Kenya will be just fine

In the aftermath of the Westgate terrorist attack – like many Kenyan’s in the diaspora I’ve been limited to; scouring Twitter and news websites for more information, calling friends and family to make sure they’re okay – and then calling once and maybe twice more to make sure they’re still actually okay – and repeating the cycle once again.

There were lots of – “Are you okay? Where are you?” “At the bank” “AT THE BANK? WHAT? GO HOME! IT ISN’T SAFE!” – type conversations with friends and family back home. I’ll show them – my next Facebook status would let them know exactly how I feel about their laissez-faire attitude to all this!

Perhaps I should refresh Twitter to see if anything new has popped up?

I’d denied myself access to viewing the pictures and the videos of the injured and dead. What good comes of me watching people getting shot and suffering? It is also probably my small way of ‘punishing’ the media’s irresponsibility for even publishing the pictures and videos in the first place.

These guys look pretty serious. Plus I could use some discipline

Surely there’s something more constructive I  can do? Perhaps head back home and join the Kenyan Defence force. I suspect they have height restrictions on new recruits. Will I cut it? I read a book once about fire fighters somewhere in the U.K. – they would measure your chest to see if you were fit enough to get in. Do we have anything like that in Kenya? Unless they measure my belly – there’s no way in hell I’d meet their fitness criteria. I think I’d be more useful in the intelligence services. Research? Critical thinking? I could do that. Yup – that’s it, I think I’d fit in much better in Intelligence.

Kenyan intelligence services have the job of answering the question – how do we move on from here? How do we respond as a country? I start to think about what I would propose if I was tasked with answering these questions.

The strategy would firstly have to be founded in top notch intelligence – we would need the best and the brightest minds in the country and in the world. Luckily this has already been done – with the Mossad on the case, we can rest assured that the intelligence we’re getting is the best there is.

The use of this intelligence would need to be two-fold. One is internal, within our borders and the second is in Somalia.

To begin with our Internal Security – the first thing we would need is to secure all entry and exit points in the country. No-one whose identity and purpose in the country cannot be fully verified should be allowed to enter the country. No-one who is not cleared through the lens of our top-notch intelligence is allowed to leave the country.

Now that exit has been mitigated – we would need to start scouring the country with a fine tooth comb.

• This is would be incredibly labour intensive in a country of approximately 40 million people. To minimise this, we would need a system – perhaps a profile of what your average Al-Shabaab member looks like. Everyone in the country matching the profile would be put on a list. Everyone on this list would need to be accounted for in some way, located and questioned. Anyone on the list who has left the country since should be placed on Interpol’s international watch list.

• We’d need technology. A system that could listen to any and all phone calls in the country (or better yet the entire region). This system would be able to pick up key words, locations etc. to better track terrorist cells in the country. It would be able to track the IP addresses and physical location of all emails and social media location being sent in the country – again scouring for key words, of people places and activity that would be informed by our Mossad-aided intelligence.

• We would slowly begin making some leads, and locating suspects. They would have to be questioned. Current law doesn’t allow for nearly enough holding time of suspects before trial. We would need more time than that to build our cases. Parliament would need to pass special legislation that allowed detention and questioning of any suspects until we had information that conclusively determined their guilt or innocence. To ensure that no terrorists could use our non-war-time constitution to escape the grasp of the law and cause more damage, we would need lawmakers to ensure that anyone suspected or convicted of terrorism forfeited their standard legal rights guaranteed by the Kenyan Bill of Rights.

• Over time, we would need to start charging suspects, we would need to hold them and be able to have their court cases held in a secure location – to make sure that it couldn’t be bombed, that they couldn’t escape, or that they couldn’t communicate with their terrorist cells. We would need a special detention camp/prison where we would detain extraordinarily dangerous prisoners and interrogate them in an optimal setting.

• In the midst of all this – we would need to keep the masses content. We would need to give them enough information to ensure they were confident the government had the situation under control. We would need to make sure they didn’t turn on each other in a panic – and they supported all special legislation required to effectively combat terrorism in and outside the country.

The second leg of the response is what happens off Kenyan soil. What happens in Somalia. We would need a much stronger presence there. Kenya has been long said to have best trained and funded military in the region – this would be the time to see it in action. We would never be safe in Kenya until there was no longer an Al-Shabaab in Somalia. We’d need more boots on the ground. We would to need launched a full out attack in Somalia to ensure that every single member of Al-Shabaab was either dead or captured and being prosecuted. We would need legislation that allowed us to capture and transport any and all suspects to our special detention camp in Kenya for questioning and charging – or being proved innocent.

Given I haven’t started my job in the intelligence services yet – I think this is a pretty decent strategy. It’s founded in intelligence. It’s logical. It focuses on both prevention of future attacks, and on and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

But it comes with a lot of questions:

Firstly, who is going to pay for all of this? We already have an over Kshs 300 Billon budget deficit and have senators and governors at each other’s throats for county cash. Unrealistically Optimistically – perhaps the new found sense of national unity will push law makers to slash their budgets and personal wages to ensure that the country can afford the response strategy it needs?

Secondly, is continuing military action Somalia (as our president has already committed to) with an even more aggressive mandate, the best way to protect Kenyan citizens in the long run?

Very practical concerns – and what of the moral and democratic price?

What is the effect of putting hundreds of thousands of innocent law abiding citizens through this ‘intelligent-profiling’ system  – only to catch a handful. How many previously innocent people will be pushed by this widespread institutional racial profiling towards extremism and acts of hatred towards a country that has labeled them guilty until proven innocent?

Is it okay to have a ‘temporary dictatorship’ for the greater security of the nation? Who becomes the holder of the almost infinite powers granted by these measures? 

What is the effect on our nation’s social fabric – of the blanket approach, where everyone is either ‘us’ or ‘them’? Where the ‘them’ is sub-human, and is mass produced as either- suicide bombers, or kamikazes, or jihadis. I’m reminded of Harry Truman’s words – ‘When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast’ he said as justification for the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

How do we learn from the mistakes of others in their failed efforts to combat terrorism? How do we respond while maintaining the civil liberties of our people – regardless of their heritage or decent?

I don’t have those answers. It’s definitely for the best that I’m not in charge of managing the response to this attack. I hope that our leaders and intelligence experts have better ideas than I do.

Needless to say – they will be working tirelessly to figure out the best way to respond to all this.

Unity amongst blood donors and recipients in the aftermath of the Westgate attack

While our leaders figure that out – the Kenyan people have already spoken. Their response; not a strategic but an instinctive one. A response from a place of love, kindness and generosity. Not only online through social media pushes for unity and calm, but through our actions – on the ground through thousands of people donating blood, sending money and any helpful items to all the friends and family of the deceased and injured. Through volunteers and retired security officers, nurses and doctors dropping everything to ensure they’re doing their part to be there for those in need and to save lives.

Their response was one of unity and one of love.

If we never lose that – Kenya will be just fine.