Monthly Archives: June 2012

“What’s going on in Kenya?”–Updated

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Extremely interesting time, “isn’t it”?

Parliament is in an uproar about questions surrounding the deaths of Internal Security Minister Saitoti and Assistant Minister Joshua Ojode in a helicopter crash. Ironically, perhaps, at least one of those MPs raising questions about a drug-running connection has sparred with the U.S. in the recent past over accusations of his own involvement in such activity–but many others are raising questions, too. The ostensible investigation into the crash has obviously lagged in terms of any public information from the government.

From the Standard:

TEN QUESTIONS MPs ARE ASKING
-Why did police fail to secure scene of crash?
– Why was Iteere first at scene but left shortly?
-Why was Saitoti family not briefed on probe team?
– Why did State frustrate South African experts till they left?
– Is there a possible drug-link to chopper crash?
-Is Kimunya’s ministry co-operating in probe?
– Shouldn’t Kimunya let someone else speak on behalf of Government?
-Why is State shifting positions on investigations?
-Why has State left a vacuum for speculation?
-Why should Iteere and Transport PS not step aside?


Lots of “buzz” in Kenya about continuing disclosures about drug-running and the Artur Brothers and such leading up to the 2007 election.

Police reform and land issues were understood by “everyone” to be crucial tasks for the “Government of National Unity” to get Kenya back on track after the failed election of 2007 and the ensuing violence, yet the Saitoti matter and drug controversies show how little has been accomplished or even attempted on the police front. (We have noted previously the fact that the land issues have remained unaddressed and ripe for more conflict.) When the Commissioner of the Police during the election, Ali, was pushed aside into the cushier, quieter role of Postmaster, in response to pressure from the U.S. among others, who replaced him but Iteere, the head during the election and post-election of the Kenyan police’s paramilitary General Services Unit (“GSU”)? In other words, the paramilitary forces in charge of securing Kibaki’s second term by, among other tasks, locking down the KICC for the announcement of the flawed election tally by Electoral Commission Chairman Kivuitu and keeping Uhuru Park in Nairobi free of demonstators while the parts of the Nairobi slums and the Rift Valley burned. How can Kenyans reasonably be expected to trust the police now?

Election campaigns are in full swing with the “2012 election” already pushed to March 2013, with questions about the ability to prepare on the part of the Government and on possible further delays for legal issues. Parliamentarians have openly sought to undermine key political reforms in the new constitution to continue to facilitate “party hopping” among other gambits to preserve themselves.

And now, the U.S. Ambassador has resigned, after an extremely low-key year on the ground. Obviously there is a back story. He was Obama’s personal choice and supposedly the post was held for him to become available after the Sudan referendum where he served as Obama’s envoy. The details may or may not matter, but regardless, it is crucial that the U.S. Administation step up to the plate in getting someone effective confirmed quickly to replace him. Confirmation hearings will be a chance for Congress to focus on Kenya before things get even messier.

For better or worse, Kenya has no greater friend internationally than the United States. It is time for some sense of urgency and focused determination from Washington. Kenya is worth paying attention to now rather than after it becomes the next crisis of the day.

UPDATE: “Why Gration Really Resigned” story from Molly Redden in The New Republic late this morning has unnamed former State Department officials indicating that a scathing report on Gration’s management style at Embassy will be released soon. Given that Africa Bureau management as a whole was heavily criticized in an IG review released shortly after the Obama Administration took office, it is especially surprising to see a new round of controversial management in the largest and most important U.S. Mission in the region.

Gration resigns–to leave Embassy late July

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U.S. Ambassador Scott Gration released a statement to the media in Kenya this morning stating that he had resigned, effective late July, citing differences with Washington over “my leadership style and certain other priorities.”

See the Standard here.

Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara said: “the resignation of Ambassador Gration is good news for Kenyan-US relations particularly in terms of the reform agenda. He has been too sympathetic to the lords of impunity.”

Happy Djibouti Day–but don’t forget democracy and free speech

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Here is Secretary Clinton’s message for the 35th Anniversary of independence for Djibouti:

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to send best wishes to the people of Djibouti on the 35th anniversary of your independence this June 27.

Over the years, our two nations have continued to build a closer relationship. I appreciate all Djibouti has done to support our men and women working at Camp Lemonnier and to play a stabilizing role in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia. I look forward to strengthening our partnership in the years to come by increasing access to healthcare and education, strengthening humanitarian assistance, and enhancing our security initiatives.

As you celebrate your independence, know that the government and people of the United States stand with you. We are committed to this relationship and to a brighter future for both our people.


Djibouti is the only African country with a full-blown U.S. military base–and it has a small population. A good test case for a New Africa Policy that emphasizes democracy perhaps?

Mudslides, Terrorism and Tourism

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The death toll rose to three from the grenade attack on a nightclub north of Mombasa Sunday. In the meantime, in the Mt. Elgon region, on the Ugandan side of the border, there are 18 confirmed deaths from this season’s current mudslides, with 450 missing.

