A problem as old as the Republic.

Cross-border crimes are nothing new in Kenya. This nation has had smugglers of all stripes for as long as the Government of Kenya has existed. It is fashionable to speak of "porous borders" these days, though that phrase is frequently a code aimed at the long border between Kenya and Somalia. The most common cross-border crimes are human smuggling, gun-running, drugs smuggling, smuggling of counterfeit medicine and other goods, smuggling of goods for which excise or import duty has not been paid, and the new belle of the ball, smuggling of wildlife trophies. But the king of the criminal hill is the triumvirate of people, guns and drugs, though wildlife trophies are coming on strong because of the demand in the Far East.

The smugglers cannot all be Somalis, as the "porous borders" meme would imply. In the 1990s, the Kenya/Somali border was a the preferred route for contraband sugar from Oman/Yemen and charcoal to the Middle East. When The Sudan decided to play host to Osama Bin Laden and his band of murderers, it was only a matter of time before the people smuggling included a cohort of al Qaeda soldiers on the way to extend their front against the United States in East Africa and the guns they would need to wage their war. The US embassy, as the High Commissions of the UK, Australia and Canada have been so heavily fortified, and the ranks of al Qaeda and al Shabaab so decimated by US Reapers and Predators and the KDF/AMISOM that for a time many though that the guns smuggled across our borders would lie silent.

Sadly, the truth is that these guns and the guerrilla tactics their previous owners employed in their war against the US are now being turned against rhinos and elephants, or so the civil society/wildlife conservation industry would have you believe, and names of "senior civil servants" and "politicians" are being bandied about in the same cavalier manner they were bandied about regarding the drugs smuggling scare in 2008/2009.

That is not to say that there is no grain of truth in what the civil society/wildlife conservation industry is claiming. It is an open secret that bar one or two honest officers, our security and defence sectors are riddled with bad apples. The colonial legacy of paying the upper echelons of the police and military well, and treating the rank-and-file like shit has come back to bite us in the ass. They may be members of the "disciplined forces" but their discipline takes a back seat when their bosses live like kings through corrupt procurement deals while they live like rats. It would take the patience of the Israelites in the desert for the rank-and-file to forebear their lot until "things get better" as they are always exhorted to do. Our porous borders are a reflection of the rot; it is rotten at the top and it is rotten among the rank-and-file. It is why suspected Nigerian drugs smugglers are deported from Kenya and a week later there are rumours that they have been spotted crossing into Kenya at the Namanga border crossing after parting with large wads of US greenbacks.

Let us, then, not pretend that we are facing new problems or new challenges. This is a problem as old as the Republic. The reaction should therefore, be calibrated for maximum effectiveness. "Vetting" and the other publicity stunts we have engaged in don't seem to have prevented lorry-fulls of Ethiopians, Eritreans or Somalis from being smuggled into Kenya on their way to South Africa, or tonnes upon tonnes of narcotics and wildlife trophies from being loaded onto ships in Mombasa, or sophisticated car-bombs being "discovered" in police stations. Cut off the head of the snake, and the body will whither; eliminate the corruption at the top, and the rank-and-file will fall into line. Until we accept this fundamental truth, and apply it ruthlessly across the board in the Government of Kenya, this problem will be faced by our descendants for a millennia.