Tag Archives: Garissa

Kenya’s security failure – Paul Hidalgo, John Githongo and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights on “Corruption, Injustice, Abuse”

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In Foreign Affairs, Paul Hidalgo explains “Kenya’s Own Worst Enemy; Al Shabab Isn’t the Real Problem“:

Corruption, injustice, abuse, disillusionment, marginalization, and radicalization are the legacies of years of misguided policies in Kenya. After an al Shabab rampage in Garissa earlier this month left over 140 university students dead, these issues are impossible to ignore. If Nairobi continues to refuse to address them or fails to do so, the already troubled East African country will soon become even more unstable.

The radical Islamist group al Shabab is responsible for the series of terrorist attacks that have rocked Kenya in past few years. But the reality is that al Shabab is a shadow of what it once was. The al Qaeda-linked group has been pushed out of all major cities in Somalia and cut off from its financial lifelines. Its leaders have been decimated by drone attacks, internal strife, and defections. And that is why the group’s ability to easily attack within Kenya is so puzzling. For their part, Kenyan leaders have long contended that entities outside the government, namely Somalia-based fighters and the country’s minority Muslim population, are to blame. But the truth is that the main culprits are the culture and policies of the government itself.

Take, for example, Kenya’s security services, which are acknowledged as the most corrupt institution in one of the most corrupt countries in the world. . . .

Corruption might clear the way for attacks, but incompetence turns tragedies into national disasters. .  .  .

The security forces’ well-documented history of abuse, discrimination, and heavy handedness is directly connected to radicalization. . . .

Instead of trying to tackle all these issues, Kenyan leaders have fallen back on their usual responses: attacking easy targets and pursuing knee-jerk policies. As before, these simply make matters worse. . . .

.  .  .  .

Pressure is mounting for Kenyatta to enact serious reforms, and his recent admission that there were security failures at Garissa may signal that things are shifting. But Kenyans shouldn’t hold their breaths. Nairobi has proven time and again that it is incapable of or unwilling to make difficult reforms. It may end up that civilians will be forced to take to the streets in a major way to push the government to action, or take matters into their own hands, such as the pledge from the country’s top Muslim organization to root out radical clerics from mosques. However it plays out, the longer Kenya waits to address its problems in some fashion, the more innocents will die and the more dysfunctional the state will become.

“John Githongo on Garissa: Kenya’s corrupt chickens have come home to roost,” from Kingsley Kipury and Simon Allison in Daily Maverick:

.  .  .  .
Githongo’s main argument is that corruption has prevented Kenya from establishing an even remotely effective security sector, leaving it vulnerable to Al-Shabaab-style attacks. “Kenya has had a problem with terrorism for some time, and recognised the need for much improved equipment and technology for our security service to be able to deal with it. However national security is the last refuge of the corrupt, and there are those in government who decided that those are the contracts we are going to make money from. And in the pushing and the shoving and the disagreements and squabbling of people fighting for their cut, and things stopping and starting, goods being delivered half-baked or not at all, Kenya lost a tremendous opportunity to establish a very solid framework for defending itself against terrorism,” he said.

That’s the first problem. The second is the culture of corruption, engendered by the country’s political elite, which means that, for often trifling sums, individuals at all levels of the state are willing to turn a blind eye to threatening activity. “When people lower down the ladder in the security services, whether it’s in the police, immigration, intelligence, the military, when they see them [their superiors] steal from large scale security contracts, they then start perpetrating corruption lower down the ladder. That becomes a problem that becomes pervasive, and it is exemplified most starkly by the ease with which it would apparently seem possible for terrorists to be able to cross through our porous borders by paying small amounts of money to junior officials,” Githongo said.

For Githongo, it’s impossible to separate the current insecurity in Kenya from its history of corruption. “I think it’s definitely a case of chickens coming home to roost, vis-à-vis Anglo Leasing. If we had properly executed those contracts starting from around 2001 into 2004, we definitely wouldn’t be having the kind of problems we have right now, or at least they wouldn’t be at the scale they are at now.”

