareness of risk to themselves and to other road users. “Once the tools are taken away and you put some uncertainty into the street in terms of who has right of way, drivers and pedestrians naturally become more attentive and engaged... You redistribute the burden of risk, giving pedestrians more control,” says Adams.

One can learn a lot about the problems of Kenya by observing the behaviour on our roads.

Like the government that built them, they are hideously expensive but rarely in good shape. Everyone is in a hurry to get on them only to idle away many hours in the seemingly endless traffic jams. As everyone hurries up and waits, enterprising individuals freed from the constraints of law and conscience are getting ahead. These days it seems that everyone who is anyone - from diplomats to County Governors to Cabinet Secretaries- enjoys life on the fast lane courtesy of the Kenya Police, sirens, flashing trafficators or just plain old bad manners.

The rest of us middle-class nobodies can wait after all. It’s not like we are on the way to do anything important. So what if we have to spend three hours to get to the office or home just because the President is in a hurry to get somewhere? Members of County Assemblies have also argued that they should also be exempt from traffic rules because they have weighty matters to attend. This is, of course, unlike the rest of us whose petty concern is trying to earn enough to pay their obscene wages. We have to make way.

The other interesting thing about our roads is those who are actually not on them. There’s a kind of apartheid system where the poor who cannot afford cars or get car loans to buy cars they cannot afford are considered a nuisance. They die in ever larger numbers and are blamed for it. Even the pathways and pedestrian crossings supposedly built for them are not safe courtesy of the previously mentioned, morally challenged drivers. 

The roads tell us a lot about the hierarchies at work in Kenya and the relative values they place of the time and lives as well as the fortunes of the various classes of people. At the very top is the political class and those riding on their coat tails, from government officials to the wannabe county potentates. Everything stops for them. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of their dash to riches. Ours is a system that rewards the unscrupulous and punishes those who follow the rules. To ascertain this, one need only look at the records and bank accounts of the Honourable men and women in our houses of Parliament.

Our middle classes are often too busy trying to stay on the road to nowhere in particular and too busy trying to get ahead to make any noise about the state of affairs. They are grateful for any crumbs they get, any gaps they are allowed in the snarl-up that is life in Kenya even as their prospects of actually making it recede. So, for example, they will cheer the rise of property prices, much of which is driven by the money-laundering of the elite, even as that very rise ensures that their dreams of one day owning their own home will remain just that. Accept and move on, they say. Don’t complain too loudly and if you do, do it on Twitter. There’s no point in resisting the predations of the political and economic roadhogs, those of matatu-esque dispositions.

Of course, at the very bottom of the pile are the poor, whose presence on the Kenyan road is barely tolerated despite their vastly superior numbers. We prefer that they keep out of sight, stick to the places we have prepared for them. It is they, not the road that is the problem. And when the system crushes them, they die unmourned, blamed for their poverty, for making poor electoral choices, for supposedly not working hard enough or being more enterprising. Only by grouping together and expressing their power through sheer force of numbers can they force their way across. And when periodically their anger spills over in riots and “mass action” they can even take over the streets entirely.

Like the police on our roads, our institutions of accountability simply serve to keep everybody in their proper place. They are there to police the citizens, to clear a path for our betters. While they may express umbrage at the toll that the system takes both in blood and in treasure, the fact is they are its enablers and foot soldiers, constantly on the take, either openly fleecing the citizens or in more subtle ways, pocketing massive salaries for doing little work.

The inequalities on the Kenyan roads, as in Kenyan political and economic life, and the rules and norms that have developed to enforce them, need a radical rethink. We need to redistribute the “burden of risk” across our entire political and economic system.  Today, it is the poor who shoulder the largest proportion of it. The current rules and norms conspire to insulate the wealthier classes from the consequences of bad political and economic choices. During the post-election violence of 2008, for example, I remember the police lining up on the road that separates the gated middle-class housing estates where I live from the Kibera slums. Their overriding objective, it seemed, was to insulate us from the violence of the poor, which violence was a direct consequence of the frustrations and deprivations visited upon them by the system we were all so eager to uphold in the name of peace.

Just as they are on our roads, our high and mighty are protected from suffering the consequences of their theft and incompetence. They are, generally speaking, safe from the anger generated by the meltdown of the education system, the soaring inflation, the rising insecurity. Our system allows them to proceed with their lives in happy-go-lucky fashion, oblivious to the misery they continue to inflict. And it tells us that we should be horrified when someone breaks the mold to take a cane to Raila Odinga or throw shoes at President Uhuru Kenyatta. We think it unbecoming. Our rulers should only see our happy faces as we dance for them and pretend everything is hunky-dory.

When the ugly violence that the poor have to navigate on a daily basis suddenly and unexpectedly appears in an upmarket mall, we mourn for the victims. But even then, we continue to be blind to other deaths. Who laments the dead of Mpeketoni or the murdered of Garissa? Where are the monuments to mark the victims of Bungoma? Why are these not as deserving of remembrance as the victims of Westgate? As we return to our malls in supposed defiance of the terrorist assault on our way of life, do we see the suffering of those who cannot afford to indulge in the illusion of safety, for whom poverty, violence and death continue to be the stuff of everyday life? What would we do different if we did?

