We’ve lost Somalia war to greed, ineptness

 

There is a parallel universe in which the war against al Shabaab unites us a country, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor, those who support President Uhuru Kenyatta and those who do not. That is what good wars are supposed to do. And one could argue that the war in Somalia had the inkling of a good war.

We sent our men and women in uniform to keep those who would want to harm us from doing so, and to help Somalis re-establish order in their country. These are noble goals, and should have been used to sell the war to Kenyans, and to guide the prosecution of the war itself. Here was our nationalist moment.

Instead, and in typical Kenyan fashion, we chose to squander it. First was the secrecy about the goals of the invasion. There was not a public debate about its objectives. Initial reports indicated that the trigger was the abduction of tourists. This framing made it seem the Kenyan government was more concerned about the lives of foreigners, and the tourism industry – which mostly benefits a few well-connected families – more than it cared about regular wananchi who were bearing the brunt of terror attacks. Even if the proximate impetus was the noble goal of rescuing kidnapped tourists, the packaging was terrible. And with that, the Kenyan government missed an opportunity to rally the public around the flag and to generate public support for a noble effort.

Second was the corruption. No sooner had our troops crossed the border than it emerged the military top brass was involved in the smuggling of sugar and charcoal. It also emerged that these very same activities were benefiting the Al Shabaab, ostensibly our enemy in Somalia. The government denied this, of course, despite mounting evidence which included a UN-sanctioned report.

Again, we managed to tarnish a noble cause with our insatiable appetite for greed and our Kenyan habit of corrupting even the most sacred of duties. Just to reiterate, the generals were reportedly benefiting from illegal activities that were benefiting the very same terror group that was slaughtering our enlisted men in Somalia.

Third came the deceptions about the number of our troops lost in combat. The battle of El Adde on January 15 2016 was the single biggest loss in our military history. We lost more than 100 of our troops in a single battle. Yet the government has never come clean on the magnitude of the human loss that it visited on our brave army. There were no official memorials. Our military families were forced to deal with their grief in private, as if nothing happened. The same thing happened early this year in Kulbiyow, where Al Shabaab killed dozens of our soldiers. Then, too, the government chose to equivocate on the total number killed. Again, there was no national reckoning with the fact that Kenyan soldiers are fighting and dying in our name in Somalia.

It is hard to explain government’s action regarding our troops in Somalia. Most governments tend to use troop deployments as a means of generating public support, but in our case the government has chosen to keep troop deployments secret. Why is Kenya different in this regard?

My hypothesis is that our choice to keep this singularly nationalist effort private is because those who lead us do not desire to create a united Kenya. They do not believe in the Kenya Project. Kenya, to them, is merely a means to an end. This was true under the Raila-Kibaki era. And it is true under Uhuru and Ruto.

And as I argued last week, the evidence of their disdain for the Kenya Project is shown in the manner in which they practice tribal politics. It is quite possible for ethnic chauvinists to advocate for the absorption of other ethnic groups by demonstrating their inherent superiority – you may call this inclusionary ethnic chauvinism. The Parisians, for example, sought to convert other ethnic groups into Frenchmen, and thereby created a stronger united country. Our brand of ethnicity is exclusionary, and therefore puts us on the slippery tribalist race to the bottom. And it is exclusionary because it is not nationalist, but exists for the sole purpose of stealing from the public.