Disappearances and extrajudicial killings won’t end terrorist threats

What you need to know:

  • Recent history has shown that extra-judicial killings and torture breed extremists.
  • The Kenyan state has for decades treated Kenyan Somalis as “the enemy within”.

In the last few months, human rights activists have been raising an alarm over the sudden disappearance of young Kenyan Somali men.

The activists claim that more than 100 men are missing in Mandera, 50 have disappeared without a trace in Garissa, the whereabouts of 36 young men from Wajir is not known and at least 20 ethnic Somalis from Eastleigh in Nairobi have been abducted.

The bodies of three men who had gone missing were discovered in Murang’a just last week. Many believe that the youths could be victims of extrajudicial killings.

Recent history has shown that extrajudicial killings and torture breed extremists and provide justification to terrorists to carry out more terrorist attacks. Osama bin Laden was killed (extra-judicially, I might add), but his death did not stop the rise of the monster called Islamic State.

In addition, the political fallout from security operations, such as Operation Usalama Watch carried out in Eastleigh in April 2014, and the mysterious killings of Muslim clerics in Mombasa have done little to win the hearts and minds of communities from which terrorist groups find recruits.

'KLEPTOCRATIC POLITICS'

As the International Crisis Group warns: “Across the spectrum of Kenyan Muslim opinion, there is a clear message: as well as historical grievances, the State’s ‘counter-terrorist’ operations are a primary driver towards extremism.”

The more appropriate response would be to co-opt members of terror networks, and work with Muslim and Somali communities to identify potential terrorist threats.

However, rather than adapting its security approach to work with people who have an understanding of Kenya’s political psychology and sociology, the State perpetuates an “others” approach that treats entire populations as somehow separate and threatening, says a paper published by the Institute of Development Studies.

Terrorism endures in Kenya, says the paper, because it is at the heart of the country’s “kleptocratic politics” in which informal power extends from elites to a network of administrators, police, security officers, criminal bosses and business interests who forsake national interests for personal interests.

The Kenyan state has for decades treated Kenyan Somalis as “the enemy within”. That is why, despite the presence of ethnic Somalis in high positions within government, northeastern Kenya has remained the epicentre of human rights violations by the state.

The Wagalla and other massacres are still fresh in many residents’ minds. The northeastern region is also the most neglected part of the country – Wajir and Mandera towns got their first tarmacked road this year, more than 50 years after independence! How can people of this region feel Kenyan when Kenya treats them like outsiders?

What’s worse, in regions deemed to be terrorist “hotbeds”, the mass exodus of teachers, doctors, nurses and businesspeople is threatening to further impoverish people who have already suffered from decades of government neglect.

REMAIN MARGINALISED

Kenya’s northeastern region, which held so much promise under a devolved system of governance, could likely take years to recover from the effects of the Mandera and Garissa terrorist attacks. More than 800 teachers who left northeastern Kenya have refused to go back. If this crisis is not managed, it is likely the region will remain marginalised for another five decades.

Meanwhile, corruption ensures that national security is sacrificed at the altar of individual greed. Grand and petty corruption are helping terrorists cross into Kenya and ensuring that they are never get caught. Just last week a police lorry was found to be illegally ferrying human cargo from Ethiopia into Kenya.

If the police can be involved in human trafficking then it goes without saying that some of those who are trafficked might be terrorists. Small-scale corruption at border posts has already compromised our security, while grand corruption has made a mockery of our anti-terrorism strategies.

Vital tools for the enhancement of security in the country, such as forensic labs and intelligence gathering equipment, have been sacrificed by people who don’t understand that their short-sighted greed and actions are robbing their children and grandchildren of a secure future.

Terrorism and insecurity cannot be stemmed through extra-judicial killings, ethnic profiling or collective punishment; on the contrary, these measures lead to radicalisation. We are insecure because we are corrupt.