Crucially, however, corruption is not just history. According to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index, corruption in Kenya has worsened since President Uhuru Kenyatta came to power. Kenya is currently ranked 145th in the world for corruption, only just above the Central African Republic and nine spots below Nigeria.

In this context, it’s hardly surprising that Githongo reserves some of his strongest criticism for the current administration of Kenyatta. “This is the most corrupt administration since the [Daniel arap] Moi administration, if not more corrupt. . . .

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Condemns Listing of Human Rights Groups as Terrorist Organizations in Kenya:

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights is deeply concerned over the most recent steps taken by the Kenyan government to further restrict the legitimate activities of domestic civil society organizations, under the stated auspices of countering terrorism. Earlier this week, alongside terrorist groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram, Kenya’s Inspector General of Police listed several notable human rights groups to be declared “Terrorist Organizations,” froze their bank accounts, and gave them 24 hours to clarify why they should not be designated.

“Governments have a real responsibility to meet the threat of terrorism and protect the welfare of their citizens, and civil society groups are indispensable to achieving these ends,” said Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. “The Kenyan government has gone too far by including human rights groups in a list of possible terrorist organizations. President Kenyatta and the relevant authorities should take immediate and transparent steps to remove these human rights groups from this list.”

. . . .

Thirty eight years after the U.S. started Kenya police training in 1977, yet another failure in Garissa University massacre

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The trained elite forces of Kenya’s Recce Company Crisis Response Team of the Kenya Police Service’s paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) do not lack for personal courage and technical competence, as they showed once again in dispatching the four terrorists who spent the day Thursday murdering Christian students at  Garissa University College after killing the two guards and seizing control of the campus.

Sadly, as we also saw in the Westgate tragedy, the top ranks of leadership in Kenya’s security apparatus lack the will and/or the focus that would be required to use such forces effectively to protect Kenya’s citizenry from even such small bands of terrorists.

The infuriatingly obtuse mediocrity of Kenya’s political elite was perhaps most conspicuously on display in Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed’s characterization of the police response to the university siege as “adequate” in her interview yesterday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, going so far as to conclude “we did all that we could do.”  While it is true that the Kenya Defense Forces did not intervene with “friendly fire” as at Westgate, the terrorists were left in control of the school for hours on end while the Recce Squad remained in Nairobi before finally departing by plane in the early afternoon, followed by two hours of briefings on the ground in Garissa before the successful assault.  Reporting in the Sunday Nation indicates that the Recce Company members, trained in the U.S. and Israel, are regularly being diverted to ordinary policing tasks in diverse locations and not maintained as intended on standby for the emergency Crisis Response Team at their Nairobi headquarters.

Surviving students reported being aware of their insecure environment long before the attack, which was preceded by specific warnings of attacks on university campuses, as well as the British and Australian warnings of threats which so angered President Kenyatta in the preceding days.  Most individual politicians in Nairobi have more security than this inviting cluster of “upcountry” Christian young people sitting in Garissa which has long experienced small scale church attacks and other terror incidents, as well as mass “security” repression on a periodic basis.

In an interview with the Daily Nation about the background of the middle class Kenyan among the terrorists, the assistant principal of the high school attended by the now notorious killer noted that student had finished at the school “way back in 2007 when radicalization was unheard of.”  “Terrorist was a gifted, obedient student”

Even “way back in 2007” when I went to Garissa to train prospective parliamentary candidates the area was insecure enough that police escort was required from a checkpoint on the highway east of Mwingi in Eastern Province on into Garissa, crossing the Tana River into North Eastern Province.  It is hard for me to understand the idea that some grand foresight would be required to see the need for more security for this particular campus.  On its website, the University reports that it “benefits greatly from Garissa’s urban setting.  It feels closely tied to and responsible towards the city and county.  For its part it contributes to the cultural life of the city and region, and in all its activities pays regard to community and urban needs.”  The University came into being as the first full university in the old North Eastern Province in 2011 as an upgrade to an older Garissa Teacher Training College.  A noble initiative toward the crucial long term endeavor to begin the work of bringing this historically neglected region more fully into the Kenyan nation–one that made it an obvious target for Islamist extremists opposed to this endeavor.  And now shuttered indefinitely in the wake of the horrific mass executions.

