Kapenguria attack demonstrated that violent extremist is a national security disaster

The recent Kapenguria Police Station attack where a rogue policeman killed seven of his colleagues including the Station Commander and a member of the elite RECCE squad that had been flown all the way from Nairobi to end the killing has served to show that violent extremism is the biggest security threat of our time. According to the Global Terrorism Database, since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been over a nine-fold increase in the number of deaths from terrorism, rising from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,685 in 2014.

In 2014, the Database ranked Kenya as the 12th most affected country by terrorism in the world and 3rd in Africa after Nigeria and Somalia. The Kapenguria gunman fitted a profile of a violent extremist, and postings in his social media page seem to confirm the same.