Politics and policy
By EDWIN MUTAI, emutai@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- Interior secretary Joseph Nkaissery said that a security barrier is being constructed on a small portion around Mandera town to help control and screen people crossing into Kenya.
- A wall, whose cost was initially estimated at Sh20 billion, had been touted as Kenya’s best bet in keeping Somalia-based terrorists Al-Shabaab from sneaking into the country.
Kenya is not building a wall on its entire border with Somalia, Interior secretary Joseph Nkaissery has said.
Mr Nkaissery told a parliamentary committee that a security
barrier is being constructed on a small portion around Mandera town to
help control and screen people crossing into Kenya.
“We are not building a 700-kilometre wall. We are
only erecting a barrier between Bulahawa and Mandera towns, which have
no man’s land,” the minister told the National Assembly’s Committee on
Administration and National Security last Thursday, adding that the plan
was to establish entry points with police checks, immigration and
customs officials.
A wall, whose cost was initially estimated at Sh20
billion, had been touted as Kenya’s best bet in keeping Somalia-based
terrorists Al-Shabaab from sneaking into the country.
Immigration Services Director Gordon Kihalangwa,
who has been nominated to serve as principal secretary for Interior and
Co-ordination of National Government, had indicated that the wall would
be constructed along the entire Kenya-Somalia border to keep out illegal
immigrants and to check the proliferation of small arms into the
country.
Deputy President William Ruto affirmed Mr
Kihalangwa’s position on April 7 when he declared that construction of
the 700-km wall had begun, even as he brushed aside questions whether
proper procedures had been followed in hiring a contractor.
The government has been weighing the option of
erecting a security barrier in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in
its territory by Al-Shabaab insurgents.
The latest and deadliest of the attacks took place on April 2 at Garissa University College where 147 people were killed.
Mr Ruto had indicated that the wall would run from
Border Point One in Mandera to Kiunga in Lamu. The project, however,
runs the risk of reviving old border disagreements between Kenya and
Somalia.
A surveillance road was also to be built, running parallel with the barrier, for easier monitoring of the border.
The barrier was expected to be modelled on the
snaking structure that separates Israel from Palestine’s West Bank and
would have seen bricks, mortar and barbed wire line the border.
Mr Nkaissery’s declaration that there were no plans
to erect the multi-billion-shilling wall followed criticism that the
effort would not protect Kenya from attacks given the ongoing
radicalisation of youths within the country’s borders.
It has also been suggested that using drones to
monitor activity along the porous border would offer better protection
against infiltration than building a wall.
The government has not disclosed the cost of
constructing the proposed Mandera barrier but reports indicate it will
comprise a concrete barrier with listening posts, surveillance stations
and CCTV cameras.
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