Corrupt Kenyan immigration and inept security officers must take responsibility for rampant terrorism

There are Somali refugees all over the world; in the UK, US, and in many European countries. They do not hurl grenades into public places, or take people hostage, kill and maim so invariably as it is happening in Kenya. 

The problem, is clearly not the refugees. You can ethnically profile, deport, harass and humiliate Somalis in Kenya but that won’t solve the problem. That wont stop terrorist attacks and infiltration of more hardened cells of terrorist establishments, sympathisers of Shabaab and Al Qaeda.

Corrupt Kenyan immigration and inept security officers must take responsibility. Immigration and security is treated with so much secrecy. Loads of money spent yet these busybodies cannot prevent dodgy characters from getting into our country and jeopardising the lives of tolerant Kenyans who've been living with hundreds of thousands of refugees for decades - Somali, Sudanese, Congolese, Rwandese, Burundian. 

Somebody yapped about an impending shake-up of the entire security apparatus in Kenya after West Gate (NSIS, internal security, military etc). It still remains IMPENDING, 6 months down. 

Bunch of talkers right?

Listen Mr. African 'STATESMAN': Rants of a Troubled Pan-Africanist

OK listen AU, IGAD, EAC, NEPAD and all other multilateral African institutions and ‘statesmen’ who’ve perfected the art of perennially ranting and whining about ‘Western Imperialism’. I am talking as a Pan-Africanist disturbed by the ingenuity, ineptitude and slack of many a folk in the exclusive club of African leadership. 

Listen, an intergovernmental, inter-agency summit is underway in London, United Kingdom as I write. It’s the Somalia Conference convened by British Prime Minister David Cameron and his allies to address the troubles and restoration of Somalia. I know you are probably there already - INVITED, and must have carried elaborate delegations with you. Invited to participate? Invited to provide quorum? Or maybe just to be placated? Maybe to be arm twisted like you traditionally have been. Don’t you find it uneasy, disturbing or just funny that you are invited by a foreign entity, the same ‘Western Imperialists’ that you detest so much to deliberate on an endemic African predicament, a shameful scar on the Emblem of Africanism that is squarely on your mandate? Aren’t you a tad bit disturbed by your always sluggish, last-man response to matters of African welfare?

I listened pensively to presidential speeches at the recently concluded AU summit in Addis Ababa: African leaders whining, distraught and disenfranchised, faulting the West, NATO for their role in the destabilization of an African flagship country – Libya. But come to think of it, beyond that barrage of rhetoric, emotions and the display of flaring tempers orchestrated by the likes of Zimbabwean ‘statesman’ Robert Mugabe, What did you do about Libya? How much seriousness did you commit to standing with an African state? How much resources or even time did you devote to rescuing Libya? After how long did you act? Anyway, I guess my questions could be indeed irrelevant for a people who can’t even agree on a stable AU leadership, a people clearly disillusioned and oblivious of their mandate.

How shameful it is that you just get invited to an assembly of this calibre. How humbling it is that you will merely sign the resolutions but without the muscle and space to take centre stage in their execution. How I wish this would have been a partnership at the least, a joint caucus of an African multilateral institution with the western allies OR at best an African initiative strategized and executed by Africans drawing in international allies. As it is, I guess you haven’t mustered any serious leverage in these deliberations and you won’t be able to bargain and argue more aptly for Somalia, the Horn of Africa, and Africa. God forbid you might be participating effectively as rubberstamp ink, in a premeditated process of ratifying already engineered English/Western judgements on the prospects for Somalia.

Isn’t it time you cut the rhetoric and got more proactive, more strategic and more creative in sorting out the challenges bedevilling our beautiful troubled continent? Isn’t it time such big African economies like Nigeria, South Africa as well as promising ones like Ghana, Botswana rolled up their sleeves and contributed more in terms of resources, time and delved into the murky waters of African Unity like their counterparts in Asia, Europe and South America do? 


For as long as you proceed with the prevailing ambivalence about these imperatives, you continue to sell out Africa – Cut the rhetoric folks; get down to work!  

  

 NO: Do you get any DUMBER – Alex Perry?

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara said: ‘If you tremble with indignation at every injustice – you are a comrade of mine’. Today I quaver with vexation, at a downright injustice that can only be met with contempt the measure of which the demeanour of the injustice for sure deserves. An injustice that I am sure must disturb any right thinking person and incentivise them to counter. Am talking about the careless outburst of one Alex Perry, who now I know happens to be TIME’s Africa bureau chief in charge of covering Sub Sahara Africa.

At 6:12 am on Wednesday 19^th October 2011,

Alex Perry posted an article on the prevailing onslaught of the Kenyan armed forces on the Somali terror group Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen on his blog – ‘Global Spin’. At this point therefore, I advise that you proceed and read ‘Kenya Invades Somalia. Does it get any Dumber?’ so that you make sense of this post; so that you appreciate the gravity of this injustice that I could not let slide just like that.

If you don’t find time to read the post, here is a succinct synopsis. In a nutshell, Perry alluded in this post that the Kenya Government has invaded Somalia, foolishly started an unnecessary war a kin to the infamous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, faulted the capacity of the Kenyan army and the possibility of success in the military campaign and accused the Kenyan government of staging a well-orchestrated PR exercise, a war to bolster the country’s reputation as a safe and secure place.

Dear Mr Perry, Be informed that the people of Kenya won’t tolerate your inept journalism and I join the many who have demanded an apology from you. First and foremost, even if I didn’t read this article, the title alone is insolent and provocative. Your article is poorly researched, full of unacceptable generalisations and biasedly argued to say the least.   

