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.

Frying Pan Into Fire: Will Beefy Governments Make Us More Secure?

The reaction to the terrible attacks in France and continuing anti-terror operations across Europe will sound familiar to many Kenyans but should make them sit up and listen nonetheless. Across the world, the rhetoric of war, the beefing up of security forces’ presence in our lives,  and the benumbed acquiescence of the citizenry to this governmental power grab have for the last four years almost become the de rigueur response to terror attacks.

From Paris to Nairobi, terrorists are decidedly succeeding in scaring people into abandoning long-cherished notions of liberté, égalité, fraternité and are consequently empowering and emboldening governments to act in ever more undemocratic and unaccountable ways. Democratic constitutions designed to contain the power of states are seeming ever more quaint and anachronistic in an era where regimes have reinvented themselves as protectors rather than oppressors of the people.

Today lockdowns, emergency powers, mass surveillance, armed police on the streets, criminalization of thoughts, expression and even dress are fast becoming an indispensable attributes of a “free society”. The diminution and sacrifice of civil liberties is seen as necessary to earn the favour and protection of temporal potentates.

Back to Paris, which has now suffered a second, high casualty terror incident in the space of less than twelve months. So far, criticism of the French security and intelligence services has been muted, even within France. This is understandable given the outpouring of sympathy the attacks have provoked. However, when a conversation on how men and women could smuggle military-grade weapons and suicide belts into the heart of the city does get under way, it will almost inevitably result in more assaults on liberté. Already, the French Parliament has voted to extend a state of emergency which grants “the police and military greater powers of search and arrest, and local governments the right to ban demonstrations and impose curfews” for another three months.

In Kenya, pro-government types have already begun to latch on to the idea of uniting behind the regime as an example of how we should respond to attacks. “French opposition stands with the govt amidst #ParisAttacks..in kenya theyd be calling on the president to resign” went one tweet. In times of terror, they would have us believe, the government can do no wrong. The warped definitions of patriotism being forced down Kenyans’ throats essentially boil down to “my government, right or wrong”.

Anyone querying the narratives coming out of the Uhuru Kenyatta administration risks being branded a terrorist sympathiser.  National security has become the carpet which covers all ills. When a recent report exposed syndicates within the Kenya Defence Forces smuggling charcoal and sugar in southern Somalia where they are deployed as part of the AU peacekeeping force, the report’s authors were immediately condemned as unpatriotic and malevolent agents. The KDF spokesman went on national TV to announce that the KDF had “quietly” begun investigating them and their sources. Meanwhile, the allegations, which have consistently been made by others including the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea as well as independent journalists, went unanswered.

Similarly, when, a few weeks ago, journalists reported on security procurement queries raised by the Auditor-General, they were immediately summoned and one arrested by police apparently on the orders of Internal Security Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery, who demanded they reveal their sources. Ironically, they were accused of endangering public safety for reporting that the Auditor-General had specifically stated that the “purchase of second-hand arms and ammunition… from ‘friendly manufacturers’” had “seriously compromis[ed] the operations of the security agencies”. Of course, like with KDF smuggling, little to date has been said about an investigation.

Our ears should thus prick up when President Kenyatta declares corruption a threat to national security. This is not to say that graft does not threaten the very fabric of the nation. It undoubtedly does. However, a glance at the opaque and unconstitutional means the Uhuru administration has adopted to deal with other national security threats, such as terrorism, should give us some pause. They have resulted in laws that, instead of tackling terrorists, have vastly expanded the powers of government and targeted its opponents as well as the media’s ability to report on terror attacks. The above example of Nkaissery’s mendacity demonstrates that the government has few qualms about using “national security” to shield itself from public scrutiny. Therefore, allowing it to frame the struggle against corruption in the language of national security carries significant risks.

The reason Kenyans should keep a wary eye on European reactions is because the administration will almost inevitably seek to legitimize its own bad behaviour and lack of accountability by referring to them. It will argue that the citizens of this “mature” democracy are blazing a trail we should all follow, one of unquestioning loyalty and obedience to the authorities. Just as few in France are today interrogating the retaliatory bombardment of the Islamic State “capital” of Raqqa in Syria, so Kenyans are encouraged to gloss over the reasons for and achievements of the 2011 invasion of Somalia.  

