Where should parents whose children have been lured by Shabaab thugs turn?

What you need to know:

  • Kenyans’ relationship with the uniformed armed forces is one of fear and mistrust.
  • Few parents will turn over their children to the police.

The other day, a young man simply disappeared off the face of the earth. He was a student at the University of Nairobi, studying urban planning.

He made his arrangements carefully. He sold off his hostel room and most of his belongings.

He deleted his social media accounts and binned the posts he had made in the past. A cousin did exactly the same.

They switched off and disposed of their phones. Then they took off, possibly towards Somalia or further afield.

And just like one of the killers who massacred innocents at Garissa University, one of the young men who disappeared was the son of a prominent Kenyan.

His father has served as a very senior government official.

The person who narrated this story after it became clear following efforts by anti-terrorism police to question other students at the university and was familiar with the agony the parents are going through, added a pertinent question: Where should parents whose children have been radicalised or who seem on the verge of joining the Shabaab militants turn?

In most societies, the answer would be to go to the police. But Kenyans’ relationship with the uniformed armed forces is one of fear and mistrust.

Attitudes have changed little since colonial times when the police were the oppressors and participated in the massacre of tens of thousands.

Many years ago as a child, we were socialised to run away for no reason at all at the sight of the police helmet.

Adults were the same. Remember when the streets of Nakuru emptied like the River Jordan when a marching band from the General Service Unit made its way into town, apparently to celebrate the unit’s 50th anniversary, and people fled for dear life not knowing the mission of the red berets?

Kenya needs to understand that it is now in the middle of a global battle between a small but determined core, which wants to take the world back to the 15th century and which believes it is their duty to kill all “unbelievers,” especially Christians, but also Muslims who don’t share their murderous ideology.

EXIT PLAN

This threat demands a complex, grown up, strategic response. It is right that in the medium term there should be an exit plan from the mess in Somalia (probably after the next presidential election there in 2016) but that won’t be enough.

Witness, for example, the fact that dozens, possibly hundreds, of Tanzanian youth are among those Al-Shabaab has recruited in recent years.

One solution would be to look to the unlikely example of Saudi Arabia and try and formulate an ideological response to the terrorists.

Saudi Arabia faced a growing Al Qaeda threat from the late 1990s and decided that jailing the militants was not enough to deter recruitment.

Instead, it set up a major de-radicalisation programme from around 2004. Extremists were put through months of religious re-education and psychological counselling with the radicalised youth taking lessons on sharia law, psychology, vocational training, Islamic culture and history.

By 2010, 4,000 youth had gone through the programme with only a few hardened fellows returning to the path of extremism after their release. (Most of those put through this programme were not killers but potential murderers like the two youth who vanished from the University of Nairobi)

Kenya needs a multi-faceted approach. Murderers such as those who rampaged through Garissa need to face the blunt edge of the law.

But parents also require a place to turn for those who have been brainwashed and are contemplating joining the Shabaab.

Few parents will turn over their children to the police. The state needs to work with clerics to fashion a counter-radicalisation strategy that can help to rehabilitate potential terrorists, which naturally should be accompanied by surveillance after the youths leave the programme.

Kenyans should in turn at least suspend their perennial cynicism to all major national questions and understand that on national security, we are sailing in one ship that must not be allowed to list because it will sink with everyone on board.

The sniping against elites from North Eastern such as Aden Duale, for example, is completely unproductive. It makes more sense to rally together and confront a shared challenge using a variety of instruments including ideological ones.