A village in the Netherlands that had a problem with speeding traffic passing a primary school decided to solve this, not by erecting larger fences, but by extending the playground across the street. Suddenly confronted with the risks of their behaviour, drivers spontaneously reduced speeds. We too similarly need to dismantle the system of privileges and entitlement that keeps us separate from and oblivious to the risks of our political and economic behaviour. We need to re-imagine and recreate Kenya as a “shared space” where everyone, not just the poor, takes their fair share of the risks and everyone, not just the powerful, enjoys their fair share of the benefits.

Rethinking Security

Kenya’s security system is broken. Two devastating attacks in the space of nine months, each claiming more than 60 lives, are testament to the veracity of that fact. Even before last week’s attacks on the coastal town of Mpeketoni, Kenyans had good reason to fear for their safety. According to the police, in the 35 years from 1975 to 2010 Kenya suffered a total of 6 terror attacks. However, in the last four years, the country has had to endure nearly 80 such attacks. In the light of this, it is amazing that the country is operating with pretty much the same security mindset that informed responses for over a century.

The choice of 2011 as a watershed year is, of course no accident, being the year that Kenya sent its troops across the border into neighboring Somalia where they today operate as part of the UN-funded African Union Mission to Somalia. Most of the attacks have been blamed on the Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda affiliated terror group that the Kenya Defense Forces were meant to be chasing down in Southern Somalia.

Thus many now see pulling the troops out of Somalia, and in the process fulfilling one of the Al Shabaab’s core demands, as a way to turn the clock back. It is a view that seems to be winning the support of many Kenyan politicians, but one that I consider to be extremely, even dangerously, naive. It is true that Somalia is the Al Shabaab’s primary target, where the extremists previously sought to impose a harsh, Taliban-inspired form of Islamic law alien to Somali culture and history.

However, on many occasions, the extremists have openly declared that their agenda does not stop at Somalia’s borders. Not only has the group allied itself to the global terror network, Al Qaeda, it has also actively provided a safe haven for terrorists such as those who, in November 2002, bombed the Paradise Hotel on the Kenyan coast, killing 22 innocent people.

Consider this 2009 statement from one of its officials following Ethiopia's withdrawal: "The fact that the enemy has left Mogadishu does not mean that the mujahideen will not follow him to where he still remains." The Al Shabaab thought the idea that jihad had ended with Ethiopia's withdrawal was "in clear contradiction with the statement of Prophet Muhammad … that jihad will continue until Doomsday."  Why would they treat Kenya’s withdrawal any differently?

The fact is our security problems did not start with the invasion of Somalia (though attacks have undoubtedly multiplied since) and will not be fixed by withdrawing from there. With Al Qaeda seeking to establish a base next door, we should’ve expected that the war would sooner or later come to our doorstep, whether or not we intervened. The question is why were we not better prepared?

The real issue is that our security setup is not fit for purpose. As David Ndii notes in his recent piece, “we retained the repressive colonial security infrastructure whose primary function was to protect the government from its oppressed subjects.”   As I have written many times before, the colonial state was never overthrown and the extractive state was maintained with our ravenous elites feasting at the top. The entire security apparatus remains designed to protect this obscene banquet.

Thus our agencies (and institutions) are very good at finding political opponents and disrupting citizen demonstrations, but not as good at detecting, preventing or responding to terrorist atrocities. In a very real sense, they are fighting with their guns aimed at the very people they are supposed to be protecting. Because they have been resourced to fight internal opponents of the regime, they have neither the training nor the equipment to deal effectively with the threat from international terrorists. The shambolic responses to the Westgate and Mpeketoni atrocities are proof positive of this.

However, true to form, Kenyan elites both in opposition and in government have been more interested in exploiting these attacks for political and financial gain rather than in resolving our problems. It is the same elites who in the late 90s and early 00s hatched schemes to steal humongous amounts of money under the guise of making much needed technological improvements to the security systems. The improvements, of course, never materialized.

Today, they treat security as a political football, something with which to score points against your political opponent, as opposed to a national emergency that must be addressed with sobriety and honesty. And, as always, they have sought to get paid, utilising the opportunity to sneak in tenders dubious, opaquely sourced and ridiculously expensive surveillance systems.

There appears to be little inclination to find real and long term solutions. Following the Westgate attack, President Uhuru Kenyatta promptly forgot his promise to institute a commission of inquiry into the failures that preceded it and that characterised the response. A joint parliamentary committee probe then produced a report that was so poor that the National Assembly binned it.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” said Albert Einstein and this, unfortunately, is precisely what Kenya is trying to do. However, without a clear understanding of what the long term security challenges are, Kenya will be continue to be prey to the short-term machinations and greed of those in power.

A comprehensive and independent public inquiry into the terror attacks and security responses of the last four years would help identify causes and lapses and provide the fodder for us to think about security in new ways. So far, only Musalia Mudavadi has had the good sense to demand one, albeit timidly. Let’s hope that in the coming days, many more will join him.