Anyone but al-Shabaab: Kenya's political divisions laid bare by spiraling
attacks
- By Jeremy Lind
Posted on
<
http://africanarguments.org/2014/07/11/anyone-but-al-shabaab-kenyas-politic
al-divisions-laid-bare-by-spiraling-attacks-by-jeremy-lind/> July 11, 2014
Weeks after deadly attacks killed 60 at Mpeketoni in Kenya's Lamu County,
new raids on July 5th in Lamu and Tana River counties left over 20 dead,
sowing fear anew in a country growing accustomed to sophisticated attacks of
murderous brutality. As before, a heavily armed group came during the night,
striking the local police station, torching homes and businesses while
targeting men on a killing spree that was rumoured to last for hours.
Less than a day after the latest raids on the settlements of Hindi in Lamu
and Gamba in Tana River, Deputy Inspector General of Police Grace Kaindi
claimed in a press briefing that the outlawed Mombasa Republican Council
(MRC) was behind the attack. This was despite a broadcast on an
al-Shabaab-affiliated radio station which stated that the Somalia-based
group was responsible for the raid on Hindi (no group has thus far claimed
responsibility for the Gamba attack). Explaining the police thinking, Kaindi
revealed that a board had been placed at a road junction, with the following
message scrawled in chalk:
'Raila Tosha (Raila is enough, the one who should
lead)
MRC munalala (MRC is sleeping)
Waislamu Ardizenu (Muslims, it's your land)
Sina nyakuliwa (Your land is being taken away)
Amkeni mupigane (Wake up and fight)
you invade Muslim county
and you want to stay in peace
Kick Christians out Coast
Uhuru down'
While Kaindi acknowledged that the board may have been intentionally placed
to divert the attention of investigators, the initial police response to the
raids is the latest episode in an unseemly politicisation of recent attacks
that have shaken the country. As the al-Shabaab threat looms ever larger in
Kenya, its divided political leaders risk leaving Kenyans even more
vulnerable to appalling violence.
Westgate horror, political indifference
How did Kenya come to this point? Kenyans briefly united after the assault
on the upscale Westgate shopping centre left 67 dead in September of last
year. Across social media, Kenyans and friends of Kenya changed their
profile pictures to an image of a lone-candle burning, emblazoned with
'Kenya'. Ordinary Kenyans from across regional and religious divides brought
food and thermoses of hot tea to the military personnel stationed at the
blockades set-up in the city's Westlands neighbourhood, as gunfire continued
to ring out from the complex. President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose nephew was
amongst those killed, cut a unifying figure on national television.
Days later, walking hand-in-hand with Deputy President William Ruto and
Opposition Leader Raila Odinga into an inter-faith prayer service at the
city's eponymous Kenyatta International Conference Centre, the President
announced that he would establish a
<
http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2013/10/commission-of-inquiry-to-probe-west
gate-attack/> Commission of Inquiry into the attacks. Nearly 10 months
later, the Commission has yet to be created, and Kenyatta has been silent on
the matter. In the weeks after the attack, CCTV footage aired on a Kenyan
television network showed members of Kenya's military
<
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-138226/cctv-footage-shows-soldiers-l
ooting-mall> looting a supermarket. Later,
<
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/kenyan-soldiers-jailed-for-looting-dur
ing-westgate-mall-atrocity-8911184.html> two soldiers were jailed, leaving
bigger concerns of discipline and professionalism in the security services
unaddressed.
Today, the partially-scaffolded, boarded-up Westgate centre stands as an
eerie reminder of death and ineptitude. Surprisingly, the issue has
generated very little public debate, even though attacks have multiplied,
from bombed markets in the city's working class neighbourhood of Gikomba, to
exploding matatus on the Thika superhighway, to village massacres.
<
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/mobile/?articleID=2000119770&story_title=goi
ng-back-to-the-westgate-promise> Writing in Kenya's Standard broadsheet,
Kethi Kilonzo, an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, wrote, 'to date the
country does not know how, why, who, where, and when. Terrorism and the
terrorists have not been stopped. The question - what next? - remains
unanswered. If the failings leading to Westgate had been uncovered, and
these gaps and the persons responsible dealt with publicly and resolutely,
would this have stopped the terrorism acts that have followed Westgate?'
Although Kenyatta's failure to establish a Commission of Inquiry has not
caused a public backlash - perhaps owing to the fact that past Commissions
of Inquiry have been a way for Kenya's politicians to bury difficult issues
- the lack of any official investigation feeds a feeling of despondency and
fear over when and where attacks might happen next. In the UK, an inquest
into the 7/7 bombings of London's tubes and buses - the verdict of which was
delivered in 2011 nearly six years after the attack - was significant as
part of a longer process of reckoning and healing following the seemingly
indiscriminate violence.
Although the then-Home Secretary, John Reid, ruled out a public inquiry into
the bombings, as a number of bereaved relatives demanded, the inquest
presided over by the high court judge Lady Justice Hallett shared
considerable insight and findings on possible shortcomings in intelligence
and emergency service responses.
