What else can we do?

If the United States, Great Britain, the Russian Federation, the Philippines, India or Spain have been unable to solve their problems with restive minorities with a penchant for grenades, assault rifles and improvised explosive devises, who are we to declare that the recent approach by the Ministry of the Interior and Co-ordination of National Government to identify "the enemies within" is the wrong one? While the "sealing off" of Eastleigh estate and the rounding up of thousands of "suspects" and concentrating all of them at the Safaricom stadium formerly known as the moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, might evoke images of Stalin's gulags or Hitlers concentration camps for those who subscribe to the History Channel, it is time someone asked the more fundamental question: will we treat Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku with kid gloves the next time a violent atrocity is perpetrated against innocent Kenyans? The answer, this blogger believes, is "No!"

Since the Republic of Somalia disintegrated in 1991, Kenya has played host to hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees. Because it took close to twenty years for the fighting to abate long enough for some semblance of normalcy to return to Mogadishu, many citizens of Somalia have become integrated into Kenyan society, especially among their co-religionists and ethnic kinsmen living in Nairobi, Mombasa, Mandera and Wajir and until the United States'-led Global War on Terror crossed the Atlantic, Kenyans and Somalians had lived in peace sans suspicion. When George Bush the Younger declared a global war on terror, he invited every one with an axe to grind against the United States to go to war against the United States. It is how Kenyans, who have never really been on the receiving end of US war planes or tanks or missiles, would not think twice about following the teachings of a preacher and head for Mogadishu or Kismayu to wage war against the Kenya Defence Forces in the ranks of al Shabaab.

For forty years, the only problems Kenya had were political; with the job of establishing a one-party state cut out for President Kenyatta the Elder and Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, the received wisdom from Yosip Broz Tito to Deng Xioping to Nicalae Ceaucescu to Yoweri Museveni was pretty much clear. In the 1980s, it was the foolhardy who would pretend to the throne that was the presidency. It is with the collapse of the one-party firmament that Kenya started flirting with "youth-wingers" and "militias." The murder, rapine and looting that engulfed the nation in 1992 sowed the seeds for the restiveness in Kenya's Coast, North East and Northern Frontier. Uhuru Kenyatta finds himself fighting, in effect, a secession without the tools to do it. Taking a leaf out of the US experience in Iraq, Kenya seeks to expel all "prohibited immigrants" because they contribute to the ranks of the malcontents fomenting war against Kenya. What choice is there? 

Simply because they come from dire circumstances is not sufficient not to act against them. Simply because it is a corrupt system that encouraged their becoming prohibited immigrants is not a sufficient reason not to act against them. Some are dangerous; some have actively fought the Government of Kenya. Kenya does not have the surgical precision of identifying everyone as do the USA, Great Britain or Spain. Therefore, we will use the blunt weapon of "wapi ID?" and mass deportations. If the bleeding hearts outside the Safaricom stadium have another way of separating the sheep from the wolves, please, share them with Joseph ole Lenku.