Invasion

With all due respect, Mr Perry what makes a military operation sanctioned by the Somali Transitional Federal Government to effect a bold, resolute move to send a firm message to Al Shabab and its sympathizers that they cannot continue to wreak havoc, sustain mayhem and endanger the lives of millions of people living in the horn of Africa an invasion?  What options are there for a country that shares a 675km long boarder with Somalia susceptible to proliferation of illegal arms and terrorist elements, a government that has tolerated over half a million refugees, spent colossal state resources at a time of economic difficulties on humanitarian aid accommodating Somali refugess, accepted loads of Somalis naturalised as Kenyans living within the county’s capital and at the peril of its people at a time when the high and mighty that you mention have obviously abandoned the Somali people, absconded their duty to humanity and avoided the Somali problem like a plague. What options exist for a country that has frankly borne the greatest brunt of Al Shabab facilitated terrorist activities of the Al-Qaeda cell in Somalia? The 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, the Kikambala Mombasa bombing in 2002, the focus on Kenya as the conduit for the terrorist attacks in Kampala, 2010; the piracy in the Indian ocean and its effect on the Kenyan coast. What options exist for a government whose citizens demand security, and indeed that has substantially invested on the military (about 9% of national budget, 2% of GDP in 2009)?

A National Lifeline

I expect you to understand this better (as a bureau chief in charge of Sub Sahara Africa), but in any case you don’t, Kenya has no oil, no diamonds and the flowers, tea and coffee certainly are meagre. We depend largely on Tourism, which is the largest foreign exchange earner, a significant source of national revenue and much needed jobs. Tourism is the lifeline of this country’s economy and anything that hampers the influx of tourists is as good as threatening the livelihoods of the Kenyan people. No doubt the Kenyan tourism industry has taken beating after beating in the hands of Al Shabab murders, abductions and piracy in the Kenyan coast and the perception of insecurity created and exaggerated by travel advisories by the United States, United Kingdom and other European governments that have done nothing serious to address the crisis in Somalia. Moreover, for a growing third world economy like Kenya, foreign investment is obviously crucial for economic development. What capitalist will commit their money in a country perceived as insecure and risky? If this doesn’t not help you understand the gravity of the impact of the turmoil and chaos in Somalia on the Kenyan people and the justification for this military campaign then you certainly have no business sitting in that office.

Ineptitude of the Kenya Army

Mr. Perry, to insinuate that the Kenya army is inept to the level of being ‘chewed up’ by 2, 500 ill trained guerrilla militia is absurd and utter nonsense. It is laughable how you choose to glorify the Al shabab, how you prop it as some indispensable army of immortals who no one alive can take on. How you choose not to acknowledge the fact that the Kenyan army is one of the most robust, well equipped and most disciplined military agencies in the region. May be that sounds fallacious to you; OK then take a look at the UN, African Union peace keeping missions in Africa for instance and see what proportion of it cradle from this ‘inept Kenyan brigade’. You mention the ‘defeat of US, Ethiopian troops in Somalia’ to galvanise your lopsided argument and unjust condemnation of Kenya’s military campaign. Tell the truth; US troops could obviously not have been overwhelmed by Al shabab, they contained a few casualties and chose to withdraw (the causation definitely attributable to a lot more other political economic reasons I believe you should understand), the Ethiopian army retreated of course after saving the Somali government and with all due respect the AU AMISOM forces have seen Al shabab retreat from Mogadishu, lose significant influence in Somalia (resort to war propaganda, like they lined bodies in Burundian uniforms on 20/10/2011 claiming they killed AMISOM soldiers in a bid to amplify the flimsy clout they have remaining) and allowed the Somali Transitional Federal Government significant scope to organise some formal control of the war-torn country.  Clearly Mr. Perry any sane person recognises the crimes inflicted on innocent Somali men, women and children, condemned to starve to their death by Al shabab hell bent to create impossibilities to deliver humanitarian aid. How absurd it is to unfairly fault such a courageous attempt to address an endemic global disaster without offering any serious alternatives.

I thought a right thinking journalist aware of the eminent complexities in dealing African problems like this one could spare some space on his blog to highlight the possibilities of success, champion for supplementary support and condemn the atrocities committed by this group instead of peddling fear, mongering falsehoods and posing as an Al Shabab apologetic. I thought a journalist in his right minds would find space on his blog to highlight the contempt of the US government; spending millions of dollars destabilising a peaceful country, offering uncalled for military support to counter the Lords Resistance Army, a guerrilla group that is no longer a problem in Uganda yet saying NOTHING about supporting a campaign to pacify an evidently troubled region, at the epicentre of global humanitarian aid appeals. 

Yes indeed ‘history is littered with warnings’ against military campaigns like this one; yes indeed the onslaught might be costly especially to the myopic who elect not to weigh it against the proceeds of a safer, more peaceful and stable horn of Africa; yes indeed the Kenyan government/army could do with better intelligence and martial support. But this certainly doesn’t warrant a resignation and a cowardly folding of the tail to succumb to the battering by outlawed militia as though Kenya is some stateless society without definite boundaries recognised by international law and acknowledged by the UN like you prescribe. If anything, like one of my comrades already aptly put it – the Kenyan government is damned if it doesn’t act and damned as well for whatever armed action it pursues’.  

I hate to admit this but I almost succumbed to the line of criticism that some African scribes I know have adopted in response to such poorly researched and executed pieces. You make me want to agree with them that this is yet another case of the ‘typical article about Africa, written by a white journalist largely ignorant of the realities in Africa’. Kenya Invades Somalia. Does it get any Dumber? NO: do you get any dumber, ALEX PERRY. I too demand an apology.