Was it an intelligence operation?

The only nations that launch full-scale military invasions are nations that have a lot riding on a war. The United States has a lot to lose and not just from a global politics perspective. Its corporations are embedded in so many markets that sometimes war is the only solution to political or security problems that might reduce or even eliminate those corporations' profits. But as the Islamic State caliphate demonstrates, like Hamas before it and Hezbollah even earlier, it is not always necessary to launch a war of aggression to achieve the same political and economic goals.

The United States, the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan have well-respected, and rightfully feared, intelligence capabilities. Israel too has a fearsome reputation in the intelligence field. So do the British, the French, the Germans and the South Africans. But in the twenty-first century, where multinational corporations' market capitalisations are sometimes greater than the combined GDPs of "emerging" economies, nations have found ways of launching wars without fighting and they have relied on intelligence-led operations to sustain these proto-wars.

Kenya, under the forty-year rule of both Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, had a fearsome reputation when it came to intelligence, especially internal-security related. It was well-respected for the quality of its intelligence on the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region. It was trusted in global capitals because of it. That reputation is now in tatters and the diminishing confidence of foreign powers is reflected in their panicky "travel advisories." The tourism sector is ashambles; hotels are threatening closure and layoffs at the Coast.

Not even the most optimistic of fools believes that al Shabaab was a credible threat to Kenya before the 2011 invasion of Somalia by the Kenya Defence Forces. They were largely effective along the long Kenya-Somalia border because of the inadequate border protection afforded on a shoe-string defence budget, but because of the remarkable degree of graft that pervaded key intelligence-related agencies. Because of the opacity of the National Intelligence Service operations as that of Military Intelligence, we will give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that they are not working hand in hand with our enemies to facilitate attacks on the homeland. We cannot say the same about the National Police Service, the erstwhile provincial administration, the Immigration Department, or the specialised police units set us for close protection like the General Service Unit or antiterrorism like the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit or violent crime interdiction like the Flying Squad.

It seems that al Shabaab took the lessons of the fall of the Islamic Courts Union to heart and adapted them to its purposes. It has become a major player in the intelligence business. This is a scenario that should keep the Interior Cabinet Secretary, the Defence Cabinet Secretary, the Director of Military Intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Criminal Investigations sleepless nights. And al Shabaab keeps evolving in what is an intelligence war and it keeps learning lessons. Some of the tutorials are of recent vintage too.

The President of Kenya travels in a security bubble that includes uniformed and plain-clothes security and intelligence officers. His vehicles are examined for listening devices or explosives. The route he drives through is secured hours or even days in advance with security and intelligence officers assessing traffic patterns, vulnerable points, potential choke points and elevated positions capable of being used as snipers' nests. The vehicles in his cavalcade are kept in secure surroundings and protected from infiltration.

But in a week of drama, a vehicle that was part of the "State House Fleet" but not part of the "Presidential Motorcade," whatever that means, was stolen, its police inspector driver kidnapped for several hours, and transported across the border with Uganda to Tororo. There are lessons to be learned if we are willing to hear them. Al Shabaab is surely paying attention.

Whatever the story peddled by the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit, it is clear that that State House security can be breached and a key vehicle taken at gunpoint. What must be determined is whether the police inspector was set up by someone, whether he was careless or whether it was an inside job. The border area through which the vehicle passed must be vetted; we must know whether border officials were involved and at what level and for what benefit.

 

The intelligence community must assess whether it was local car-jacking or whether it was an intelligence operation designed to test State House intelligence and security and whether it was state-sponsored, organised crime-sponsored or terrorism-related. Whether the Presidency publicises it or not, heads must roll and intelligence and security protocols must be upgraded. Next time we might not even know the vehicle is gone until it is re-infiltrated into the presidential motorcade as a car-bomb.