Westgate Mall siege: Let’s learn our lessons on security once and for all

The memory of the hostage situation in Westgate Mall will soon disappear from the front pages. Live coverage from The Hague or something else will take centre-stage and shift our focus from our most pressing security challenge of recent times.

However, I pray that two lessons of Westgate will not be lost. The first lesson emanates from the complicated context within which Al-Shabaab terror is unfolding in Kenya. We must understand that context but refuse to be its prisoners. The second is the centrality of citizen participation in the country’s security.

The two lessons are related. The context of anti-terror operations in Kenya is complicated by historical factors. One of those factors is the issue of the identity and citizenship of people of Somali ethnicity. The second is the implications for regional security of the collapse of the Somali Republic.

WAVE OF REFUGEES

The collapse of Somalia not only led to internal breakdown, it unleashed a wave of refugees in Kenya and other Horn of Africa countries. Many of the refugees are Somali; but Kenya, too, has a large Somali population.

Does it bear adding that Kenyan Somali deserve the same citizenship rights as all other Kenyans? The issue of their rights ought not be an issue of discussion. The rights are a given.

But the Somali refugees complicate the picture for Kenya’s security agencies who, in guaranteeing security, have to distinguish citizens from non-citizens. Often, the security agencies adopt the old Maoist approach of draining the pond to catch the fish. Some legislators have joined the chorus thus leading to the counter-productive land of vile bitterness.

Refugees need assistance and understanding. We must reject the view of the MPs who demand the closure of refugee camps. Indeed, the camps must one day be closed and the refugees returned home.

But the precondition for this is for AMISOM to win and create conditions for return to stable nationhood. Anything short of this is the response of someone who has taken leave of wisdom and substituted it with bitterness.

Al-Shabaab aims at ensuring that bitterness triumphs over thought; that we partake of the same irrational and inhuman actions against others the way they do by murdering, maiming and dehumanising our people.

But the struggle must extend beyond KDF winning the war — it must include winning the minds of Kenyans. KDF might win the war, but as long as there are people who are willing to kill for the absurd ideologies of the movement, no amount of closure of camps will prevent them from trying to attack Kenyans.

Indeed, given that there is no evidence yet that the Westgate attackers came from the camps, closing them will simply be a sideshow.

If the security agencies in Kenya took to demystifying security operations and engaging citizens to some level of security sensitisation and awareness, they will get the fish without draining the pond.

However, the statement this week by Interior Cabinet Secretary, Joseph ole Lenku dented the hope that this lesson of modern security operation has reached the relevant authorities.

Only a few months ago, Ole Lenku had no idea how Kenya’s security is conducted. Six months in office, he is now the “brilliant” advocate of “we cannot discuss intelligence in public”. This simply means that new ideas are of the least interest to those columnist Kwamchesti Makokha describes as securocrats.

If the views of the securocrats prevail, our intelligence and security system will continue to exist in splendid isolation from ordinary people. Security will be like tap water, something we expect to find ready-made until, of course, the taps run dry and the blame begins. This must change very soon.

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