The Kenyan government protested the U.S. warning about a threat of attack in Mombasa as “economic sabotage” given the obvious potential impact on tourism, as well as a “betrayal of trust”, while insisting that it was ahead of the game and fully cooperating with U.S. agencies to stop any such planned attacks. Contrary to some initial reactions on twitter, the local bar attack was clearly not the kind of event that the American Embassy was warning about.

At the same time, Mombasa residents have accused security agencies, especially the National Intelligence Security Services (NSIS), of sleeping on the job.

“As residents of Mombasa, we are disturbed by these attacks which are occurring without any arrests. The police should work around the clock and arrest people suspected to have committed the incident,” said Mr Abdul Abdulla.

Since Kenya sent troops to Somalia last October, a series of explosions have rocked Nairobi, Mombasa and North Eastern region in what is believed to be retaliatory attacks by the Al-Shabaab.

Meanwhile, some American and British tourists on Monday down-played the travel advisory, saying the country was safe.

Mr Kevin Schmidt from California, USA, has been in the country for three weeks and said: “A lot of it is precautionary, they (US government) want to make sure everybody is informed,” he said.

“Man arrested over attack at drinking den,” Mark Agutu in the Daily Nation.

The bigger terrorism issue relates to the seizure of bomb making materials tracked to the port from Iraq and the arrest of two suspects thought to be Iranian.

“Inciting” lyrics “flagged” in Kenyan campaign

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This is where the action really is in Kenyan politics at the moment–ethnic mobilization. Kenyan bloggers and civil society published and circulated very disturbing related song lyrics from three musicians aimed at rallying the Kikuyu around Uhuru against Raila and the ICC and petitioned the National Cohesion and Integration Commission borne out of the post-election violence in 2008. Capital FM reports that the NCIC has “flagged” the matter for scrutiny (let’s check back and see if there is any follow-up):

Popular Kikuyu musicians John DeMathew, Muigai wa Njoroge and Kamande wa Kioi are likely to be investigated after songs sung by each of them were flagged for being ‘inciting’.

The Mugithi singers, who are popular live musicians, are accused of singing songs that border on ‘hate speech’ against Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is one of the contenders for the top seat in 2013.

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) flagged the songs, Mwaka wa Hiti’ by DeMathew, Muigai wa Njoroge’s ‘Hague bound’ and ‘Uhuru ni Witu’ by Kamande wa Kioi.

NCIC boss Mzalendo Kibunjia says they were following up with the media council to find out whether the controversial songs had played on any radio stations so that action could be taken against the media houses as well.

In Western Province, this West FM coverage of a campaign rally for Deputy Prime Minister Mudavadi, elected through ODM but now running for president with the new UDF party, gives a flavor for the public side of the campaigns:

He challenged the leaders who want to liberate Kenyans to concentrate on eradicating poverty among Kenyans and reduction of the cost of living pounding them because there is no visible opponent of Kenyans like the colonial whites whom he said were long gone after attaining of independence.

The Sabatia MP insisted that he should be given chance to open the door for a Luhya presidency after he was the first one to become a Luhya vice president that saw the late VP Michael Kijana Wamalwa and Uncle Moody Awori follow suit.

At the same time Khalwale and Kituyi affirmed that Mudavadi is the most experienced politician of the day among the Luhya leaders and thus is the prospective person to seek presidency as compared to others such as Eugene and Jirongo.

Mukhisa said that Wamalwa can be a prospective leader at a later period but felt that Mudavadi is ready to go for the seat now. He said the Luhya community has got a vast experience of assisting leaders from other communities to access power and thus can use the same experience to help one of their own accesses the same power.

Khalwale and Mugali cautioned against Luhya divisions which they said will be an advantage to their opponents and hence essence for the community to work as a team in their endeavors.

“This is now the time for the voters from the Bukusu nation to hold hands with voters from Maragoli nation and vote together and work together because we want the Luhya nation to speak and speak in one voice,” Khalwale said.

U.S. Embassy warns of imminent threat of terrorist attack in Mombasa

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From the Saturday Nation:

The United States has ordered its government officials to leave the Kenyan city of Mombasa over an “imminent threat of a terrorist attack.”

The US also suspended all government travel to the coastal city until July 1.

“This is to alert all US citizens in Kenya, or planning to travel to Kenya in the near future, that the US Embassy in Nairobi has received information of an imminent threat of a terrorist attack in Mombasa, Kenya,” read a statement issued by the Embassy Saturday.

“All US government travel to Mombasa is suspended until July 1, 2012.  All US government personnel are required to leave Mombasa.”

However, the Embassy said US private citizens were not affected by the travel advisory but “should consider this information in their travel planning”.

On Wednesday, two containers tracked from Iraq by international police were traced to the yards of a container freight station (CFS) in Mombasa.

This seems to be getting bigger coverage in the international media than in Kenya’s media so far.

Africa Trade News: Bills to amend the AGOA to extend the “third country fabric” benefit introduced in Congress

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Representative Camp (R-MI) and Senator Baucus (D-MT) have introduced bills in the House and Senate respectively to provide for this extension under the African Growth and Opportunity Act of great interest in East Africa.  With strong bipartisan support in Congress and from the Administration this would seem to be a timely step before the preference expires in August to show that we are serious about stepping up American trade with Africa to support private sector economic growth.   The bills would also add South Sudan as an eligible country.

