If you do not diagnose terrorism well, you will prescribe the wrong medicine

What you need to know:

We are part of a global fight between open societies and the terrorists who consider them an abomination.

If a doctor confuses symptoms or even mysteriously blames you for pretending you are sick, he is unlikely to prescribe the right medicine for you.

This is the situation in Kenya today when it comes to the public commentary on terrorism.

Some of our country’s most prominent voices lay the root causes of the continuing terrorist campaign in Kenya on poverty, joblessness, or political marginalisation.

Others argue that Al-Shabaab and its affiliates’ sustained regime of murder would stop instantly if Kenya withdrew its troops from Somalia.

Yet some imply, without ever citing a single supporting fact, that the attacks are a sinister State plot to distract Kenyans from the very real challenges our country faces.

These diagnoses, when they are not used to advance narrow political agendas, are driven by a blind belief that non-State violence is almost always a response to grievances born of government ineptitude or corruption.

The terrorist attacks, therefore, become one more chance to heap individualised blame on public servants.

We all know that terrorists with the same ideological leanings and connections as Al-Shabaab have struck some of the richest countries in the world. And there are poorer, far worse governed countries than Kenya that are not a target. We were also under attack long before the KDF ever deployed to Somalia.

Here is the real root cause. The democratic, open Kenya we are trying to build is highly visible, offensive and accessible to a network of financiers, recruiters and ideologues that are inspired by a deliberately distorted vision of politicised Islam.

Not all political violence arises from a desire to arrive at clear goals like State power or wealth; and that not every rebel wants to overthrow the government to make it more efficient and responsive.

The suicide bomber targeting poor people in Eastleigh is not responding to the oppression or the marginalisation of the vulnerable.

MURDEROUS REACTION TO OPENNESS

As an individual he may have deep emotional and psychological problems but his recruiters, trainers and sponsors have not been driven mad by their own suffering or that of any population group.

This is evident from the fact that they are perfectly willing to visit the most horrific murder and torture against the weakest and most vulnerable.

Poverty, lack of opportunity, political marginalisation or Amisom operations allow the recruiters more room to manoeuvre but even when these factors are absent, they will continue their campaign.

They cleverly connect local political or economic problems with a globalised campaign. But what they are is a murderous reaction to openness, individual rights of religious practice, speech, movement and occupation that is spread from the western tip of Africa, across the Sahel and into the Horn of Africa.

The terrorists try to claim an idealised past that never was as a route to fanatically seeking a future in which behaviour is controlled through fear, and in which the individual’s choices accord to a single, and as I have said, deliberately distorted vision of Islam. Muslims have suffered the most from the terrorists.

If you want a peek into a society ruled by Al-Shabaab or its fellow travellers, look no further than the areas it controlled in Somalia before being driven back by Kenyan and Amisom troops.

A national campaign to immunise children against polio was forbidden as part of an evil “Western plot”. Football, music, and dancing were banned.

The Taliban imposed rules that allowed the whipping of women for not covering their ankles; a ban on women laughing loudly, and on their presence in public gatherings.

No cosmetics; windows were to painted over so no one could look into their rooms; no photos of women printed in newspapers; and no education to girls older than 10.

Public beheadings, mutilations and stoning to death were frequent entertainments for breaking such rules. This is the stuff of unrelenting fanaticism.

Our analysts and pundits should beware excusing the devotion to violence and control of the Talibans and Al-Shabaabs of the world as a rational political reaction to globalisation, capitalism or any number of local problems.

While their visions will never take systematic root here without millions of Kenyans being murdered, unchallenged, they can succeed in undoing our own vision for Kenya.

Talibanisation in the societies most vulnerable to it will be harder to advance if countries like Kenya succeed in their fundamental political and economic bet that openness, freedom of movement, association, speech and exchange are the key to the wealth and political culture we both desire and deserve.

The terrorists must ensure we fail. By attacking markets, transportation and places of worship, they are hoping that our fear will shut down our openness and lead to political and religious division.

The national security organs can productively leverage private security companies through a renewed regulatory framework sensitive to the counter-terrorism effort.

Finally, and most importantly, we are part of a global fight between open societies and the terrorists who consider them an abomination.

To be most effective, our actions to sustain our political and constitutional order should be properly rooted in a national counter-terrorism strategy that harnesses civilian institutions and the public.

Mr Kimani is a diplomat who was the first senior counter-terrorism adviser to Igad.