Press Freedoms Under Threat In Kenya

The arrest and detention of two Kenyan bloggers, Robert Alai and Patrick Safari over pictures of dead Kenyan security officers that shared on their Twitter timelines has once again shone the spotlight on government threats to media freedom in the East African country.

The pictures posted by the two showed some of the bodies of 12 police officers killed when their vehicle ran over a landmine suspected to have been planted by members of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terror group. The bodies had been piled in the back of a government pick-up in a disrespectful manner.

The government, perhaps predictably, took a dim view of his actions, with the National Police Service and the National Cohesion and Integration Commission both urging the photos to be taken down the pictures. The police declared in a statement that the bloggers had chosen to “callously disregard common decency of showing respect to the departed and their families”. The NCIC chimed in claiming that the pictures would cause despondency among the country's armed forces and could be construed as “propaganda for war which is not protected under the constitution”.

Both institutions seem apparently oblivious to the irony of claiming that it is not the actual treatment accorded to the officers’ bodies that showed disrespect but rather the reporting of it that was the problem. It is however not surprising. Such attempts at shaming Kenyans into silence are always employed whenever the government wishes to hush up criticism of its apparent lack of regard for officers and troops.

In January 2016, after nearly 200 Kenyan soldiers were killed in an Al Shabaab attack on their base near the Somali town of El Adde, the government also attempted to suppress any images that would highlight the scale of the failure, even going as far as to arrest and question a number of bloggers and journalists who posted pictures of the attack (though not necessarily of the dead) on his Twitter timeline. The government-sponsored hashtag #HonourOurHeroes was deployed to suggest that those demanding the truth about how many people died and for senior officers to held to account were somehow the ones dishonouring the troops, not the clumsy attempt at a cover up.

Earlier this year, on the third anniversary of that massacre, Al Shabaab militants attacked the DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi, killing at least 21 people. The New York Times published pictures which showed bodies of some of the dead, sparking a wave of online outrage from Kenyans on Twitter, calls for the deportation of their incoming bureau chief and threats of deregistration by the Media Council of Kenya – a state-funded body which regulates media in Kenya. At the time, while agreeing with the general consensus that the NYT was wrong to publish the pictures, some, including me, warned that allowing, and even encouraging, the government to get involved would establish dangerous precedents.

Today, those chickens are coming home to roost. The legitimization of the use of state power to intimidate and threaten the media has further emboldened those who are wont to shut down dissent. It is worth remembering that the Kenya government has had a long-standing ambition to censor the publication of pictures from terrorist attack. One attempt in 2014 sought to amend security laws to criminalize the publication of photographs of the bodies of terrorism victims without the consent of the police. It was fortunately declared unconstitutional for violating the guarantees of freedom of expression and of the media.

The government is well aware that the High Court in that judgment clearly disagreed with the idea that “images of dead or injured persons” even those “likely to cause fear and alarm to the general public or disturb public peace” amounted to propaganda for war. Though it is yet to state what laws the two bloggers are supposed to have broken, following a court appearance, they will however be jailed without charge or trial for at least two weeks while the police apparently investigate “claims they might have received the photos from an Al Shabaab sympathizer”. This despite the fact that a police officer has reportedly been arrested on suspicion of being the source of the images. The point of all this seems less to secure convictions than to harass and intimidate citizens and journalists into silence. It is little more than an abuse of both police powers of arrest and of the court process. In addition, the whole saga may also be a ruse to distract from uncomfortable questions regarding the whereabouts and quality of armored and mine-resistant vehicles that the government procured for the police three years ago to protect officers form exactly this sort of attack.

The media in Kenya should be very afraid. In essence, the government is looking to punish reporting that paints it in a bad light. If this sort of harassment is allowed to stand, it will not be long before regular journalists find themselves similarly treated when their stories rub the government the wrong way.

Kenya vs NYT is not about press freedom. But it could be.

The New York Times decision to publish graphic images of victims of Tuesday’s terror attack at Dusit D2 Hotel in Nairobi and the backlash it has engendered online have sparked furious debates about everything from the perceived racism of the foreign press, to media ethics and the limits of press freedom.

