The Courage To Be Free

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," said Benjamin Franklin. The arrest and nine-hour detention of Brazilian David Miranda at London's Heathrow airport has today re-ignited debate over the erosion of civil liberties in the war against terror. Miranda's treatment was widely seen as a vindictive attempt to intimidate his partner, and Guardian reporter, Glen Greenwald, for publishing information on US government spying on both its citizens and people across the world.

The source of Greewald's information was Edward Snowden, whom the West has turned into a fugitive, following in the footsteps of Wikipedia's Julian Assange, still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and Chelsea Manning, who was recently sentenced to 35 yeas imprisonment for being the providing Wikileaks with thousands of secret US diplomatic cables. The scale of this unprecedented attack on civil liberties supposedly guaranteed in the West was recently underlined by reports of UK government goons overseeing the destruction of hard drives containing information relating to the Snowden leaks in the Guardian's basement.  "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," one said.

As noted by Agnes Callamard, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, an international human rights organisation that defends freedom of expression, Miranda's arrest has also highlighted the fact that odious so-called "anti-terror" legislation is actually being used, not to target terrorists, but against against activists and journalists who dare to question and expose the "all-encompassing security response to terrorism and the human rights violations that result from it".

Any of this sound familiar?

In Kenya, the diminution of fundamental freedoms in the name of an elusive "peace" or security has been a fact of life for a long time now. By the time the election season rolled around, we had gotten used to the idea of trading innocent lives and the rights to a fair trial for the illusion of security. We cheered whenever the police announced their latest kills. "Cops gun down suspected thugs in shootout," was a regular headline. "Suspected" became more than a word. It became a means to strip people of their humanity. So few raised their voices when suspected thugs were shot and suspected witches were burned.

(It is worth noting, however, that in the hallowed halls of the powerful, "suspected" didn't have a similar connotations. For example, when calls grew for senior officials implicated in theft to resign, the government invented a new taxonomy where they could "step aside" and continue earning their obscene wages without the bother of working for them.)

In the run up to the election and in the time since, the dread of a 2007/8-like post-election conflagration has created an atmosphere where the public is increasingly willing to acquiesce to, if not support, the silencing of voices challenging official conduct and narratives. Like the Guardian in the UK, our media have become complicit in this silencing, destroying journalism standards under the watchful eye of the government's security apparatus. Editors have allowed the news to be lobotomised. Journalists do little other than parrot the official line and are more concerned with their celebrity status than in an informed audience.

The period following the election has demonstrated that, like in the West, these silences are not erected to protect the public, but rather to protect the elite, who have used the period to line their pockets with public cash, from prying eyes and uncomfortable questions. We have seen a bill in Parliament to "improve" the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission's report by deleting their names from it, the rehabilitation of Daniel arap Moi from erstwhile kleptocratic and brutal dictator, to lovable elder statesman as well as the revival of Nyayo-era intimidation by officials openly issuing warnings to those "fomenting disaffection against the government."

In this atmosphere, organised civil society has been effectively silenced. Calls for reform of the electoral system have been branded as the resurrection of a dangerous electoral politics. Human and political rights activists with a distinguished history of standing up for Kenyans' freedom and dignity are today designated as Western stooges and regularly receive death threats. With no public outcry, the government has passed a law allowing it to register and regulate the operation of civil society organisations. It has similarly drafted a bill to similarly muzzle the compliant press, again facing little public opposition.

In Kenya, as in other parts of the globe, there is an effort to convince the public that fundamental freedoms need to be curtailed for the sake of security. "Security, rather than human rights, has emerged as the algorithm de rigueur," says Callamard. This argument must be resisted for it seeks to mask the real causes of conflict and precludes effective remedy to both deliver justice and enhance security. The actions carried out under the cover of darkness or the cloak of secrecy, actions claimed to be necessary for national security, have time and again been shown to be neither necessary nor in the national interest. Revelations such as those from Wikileaks have demonstrated the folly of putting our faith in official pronouncements or in public professions of commitment to protection of fundamental freedoms.

We must instead insist on the means to monitor and punish any government malfeasance. We must insist on a press that is truly free and that takes its duty to inform, rather than entertain, the nation seriously. We must also insist that the government keeps its dirty hands off civil society and leaves them be to question and interrogate official conduct and policy. We must insist on a better electoral system and refuse to be bought off by talk of building the nation, economic growth and free maternity and laptops.

We must build up the courage to be free and come to understand that it is we, the citizenry, who are the ultimate guarantors of accountability in government. If we shrink back out of fear, if we sacrifice "liberty for a little temporary safety" then we not only won't deserve, we also won't achieve either freedom or security.

War and Peace-keeping

Si vispacem, para bellum is a well-worn Latin adage that translates as, "If you wish for peace, prepare for war." However to prepare for war, one must have an idea of the likely threats as well as which to prioritise. According to the Kenyan Ministry of Defence, the two-fold mission of the country’s armed forces, as defined by the Constitution, is “to deter aggression and should deterrence fail, defend the Republic; provide support to civil power in the maintenance of order.” But what does it mean to defend the Republic?

Kenya’s National Security Intelligence Services Act defines “a threat to national security” as espionage, sabotage, terrorism or subversion directed against the country’s interests; the destruction or overthrow of the constitutionally established system of the Government; violence promotinga constitutional, political, industrial, social or economic objective or change in Kenya; and “foreign-influenced activity” that is detrimental to the interests of Kenya.

