It’s time to develop a policy to fight insecurity, terrorism

By Ken Opalo

The security situation in Kenya seems to be getting worse by the day. Runaway crime has left many Kenyans on the defensive, from wananchi in our towns and the countryside to waheshimiwa in the leafy suburbs.

To compound our problems, foreign terrorists have found fertile soil among our legions of unemployed youth and proceeded to radicalise them. Sadly, our entire security apparatus seems to be at sixes and sevens.

For a while I thought that the confused reactions we received from Vigilance House and other quarters to incidents of crime and terror attacks were well orchestrated counter-intelligence moves.

But I am beginning to doubt this. Our security establishment seems to be in constant reaction mode, often miles behind those perpetrating heinous crimes.

What we are facing is not a joke. And we must treat it with the utmost seriousness it deserves. In particular, it is time our politicians got honest with one another and acknowledged that this is not a political matter.

We cannot defeat the security challenges facing the country without a united front. Lessons abound — from Pakistan to Lebanon to Nigeria — of what happens when the political class fails to act fast and united in the face of those bent on creating a perpetual state of disorder and chaos.

What is the government’s counter-terrorism strategy? Do we have a plan to address the root causes of the problem we face or are we just going to reflexively react to the symptoms? It is not a secret why our youth are turning to crime and those who preach hate and destruction to life and property. There are simply no proper alternatives. There are no jobs.

And to make matters worse, no one seems to care. Our development strategy is still skewed to benefit those who managed to get to university. Yet tens of thousands of our youth drop out of primary and secondary schools each year.

These young men and women do not need free Wi-Fi. They have no smart phones or iPads. They are often unsure about where their next meal will come from. They want jobs.

Let us be clear, as long as we continue to chase shiny things in the name of development policy while ignoring the basics we will continue to have problems. Before we start running we must learn to walk. Otherwise we shall find ourselves having left too many of our youth behind. These observations might seem obvious to most. So why aren’t the Kenyan political class and security establishment acting accordingly?

Perhaps the biggest source of concern should be the prevailing insouciance among the political class regarding matters of security, even as they too begin to bear the brunt of runaway crime.

In the last couple of weeks two Members of Parliament were robbed. The president’s aunt was carjacked last month. An aide to the Deputy President was also robbed around the same period minutes from State House Nairobi. Not to forget, we have a Member of Parliament on a wheelchair as a result of a terror attack.

If these incidences are not enough to jolt Parliament and the security establishment to wake up to the mess we are in, what will? Kenyans are tired of empty reassurances from politicians. They want to see action. And not just any kind of action, but action that is well thought out and that will sustainably bring security.

“Swift responses” and “stern warnings” will not bring back to the life the innocent Kenyans who have died in Mandera, Mombasa, Nairobi and elsewhere at the hands of terrorists and common criminals.

This week Senator Kithure Kindiki floated the idea of a comprehensive overhaul of the Kenyan security system. This is a chance for the political class to develop a commonsensical and consensual policy to tackle insecurity and terrorism in the country. There should be no room for politics. The days in which politicians could turn on and off the supply of violence by their hired thugs are over. Now those thuggish organisations form ready made recruitment dens for elements intent on turning us into places we only used to see on television and read about in the papers. As a country we cannot allow this to happen.

Lastly, the government should internalise lessons from the broken windows theory of crime. That is you cannot establish order in one sector and allow chaos to persist in a related sector. We cannot eliminate terrorism and ignore common crime just as we cannot eliminate common crime while ignoring the poaching menace and other instances of illegal trade.

The writer is a PhD candidate at Stanford University and consultant with IPRE Group