Of bombs and banners: Kenya’s broken compass on terrorism

Then came Westgate.

On September 21, 2013, heavily armed Al-Shabaab militants stormed Westgate Mall in Nairobi, killing at least 67 people during a four-day siege that transfixed the nation. The images—of terrified civilians hiding under tables, black smoke billowing from the mall, and masked men firing indiscriminately — etched themselves into the country’s collective memory.

Barely two years later, on April 2, 2015, Garissa University was attacked. Gunmen from Al-Shabaab stormed the campus at dawn and massacred 148 people, most of them students.

Then in January 2019, came Dusit D2—a luxury hotel and office complex in Nairobi’s Riverside area. Again, Al-Shabaab militants launched a coordinated attack, killing 21 people and injuring dozens. This time, the state response was quicker and more coordinated, but the fear and trauma were no less profound.

Read:  How childhood ‘torture’ prepared Dusit D2 saviour Christian Craighead

Each of these attacks — gruesome, indiscriminate, and ideologically motivated — revealed the very real threat that terrorism poses to Kenya. They were not expressions of civic defiance. They were orchestrated campaigns of mass murder. And it was in the shadow of these horrors that Kenya passed and expanded its anti-terrorism laws, empowering the state to pursue extremist networks and protect public spaces.

But today, those very same laws are being turned against citizens, not terrorists.

In recent months, a number of Gen Z protesters — young Kenyans mobilising against economic inequality, extra-judicial killings, corruption, and state impunity — have been charged under terrorism-related statutes. Their crime? Taking to the streets, organising online, and demanding change. Not bombs. Not weapons. Not plots. But placards and purpose.

Anti-terrorism laws

It’s a disturbing development. By invoking anti-terrorism laws against peaceful protesters, the government is not protecting national security —it is criminalising dissent.

This is not merely a legal overreach; it is a betrayal of the spirit in which those laws were conceived. Anti-terror laws were not meant to silence the frustrated, the unemployed, the dreamers of a better future. They were meant to confront threats like the Al-Qaeda operatives who bombed the US Embassy, the Al-Shabaab gunmen at Garissa, the extremists at Westgate, and the suicide bombers at Dusit. To equate these acts with youthful protest is not only intellectually dishonest—it is morally bankrupt.

But Kenya has heard this tune before.

In the 1950s, as the Mau Mau movement rose to challenge British rule, the colonial government labelled the freedom fighters “terrorists” and some historians continued to regard it as “Kikuyu civil war.” The terrorist designation was strategic—it stripped the movement of its political legitimacy and allowed the colonial state to use overwhelming violence under the guise of maintaining law and order. Thousands were detained, tortured, or executed. Their demand for land and freedom was treated as sedition. Some leaders, including Gen Mathenge Mirugi, disappeared without trace.

It took decades for Kenya to finally acknowledge the truth: Mau Mau were not terrorists— they were freedom fighters. Under President Mwai Kibaki, their role in Kenya’s liberation struggle was formally recognised, and the long-suppressed story of resistance was brought back into the national narrative.

Today, that cycle is repeating—this time with Gen Z in the crosshairs.

But unlike in previous protest movements, Gen Z is not waiting to be led. They are organising digitally, speaking boldly, and refusing to be co-opted. They are not aligned with any political party. They are driven by purpose, not patronage. And that makes them uniquely threatening to the status quo.

But I find myself marveling—and asking: If we are charging Gen Z protesters with terrorism, then what would we do if we were faced with an actual case such as that of Monika Haas?

Let me explain. Kenya’s anti-terrorism laws were never designed to target peaceful civic protests or generational frustrations with government. They were crafted in response to a very different kind of threat—one embodied by individuals such as Muradi Aksali and Monika Haas. These were not disillusioned youths expressing dissent; they were trained operatives, international militants, and ideological extremists who used violence to achieve their goals.

Muradi Aksali, travelling on a false Maltese passport, planted a bomb at Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel in 1980 — a direct act of terror that claimed innocent lives and was later claimed by Wadie Haddad’s Popular Front. It was not a spontaneous outburst of rage or discontent, but a calculated response rooted in global geopolitics, planned far from Kenya’s streets.

Similarly, Monika Haas operated in the shadows of Cold War militancy, smuggling grenades and pistols past airport security with a baby in tow, facilitating the hijacking of a Lufthansa jet, and playing a role in the murder of German officials. These were operations designed to kill, to intimidate, and to send messages through fear.

Transnational violence

It was this kind of organised, transnational violence that Kenya’s anti-terror laws were created to confront. In the decades following the Norfolk bombing, and especially after the 1998 US Embassy attack and the rise of groups such as Al-Shabaab, Kenya faced real and persistent threats from violent extremism. The legal tools that emerged—such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act — were a response to this reality: laws crafted to stop bombings, assassinations, and mass-casualty attacks, not peaceful assemblies or protest marches.

By contrast, the recent wave of youth-led protests are fueled by economic hardship, corruption, and calls for accountability. These demos are public, visible, and organised largely through digital platforms. They are not covert. They do not involve arms. They do not aim to terrorise the public or coerce the state through fear. Instead, they represent a generational cry for a better future, grounded in rights enshrined in the Constitution—freedom of expression, assembly, and protest.

To apply terror laws to these kinds of demonstrations is to misread the purpose of those laws. It is to blur the line between genuine threats to national security and legitimate political expression. Worse still, it risks criminalising youth for exercising their democratic rights, and it shifts state resources away from the very dangers the laws were meant to address. Terror laws lose their potency and public support when they are misapplied. And in doing so, the state undermines both its credibility and the trust of the very citizens it is meant to protect.

Terrorism has a definition, and figures like Aksali and Haas fit it. They used violence to send messages, often on behalf of causes rooted in distant conflicts. Gen Z protesters are not terrorists. They are citizens (and I am not blind to the fact that we have home-grown terrorists). Thus, Kenya must be careful not to confuse the two.

To conflate civic protest with international terrorism is to collapse all meaning. It’s a misuse of power, a distortion of justice—and, frankly, an insult to the memory of those who lost their lives in actual terror attacks on Kenyan soil.

To charge peaceful protesters under anti-terror laws is to misunderstand both the threat and the times. Kenya’s Penal Code already provides for prosecuting crimes such as vandalism, arson, or public disorder. To reach for terrorism statutes instead is to send a message—that the state sees young, organised voices as an existential danger.

This miscalculation is dangerous. It erodes public trust, delegitimises real counter-terrorism efforts, and turns the machinery of justice into a tool of fear. And in the long run, it undermines the very security these laws were designed to uphold.

John Kamau is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto, Canada. Email: [email protected]; X: @johnkamau1