Many shades of opinion have been expressed with some seeing the photographs and the NYT’s refusal to take them down as a continuation of violence against the victims and their families, and as evidence of racist double-standards in the reporting on terrorist atrocities. Others have opposed the torrent of personal abuse and calls for deportation visited on incoming NYT bureau chief, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura following her initial tone-deaf and seemingly dismissive responses to complaints on social media. Now threats by the state in the guise of the Media Council of Kenya to revoke or suspend her and her colleagues’ media accreditation if the Times did not remove the images and issue an unconditional apology have also opened up a regulatory can of worms.

Photographs of deceased victims of terror attacks strike a particularly sensitive chord in Kenya and it is not just the foreign media that has found itself on the receiving end of a social media backlash. Following the 2013 attack on the Westgate Mall, in which 68 people lost their lives, the Sunday Nation was excoriated and forced to apologize after it published on its front page a gory photo of bloodied and screaming woman. Three years ago, the government arrested and threatened to prosecute bloggers for circulating pictures of dead Kenyan soldiers following the overrunning of their base in Somalia.

While extremely sensitive, it is not one that lessens Kenyans’ general commitment to press freedom. Fifteen months after Westgate, many were outraged when the government rammed through Parliament amendments to security laws that included a prohibition on the publication or broadcast of images of terror victims without the consent of both the police and the victim. The law was later struck down by the courts which ruled it infringed on the constitutional guarantees of press freedom and freedom of expression.

Media editors also have to contend with evolving community standards and attitudes as well as social media’s empowering of audiences to forcefully express themselves. Two decades ago, in what seems a completely different era, graphic images of victims of the 1998 bombing of the of the US Embassy in Nairobi in which 224 people died, caused little uproar. And while pictures of victims of state violence do not always attract the same umbrage, the traumatizing and, in many ways, uniting effect of terror incidents gives their expression particular force.

It is within this context that we must understand the reaction to the publication of the photographs. The New York Times claims it was motivated by the need “to give our readers around the world a clear picture of the horror of an attack like this”. However, many are not buying it, pointing out that, despite the paper’s assertions to the contrary, similar standards are rarely applied to white and US victims. In a telling interview explaining the Dusit D2 decision, Meaghan Looram, the NYT’s director of photography admitted that she could not recall seeing pictures of victims of school shootings in the US and the need to abandon historical notions that “may have applied different standards to material from locations broadly thought to be remote or “over there,” rather than close to home.”

But it is these same racist notions that have seen the paper refuse to bring down the offending photograph despite over 14,000 people signing a petition for it to do so. That this demand is being made by ordinary Kenyans is what should matter. It is not about censorship by the state. Rather, Kenyans are demanding that the folks at the New York Times choose humanity over their editorial policy. It should be a no-brainer.

The stand-off with the MCK is thus unnecessary. But it does have rather toxic implications for press freedom in Kenya. Not only does it make it easier for the state to isolate and target the foreign press corps, something it has previously done, but giving the government a taste of the power to decide what content media can carry could whet its appetite for more. As was demonstrated with the 2014 security laws amendments and again with a shutdown of local private broadcasters for a week last year, this is no idle threat.

So, for the sake of humanity and press freedom, the Times must take down the photo. And an apology would be nice too.

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.

How America Became An African Country

Trevor Noah, the South African comedian and host of The Daily Show, a popular late-night news satire and talk show in the US, once described Donald Trump as America’s first African President.  In fact, Americans could do worse than look to the continent in general, and Kenya in particular, for a preview of what life under a Trump administration would be like.

President-elect Trump and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta have much in common. Both are fabulously wealthy, the children of privilege with questionable success in business, and both have been accused of fanning ethnic and racial hatreds. Both have risen to head their respective countries in the most unlikely of circumstances and in the face of global opprobrium. While many across the world echewed Trump’s xenophobia and reckless approach to international affairs, Kenyatta had faced similar opposition to his candidacy three years earlier. This was a consequence of his -and his running mate’s - indictment at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in relation to Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence in which over 1000 people died.

Trump and Kenyatta even have similar ideas about how countries should be governed.

Take their shared suspicion and contempt for the media. Where Trump has called journalists “scum”, “illegitimate” and “horrible people” and declared his aim to make it easier to sue them, Kenyatta regularly derides newspapers as only good or wrapping meat, and his administration has introduced new laws meant to stifle independent reporting. It has arrested and beaten journalists who persist in asking uncomfortable questions, and, leveraging its advertising and regulatory muscle, leaned on media houses to fire them or to pull their stories. Just recently, in response to a spate of corruption stories, Kenyatta declared that the media should be required to prove any allegation of government graft they dared to report on or face the consequences.