Security, we are told, is a prerequisite for liberty. And in our terrorized times, this has translated to a preference for more brawny and less brainy states. However, beefy governments rarely countenance civil liberties. We conveniently forget that throughout history, it has been governments that have been the main agents of terror. And that from Burundi to North Korea, they continue to be the main perpetrators of it. True Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, ISIS, Boko Haram and their counterparts across the globe horrible savage and vicious collections of mass murderers who need to be determinedly fought. According to the 2015 Global Terrorism Index, last year terror groups were responsible for 32,658 deaths last year, the highest death toll ever recorded. 

However, it pales into comparison compared to the deaths caused by governments which US political scientist RJ Rummel estimated to be in the order of 262 million over the last century – an average of  over 2.5 million a year.  Government’s cause death and suffering on an exponential scale. There's even a term for it: democide. Beefing them up so they can supposedly more effectively and efficiently fight terrorists may very well be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

It is also important to remember another of Rummel’s findings: “Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth ….The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." Democracies which fragment and distribute power are much less of a threat to their citizens than totalitarian regimes where power is concentrated in the executive or in the leader.

Given the above, here’s the really bad news: And, as Canadian MP, Elizabeth May, noted last year: “Once we give up our rights and liberties, it's very hard to get them back.” Rousseau was even gloomier. “Free people remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”

Uhuru Kenyatta's Ten Commandments

If New Year Wishes Were Horses...

Yesterday, Kenyan police made a remarkable find. With the help of the public and after combing an overgrown compound in the Rift Valley town of Burnt Forest for three hours, they discovered an aluminium container buried under the ground. Inside were six AK47 assault rifles and about 700 rounds of ammunition.

While the circumstances surrounding the discovery were themselves little short of astounding, a little noted feature of the story was the use of so-called “gun detectors” alongside police dogs. Media footage appears to show police meticulously using the devices to scan the search area for weapons. On closer examination, however, the devices resemble the fake bomb detectors sold to authorities around the world by convicted fraudster James McCormick.

Kenya was one of the first countries to purchase the devices in 2004, and even after they were shown in a UK court to be “completely ineffectual as a piece of detection equipment” and contained no working electronics, our police have kept faith in them. “They are in operation and they work,” declared Nairobi police chief, Benson Githinji, just last year.

The use of equipment that has been shown to be useless is symptomatic of a much deeper malaise that has infected the government’s approach to insecurity, and indeed to many of the problems bedevilling Kenya. Over the past year, it has kept repeating the same actions over and over, and hoping for different results.

Thus the so-called war on terror revolves around the familiar tropes of criminalising entire communities and violation of civil liberties that have previously failed to stop attacks. Instead of rethinking its strategy and adopting new, effective and comprehensive tactics to tackle the security meltdown that terrorists have been taking advantage of, the government continues to bang our collective heads against a brick wall. It has even sought to give its failing methods the force of law through the recently passed Security Laws Amendment Act.

And when confronted with criticism, its preferred response is to shoot the messenger, not pay heed to the message. So when Aljazeera aired its expose about extra-judicial executions of terror suspects, the government’s reaction was to ignore the substance of the allegations and to threaten the media house and its journalists. The new laws target the dissemination of news about terror incidents, essentially requiring police approval of any reports. It is hard to imagine that exposes of state incompetence, such as the KTN investigation into the response to the Westgate attack which provided the now familiar footage of soldiers looting the mall while pretending to fight terrorists, will henceforth be allowed on air. It is worth noting that at the time, the Inspector General of Police was not keen on reporting that embarrassed the government and actually ordered the arrest of the journalists involved.

In other areas too, the government has continued to plough ahead with measures that bring little relief to the common citizen while providing huge opportunities for rents for the elite. Following his predecessor’s lead, massive infrastructure projects, featuring either single sourcing or dubiously awarded contracts, have become the order of the day. Corruption and impunity reign supreme as elites graduate from chai to chicken. Meantime, Kenyans are saddled with poverty, disease and ever higher levels of debt and living costs.

