Involve citizens in securing nation

It is not the intimidating, fearsome security sector bulls that you should be wary of, as we sadly learnt from the Gestapo. It is the quiet, soft-spoken intellectuals who think up the nightmares.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki, because he is clever, trained to deal with large volumes of data and thinks independently, can make a fantastic contribution to the improvement of Kenya’s security infrastructure. But he should first forget about trying to convince social media types that, though he speaks in a beautiful, delicate soprano, he has a pair of testicles.

But let me tell this story in a more relaxed, “retired” manner.

I went for a haircut at the mall this past week. At the gate, I met two well-armed security officers, possibly from the Rapid Deployment Unit of the Administration Police (AP), the serious-looking ones with good guns and an air of competence. Usually, you find uniformed police with AK47s and a tendency to run away at the sound of the first shot. 

There was a time when only the Recce Company of the GSU knew anything about hostage rescue and storming siege situations.

NPS improvement

Today, the capacity of the National Police Service to confront and effectively fight terrorists is significantly improved. I suppose the enhanced police presence was in response to the alert issued by Western countries about possible attacks on places frequented by foreigners.

Despite the police presence, I never missed a beat and was never even remotely uncomfortable. I had my nails trimmed (usually takes a hacksaw and a good chainsaw), a manicure, and a haircut followed by much fondling of the head and shoulders and cracking of the neck (which is more frightening than all the terrorists in the world). My concern is that some enthusiastic but untalented attendant will miscalculate and break my neck like a dry twig. 

I was perfectly happy, and relaxed, cracking dry newsroom jokes, half of which the attendants did not find funny and half of which they probably found offensive. So impactful was my presence that, the following day, they made a follow-up call to find out how I liked the service! (I think it was an “are-you-back-at-Mathare-or-still-on-the-loose” type of call.)

I have come a long way. Ordinarily, I would have information about places which were considered “not-a-question-of-if-but-a-question-of-when” targets. I’d go to great lengths to avoid such places and ban my children and friends from setting foot there until the alerts are lifted. 

These days I go everywhere, perfectly at ease, alerts or none. Over the last holidays, I took my children to watch Avatar—which is 30,000 hours long—on the big screen at the Two Rivers shopping mall and the only discomfort I encountered was the risk of nodding off at certain points in the endless flow of great cinematography.

During an active shooter event, you see waves of panicked humanity running away from perceived danger and this makes us easy to trap and massacre. A hammer-and-anvil trap is a piece of cake to lay.

The bad guys set up an ambush, send a few shooters to scare us and drive us into the direct line of fire of the main force. I was shocked to realise that, in such a shooting situation, I would be among the least likely to be in that panicked wave of humanity; I’d probably be among the least likely to walk out of it unscathed. Somewhere along the way, I’d stop running. Now, I am not a flighter; I am a fighter.

The reason for this, and part of what might happen in the bandit zones, is that people can’t be kept in a perpetual state of terror. Continuous application of fear creates resistance, not as a natural reaction of courage but of self-preservation. 

The state, which is mortally afraid of the people, has jealously monopolised the instruments of violence, creating a soft, unmartial, broiler population that is good, hardworking and taxpaying but incapable of protecting itself. That is OK; but then, the state is not able to protect the broilers from the bandits and the Al-Shabaabs.

I’m a pacifist, I abhor violence, I couldn’t kill a kill a chicken for a dinner and I run away from snakes. But I’m the child of parents who fought a civil war in which people were killed.

I come from a previously violent culture where young men were trained to fight and steal cattle. Actually, if you read certain histories of the Ameru, you will probably see where the Pokot and Turkana learnt to rustle cattle.

Intellectual skills

Which brings me back to Prof Kindiki. He should use his intellectual skills to, first, shift the posture of the state from an indolent money-grubbing, occupying force to an institution that is one with the people, drawing strength from them. 

Secondly, he should generationally harden the Kenyan population by giving it access to the tools—and security thinking—required to protect itself and the country.

The US, UK and other peaceful countries have a balanced martial culture that enables the people to participate in national security without posing a threat to the state. That is a bigger challenge than being able to cow a bunch of bandits. And the good professor is up to it.

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