So, Kilzono's question stands: 'What next?' For the moment, neither the
government nor the opposition seem to have much to say.
Mpeketoni and 'anyone but al-Shabaab'
Since Westgate, grenade attacks, bomb explosions, ambushes and village
massacres have affected Kenyans of many stripes - commuter, police officer
and farmer, better off and poor, Somali, Luo and Kikuyu. Yet, as the
violence spreads, affecting more and more aspects of ordinary Kenyans' daily
life, a creeping politicisation of the violence has polarised attitudes and
occasioned greater discord in the face of a perilous threat. While
al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the Mpeketoni massacres, in a
televised address, President Kenyatta attributed the attack to unspecified
'local political networks', leaving little doubt that he blamed the
political opposition. Kenyans from many tribes were killed in the massacre,
yet Kenyatta's Kikuyu tribesmen, who settled the area in the 1960s on land
given by Kenyatta's father and first President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, were
disproportionately affected.
Vanished is the presidential figure who originally sought to unite and
reassure shocked Kenyans after Westgate. Instead, Kenyatta has stepped right
into the fray of politicians' acrimonious statements as well as
<
http://www.itwebafrica.com/ict-and-governance/256-kenya/233169-kenya-issues
-hate-speech-warning-prior-to-saba-saba-rally> hate speech spread by social
media and text messages. Already, even before the Mpeketoni attacks,
loyalists of Kenyatta's ruling Jubilee Coalition sought to portray the
earlier attacks as targeting Kikuyu. This, in turn, has fed a perception
that the attacks were in fact ethnically-motivated violence perpetrated by
sympathisers of the Odinga-headed opposition Coalition for Reforms and
Democracy (CORD). The fact that no one claimed responsibility left open the
possibility that al-Shabaab was not to blame.
The Daily Nation columnist
<
http://mobile.nation.co.ke/blogs/Mpeketoni-attack-opposition-kikuyu-/-/1949
942/2352388/-/format/xhtml/-/1v1dn7/-/index.html> Machario Gaitho wrote, 'By
the time the Mpeketoni attack came about, it was almost as if to confirm the
prevailing narrative about a domestic anti-Kikuyu plot. President Kenyatta's
statement now takes that out of the murky realm of Jubilee social media
activism and soapbox political rhetoric and elevates it to the official
government position on a key national security issue.'
Fast forward two weeks to the Gamba and Hindi attacks and Kaindi's claim
appears less a statement born from extraordinarily efficient investigative
abilities by Kenya's police service and more a knee-jerk reaction to sully
Jubilee's opponents. Anyone but al-Shabaab is now responsible for the
attacks. Thus, Kenya has moved in the past two months from suffering a
series of attacks that no one claimed responsibility for - but which were
thought to possibly be part of an intensifying al-Shabaab campaign in Kenya
- to a succession of massacres claimed by al-Shabaab, but which the
government and police blame on a range of political dissidents and outlawed
domestic groups.
People die, politicians fight
As Kenya's politicians continue to fight, Kenyans continue to die. The one
thing Kenyatta's blundering response to the Mpeketoni attacks did - and
leaving aside whatever the truth may be of who carried out the attacks
(Commission of Inquiry anyone?) - is to highlight how effectively al-Shabaab
has come under the skin of Kenya's domestic politics.
A widespread misconception at the moment is to externalise the al-Shabaab
threat. This is not of course unique to the current juncture at which Kenya
finds itself. In 2009, after al-Shabaab militants kidnapped British
holidaymakers at an exclusive idyllic hideaway miles away from Kenya's
border with Somalia, Kenya Defence Forces poured into southern Somalia in an
operation dubbed 'Linda Nchi' ('Protect the Country'). Its purpose,
ostensibly, was to lend force to the establishment of the pseudo state of
Jubaland as a 'buffer zone' protecting Kenya from the conflict in Somalia.
Subsequently, the Kenyan government pursued a policy of repatriating Somali
refugees to Jubaland. A more recent operation in April and May this year,
'Usalama Watch' ('Security Watch'), rounded up thousands of Somalis from
Nairobi's Eastleigh and South C neighbourhoods, who were then incarcerated
at the city's Kasarani stadium for a 'screening' process to root out anyone
who was in the country illegally.
What all of these security responses have in common is a predilection of
blaming 'the other', and particularly Somali people, for attacks in the
country. Yet, the politicisation of recent attacks only unmasks more
fundamental afflictions in Kenya that exist irrespective of al-Shabaab or,
for that matter, the conflict in neighbouring Somalia. These include
significant regional and ethnicised political divisions, a polarised
politics that thrives on scare-mongering and fear, a lack of public trust in
policing agencies, and an ossified security apparatus needing reform.
Military adventures in Jubaland and the targeting of Somali populations in
Kenya have not strengthened security and have probably worsened an already
grave situation. Rather, the safety and security of all Kenyans will only be
guaranteed through a serious and sustained effort from its political leaders
to address the country's many long-standing challenges.
Dr. Jeremy Lind is a Fellow of the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team
at the Institute of Development Studies.
Received on Fri Jul 11 2014 - 13:41:28 EDT