Jihadis must not be allowed to make Mombasa their beachhead

An early wish by governors and their county outfits to be granted security functions was a very dumb idea.

Mercifully it never went far. Look at events in Pokot-land.

The co-ordinated outcry by local MPs and ex-MPs against the military operation there is clear confirmation that Pokot leaders would have probably let the Kapedo killings (19 policemen and three civilians) and the theft of their weapons go unpunished.

You can rest assured that a security service that answered to West Pokot County would leave the cattle-rustling culture blissfully undisturbed.

Mombasa is the other county where noises about delegating security roles have periodically been heard.

For reasons that have long been obvious, and which manifested themselves dramatically again last week, such a wish must never be entertained. Not when the local political and community leaders display their usual, dismaying ambivalence toward the jihadist menace engulfing the coastal city.

I am sure those Mombasa politicians together with the vocal Muslim human rights groups at the Coast wanted to peddle the view that the police planted the explosives and the terrorism-related literature found in the mosques that were raided.

That tendency is symptomatic of the knee-jerk defences put up on behalf of Mombasa youth despite the plain evidence that many have been brainwashed by extremist dogma.

The people who should be mentoring these youth in the ways of good citizenship have for long pretended to be blind to the dangerous militancy that is being preached in known Mombasa mosques.

Where were these community mentors when mosques like Sakina and Musa were being taken over by extremists? How come mainstream voices like Supkem have been reduced to bystanders by these hotheads? We can excuse community leaders when one or two terrorists operate below their radar.

But when one, two, three and more mosques are systematically and forcibly taken over by wild-eyed enthusiasts of Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda, we must acknowledge there is a very, very serious communal crisis, and one that cannot be papered over with reflexive arguments about Muslims being “profiled” or the government being “anti-Islam.”

A LITTLE WORKOUT

Marginalisation and the lack of opportunities are frequent explanations of the radicalisation of a segment of Mombasa’s youth. Let’s give this theory a little workout. Mombasa is the second-most important city in Kenya with amenities that rank second only to Nairobi’s.

You cannot equate the opportunities available in Mombasa to those in counties like Nyamira or Isiolo, or Baringo.

It is fair to ask what available opportunities Mombasa’s Muslim youth have seized from their metropolitan vantage point. Surveys have shown that Mombasa’s uptake of higher education is embarrassingly as low as Kajiado’s. How many Arab-Swahilis actually show up for the periodic police recruitments or have shown interest in accessing Uwezo funds? Do they have any interest in being part of the government bureaucracy?
This “otherness”, which the coastals colourfully tag as “Pwani si Kenya”, works to their disadvantage. Kenyan Asians can afford to “marginalise” themselves from the mainstream, so to speak, because they enjoy the cushion of strong family businesses.

The majority of the coastals can’t.

We are all making a huge mistake by looking at Mombasa through the narrow perspective of tourism. Big mistake. Nigeria initially shrugged off isolated grenade attacks and shootings at mosques in the northeast of the country as simple law-and-order hiccups that could be put down with quick police action. See where they are now with the monster that is Boko Haram.

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As I write, suspected Al-Shabaab bandits have attacked travellers in a bus, killing 28. They were specifically targeting non-Muslims. This sectarian nonsense is counter-productive.

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