As in Burnt Forest, where no journalists seemed to question the use of the “gun detecting equipment,” the government’s incompetence has been abetted by that of the country’s media houses. What Israeli politician, diplomat and author, Abba Eban, said of the Arabs is true of our press:  they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Over the past year, the government has rarely been called to account by the press or even had its narrative questioned. It is almost never asked to substantiate its claims of having prevented many terror attacks, of falling crime rates or significantly reduced energy costs. From superficial reporting on the challenges facing the country to the limited coverage of the opposition’s Saba Saba rally, to the parroting of government narratives on various issues, the media has distinguished itself by its insipidness. Coverage, though somewhat improved compared to 2013, continued to be episodic and devoid of context.

Therefore, as we ring in the New Year, I continue to hope that as a society, we will begin to demand better. That we will tire of the mediocrity and mendacity that has become a mainstay of the government’s policy pronouncements and insist on well thought out and well-articulated strategies that actually address our real problems. For example, that we finally decide to address the many weaknesses with the electoral system that were revealed by the last election cycle, keeping in mind that bungled elections have proven to be the greatest threat to our national security. Or that we will question the reality of government pronouncements of a “transformed” education system and insist on more than just superficial actions like the provision of laptops or abolishing of the school ranking system.

In all, I hope that we will go beyond a reflexive shouts about institutionalism and towards a candid examination of the nature of our institutions, the system they engender and the fruits they produce. That we will continue the effort to re-imagine and re-create Kenya as a country that works, not just for a few, but for all her citizens. And finally, that the media will find the courage to lead the nation in this endeavor. I will try to play my part and pray others will as well.

Let this be our common resolve, our resolution for 2015.

Happy New Year!

Press Release: KGWA Fully Supports Changes To Kenya's Security Laws

Nairobi 21^st December, 2014. The Secretary General of the Kenya Ghost Worker Alliance, Mr Casper Mwakazi, has expressed the organization's full and unstinting support for the efforts of the Government of Kenya to secure the country from the menace of terrorism.

On Friday, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law a set of tough measures designed to ensure the country can detect and prevent terror attacks. This came after a chaotic session of Parliament passed the contentious Security Laws (Amendment) Act, 2014.

In a statement sent to media houses, Mr Mwakazi praised the President for taking a principled stand on the issue. He faulted those saying the legislation had been rushed and had not benefited from wide consultations. "I can confirm that the KGWA was one of the organizations consulted by the government over the amendments," he said.

He added that, for the sake of national security, the Association had offered to temporarily fill the position of Inspector General of Police left vacant by the resignation of David Kimaiyo three weeks ago.

“It is unfortunate that some misguided Kenyans do not understand that these measures will exorcise the spectre of terrorism haunting our country,” he said. "Just because the benefits of the law are not immediately apparent doesn't mean they are not there," he said.

He urged Kenyans to maintain trust in their elected leaders, cautioning against selfishness. “The rights we are sacrificing in the interests of national security, are nothing compared to the peace of mind the government will gain,” he said.

He also noted that even though the new law posed a threat to the livelihoods of human rights activists and journalists, that would be offset by the opportunities it would open up for the members of the KGWA.

In this regard, Mr Mwakazi also welcomed reports that the government was considering a fresh head count of public workers. The last recount, carried out a few months ago, resulted in 12,000 KGWA members almost losing their jobs.

“The KGWA remains optimistic that any new recount would vastly reduce the number of our members affected by this draconian measure. We renew our call for a transparent process and dialogue to resolve any outstanding issue,” he said.

The statement concludes with the KGWA motto: “Work by faith, not by sight.”

The Government Knows Best

Barely four years after it was inaugurated with much pomp and ceremony, Kenya’s new constitution is being undone. The Security Amendment Bill introduced in Parliament last week portends the return of the all-powerful, unchecked executive and its intrusion into almost every facet of Kenyans’ lives.