When it comes to fighting terrorists, their pronouncements are also remarkably similar. Both prefer to speak in vague and bombastic terms and to demonize Muslim refugees and immigrants rather than offer detailed policy prescriptions. Trump says his plan for defeating ISIS is a secret whose details he won’t be revealing to the public any time soon. One hopes he’ll be sharing them with the generals since he claims to know more about fighting the extremists than they do. The Kenyatta administration, after all, has taken more than three years to come up with a strategy to tackle radicalization and is no closer than Trump to articulating a strategy to defeat the Al Shabaab, the Somali based terror group that has murdered nearly 800 Kenyans, most of them after Kenyatta took office.

There is also the question of whether Trump will follow through on his oft-repeated promised to get Mexico to pay for a wall on the US’ southern border to keep out immigrants (which Mexico has repeatedly vowed not to do). Here too, Kenyatta can offer some guidance. Depending on which of its officials you choose to believe, the Kenyatta government is building a wall to keep out terrorists either along the entire 700km border with Somalia, or just on a small section near the border town of Mandera. It may or may not be a physical barrier (there has been some talk of a human wall) whose construction is either ongoing or has stalled.

In addition to the wall, Trump has vowed to round up and deport illegal immigrants whom he says are gaming and mooching off the system, driving up crime, taking jobs and opportunities away from US citizens and depressing US wages. That little of this is true doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot. Similarly, the Kenyatta regime has developed a fondness for demonizing refugees from Somalia, blaming them for everything from terrorist attacks to being a drain on the Kenyan economy, as a way of distracting from its own failures. In 2014, under operation Usalama Watch, it begun rounding up and deporting them, and restricting those that remained to the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in the desolate north. Then, earlier this year, the government declared it would close the Dadaab camp by the end of November and has been effectively dumping hapless and unwilling refugees back into their war-ravaged country ever since. (That effort has now been suspended following an international outcry).

In September 2013, the prolific Ugandan columnist, Charles Onyango-Obbo, wrote that the International Criminal Court “had finally made Kenya an African country”. What he meant was that as the government worked to scuttle the cases against the President and his deputy (and with them any prospect of accountability for the 2008 violence), it had brought the country into closer alignment with authoritarian regimes in vogue across much of the rest of the continent. In similar fashion, it is perhaps not so far off the mark to suggest that with the election of Donald Trump, the US too has become something of an African country.

This piece was first published in the Washington Post.

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.

Lessons From Our Burning Schools

The wave of unrest afflicting secondary schools in Kenya has understandably elicited much public concern. Many have chimed in with their take on what is causing it, with most blaming panic over exams, drug abuse, an oppressive school environment, wayward parenting and incompetent government officials. Some have even suggested that the abolition of corporal punishment is to blame.

Given that this problem is not new, it is rather curious that there seems to be such confusion over its causes. According to a 1996 PhD thesis by Margaret Wangeci Gatimu of Portland University, disruptive unrest in the form of class boycotts and riots in secondary schools had by then been steadily increasing in Kenya since the mid-1970s. The study highlighted many of the same issues that are cited today.

So perhaps it is better to ask not just why unrest happens, but also why the problems said to cause it have been allowed to fester across generations of students. In a media interview earlier this week, the Cabinet Secretary for Education bemoaned the fact that recommendations from at least two task forces appointed by his predecessors as well as from many independent researchers, remain unimplemented.

This failure to effectively address the issue, despite the existence of such reports, is a manifestation of a wider systemic reluctance to employ evidence-based measures to solve problems. And this goes beyond schools. In tackling security and terrorism, Kenya has seemed to prefer knee-jerk solutions to what are complex and historical challenges. The desire has seemed to be to address the immediate crisis and move on rather than to proactively tackle the underlying and fundamental causes.

An example of this is the reaction to last week’s bombing of Elram village in Mandera by Kenya Defence Forces planes which killed at least 4 children. There have been few calls for the incident to be exhaustively investigated, for people to be held to account and, more importantly, for lessons to be learnt to ensure this never happens again. Similarly, the circumstances surrounding the January overrunning of a KDF base by the Al Shabaab group at El Adde in Somalia and consequent massacre of at least 141 soldiers are similarly shrouded in mystery. 