Jeffrey Gettleman’s story in the New York Times “Shabaab Militants Learning to Kill on a Shoestring” identifies the extremist ideological counter-narrative. In claiming credit for the attack on one of the largest concentrations of non-Muslims in the area a Shabaab spokesman called the University part of a scheme by the Kenyan government to spread “their Christianity and infidelity” in a Muslim area that the Shabaab consider a “colony” under Christian control.

Nonetheless, Radio France International in a story headlined “Not enough Kenyan police in Garissa because its considered a ‘punishment zone'” quoted analyst Adam Hussein Adam saying “This is something that has been there since independence, and we continue to see that place [Garissa] as an outlier, and therefore we don’t deploy enough state authorities there until we have a problem like we now have.”

To me, the idea expressed in various quarters that pulling the Kenya Defense Forces out of AMISOM in Somalia now would resolve the underlying contested nature of the broader northeast within Kenya seems naive.  I don’t think the original 2011 incursion into Somalia was well considered or the best priority for Kenyan security at the time, and the AMISOM role for the KDF ought to be evaluated on its own merits now and going forward.  Nonetheless, I do not believe that there is a de facto bargain to be struck by withdrawing the KDF that would assuage those fighting what Nairobi-based security consultant Andrew Franklin has described for many months now as an insurgency within Kenya’s border counties.

Attention also needs to be paid to the experience and motives of the 27 year old Nairobi law graduate and banker, the son of a local chief from Mandera County who came to the capital for high school, followed by university.  Reportedly he wanted to join IS but settled for Al-Shabaab because he did not have a passport to travel to the Middle East but could transit the porous border into Somalia.

U.S. press coverage of Garissa University massacre

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“The Big Picture: Attack in Kenya” photographs in The Boston Globe.

“Kenya attack targets Christians, putting new pressure on religious leaders” Ariel Zirulnick in the Christian Science Monitor.

“Kenya faces grim aftermath of school massacre” Abagail Higgins and Jessica Hatcher in the Washington Post.

Kenyan religious leaders urge unity after Shabab Muslim extremists slaughter Christian students  Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles Times.

“Christians warned, then killed in Kenyan university massacre” Margot Kiser in The Daily Beast.

“University attacks marks Al Shabaab’s pivot to ISIS” Ashish Kumar Sen interview with Bronwyn Bruton in New Atlanticist.

“Kenya mourns 148 dead in university attack by militants”  Christopher Torchia and Tom Odula for Associated Press.

3850455481_f0db94e43c_b“Kenyans agonize over student massacre” Martina Stevis in The Wall Street Journal.

Good reads

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“Kenya’s once safest town, now famous for the wrong reasons” Xinhua,

Kenya’s northern town of Garissa that was once voted as the safest town in East and Central Africa by Interpol has all of a sudden lost its glory as it continues experiencing a spate of grenade and gun attacks allegedly being executed by Al-Shabaab militants. . . .

“Somaliland Elections: Everything’s fine, except when it isn’t” Progressio Blog.

“Why fighting corruption in Africa fails” by William Gumede in Pambazuka News.

The Citizen reports on the release of the 2012 Afrobarometer “Round 5” poll for Tanzania, highlighting growing public perception of corruption by the CCM government.

Kenyan voter registration underway; new poll and new security incidents

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Garissa
GARISSA

Kenya’s biometric voter registration finally got underway yesterday, with relatively low turnout.  The main reported glitch appeared to be problems with BVR kits losing power after using up their battery life.  The registration period runs through December 18.  Because of the delays with the BVR kit purchase, the deadline of December 4 for formation of party coalitions, three months before election day, falls during the middle of the registration period.

