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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ezekiel Mutua And Kenya's Language Of Silence

Ezekiel Mutua is at it again. The head of the Kenya Film Classification Board has developed a fondness for showing off the perks that come with his job. In April, he took to social media to boast about using an airport’s VIP lounge and flying business class.

This week, he posted pictures of his diplomatic passport (which, to the schadenfreudic glee of many tweeps, an embarrassed government has since ordered to him to surrender) on his Facebook account to brag that he had received a visa to visit the United States despite his bigoted and illegal crusade against “content promoting LGBT and Atheists culture in Kenya”. "I didn't even have to go to the Embassy for biometrics or pay the visa application fee. It was delivered to my office free of charge," he averred.

Mutua’s immaturity predictably drew a large number of mocking responses which only spurred him on to new lows, petulantly sending insulting direct message calling one “an idiot” and a “bloody fool”. But however disgraceful we might think his antics to be, we should be careful not to be distracted by them. 

It would be a deadly mistake to focus on the theatrics and ignore the real danger. For that lies, not in his braggadocio, but in the silence that has greeted his distorting the law and the constitution in an attempt to impose his views and beliefs on the rest of Kenya. 

Mutua has used the KFCB, which was set up to regulate “the making and exhibition of cinematograph films, for the licensing of stage plays, theatres and cinemas” in ways not contemplated in legislation. He has attempted to police parties, the internet, TV ads and even claimed the power to regulate the content of political shows. Though there is no law criminalizing homosexuality, he purports to declare it illegal and to ban internet videos that celebrate love between same sex couples. He has claimed that atheism is similarly unconstitutional despite the clear constitutional prohibition on establishing a state religion.

Yet few of these outrages have elicited much discussion outside social media. Much of Kenyan media seems to be blissfully unaware or even worse, dismissive, of the threat he poses especially as we head into the election season. If nothing else, one would expect that the idea of a government official prescribing the limits of political speech would have both journalists and opposition politicians up in arms. But it has elicited little more than whimpers and an empty threat to sue from media owners, which Mutua has laughed off.

This silence mirrors a wider quiet, a tendency to focus less on the substantial and more on the superficial. Last week, as the country marked the third anniversary of the horrific attack on the Westgate mall, I noted that official accounts of terror incidents were mostly designed to cover up the incompetence and culpability of senior officials and officers rather than reveal the truth. But the really alarming fact is that the government’s obviously flawed tales do not elicit much commentary or questioning from either the press, civil society or the opposition.

But just as the silence over the mistakes and criminality at Westgate allowed them to be repeated at Mpeketoni, Garissa, Mandera and El Adde, so the silence over Mutua's overreaching only serves to embolden him and spur him on to further violations. Like the proverbial frog slowly boiled alive, we are all imperiled by the failure to raise the alarm over his menacing of citizens and the government attempt to control the lives and opinions of citizens. 

Kenyan novelist, Yvonne Owuor, has described silence as one of our languages, which "plays out in the hasty attempt of the powerful to shut down independent voices that cannot be controlled." From the harassment of bloggers, to the firing of free-minded journalists, editors and cartoonists, this "shutting down" has been particularly evident in Kenya media. But it is not only happening there. Today Mutua is illegally transforming the KFCB into a tool to bludgeon vulnerable minorities -and political dissidents- into silence.

It is a truism worth repeating that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Whether it is about security and terrorism or the diminution of citizens’ rights to free speech and conscience, this silence leaves us all vulnerable. Freedom from predation by terrorists or even by a narcissistic and insecure public official, will only come when we loudly and consistently demand it.

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.

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.

The Price Of A Good Kenyan Name

Kenyan media is going through a torrid time. Once described as one of the most vibrant and critical on the continent, it is today looking like little more than a shadow of its former self. From the firing, reportedly at the behest of the state, of editors and journalists at the country’s two leading newspapers, The Daily Nation and The Standard, to the anodyne and superficial coverage of governmental malfeasance, media in Kenya appears to have raised the white flag of surrender.

