The other day, a young man simply disappeared off the face of
the earth. He was a student at the University of Nairobi, studying urban
planning.
He made his arrangements carefully. He sold off his hostel room and most of his belongings.
He deleted his social media accounts and binned the posts he had made in the past. A cousin did exactly the same.
They switched off and disposed of their phones. Then they took off, possibly towards Somalia or further afield.
And
just like one of the killers who massacred innocents at Garissa
University, one of the young men who disappeared was the son of a
prominent Kenyan.
His father has served as a very senior government official.
The
person who narrated this story after it became clear following efforts
by anti-terrorism police to question other students at the university
and was familiar with the agony the parents are going through, added a
pertinent question: Where should parents whose children have been
radicalised or who seem on the verge of joining the Shabaab militants
turn?
In most societies, the answer would be to go to
the police. But Kenyans’ relationship with the uniformed armed forces is
one of fear and mistrust.
Attitudes have changed
little since colonial times when the police were the oppressors and
participated in the massacre of tens of thousands.
Many years ago as a child, we were socialised to run away for no reason at all at the sight of the police helmet.
Adults
were the same. Remember when the streets of Nakuru emptied like the
River Jordan when a marching band from the General Service Unit made its
way into town, apparently to celebrate the unit’s 50th anniversary, and
people fled for dear life not knowing the mission of the red berets?
Kenya
needs to understand that it is now in the middle of a global battle
between a small but determined core, which wants to take the world back
to the 15th century and which believes it is their duty to kill all
“unbelievers,” especially Christians, but also Muslims who don’t share
their murderous ideology.
EXIT PLAN
This
threat demands a complex, grown up, strategic response. It is right
that in the medium term there should be an exit plan from the mess in
Somalia (probably after the next presidential election there in 2016)
but that won’t be enough.
Witness, for example, the
fact that dozens, possibly hundreds, of Tanzanian youth are among those
Al-Shabaab has recruited in recent years.
One solution
would be to look to the unlikely example of Saudi Arabia and try and
formulate an ideological response to the terrorists.
Saudi
Arabia faced a growing Al Qaeda threat from the late 1990s and decided
that jailing the militants was not enough to deter recruitment.
Instead,
it set up a major de-radicalisation programme from around 2004.
Extremists were put through months of religious re-education and
psychological counselling with the radicalised youth taking lessons on
sharia law, psychology, vocational training, Islamic culture and
history.
By 2010, 4,000 youth had gone through the
programme with only a few hardened fellows returning to the path of
extremism after their release. (Most of those put through this programme
were not killers but potential murderers like the two youth who
vanished from the University of Nairobi)
Kenya needs a
multi-faceted approach. Murderers such as those who rampaged through
Garissa need to face the blunt edge of the law.
But parents also require a place to turn for those who have been brainwashed and are contemplating joining the Shabaab.
Few
parents will turn over their children to the police. The state needs to
work with clerics to fashion a counter-radicalisation strategy that can
help to rehabilitate potential terrorists, which naturally should be
accompanied by surveillance after the youths leave the programme.
Kenyans
should in turn at least suspend their perennial cynicism to all major
national questions and understand that on national security, we are
sailing in one ship that must not be allowed to list because it will
sink with everyone on board.
The sniping against elites
from North Eastern such as Aden Duale, for example, is completely
unproductive. It makes more sense to rally together and confront a
shared challenge using a variety of instruments including ideological
ones.
mutiganews@gmail.com
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