Long history of mistrust between Kenya and Russia in Cold War era

Russia President Vladimir Putin with President Uhuru Kenyatta on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa Summit. [Courtesy, Twitter]

Wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said Russia was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. He described the country as “an inscrutable and menacing land that plays by its own rules usually to the detriment of those who choose more open regulations”, and summed it with imagery that Russia, which he called the “other” had separated herself from the rest of the world by drawing an “iron curtain”.

In the past three weeks, Russia has become a hated name world over. Even elderly folks in the village know the price of fuel has gone up, fertiliser become scarce and unaffordable, and the price of tea produce has gone down because Russia has raided a small country called Ukraine. Russia has become a pain in that part of the anatomy I wouldn’t mention. Soon even couples denying the other conjugal rights won’t need much explaining but just say ‘Russia’.

Lands of contrasts

Russia is the largest country in the world occupying 11 per cent of the total landmass. It has 11 time zones meaning it is dusk and dawn in the same country on the same day. It is also a place where one-third of the country is closed three months in a year when ice falls and halts all movement.

Just as Russia is often to be caught on the wrong, so is her attachment for the long. The country’s full name is the Russian Soviet Federal Republic (RSFSR). Before that it was the largest of the 15 countries that made the former Soviet Union, whose full name was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Russia is also the only country in the mongrel continent called Euroasia because about half of it is in Europe and half in Asia. It is the land of extremes where stone and nuclear age co-exist under one roof. It is also the land of vodka where the President and his ministers freely take swigs during Cabinet meetings and children are allowed few sips of devil’s drink to keep them warm during winter. Mike Sonko would love that.

Though the first country to open an embassy in Nairobi, Kenya and Russia handled the other with utmost suspicion in the Cold War days. Russia and China were the only two countries whose embassies in Nairobi couldn’t trust Kenyans to work in their premises, even in junior positions like cooks and cleaners.

Kenyans paid back in the same coin. Mr Essau Kioni, who was head of Russia desk at the Kenya Police Special Branch, the precursor to the present National Intelligence Services (NIS) told me that his “boys” would secretly open any letter sent to or received from an address in Russia. My friend and colleague Mwenda Njoka was a subject of interest to the Special Branch when on leaving high school in 1980s he innocently wrote to several embassies, Russia among them, in search of a scholarship to study abroad. Special Branch ‘boys’ tracked him down to his rural village in Meru for a few questions to satisfy themselves there was no hidden agenda.

Talking monkeys

Neither was it  – and still it isn’t – a walk in the park for Kenyans who got an opportunity to study in Russia and other states in the former Soviet Union. Kanu-era Cabinet minister Joseph Kamotho who alongside politician Dr Oburu Odinga got scholarships to study there in early 1960s told me their first shock was the entrenched racism in the country to an extent black people were openly referred to as monkeys. “On sighting Africans in the streets children would stop to ask their mothers how come the “monkeys” could speak like human beings”, the former minister recalled of his experience in Russia. He was in the group of African students who couldn’t stomach the racism and fled the country to complete their studies in the United States.

One of the students in the Kamotho group by the name of Nicholas Nyangira wrote home a letter that was published in this newspaper (at the time known as East African Standard). He reported: “What I learned in six months in the Soviet Union is what some Africans will never learn. They are taken to Russia’s showplaces and never experience the race hatred that I suffered at the University of Baku (where Kamotho and Oburu Odinga were). I also discovered it is easy to get into Russia but leaving can be a nightmare. 

Sabotage

At the government level, Kenyan authorities were always suspicious of Russian motives. Only few weeks to independence there was a coup in Zanzibar with alleged Russian involvement. On the same day Kenya Army soldiers mutinied at Gilgil Barracks and the government had to ask British troops in the country to intervene. Shortly after, Russians opened a college in Nairobi called Lumumba Institute where one of the professors was a secret agent of the Russia dreaded intelligence unit, KGB. Kenyan authorities would later order the college closed and the Russian lecturers expelled from the country.

About the same time, a Russian freighter christened Fizik Lebedev docked at Mombasa loaded with heavy weapons and 17 military officers who were booked at Panafric Hotel as tourists. Kenyan authorities declared the “tourists” unwanted guests and the ship was ordered to immediately leave Kenyan shores. The government ordered that no foreign diplomats leave Nairobi without two weeks’ prior notice and a full description of their itinerary. The directive was purposely intended and enforced on the Russians. The Russians hit back by insisting all financial aid they had given to Kenya be paid back through compulsory imports of Russian commodities. Kenya disagreed and secured emergency funding from the World Bank to offset Russian loans.

Kenyan authorities ordered six Russian diplomats out of the country. At a highly charged Kanu conference convened in Limuru,  President Jomo Kenyatta angrily banged the table and said he would name Kenyan politicians who were on ‘payroll’ of the Russians. It happened that on the day of the conference a Russian secret agent posing as a journalist had been hiding in the bushes on the way to Limuru with an intention to bribe delegates headed to the conference. The Russian ‘journalist’ was ordered to immediately leave the country.

The games continued. In 1976 Kenya assisted Israelis in the famous Entebbe Airport raid that rescued hostages in a French airbus hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Russia, through their African proxy Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, encouraged Uganda to invade Kenya Ukraine style. Americans and the British quickly intervened to make Uganda and its sponsors know a raid on Kenya would come at very high cost.

Postscript: Two weeks ago I wrote in this column that Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka will always find something to whine about. Only hours after great fanfare in which he agreed to put aside his presidential ambitions and back Azimio candidate Raila Odinga, he travelled to his rural home to cry foul that he didn’t know the full contents of what was agreed on and signed at KICC. Kalonzo is a lawyer of long-standing. Even a first-year law student will tell you never to sign anything whose fine print you haven’t read and understood. Just pray that in the many years Kalonzo was our Foreign Affairs minister he never signed a treaty with another country that he hadn’t read and understood!