An historic mission to stem Al-Shabaab’s barbarism

The massacre of 148 students of Garissa University College in Garissa town by Al-Shabaab gunmen on Thursday brings to mind Bernard Wasserstein’s book, Barbarism and Civilisation (2007), which depicts the 20th century as a paradox — “a century of barbarism and civilisation … of cruelty and tenderness”.

In a deep sense, Garissa — where 148 people were killed, 79 wounded and 500 others rescued — signifies the forceful “return of barbarism,” epitomised by Al-Shabaab’s terrorism, to haunt the 21st century.

The killings rekindled the vexed debate on security in Kenya. A week ago, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared, during in his second State of the Nation Address on March 26, 2015, that “the state of our Nation is strong [and] our nation is more secure.” He was absolutely right.

Security has improved. A new-look security architecture steered by a team of battle-hardened securocrats, new security laws and an intelligence-led counter-terrorist effort have cumulatively reduced terrorist attacks from an average of 30 per year in 2012-2014 to zero between December 2014 and April 2015.

Kenya’s Defence Forces have degraded Al-Shabaab’s military capacity inside Somalia while the country’s intelligence has helped foil at least five major Al-Shabaab terrorist attacks of the magnitude of the Westgate siege in 2013 and the Mpeketoni attack in June 2014.

But Kenyatta was neither hubristic about security nor oblivious of the enormity of the terrorist threat. “This terrorist group [Al-Shabaab] still poses a significant threat to Kenya, especially in light of the long porous border with Somalia,” he said, rather presciently.

Brazen Al-Shabaab attacks in Somalia, Uganda and now Kenya have revealed the resilience of the Islamist insurgency despite a series of strategic setbacks and battlefield losses in recent years. Al-Shabaab, al-Qaida’s largest affiliate in Africa, is the principle threat in the politically volatile East and Horn of Africa regions.

STRIKE ANYWHERE

It has proven capacity to strike anywhere in East Africa. An Al-Shabaab gunman on motorbike shot Joan Kagezi, Uganda’s Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, as she drove home in Kampala on March 30, 2015. Ms Kagezi was the lead prosecutor in an on-going trial of 13 Islamists accused of participating in the 2010 killing of 76 people in Kampala.

Earlier on February 20, 2015, the militia’s twin bomb attacks in Somalia’s capital left at least 20 people dead, including two members of parliament and the deputy mayor of Mogadishu.

Garissa revealed how Al- Shabaab is exploiting the capacity over-stretch of regional states to strike. Prior to the Garissa attack, intelligence agencies in Uganda and Kenya issued warnings of possible Al-Shabaab terrorist attacks, calling for vigilance around major infrastructure projects or universities in Kenya.

However, even with up-to-date intelligence, marshalling enough police officers to protect hundreds of thousands of vital installations and institutions, including nearly 60 universities strewn across the country, remains a major security dilemma.

Building a rapid response capacity has proved a viable stop-gap measure. Less than 30 minutes after the terrorists stormed the university’s hostel complex, more police officers and KDF troops were deployed to give support to two police officers stationed at the university.

This rapid response strategy worked. The hostage crisis was over before nightfall.

Garissa carries two lessons of theoretical significance. Terrorism will continue to thrive in insecure spaces such as North Eastern as well as states rocked by conflict such as Somalia, Syria, Iraq or Libya. More importantly, the terrorist of the future is a gunman holding hostages or shooting from the window of a speeding car or on a motorbike.

DESPERATE GROUP

However, Garissa reveals Al- Shabaab as a desperate group following a string of military and strategic setbacks. This follows the killing by US airstrikes of its chief, Ahmed Abdi Godane, in September 2014. On March 12, 2015, Adan Garar, one of the masterminds of the 2013 Westgate Mall attack, was also killed.

Godane’s successor, Ahmed Umar, lacks the charisma and the strategic intelligence of his predecessor and is unlikely to hold the fractious groups together. The group’s former intelligence chief has surrendered.

As a result, the Somali militants are playing a high-stakes ideological game. They portray most of their recent attacks as a “clash of faiths” between Christianity and Islam. Al-Shabaab is using the divisive ideology of “nativism,” a pseudo-racist and “us-versus-them” idiom, to win the hearts and minds of Kenyan Somalis (“the natives”) and to fuel their hostility against non-Muslim Kenyans (“settlers”).

It is also tapping into the arteries of Somali ethno-nationalism. Thus, after every attack, it claims that the assaults are revenge for Kenya’s military adventures in Somalia. The endgame is to recreate a “Greater Somalia” incorporating North Eastern counties under its fundamentalist Islamic rule.

In the on-going war on corruption, Kenya should seek to cut the supply lines of the militia’s multiple sources of funding. These include exports of charcoal through the ports of Kismayu and Barawe, import of tens of thousands of bags of contraband sugar worth millions of shillings which illegally finds its way into the Kenyan market, and the smuggling of ivory as a lucrative source of funding for Al-Shabaab militants.

Kenya is training thousands of security officers to keep Al-Shabaab at bay. After the Garissa massacre, Kenyan ethnic Somalis in North Eastern region donated blood to help the injured survivors. Here lies the enduring lesson of the massacre: More than ever before, Kenyan Somalis have a historic mission to protect Kenya’s civilisation against Al-Shabaab’s barbarism.

Prof Kagwanja is Chief Executive, Africa Policy Institute, and former government adviser