Under the guise of giving the government the tools to fight insecurity, the proposed gives government wide and unchecked discretion in defining what constitutes a threat and taking measures to mitigate against it. It cuts a large swathe through constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy, fair trial, assembly, information, expression and thought as well as freedoms from arbitrary detention and even torture, in a misguided attempt to respond to rising incidents of insecurity including terrorist attacks.

This atrocious piece of legislation is just the culmination of a long period of Kenyan elites undermining the foundations of liberal democracy in Kenya. The fact is, while the adoption of the new constitution should have heralded the democratisation of government, the logic of tyranny was largely left intact.

In Kenya, as elsewhere, the fight for freedom has primarily boiled down to a struggle against the notion that government and ruling elites know what’s best. From colonial times, the people in power have disguised their oppression under a proclaimed special knowledge and patronising parental concern for those they oppressed. The British claimed to govern in the interests of the native population, to be the altruistic purveyors of civilisation, even as they murdered, looted and repressed.

However, it is plain that many who led the struggle for freedom, did not themselves fundamentally reject this idea. Successive post-independence governments similarly claimed to be “baba na mama” to the Kenyans they were robbing blind and whose rights they were trampling underfoot. For them, it was not oppression that was the problem, but rather who it was doing the oppressing. Following their footsteps, in 2003 the late John Michuki, a former colonial enforcer reinvented as a minister in the government of Mwai Kibaki which ended four decades of despotic KANU rule, suggested that constitutional reforms were no longer necessary since the sole objective had been to unseat the dictator, Daniel arap Moi.

In fact, with Moi’s demise, the struggle ceased to be about principles and increasingly became about power, and between those who had it and those who wanted it. Many of the leading lights of civil society and the church marched straight into government and into the annals of corruption and kleptocracy. Not only was there a failed attempt to foist a bastardized version of a new constitution on Kenyans in 2005, but by 2007, the electoral arrangements that had been negotiated with Moi to ensure a credible poll in 2002, were being rolled back.

Following yet another round of election related blood-letting, a new constitution was inaugurated in 2010 which was meant to change the way our politics worked. But, as last week sadly showed, that is yet to take root. Too many ordinary Kenyans have been seduced into thinking that the government knows best, that it is actually the checks on the arbitrary exercise of power that are the problem, that instead of protecting constraining rogue government, the constitution is making us more vulnerable to terrorism. Despite the fact that it has largely failed to implement the security system as envisaged in our constitution and laws, the government has spun its own incompetence into a narrative of excessive constitutional restraints.

So once again we hear the refrain that “Uhuru Kenyatta is not Moi. You can trust him with power.” The false narrative is propagated that it was Moi, not the concentration of unchecked power in the Presidency, that led to the state-sponsored terror that killed many more Kenyans and destroyed many more Kenyan lives than its religiously and ideologically inspired cousin. We even hear talk that some oppression is actually fine, even desirable, and that Moi, who has today been rehabilitated from oppressive and kleptocratic tyrant to strong and wise leader and elderly statesman, was an effective bulwark against terrorism, even as he massacred and terrorized.

Kenya’s slide into the seductive embrace of authoritarianism has been aided by the silencing of alternative voices, the continuing demonization of civil society and the lobotomising of the news agenda. Its purpose is to keep the citizenry divided, blind and uninformed, only privy to the official truths of government spin-masters. The publication of government press releases as news by the insipid media, and the Church’s support for tyranny demonstrate just how successful the government has been.

The Security Amendment Bill is the fruit of these efforts and Parliament’s rush to adopt it is proof that the idea of the Assembly as a check on Executive excess and not a rubber stamp for its decisions, has also been abandoned.

In the end, it is the people who must do the work of protecting the country from its government, the labour of upholding the constitution. While some, under the banner of “civil society” or “opposition” can take the lead, it does not absolve the citizen from this duty. Just as it is the ordinary Kenyan who will suffer from the worst excesses of unaccountable government, it is we who must resist its re-emergence.

