Consequences of stubbornness.

There are lessons to be learnt from challenges other countries undergo, whether they overcome them or not. In 1956, Israel joined Britain and France in a harebrained scheme to take control of the Suez and the Sinai. It almost ended in tears and though Israel came out ahead in that war, it drew important lessons that were effectively and ruthlessly applied in 1967. When Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel in 1967, she was ready. Her defence forces were the most effective in the Middle East; highly trained and highly motivated. The three Arab invaders did not stand a chance. It is a lesson that Israel forgot by the time the Yom Kippur War came around and though it prevailed again, it was at a great price. It took away lessons from that war too and today only the foolhardy would even countenance a war with Israel.

 

On 7 August 1998, the embassies of the United States in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed by al Qaeda operatives. The bombers had a network in place in Kenya to carry out the bombings. They were originally from Somalia but nearly all of them had come into contact with Usama Bin Laden in the Sudan while others had fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Typical of the Kenyan security establishment, it reacted by pushing through the National Security and Intelligence Service Act. In Kenya, the law is always the solution of first instance. This isn't necessarily the wrong approach; frequently one will require a statutory framework that is coherent to get the job done. In Kenya, though, the obsession is always to solve all problems using statutory instrument without looking at the bigger picture.

 

It is indisputable that the security scenario in Kenya today is dire. al Qaeda's surrogate in the Horn of Africa, al Shabaab, has proven to be quite resilient. It has carried out bold attacks in Kenya and Uganda since 2010. But the Westgate siege in August 2013 demonstrates that the Kenya security establishment has not learnt the proper lessons from the 1998 US embassy bombings. If it had, the traditional round-up-the-usual-suspects approach to national security would be a thing of the past, the plaything of politicians out to prove their tough-on-crime credentials.

 

Assessing what is in the public domain regarding national security is a mug's game; there is more information hidden than is available to make a fair assessment. But we can tease out some worrying trends from what we see and what we hear. In Operation: Usalama Watch, launched with zeal in April/May 2014, one can almost be certain that the National Police Service, its Directorate of Criminal Investigations and the National Intelligence Service do not have a comprehensive list of al Shabaab operatives operating in Kenya. They seem to have a comprehensive list of every Muslim cleric who's ever said a bad thing about the government, though.

 

Secondly, it is almost certain that perhaps only the NIS has trained manpower in the collection and analysis of threats to the national security. The National Police and CID do not seem to be able to anticipate security-related problems. It is why the measures the police have taken in the name of national security have proven woefully inadequate. This is further complicated by the low level of legitimacy the police enjoy among the people which seems to be exacerbated by unrelenting accusations of corruption. (Indeed, during Usalama Watch, hundreds of Kenyans have accused the police if using the operation as a license to extort millions from "suspects.")

 

What Kenya should have done after 1998 was not just enact an intelligence-gathering enabling legislation, it should have focused in building the infrastructure for tackling terrorists and terror cells. Documents of identity should have been upgraded in 1999/2000. Border crossing points should have been streamlined and automated to reduce the penchant for border agents to solicit or accept bribes. The administration of the police forces should have been made more efficient; the old-timers with old school mindsets should have been eased out. Professionalisation of policing should have began at in 2000/2001. Finally, Kenya should have done more to make the restive communities at the Coast, the NEP and the bandit-prone zones feel more included in the fate of the nation.

 

The lessons not learned are getting Kenyans killed in large numbers. Westgate seems to have failed to spark a revolution in intelligence-gathering or analysis. It did not galvanize the police forces into swifter reforms or professionalization. Graft seems the most common way for terrorists to obtain documents of identity in Kenya. The marginalization and exclusion  of the peoples of the Coast, the former NEP and the bandit-prone zones seems to have intensified. The consequences of this deliberate tack will be ever greater bloodshed against the innocent.