Al Shabab Lays a Trap for Kenya
JULY 01, 2014
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/murithi_mutiga
/index.html> Murithi Mutiga
For much of the past half century,
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ke
nya/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Kenya has cultivated an image as a peaceful
oasis in a region dogged by violence and unrest. "Kenya, hakuna matata" ("No
worries in Kenya") is the unofficial motto on T-shirts peddled to the
thousands of tourists who flock the East African country's sandy beaches and
safari parks every year.
But the image has frayed. The frightening brutality of the
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/al-shab
ab/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Shabab terrorists who killed 67 shoppers
during the four-day siege of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi last September
shocked the nation. Then, in another brutal rampage, on the night of June
15, dozens of attackers swept into Mpeketoni, a town near the tourist resort
of Lamu Island, and mowed down 48 people, many of them dragged from a hotel
where they had been watching a World Cup soccer match. A second attack on
the nearby town of Majembeni on the following night left nine people dead.
It did not help matters when President Uhuru Kenyatta went on national
television the morning after the second attack and speculated that leaders
of the opposition may have been involved. His ill-considered words threaten
to turn a security crisis into a political one which could very well boil
over into communal fighting between opposition and government supporters -
exactly the kind of scenario the Islamic extremists of Al Shabab appear to
be aiming for.
Many observers warn that allowing terrorist to sow internal discord in Kenya
would be handing Al Shabab a long-sought victory. By fomenting discontent
between two of the country's major ethnic groups, the Kikuyu and the Luo -
both predominantly Christian - the terrorists hope to stoke communal
violence and prevent Kenyans from uniting to fight back.
While it is true that Al Shabab has almost certainly drawn on the support of
some Kenyans, the suggestion that national opposition leaders are to blame
for the latest killings is widely viewed as unfounded, if not downright
bizarre. Mr. Kenyatta's declaration that the killings were the product of
"reckless leaders and hate mongers" - an implicit suggestion that the
political opposition planned the attacks - was widely seen as a dubious
effort to avoid criticism for the government's failure to deal with the
unrest spilling over from Somalia, our deeply dysfunctional neighbor.
During the 1990s, as Somalia descended into chaos, Kenya opened its doors to
many thousands of refugees, but managed to avoid getting involved in heavy
fighting. Then, in 2011, following a spate of abductions of tourists, aid
workers and the kidnapping of two Kenyan soldiers, Nairobi ordered troops
into Somalia to establish a buffer zone between Shabab strongholds and the
Kenyan border. The objective was accomplished but it has come at a heavy
cost. Since the incursion, Al Shabab is widely suspected of having launched
numerous attacks in Kenya, including bombings that killed at least 10 people
in Nairobi in May.
While those attacks have rattled the nation, the truth is that the
terrorists on their own stand little chance of causing serious instability.
Kenyans have little appetite for large-scale conflict, and security
officials say that the terrorist group's sympathizers' in Kenya number in
the low hundreds.
Nevertheless, Al Shabab has been busily trying to feed on Kenya's internal
divisions. In a move that echoes Al Qaeda's efforts to stoke sectarian
fighting in Iraq, the Somalia-based insurgents have been targeting churches
in Kenya. There have been several attacks on Sunday worshippers, including a
shooting spree at a church in Garissa near the Somali border in 2012 that
left at least 15 dead, and another attack at a church in the coastal city of
Mombasa on March 23 in which hooded gunmen killed three people and wounded
many others.
Although these incidents sparked wide outrage, they have not provoked
retaliatory violence against Muslims. Yet there are persistent fears that
the terrorists are trying to exploit the most potent cleavage in Kenyan
society - divisions between ethnic groups.
Ethnicity is a vital and highly volatile component of politics in Kenya,
where most voters back political alliances crafted along unambiguously
ethnic lines. Accusations of vote-rigging in the 2007 presidential race
ignited ethnic violence in which over 1,000 people died. A power-sharing
agreement under the auspices of the African Union led to a new Constitution
that realigned the executive branch and strengthened local power. In the
presidential election last year, Mr. Kenyatta, a member of the largest
ethnic community, the Kikuyu, edged out his bitter rival Raila Odinga, an
ethnic Luo. There has been no violence since then, but uneasy relations
persist. The rivalry reflects the fact the government is the country's
biggest spender. Access to power opens a patronage pipeline in which highly
placed officials favor their own people or allied groups in awarding
contracts and making appointments to key government jobs.
Al Shabab has intruded into this delicate situation by consistently
targeting members of the president's community, the Kikuyu, in hopes of
creating the impression that the violence is politically motivated, thereby
igniting Kikuyu retaliation against the Luo.
Mr. Kenyatta's own political standing is tenuous because he is facing trial
for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court over his
alleged role in the violence which followed the disputed 2007 presidential
election. His reaction to the challenge posed by Al Shabab has been erratic
at best.
It would be folly for Kenyans to rise to the terrorists' bait and allow the
country to tumble into the abyss of communal violence. Far from squabbling
among themselves, Kenya's leaders would do better to call for unity, and
bolster and reform the country's police force while improving coordination
and intelligence-sharing with our Western allies.
Kenyan's leaders, particularly President Kenyatta, must grasp the scale of
the challenge they face and not jeopardize our country's position as East
Africa's bastion of stability and progress. Al Shabab's effort to have
Kenyans make scapegoats of one another is an obvious trap, one we must be
careful to avoid.
Murithi Mutiga is an editor at the Nation Media Group in Kenya.
Received on Tue Jul 01 2014 - 18:05:01 EDT