We must not be suckered by the false notion that the government knows best. It doesn’t. And even when we might be inclined to believe its good intentions, history shows, it doesn’t stay that way for long. Those you think are on your side today may very well turn out to be your oppressors tomorrow and the laws being cheered on today will be the yoke of tomorrow’s subjugation. That is the reality that Kenyans will sooner or later have to wake up to. 

Why We Should Give Kimaiyo The Benefit Of Law

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. The public will clamour for such laws if their personal security is threatened.” This quote, regularly attributed to the Russian tyrant and mass murderer, Josef Stalin, should give Kenyans pause as we demand that the government take action to address the massive failure in security that the country is experiencing.

That there has been a near complete breakdown in the security system is beyond doubt. Citizens are being murdered with relative impunity along our borders and at the coast, and the resource-related ethnic violence raging unabated across the north has not spared even security officers. In the capital, women are afraid to walk the streets or take public transport for fear of assault by mobs of men and in Baringo, girls are openly subjected to illegal Female Genital Mutilation. Our wildlife sanctuaries have been turned into killing fields and despite the government knowing the people responsible for poaching, it continues unabated. In fact, according to one investigative report aired on KTN earlier this year, the poaching kingpins are being actively protected by the state.

Our security system is failing, and it is failing comprehensively. But in government circles, there seems to be a real reluctance to admit this. The standard response has been to claim that the security forces are actually doing a great job, that they have prevented numerous attacks (no details provided, of course), that the terrorists have been defeated (whatever that means) and clichéd promises of “beefing up security.”

It is clear that these excuses are wearing thin and the public can now see through them. The transparent attempts to pass off public relations spiel as serious security policy no longer works. Across the country, citizens are scared and are demanding that the government get its act together and protect them as it is sworn to do. However, recognising there is a problem is the easy part. Diagnosing what is causing that problem and coming up with a remedy that will not turn out to be worse than the disease is more difficult. The hardest part of all will be getting the patient to actually take the medicine.

Let’s take an example from our past. In the years and decades following the initial euphoria of independence, many Kenyans came to the realization that the state had turned rogue. It had not changed the colonial ethos and remained a parasitic entity, benefitting a few at the expense of the many. Its security forces, while nominally meant to protect the citizenry, in reality continued their colonial function of policing them. The security agencies were implicated in many abuses, including extra-judicial killings and assassinations, torture and disappearances.

As a result, when, following decades of agitation and resistance, the opportunity to negotiate a new social contract was achieved, one of the paramount objectives was to create a system that would make the security organs serve the interests of the people rather than those of the people in power. Thus the new constitution required that the National Police service be independent and gave its head, the Inspector General of Police, security of tenure. The President cannot fire him on a whim. Neither can he direct the IGP in how to enforce the law or tell him whom to arrest and whom not to.

In return, it was hoped the police service would exercise its mandate without fear or favour. In practice this has not turned out to be the case. The patient has refused to take the medicine. Police reforms have stalled and where we have laws, such as the National Police Service Act, they have failed to be properly and fully implemented. Similarly, laws requiring that Parliament authorize any deployment of the Kenya Defense Sources within the nation’s borders, which were designed to avoid the sorts of abuses recorded in the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, have been regularly circumvented.

Thus, it is clear that we have a security crisis and that part of the problem stems from the unwillingness to implement the laws that sit in the books. However, we will need to do some more digging and thinking if we are to understand the scale of the problem we face and to come up with workable solutions. This is why it is imperative that we support the demand made the Occupy Harambee Avenue protesters on Tuesday, that the President fulfil his promise to institute a public commission of inquiry into the security failures. Such an inquiry should take a holistic look at the entire security architecture in the light of the threats and challenges that confront us and make recommendations.

In the desire for results, we must avoid being stampeded back into the era of dictatorship. Some have suggested changing the law to make it easier to fire the IGP, David Kimaiyo. Such a proposal has been made in the National Assembly by the Jubilee Chief Whip, Katoo ole Metito and by the Chair of the Departmental Committee on Administration and National Security Committee, Asman Kamama.