To these we could add the many terrorist incidents that have killed hundreds of citizens since 2012, including the attacks on the Westgate shopping mall and on Garissa University College. The many failures that allowed the atrocities to happen and that hindered effective response, appear to have been swept under the carpet. On the contrary, a Presidential promise to set up a public inquiry into Westgate failed to materialize and, as a senior police officer told The Nation last July, “there was never a review meeting on how we handled incidents”.

Earlier this week, in reaction to a terrorist attack on the Ataturk airport in the Turkish capital, Istanbul, which reportedly killed 41 people and injured more than 230, Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet ordered the beefing up of security at all Kenyan airports. But there have been few queries about what this actually means and even fewer indications that Kenyan security agencies are learning from and adapting to previous incidents. We rarely hear of our security agencies sending teams abroad to study how such attacks happened and how they are investigated. Meanwhile, domestic incidents are similarly studiously ignored. For example, reports on the August 2013 fire which razed the arrivals terminal at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, and on the improvised explosive device that went off at the same airport 5 months later, have yet to be made public. It is unclear whether they have led to any changes.

A similar dynamic is at work when it comes to addressing the root causes of post-election violence. Three years after it was handed over to the President, the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission continues to gather dust in Parliament. The report exposed many of the deep-seated maladies that have fuelled blood-letting at election time but even as we approach another polarizing poll, there is little mention of it, let alone of implementing its recommendations.  The focus of the political class is on the urgent and important but largely superficial task of reconstituting the electoral commission.

This, more than anything, highlights the fact that as a country, we are obsessed with the problems of politicians, and not those of the people. In the end, this obsession is the real reason why the problems at our schools and the state of insecurity across the country will continue to fester once the immediate crisis has passed.

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.

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.”

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 Demanding Duale's List Is A Really Bad Idea

In the aftermath of the Al Shabaab attack on Garissa University which killed at least 148 people, the local MP and Leader of Majority in the National Assembly, Aden Duale, vowed to provide a list of terrorist financiers and sympathisers within a month. That promise passed unfulfilled three weeks back. Now, Duale appears to have stirred a hornet’s nest by declaring that he is answerable to no one and owes no one a list.

It is interesting that he felt the need to distinguish between the two, accountability and obligation. For, as much as many would wish to deny it, Duale is only half wrong. He is accountable to Kenyans, to his constituent and to his party, for both his words and his deeds. However, he is under no obligation to prepare and present such a list for the authorities. Simply put, it is not his job. And his idiotic declarations from a month back do make it so.

This is not to say that Kenyans who have information that may help authorities stop attacks or apprehend criminals don't have a duty to share it. However, this duty should not extend to preparing lists of potential suspects, and more importantly, it does not absolve security agencies from their obligation to deter, prevent and investigate crimes.

It is understandable that Kenyans, who have long been treated to the empty promises of politicians and whose government has appeared impotent in the face of terror attacks, would revel in the opportunity to stick it into one of the more abrasive and empty-headed functionaries of the Jubilee administration. Like the refugees he is wont to demonize, Duale is a convenient scapegoat. He is being offered as a sacrifice to turn away our wrath from those much more deserving of it.

Sure he lied. And he should pay a price for that. Sure he and his fellow politicians from the region made cynical promises which gave false comfort to a traumatized nation seeking easy answers. They should pay for that too. But we must be clear that asking politicians to provide terror lists can only make us less safe, not more secure.

 There are several reasons for this. First, it risks politicising security and turning the counter-terror effort into an avenue for settling political scores. That would deepen cleavages within communities that groups like Al Shabaab would only be too glad to exploit.

Secondly, it would reinforce the false perception that certain communities are either responsible, or a reservoir, for terrorists and that, as the source of the problem, they should bear the brunt of solving it. This would not only further alienate these communities but, worse, obscure the real roots, drivers and enablers of terror which are not the monopoly of any one community.

To demonstrate the latter point, consider how the current obsession with Duale’s list has obscured another promise made in the aftermath of another equally devastating terror attack. Following the Westgate attack, President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed to institute a public inquiry into the security failures that permitted and prolonged the siege. Unlike Duale’s, this was a promise made by one who was both responsible and competent to deliver it. Yet 20 months and more than 300 lives later, the inquiry is yet to materialize.

That failure has been much more consequential than any politician’s list could ever hope to be. It lies at the heart of all subsequently botched security responses -from Mpeketoni to Garissa- but is rarely spoken of.