A substantive enfranchisement problem is that only those possessing and producing an official national identity card or Kenyan passport are permitted to register.  Those waiting for identity cards will be out of luck so a burden will rest on the Registrar of Persons to expedite issuance of identify cards.  See the official announcement from the IEBC here.

An op/ed piece in The Nation from Prof. Kefa Otiso of Bowling Green University, the president of the Kenya Scholars and Studies Association, raises disenfranchisement concerns about the current version of the IEBC’s plans for diaspora registration and voting in the U.S., which would require in person registration and subsequent voting in Washington, New York or Los Angeles.

The new Synovate poll shows Odinga continuing as the front-runner, followed by Uhuru in a solid second position, but both have slipped slightly since their last poll in September.  Here is the report from The Star on the Ipsos Synovate press conference:

Prime Minister Raila Odinga who is the poll’s leading candidate has 33 per cent, followed closely by Uhuru Kenyatta with 26 per cent.

Both candidates have dropped in popularity since the last Synovate polls conducted in September. Raila has lost three percent while Kenyatta has lost four per cent of the votes.

Candidates and areas that have gained in the polls are Eldoret North MP and presidential hopeful William Ruto and Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi.

They have both of gained three per cent popularity poll. Additionally the number of undecided voters has increased to 11 per cent up from nine per cent in September.

Dr. Tom Wolf, a socio-political analyst with Ipsos Synovate attributed this shortfall of votes by the candidates to the unfinalised political alliances.

In the meantime, Nairobi remains tense after the latest Sunday matatu bombing, this time killing several people in Eastleigh, followed by rioting with Somalis targeted.  Garissa is under curfew following the shooting of three Kenya Defense Forces soldiers, which then led to what the BBC is calling an army “crackdown” with at least 8 Kenyans shot and 50 wounded.  The Kenyan Defense Minister told BBC that he did not authorize the action, which naturally raises its own set of questions.

Inter-faith peace efforts in North Eastern Province after Garissa church attack

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There are encouraging signs that Kenyans are sticking together in spite of the tensions associated with the Al Shabaab conflict:

Nairobi, Kenya (ENInews). After grenade attacks on a church in northern Kenya blamed on Islamic extremists, religious leaders said they were redoubling inter-faith peace efforts. At the same time, about 100 kilometers away, Christian relief agencies were carrying out humanitarian work in Dadaab, the world’s biggest refugee camp, despite security threats.

Two grenades were lobbed into the East Africa Pentecostal Church compound in the town of Garissa on 5 November, killing two people and injuring five others. The attack has been blamed on al-Shabab militants who are facing a Kenyan military operation in southern Somalia.

“We are alarmed by this blatant attempt by evil forces to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims,” Sheikh Adan Wachu, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims told a news conference on 10 November in Nairobi.

Speaking under the auspices of the Interreligious Council of Kenya, he said the militants had hoped to ignite Christians-Muslims violence, but had failed. He said the faiths were united against groups that misuse religion to cause anarchy and would be preaching that message in churches, mosques and temples.

“We have lived peacefully with one another for long. Therefore we choose not to interpret this as religious war,” the Rev. Joseph Mwasya, a clergyman from Garissa said on 8 November at a news conference.

At Dadaab, many agencies have scaled down since October when threats escalated, but the Rev. Eberhard Hitzler, the director of the Department for World Service of the Lutheran World Federation said on 8 November the organization will continue to deliver humanitarian relief at the camp.

“We have not yet the impression that the current situation in Dadaab constitutes a serious crisis, despite the security risks increasing for the organization; so we should set up a team to respond to it,” said Hitzler whose organization is responsible for housing and security in the camp. The 20-year-old settlement now contains more than 460,000 refugees who have fled war, famine and disease in Somalia.

[With acknowledgements to ENInews. ENInews, formerly Ecumenical News International, is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches.]

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