Al-Shabaab terrorism in Kenya, if America’s top spook is to be believed, will get worse.
James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, has said that the terrorist group is planning more attacks in Kenya to revenge the killing of more than 50 militants in recent airstrikes. Plans are also afoot to attack Djibouti, Uganda, Burundi and Ethiopia for sending peace-keeping troops to Somalia.
Now, you would have thought it couldn’t get worse. The idea of more bloodshed is frightening to many Kenyans, but an even bigger problem is that we can’t have a sombre, civilised debate about terrorism, Islamic fanaticism and the illegal, mass importation of population and what is the sensible thing to do about it.
There are those who see terrorism as the work of fanatical invaders, supported by a network of treasonous Kenyans acting out of misguided tribalism or religious kinship. This group has gone into a protective crouch and has been accused of xenophobia and fascism.
Then there is the other group, mainly made of up Muslims and liberals, which is opposed to profiling of communities or religions and argues for the rights of terror suspects, mainly on the reasonable grounds that they too are innocent until their guilt is proven.
Given the violent intolerance of parties in this argument and the extent to which people will go to silence Kenyans with a strong national view, the fight for rational debate is surely lost. But that does not mean the end of reason and moderation.
Just like everybody else, we too have a right to security. But we have an obligation to defend the rights of all communities, including ethnic and religious minorities, and to offer protection and hospitality to foreign nationals whose activities are within the law and whose only interest is to work for themselves and their families. So, what are we going to do about Al-Shabaab now that they have thoroughly terrorised us?
There are two options. The first is to throw in the towel, conclude that the Kenya’s mission in Somalia — whose objective was to stabilise that country for the benefit of its people, to prevent the mushrooming of jihadism in that country and to stop terrorists from crossing over — has failed.
In this scenario, we will retreat to our cocoon and mind our own business and also ensure that Al-Shabaab does not mind ours. This is the containment option.
The second is the engagement option, under which we basically stay the course, remain in the African Union mission, continue to fight Al-Shabaab and generally take a benign interest in the welfare of the people of Somalia. To do this, we will need to retool.
Part of the problem today is that Kenya is trying to fight a vicious, ruthless and fanatical terrorist group using peacetime infrastructure. Our Police Force is largely neglected; it is poorly trained, poorly armed and poorly indoctrinated.
We are fighting modern terrorism using the British 1950s counter-insurgency tactics. If we are to defeat Al-Shabaab and protect the rights of innocent people, then we have to recast our policing from the ground up.
In the democratisation process, Kenya basically destroyed its civilian intelligence capabilities. Today, spies are supposed to look through keyholes and call the cops. They can’t arrest and they need authorisation to carry a weapon. This is a dangerously daft state of affairs; it protects dissidents from the risk of Special Branch-type torture, but exposes the country to terrorism and sabotage.
The SAS is the key counter-terrorist force in Britain. That is serious capability. From the Westgate experience, Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda, need more than just a SWAT team to deal with them.
We need to invest seriously in counter-terrorism, human and other intelligence, put a lot of money into a first class counter-terrorism force with police, intelligence and military components and capability to defeat terrorists in warfare and rescue hostages.
We need a new border control regime. First, we should make it easy and corruption-free for well-meaning Somalians to get residency papers and the right to work and live in Kenya legally. But it must also be a very serious offence to sell citizenship papers to underserving persons.