Similarly, demanding Pokot leaders and elders account for stolen guns in the north west has not only obscured all notions of individual culpability for the murder of 24 people last November, but also seemingly put to bed any public discussion of failures on the part of the security forces and thus precluded the possibility of ensuring lessons are learnt and a future re-enactment is avoided.

In the final analysis, Duale is only guilty of practicing the empty sloganeering that today passes for serious policy debate, which is in itself a terrible indictment. However, we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into furthering his perverse logic. He and his cohorts should not be excoriated for not delivering the list, but for promising it in the first place. And we must not let that distract us from the real culprits within government and the security and intelligence agencies. It is their failure to do their jobs that is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, not the empty promises of a loony MP.

We've got bigger fish to fry.

#147NotJustANumber

“Kenya is not a nation if we can’t properly memorialize each and every citizen we lose” writes renowned Kenyan writer, Binyavanga Wainaina. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Garissa University College which killed at least 148 people, there have been calls for Kenyans to name and remember those who have died, not just in this incident, but also in previous attacks and at the hands of the state.

The hashtag #147NotJustANumber has sprung up and is being widely used by Kenya’s active online community to commemorate the individual lives lost. It is a worthy and commendable effort, one that deserves the full support of all Kenyans. It is one that seeks to buck a long-standing tradition of official amnesia, especially when it comes to victims of state violence and neglect. In a very real sense, it is about ensuring that those in power are not allowed to play down or dismiss the consequences of their malfeasance.

Nearly two weeks ago, President Uhuru Kenyatta addressed a joint session of the country’s Parliament and delivered an apology for his and previous administrations’ wrongs against Kenyan over the past half century. He also announced the setting up of a Ksh 10 billion fund to compensate victims. With that, he declared he had drawn a line under a shared painful past. He repeated this statement following the Garissa attack, adding that there was a false narrative “being propagated that Kenyan Somalis and Muslims are victims of marginalisation and oppression.”

As even a cursory reading of history -or a visit to Garissa- will demonstrate, the President was being disingenuous. The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission found that there had been deliberate oppression and marginalisation of populations especially in the North-Eastern region of Kenya. And while the apology and fund were recommended by the TJRC report, which today languishes in Parliament, so was the memorialisation of victims as well as the prosecution of perpetrators.

It appears that by “drawing a line under a shared painful past” the President is attempting an erasure of sorts; to present a past with neither consequence nor culpability. While asserting the presence of victims who need to be compensated and assisted, he nonetheless denies their victimisation, that their circumstances are the result of that victimisation. He refuses to see them as individuals, to acknowledge their individual pain, to name them.

He does not, for example, see Hussein Farah Wachu, a survivor of the infamous November, 1980 Bulla Karatasi Massacre in which over 3000 nameless citizens in Garissa were killled by security forces in. Mr Wachu’s wife was subsequently murdered by an off-duty policeman in 1994, an incident for which he still waits for justice two decades later. Similarly, the President has said nothing about repealing the 1970 Indemnity Act, which illegally gave retroactive blanket immunity to all government personnel for crimes committed during the Shifta war, in which the lives of up to 7000 Kenyans were snuffed out, and during which the government herded the North Eastern population into concentration camps.

The President appears to imagine that some compensation will serve as a substitute for justice. And worse, that it will remove the need to confront this history, to acknowledge the many lives ruined and to punish those responsible.

By insisting on memorialising these victims, on uttering their names, Kenyans on Twitter are refusing to be railroaded into a superficial closure that leaves wounds festering underneath. They are insisting on seeing the victims as full human beings, not just as units to be bought off with the promise of compensation. They demand that the full horror of what happened is acknowledged, not just instrumentalized by a government looking to score some PR points. And this idea goes beyond naming just those who died. The myriads today living with the consequences of our history need to be seen and acknowledged as well.

Last week’s events in Garissa need to be understood as part of a history where the residents have been primary victims, not just of terrorists taking advantage of governmental neglect, but also of security forces responding to such attacks. We cannot wish away the fact that they, like many of their counterparts across the country, still have to endure the legacy of the last 50 years and beyond. Naming them, and seeing them, is the first step towards acknowledging and finally confronting this history. It will also be the first step in the process of cleaning out the foundations of our nationhood and establishing them on firmer ground.

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.