Why Uganda and Rwanda should lose sleep over violence in Mombasa

Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Paul Kagame (Rwanda) and Dr Barnaba Marial Benjamin during the fourth Northern Corridor Integration Projects summit held at Munyonyo, Uganda in Februart 2014. The propositions that Kenya sold its landlocked partners in the EAC in the CoW partnership, and South Sudan and Ethiopia further north around the Lamu Port South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project, all presumed a stable coastal region 

In Summary

• The most urgent thing Kenya should be doing is working with Tanzania to contain the rise of terrorist groups along the coastal strip.
• Any Al-Shabaab related violence at the Coast is not just a security risk to the people, it is an existential threat to Kenya as it has been constructed over the last 100 years

By Charles Onyango-Obbo
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Slowly, it seems the worst nightmare of the law-abiding citizens of coastal Kenya – that their region could be blighted by extremists and terrorists – might be coming true.

On the weekend, terrorists suspected to be linked to the Somali militant group, Al-Shabaab, attacked a church in Mombasa killing six people and injuring several.

But we need to rewind to seven months back. In the middle of 2013, the big story in our part of the world was the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” (CoW), a partnership that brought together Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda in an ambitious push for regional infrastructure and other initiatives. One outcome of CoW politics is the recently inaugurated single East African tourist visa.

Tanzania and Burundi, though members of the East African Community, have not been part of this Kenya-Uganda-Rwanda love-in. The Tanzanians say they are being isolated and haven’t been invited to the CoW meetings.

The CoW leaders say they very much see Tanzania as part of the projects, and have invited it to all their meetings, just that Dar es Salaam is playing the reluctant bride.

Whatever the truth, a Kenyan media executive visited Tanzania last year when the CoWs were mooing at their loudest. He sought out officials in the Tanzanian Government and ruling Chama Cha Mapunduzi, to try and understand their feelings towards the whole affair.

STRATEGIC MISTAKES

This terrorist network, he said, was partly inspired by Oman, was then being incubated in Yemen, and from there being transported and domiciled in Somalia, from where it had broken into subsidiaries that were active in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, and also Mombasa.

From there they were radiating into the eastern Africa hinterland, and further down towards Madagascar, the Seychelles, Comoros, and onward to Mauritius.

In his opinion, the separatist sentiments in Zanzibar, and the attacks on churches of recent years there will be played out on a bigger scale in Mombasa and other coastal towns.

That the mix of secessionist agitation already seen in the form of the Mombasa Republican Council would become an explosive mix if it joins up with radical local Al-Shabaab or Al-Qaeda-inspired groups.

Any push for the independence of Zanzibar, he reasoned, is at base a revanchist movement that seeks to revive the ancient Sultanate of Zanzibar which stretched beyond Mombasa.

Let us assume for a moment that he was wrong. That would still leave a bad taste in the mouth over the events of the last six months in Mombasa. The violence there has, according to hoteliers, already impacted a tourist industry that had been badly shaken by last September’s Westgate Mall terrorist attack.

Furthermore, all the propositions that Kenya sold its landlocked partners in the EAC in the CoW partnership, and South Sudan and Ethiopia further north around the Lamu Port South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project, all presumed a stable coastal region.

EXISTENTIAL THREAT

Thus any Al-Shabaab related violence at the Coast is not just a security risk to the people, it is an existential threat to Kenya as it has been constructed over the last 100 years – and fundamentally alters many assumptions on which the economies of Uganda and Rwanda have been built.

Therefore in terms of dealing with the problem, finding, prosecuting, and smashing the terrorists is only part of the solution.

The bigger solution will, one would like to believe, come from going back to ask how we got here. Beside poverty, alienation, and repression, I think many of our nations lost their way when they started “re-religionising” politics.

The “National Prayer Breakfasts”, a big thing in many Christian-majority African countries, is part of that. In our multi-religious societies, therefore, we need to find a way to reduce both radicalisation in Islam, and within Christianity with the rise of the extreme evangelical movements.

Not an easy task, for sure, but the cost of failure is too high to pay.