David Kimaiyo should be sent to Ethiopia to learn how to keep Kenyans safe

One of the uglier maxims in the news business is that “if it bleeds, it leads”.

The logic, roughly, is that a news item will appear higher in the bulletin if very many people have died.

Thus you have reporters at scenes of disaster/crime/terrorist attacks saying: “So far 50 people are confirmed dead but the casualty figure is expected to rise.”

Translated: Don’t go anywhere, we are likely to see higher piles of bodies soon; this is a big story.

According to the police, Kenya was spared another mall massacre last week.

Two suspects were arrested in the outskirts of the capital while on their way from Isiolo to collect enough ammunition to lay waste to dozens more innocent wananchi.

It was not big news in the dailies or in the bulletins, because nobody bled. But it is obviously a significant development.

Kenya simply cannot afford another Westgate-style atrocity. The one last time was bad enough.

The casual cruelty of the attackers, slaying at short range victims as young as eight and others as old as 78, massacring the pregnant and vulnerable, shocked the world.

The economic impact has been just as grave. The other day, the Maasai Market exhibition at a local mall was almost completely deserted.

One lady bemoaned the absence of tourists and lamented that now she only saw local wazungu residents who she claimed are as stingy as Kenyans because they know the prices.

She said she preferred the “green mzungus” from abroad who would pay and tip generously in dollars and pounds.

GREATER IMPACT

People tend to think of a downturn in tourism as affecting mainly some wealthy beach hotel owners but, of course, the impact is far greater.

It hits the income of a wood-carver’s workshop, the watchman who will be laid off at the said hotels and the mama mboga who is part of the chain that feeds the tourists.

That is not to mention the depletion of revenue at the National Treasury, the pot from which free education and health care are financed.

That’s why making the borders safe is a task that should be given the highest priority.

The police and security agencies do a fairly thankless job, with the public on their backs all the time (sometimes justifiably so because the traffic police department, for example, is one of the most efficient extortion rackets anywhere outside the Latin American drug gangland), but they occasionally do a good job.

Whichever officers were involved in busting the terrorists last week deserve a reward.

But the truth is that anyone who walks around in Nairobi and other major Kenyan cities will know that this is a country still stuck in “island of peace” mentality.

Major malls and hotels are guarded by unarmed security guards carrying what the New York Police Department report into Westgate described as “hand wands”.

What are they supposed to do in the face of AK-47 wielding terrorists?

The other day at a mall, the driver of the battered taxi I had hired said that his boot doesn’t open so it could not be inspected. Just go in, the guard advised.

Why do the security forces take such a casual approach?

HOSTILE POLICE

Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo should be dispatched to Ethiopia to learn a lesson or two why that country has not suffered a single terror attack despite sharing a large border with Somalia.

Even minor hotels are manned by extremely hostile paramilitary police.

When you approach, they often order everyone out of the car and unleash a dog to check for explosives. The deterrent value alone is absolutely first rate.

In Kenya, the General Service Unit is one of the least corrupt and most efficient wings of the police force.

Why can’t its members be deployed at key installations to help reduce the threat of terror?

Instead of guarding the malls which are obvious targets post-Westgate, GSU personnel are to be found keeping watch at the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, watching out to prevent the announcement of a coup which will never come.

It is an absurd situation. Good intelligence can help keep the borders safe but it won’t catch all the miscreants.

The casual approach to security at key installations only courts yet more disaster, which Kenya can certainly not afford.

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