Here is the latest from AFRICOM following last week’s “new policy” on Africa

Aside

Here is the official word from the AFRICOM blog on the current annual joint African Endeavor exercise in West Africa, along with a good comment from David Aronson to the effect that these things make conceptual sense to build the security capacity of African states, but also raise concerns in terms of the potential for this capacity to benefit repressive regimes.

It seems that in the U.S. most people who pay attention to things are asking what then is new in the “New Policy” on Sub-Saharan Africa from the White House last week.  Rhetorically the prioritization on democracy has been there–the question is what concrete steps we are willing to take to do a better job in practice of balancing competing priorities.  The policy announcement speaks to the concerns raised in my last post, but in generalities.

Ultimately, democratic transition involves risk and uncertainty–something different than “security”.  Local perspective is necessary.  In Kenya, for instance, we have seen the al-Qaeda-related Embassy bombing and other acts of terrorism; nonetheless, Kenyans can only dream of the day when poor performance by their own government is not vastly more dangerous than the terrorists.  Even with the current war in Somalia the regular stream of explosions killing Kenyans week in and week out are road accidents.

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AGOA, AFRICOM and the “Three Ds”

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Just as the big annual African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Conference is kicking off in Washington, and USAIDs Frontiers in Development conference has ended, the Washington Post has run a large story, “U.S. expands secret intelligence in Africa” which will continue to draw attention, discussing military operations as opposed to anything involving the traditional intelligence agencies.

Briefly, my “macro” level observation is that this is an example of the choices confronting Americans in simply deciding who we want to be in Africa.

There is perhaps a certain irony that in 2012, all these years after the Cold War, the Chinese Communist Party government leads an expansive, rapidly growing commercial presence across Africa, while the U.S. does seem to be specializing more in the military/security area. “Comparative advantage”? Bureaucratic momentum and politics in Washington? Sound policy making reflecting that the U.S. sees itself as quite rich already and has a main priority of preventing future tragic “embassy bombings” and “9-11s”; whereas the Chinese government is relatively speaking “young and hungry”, and needs to build its economic power to hold power at home against any possible future “regime change” from democratization or other domestic pressures?

AFRICOM is an experiment of sorts and it is evolving. The Post story points out that AFRICOM is still doing “aid” projects–by which I assume they mean things like the traditional humanitarian and medical missions carried out by troops, and things like the fish farming program for the DRC military in Eastern Congo I noted some time back along with the military-focused democracy and governance and rule of law training, aside from the more usual military and security training assistance. At the same time, the budgetary pressure in Washington is hugely increased from anything that people would have had in mind back during the finance bubble when the decision to roll out AFRICOM as a “new kind” of combatant command was made. Spending on “development” and “diplomacy” are lowercase priorities when the budget axe swings, verses “the big D” on the traditional military side of a “three Ds” national security strategy.

On one hand, AFRICOM could provide a bureaucratic umbrella of sorts to help shelter some “development and diplomacy” efforts from the budget storm. On the other, it could suck up dollars to pay for programs that are neither efficient nor well coordinated, nor carried out by people who have development or diplomacy as their primary mission.   Regardless, I think it is fair and appropriate to say that at least some people on both the civilian and military side of the effort, who believe in the concept of a “new kind” of command, are concerned about the staying power of the model as conceived and approved against the bureaucratic pressure for military homogenization in the context of the global war on terrorism formerly known as “the Global War on Terrorism”.

Yesterday at the Frontiers in Development program Jim Kolbe, former Republican Congressman and longtime IRI board member, emphasized the importance of development for U.S. national security. I agree.  Having worked in the defense industry myself for 12.5 years, including the time of the USS Cole bombing (the ship was repaired at my workplace), 9-11 (I was in Washington), 7-7 (got the news of the London bombings as an election observer in Osh, Kyrgyzstan) I do not downplay terrorism or undervalue U.S. security–I just want very much for all of us as citizens to take responsibility for making good and deliberative decisions about our long term interests and ultimately the broader role we want to play in the world.

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ICC Proceedings–Kenya cases trial dates to be set before July 13; likely for soon after 2013 election

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Tom Maliti’s report on Monday’s ICC proceedings in the ICC Kenya Monitor

Presiding Judge Kuniko Ozaki of Trial Chamber V announced the decision today after listening to the prosecution, defense, and victims’ lawyers make their submissions during a meeting to discuss a trial date and other preliminary matters ahead of hearings in the first Kenya case. Judge Ozaki said the trial chamber will issue its decision in writing before the court breaks for its summer recess, which starts on July 13.

The decision was in reference to the first Kenya case only as a similar meeting is set for Tuesday to discuss the details of the second Kenya case. However, the practice of the pre-trial, trial, and appeal chambers has been to issue simultaneously important decisions concerning both Kenya cases.

Read the whole report for interesting details about the respective positions of the parties and comments from the Court.

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