Whatever one may think of Mr Kimaiyo’s performance, we must guard against attempts to reintroduce the imperial presidency. It is better that we insist of the procedure to remove him, which involves petitioning Parliament and the formation of a tribunal, and more important to figure out why the IGP has not taken advantage of the independence afforded to his office to streamline the force and make it more responsive to citizen concerns.

I will end with an excerpt of a dialogue between Sir Thomas More and his daughter's suitor, William Roper, as set forth in Robert Bolt's two-act play, A Man For All Seasons, which I think illustrates the folly of chopping down the laws that protect us in an attempt to get at both the terrorists and the incompetent and negligent officials who enable them.

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

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.

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.

Of Neighbours and Machetes

National security has always been the excuse of choice for repressive governments seeking to clamp down on dissent. It is such an attractive ploy because the definition of what constitutes national security, let alone a threat to it, is not only extremely vague but very much dependent on what shadowy figures with "intelligence" declare it to be.

It is they who have the wisdom to handle the sorts of information and knowledge that could not be possibly entrusted to Ordinary Joe. All he is asked to do is sign the checks and trust that whatever is done in his name is for his own good, even though it may require the sacrifice of some essential liberties.

In the just concluded elections, the perceived threat to national peace and stability was again the weapon of choice against dissent, wielded not just by the government, but also by a society uncertain of what it would do if it were shown the intelligence. The violence of just five years ago fresh on our minds, we became a terror unto ourselves.

In 2007, so we are told, historical grievances, sparked by the refusal to accept a stolen election, led to a spontaneous orgy of killing and destruction. This, I think, is largely a work of fiction. Or at best, it is a selective retelling. It seems pretty much everyone who has looked into it has concluded that most of the violence was premeditated and prearranged. Meetings had been held and targets pre-selected; pre-outraged thugs had been paid, prepped, armed and ferried about. Politicians and radio stations incited, homes and churches were burnt and people died.

Today, it is not the fact of pre-ordained violence that we are constantly reminded of. Rather, it is the refusal to accept the official version of events, what many saw as a plainly fraudulent outcome, that is portrayed as the casus belli. The narrative of our sojourn into hell has been spun as a consequence of defying our betters, of demanding to see the intelligence and make up our own minds. If only we knew our place, accepted and acquiesced, then things would have been Oh! so different.

Now, this was far from the first election to have been stolen in Kenyan history. In fact, since the return of multi-party politics, the results of every single presidential election, except the 2002 one, have been disputed. Those in control of the state, as well as their rivals for that control, have been primarily responsible for the political violence that accompanied these contests but have sought to paint it as spontaneous "tribal clashes" over historical grievances. Regardless of the fact that it was actually their greed and ambition that created these grievances in the first place, in the official (and increasingly popular) narrative, it is the victims, both historical and current, who bear the blame.

This narrative has transformed what is essentially a political negotiation between individuals over control of state resources using militia and IDPs as pawns into a tribal fight between the communities they claim to represent. By articulating reality in this way, politicians have managed to socialize responsibility for corruption and violence while paradoxically, privatising the benefits of power. Thus the actions of any politician become identified with those of his tribe, his thievery becomes that of the tribe, his violence that of the tribe.

We have bought into this crude version of events in which the victims have donned the garb of perpetrators. Instead of blaming individuals for fomenting chaos, we have chosen to see entire communities as culpable. We accepted the "official truth" that we were all responsible for the 2007 tragedy, that we were all potentially murderous. In doing so, we have generated a climate of fear and hatred wherein every dispute is seen as an existential threat. Since every neighbour is a potential machete-wielding psycopath in disguise, every action and utterance is the potential spark for mindless, all-consuming violence. This is the genesis of our mutual terror of one another, the consequent quashing of dissent, and the loud and incessant calls for a peaceful silence.

To extricate ourselves from this pernicious ideology, we need to go back to the beginning. To recognise that we have been gullible and begin to reconstruct narratives that more accurately reflect the truth. The report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, due out in a month's time, will be crucial in this endeavour. If the Commission is true to its mandate, the report will lay bare the iniquities of the past and give us an opportunity to rethink the lessons we have drawn from it. Perhaps then we can begin to identify for ourselves where the real threat to our collective security comes from.