President Kenya briefs the nation on Garissa attack last week. The
lesson the Kenyan Government can learn from the tragedies in Mpeketoni
and Garissa is that when foreign governments with better intelligence
than Kenya issue warnings about imminent threats, it should take them
seriously.
NATION MEDIA GROUP
In May last year, shortly after Chinese premier Li Keqiang made a
high-profile visit to Kenya, Britain, France, and Australia issued
travel advisories to their citizens, cautioning them against travelling
to Kenya’s coastal region.
Having just signed a Sh327
billion loan to fund the standard gauge railway, the government
insinuated then that the travel advisories were an envy-filled reaction
to Kenya’s increasingly cosy relations with China. Barely a month after
the travel advisories were issued, Al-Shabaab brutally killed more than
60 people in Mpeketoni.
Last week Britain and Australia
cautioned their citizens against travelling to Kenya’s northeastern and
coastal regions. Once again, on cue, the government responded by
suggesting that the advisories were intended to cripple Kenya’s tourism
sector and were a result of increasingly strained relations between
Kenya and its former colonial master.
UHURU KENYATTA
In
an interview last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta rubbished Britain’s
advisory, adding that Kenya did not need British tourists (whom he said
comprised mainly taxi drivers and the like) when it was preparing to
receive high-profile dignitaries like President Barack Obama, who will
be attending a conference in Nairobi in July. Barely a day after the
President made these remarks, terrorists shot dead more than 140
university students in Garissa.
The President also
questioned why there were no travel advisories against countries such as
France, which have also suffered terrorist attacks.
He
failed to acknowledge that when a terrorist attack takes place in a
country like France, intelligence and security measures are stepped up
to prevent future attacks. Kenya has failed to put in place such
measures, as evidenced by the frequency and scale of attacks in the past
two years.
The lesson the Kenyan Government can learn
from the tragedies in Mpeketoni and Garissa is that when foreign
governments with better intelligence than Kenya issue warnings about
imminent threats, it should take them seriously. In fact, it should work
closely with these governments to gather more details and intelligence
on the threat and to mitigate them.
What all these
attacks point to, once again, is the lack of an effective strategy to
combat terrorism. The building of a wall in Mandera may deter Somali
terrorists from entering Kenya, but it will not diminish the threat
posed by home-grown terrorists.
It is clear that
Al-Shabaab’s war has now been domesticated and is being waged not just
by Somalis, but also by disenfranchised and radicalised Kenyans.
A
recent report by the International Crisis Group says that Al-Shabaab is
exploiting religious, ethnic, and socio-economic fault lines and
grievances in Kenya to gain local recruits and to propagate its jihadist
agenda.
Unfortunately, the Kenyan state and security
forces are not doing enough to win the hearts and minds of poor,
unemployed youth who are vulnerable to radicalisation.
On
the contrary, they have treated vulnerable populations with
heavy-handed brutality and arrogance. In 2013 security forces set ablaze
the main market in Garissa, which effectively shut down the town’s
economic lifeline.
RECRUIT SOMALIS
Last year it randomly rounded up and detained thousands of ethnic Somalis in Eastleigh.
If
Kenya is to win the war against Al-Shabaab, it must be seen as a
trustworthy, protective force, not one that unleashes terror on people
who are already traumatised. It must also recruit more Somali-speaking
officers in its security and intelligence-gathering networks.
Comparisons
have been made between the Westgate attack and the one in Garissa in
that both took place within large buildings and involved hostage-taking.
However, in terms of local media coverage, the two incidents could not
have been more different.
The first reporters on the
ground in Garissa were not local journalists, but foreign correspondents
from international news organisations, which led to the bizarre
situation where local media organisations were using foreign media as
their main source of information in the first hours of the attack.
And
unlike the Westgate attack, there was very little real-time coverage of
the unfolding tragedy. On the contrary, local television stations
carried on with their regular programming as if nothing was happening.
The other difference is that there have been no reports about looting,
unlike Westgate, which was plundered.
rasna.warah@gmail.com
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