Thus the military’s mandate does not preclude its intervening in internal matters to preserve and defend the state. In fact, the prospect of military intervention is domestic matters is not new in the region. Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have been host to numerous coups d’etat by the military establishment, in most cases to the detriment of society as the military administrations proved to be much worse than the civilian regimes they deposed. In fact, two of the region’s leaders, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, came to power via military force and thereafter sought to legitimize their rule through elections.

More recently, addressing an East African security meeting in October 2009, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni called for the creation of an East-African defence force to counter threats both from within and outside the region. And during Kenya’s post-election conflagration in 2008, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, drew the wrath of the Kibaki administration when he urged the Kenyan army into action saying that he did not oppose military intervention when “institutions have lost control”. Ironically, according to the Financial Times, President Kibaki had himself considered imposing a state of emergency but the army resisted, fearing a split in their own ranks.Instead the army preferred a low-key role, distributing food and opening up blocked roads, though on at least one occasion it did step in to separate fighting mobs. According to a paper by the Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director, Muthoni Wanyeki, Agenda Item One of the mediation processes contemplated the possibility of preventive military deploymentto immediately end the violence.

However, in its interventions, whether internally or facing an external foe the military falls under the same limitations as described by Jakkie Cilliers of the Institute for Defence Politics in the case of the South African Defence Force. “It is part of the executive arm of the Government. It therefore does not have autonomy of action, or unlimited scope in defining its own role in society at large, except in so far as such actions or roles support, and are within the guidelines of national policy and objectives.”

A paper by Carolyne Pumphrey for the US Department of Defence states that while the traditional view of national security is that it is concerned with the preservation of state sovereignty (most especially its monopoly of force) and the protection of national interests, these interests are not confined to countries’ borders. If one compares Kenya’s territory to its ecological footprint- the amount of resources the country needs to maintain itself- the latter is far larger than the former.Therefore a threat to the country’s ability to secure supplies from without its territory, such as that posed by Somali pirates to shipping destined for Mombasa is a threat to its national security.

While the military can be seen as an instrument available to a sovereign government to provide security for its citizens and defend the nation’s vital interests, in the 21st century it may be necessary to modify this traditional approach, for more and more in today’s world protecting a way of life has moved well beyond the use of military power. According to Col. Dan Smith and Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information, “interlocking if not competing political, economic, social, and environmental interests are tying together as never before the fate of sovereign states. In turn the freedoms of citizens in an ever growing number of nations are becoming intertwined in such a way that individual security is becoming increasingly linked to the achievement of security at the international level through the reciprocal implementation of policies driven by national priorities.” To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, insecurity anywhere is a threat to security everywhere.

Therefore, a new paradigm of security has emerged which stands the Westphalian system, and its designation of the nation-state as the focal point of security, on its head. Referred to as “human security,” it decrees that the individual (or the collection of individuals known as the nation) is supreme, and not the institutions of governance. In this conception, the military’s purpose is not the protection of the state but rather the citizen. Within this paradigm, it is easy to understand the Kenya military’s queasiness about the proposed declaration of emergency during the post-election conflict. As one person, at the time described by the Financial Times, as being close to the senior command, put it, “The question the army has been asking is, is this a legally elected government? If not, and they deploy, are they supporting a ‘civilian coup?’”

However, this should not be taken to mean that the army always behaves itself when it comes to civilians. It has been accused of systematic murder, torture and scores of other human rights abuses in its interventions to quell insurgencies in Sabaot and in the country’s restive North Eastern Province. Similarly, Uganda’s military was accused of terrorized the very civilians it was supposedly rescuing from the clutches of the psychopathic LRA.

Such tactics, which breed resentment and anger, do little to further the military objective of pacification, as the US and its allies are discovering in Iraq and Afghanistan. More and more, the talk there has moved from the macho “winning,” with its visions of tidy victories and foes who know when they are beaten, to the softer “winning hearts and minds,” which recognizes that insurgencies are not defeated by capturing cities and bridges, but by embracing the people. It is a lesson the AU is yet to learn in Somalia, where it strives to secure a feckless government instead of the suffering populace. In Iraq, the troop surge, an emphasis on capturing and holding cities instead of withdrawing to the relative safety of green zones, as well as engaging with locals bore fruit. The AU should consider doing the same in Somalia.

This does not mean that insurgencies should not be fought militarily. According to Jane’s Information Group, the terror strikes on US and Israeli targets in Kenya in 1998 and 2002 highlight the fact that the country is at risk of attack by international terrorists. The country's geographical location bordering the conflict zones of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan has also made it vulnerable to infiltration by neighbouring rebel groups for use as a rear base or transit country. Similarly, Rwanda is threatened by former genocidaires who are also causing chaos on the other side of the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The LRA continues to make Northern Uganda and parts of the DRC ungovernable. All these threats need to be met squarely and the countries should not shy away from military confrontation if such is called for.

But, whether it is confronting Al Shebbab on Kenya’s borders or the Interhamwe on Rwanda’s, the focus of policymakers should be to extend the fruits of peace to the populations that breed and host these elements. This might mean working with the more reasonable elements of these groups, or, in the extreme, direct military intervention. It would also require that the military starts to provide security and services to the beleaguered peoples on their side of the borders to prevent them falling under the spell of armed groups.

General Sir David Ramsbotham of the British Army notes that every military operation is, in itself, a man-made disaster because “the use of force is bound to result in damage, not just to life and limb but also to national infrastructures. Having inflicted or received that damage, the military are trained, equipped and accustomed to repairing it. Furthermore, they are accustomed to functioning under the Law of Armed Conflict, so conforming with the dictate of international law is not strange to them either.” Our troops, with the experience of policing war zones on other continents, should prove no less adept at doing it at home.