It must be particularly humiliating for our veteran journalists, many of whom cut their teeth standing up to and exposing the ills of the dictatorship of Daniel Arap Moi only to see their publications succumb to the supposedly more democratic regimes that succeeded it. It is a sign that despite all the reforms that have been enacted, including the adoption of a new progressive constitution, little has changed in the fundamental dynamic between the rulers and the ruled. Kenya still very much remains a country of wenyenchi and wananchi.

And every so often, when one peers behind the timid headlines, one is reminded of this.

This week, the newspapers reported on the now “retired” Mr Moi apparently “breaking his long silence” to warn that corruption under the Uhuru Kenyatta administration was “getting out of hand” and to “urge Kenyans to help the government to wage the war on graft.” Now, the irony will not be lost on many Kenyans: the man who presided over a 24-year kleptocracy, and who is still allowed to enjoy the illicit fruit undisturbed, today calls corruption “this bad thing”. Talk about glass houses and throwing stones!

However underneath the comical rubbish that is Mr Moi’s condemnation of graft, lies a gem. For the aging kleptocrat unwittingly offers valuable insight into how Kenya’s ruling and still thieving elite sees its own corruption. And why so little has changed since he left power.

“You know corruption is bad . . . I am appealing to all Christians to help the government eliminate this bad thing… If you are [a] senior government [official] anywhere, please help in stopping this bad thing that is giving the government a bad image,” he is reported as saying.

Notice that Mr Moi is not particularly distressed by the misery graft has visited on Kenyans. The fact that corruption has destroyed lives and livelihoods, robbed kids of their future and impoverished millions pales into significance compared with the fact that it has given "the government a bad image". Further, the talk of it "getting out of hand" appears to imply that some level of abuse of public office for private gain is fine. Graft, it seems, is only bad when many officials do it, causing government to get blamed. Mr Moi appears to pine for the good old days when the eating was "in control".

In his eyes, corruption is not a vice to be eliminated. It is a resource to be managed lest over-exploitation causes disaffection, either among the people or, more likely given his history, among the donors. Thus the problem is not that corruption kills or impoverishes. The real crime is in exposing it and giving government "a bad image".

One only has to compare this to the prevailing rhetoric from the Kenyatta administration and its communications minions, to appreciate that it is the prevalent view among our ruling elite. Late last year, Kenyans loudly demanding a proper accounting of the Kshs 200b the government had borrowed via a Eurobond were warned that their questions, not the government’s inability to provide convincing answers, were sabotaging the economy. On social media sites, criticism of government is being equated with a destructive negativity, and the media is constantly being urged to opt for “positive” news.

Thus coverage of the plunder of Kenya’s wildlife is more likely to steer clear of the government’s role in protecting poachers and to focus attention on the fact that President Kenyatta has invited A-list Hollywood celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio to witness the burning of Kenya’s ivory stockpile.

Similarly, GoK has tended to deal with insecurity and terrorism primarily as threats to its image, not as threats to the lives of Kenyans. The failure to institute a promised public inquiry into security lapses and response failures linked to the September 2013 Westgate attack can be attributed squarely to the imperative to protect government’s “good name” and avoid accountability. A similar dynamic is at work in the two-month silence over the casualties of the Al Shabaab attack on a Kenyan-manned AMISOM base in El Adde, Somalia.

The effective binning in Parliament of the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission also illustrates the elite belief that historical injustices can be solved via transient political arrangements and empty rhetoric about "restorative justice".  

It all boils down to the conflation of Kenyans’ troubles with those of its politicians. In this formulation, citizens don't have bread-and-butter issues. They have "political problems" requiring "political solutions". An ethnic community’s welfare is improved, and its poverty vicariously eradicated, by granting its political sons opportunities to “eat” public resources. And conversely, it is impoverished by their exclusion from the feast.

Thus the response of the Jubilee government to allegations of corruption, which has essentially been to point out that the leaders of the opposition CORD coalition are similarly implicated, is entirely understandable. Because, as Mr Moi has revealed, the problem is not that public money has been stolen, but that the government is getting blamed for it. And the reason why so little has changed since he left power is that this continues to be the problem Kenyan politicians are grappling with. 

They don't want to change the system. They want their turn to eat.

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 Kenyans Die In Vain

147.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A version of this article was published in The Star

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can We Share The Kenyan Space?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Year Later, Confusion Still Reigns Over Westgate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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