Opacity over security issues a refuge for incompetence

Presidential spokesman Manoah Esipisu has owned up to unspecified shortcomings in the official response to the Garissa terrorist attack, asserting that for the government, “it is always a learning curve.”

This is not the first time that the government has admitted inadequacy in responses to the major terrorist attacks that have occurred since Jubilee came to office.

The Westgate attack led to palpable public anger over the barbarity of the attack but also because of the incompetent responses, including confusion and delay, in reacting to the takeover of the mall, which allowed the terrorists to maximise on casualties, and led to fatalities among the rescuers.

More anger was generated over subsequent credible claims that security forces, while responding to the terrorist attack, had looted the mall. The President acknowledged problems with the response when he promised to establish a commission of inquiry into the perceived lapses. In the end, however, no commission was established, and the President never spoke about this subject again.

After the Mpeketoni attack, the President again expressed disappointment because “intelligence on this attack was available to security officers in Mpeketoni,” but “these officers did not act accordingly.”

According to the President, “this negligence and abdication of duty and responsibility [was] unacceptable.” He, therefore, announced that “all concerned officers have been suspended and will be charged in a court of law.”

However, in the months that have followed, it has not been clear if cases against these officers are going on in court.

While a commendable sign of humility, the acknowledgement of fault is ultimately unhelpful if, after each terrorist attack, the country shows no evidence of learning and repeats the mistakes made before.

The questions that have exercised the public mind in the last one week include the slow response to the Garissa attack which saw the officially-mandated response unit, the Recce Company, only make an intervention at the university compound 11 hours after the authorities first became aware of the attack. There are also questions about the role of the military garrison stationed in Garissa.

An immediate neighbour of the ill-fated university, it is alleged that soldiers from the garrison who arrived at the university soon after the onset of the attack did nothing more than maintain public order on the outside, as the slaughter continued inside.

Could they have done more? Recriminations about disregarded prior warnings of terrorist attacks have characterised the aftermath of all recent attacks. The blame game that the Westgate attack generated among different security arms led to leaks of information calculated to exonerate the National Intelligence Service, which had come up for a lion’s share of the blame, by showing that the agency had warned others of an attack at Westgate.

As seen, none other than the President claimed that security agencies knew about, but failed to prevent, the Mpeketoni attack.

The Garissa attack, however, is more controversial. The government has denied claims that travel advisories issued by British authorities, and which drew a derisive response from the President, were based on intelligence about the likelihood of a Garissa-like attack. Whatever the case, a reasonable question seems to be what appreciation the Garissa university authorities had about the risk of a terrorist attack on their facility, and what was done to mitigate the risk.

Another area of official response that has drawn anger is a sense that has been apparent that the grieving families are on their own, and do not have the support of the government or the larger public.

The Westgate attack elicited an outpouring of solidarity, as part of which the government and the opposition closed ranks, and the private sector rallied together a commendable humanitarian response.

While Westgate was a public tragedy for Kenya, Garissa has been a private tragedy for the individual families that lost loved ones. The country has gone on with business as usual, leaving them to their own designs.

While after the attack the President declared three days of national mourning, this only served as the government’s exit plan from the situation which was then privatised to the families, rendering the declared “national mourning” hollow.

There has been no national sense of the monumental tragedy that is represented by the horrific violence under which such a large number of young lives were taken.

I spent time at the Chiromo mortuary last week, where I met a man from Kisii, whose daughter is still missing. The man told me, and many other families agreed with him, that he felt the government had no interest in the Garissa tragedy because the victims were poor people.

I revisit Mr Esipisu’s remarks about a “learning curve” for the government. It is difficult to agree that the government has learnt anything. For the government to sustain claims that it is learning from mistakes made when responding to previous tragedies, there have to be shared facts, about those attacks, both within government, and also between government and the public.

It is only after establishing a common truth that lessons can be drawn. Regrettably, however, the government has shown an aversion for shared truth about what transpired in these attacks.

While the Westgate rescue started transparently, it was subsequently obfuscated in opacity and smoke (literally!) and even claims about looting, about which there was credible independent evidence, were dismissed offhand.

While Mpeketoni was presumed to be an al-Shabaab attack, the President’s alternative claims, exonerating the terrorist group, were never investigated.

The country cannot establish binding expectations about official response to terrorist attacks unless the government agrees to end the obfuscation of security issues, which is only a refuge for incompetence.

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