Politics
Evaluating Uhuru Kenyatta’s first year
Hysteria
The government’s response to terror attacks often fuels hysteria rather than tackling the problem on the ground. The most recent manifestation of that is the Kasarani detention and screening operation. Days after Kenyatta’s speech, the police launched one of the biggest security dragnets in recent memory, deploying 6,100 officers around the country in search of illegal immigrants, unlicensed weapons and suspected terrorists. The operation targeted Eastleigh, where thousands of immigrants were arrested and taken for screening.
The Kasarani screening program partly reflects the government’s increasing frustration with developments in neighbouring Somalia and its military operations there. The opposition Orange Democratic Movement has called for the government to withdraw its troops.
Early this year, interior secretary Joseph Ole Lenku announced that the government planned to close the Dadaab refugee camp in Garissa County in northern Kenya. Over 20 years old and housing about 340,000 mainly Somali refugees, Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee camp. It is also Kenya’s fourth-largest city.
Now the government views Dadaab as a breeding ground for terrorists. Alarmed at what appears to be a scapegoating of Somalis, community leaders accuse the government of unfairly targeting their people. “The government has no interest in fighting terrorism. The screening of Somalis in Kasarani, the threat to close the Dadaab camp: these are all part of a strategy to hold the West hostage,” says Farah Maalim, a deputy speaker in the last parliament and a trenchant government critic.
Maalim went on to say, “This government is determined to target Somalis and Muslims in general…. We have been warning the government for years over the growing threat of terrorism. They have done nothing about it. Why isn’t there more monitoring of Al-Shabaab’s forays into Kenya? You don’t have to up-end the whole of Eastleigh to track down a few hundred aliens. That is fascism. It’s exactly what Hitler did with the Jews, and you can quote me on that.”
Security officials reject such claims. “No single community is being targeted. Screening is aimed at smoking out criminals in order to curb criminal activities. Every community – including Somalis – has been affected by terrorism and insecurity, and as such they too are beneficiaries of any efforts the government makes to improve security,” says Mwenda Njoka, a spokesman for the Inspector General of Police (IGP).
In Mombasa, Muslim leaders have said the government is behind the murder of Makaburi. They say his shooting is part of a pattern of attacks against militant clerics on the coast. Yet the influence of these clerics is reaching far beyond Somalis and Muslims to the wider population in towns and cities and the informal settlements housing millions of unemployed youth. Indeed, most new recruits to Al-Shabaab and its local associate, Al-Hijra, are Christian youths converted to Islam. Much of Al-Shabaab’s online propaganda is now delivered in Kiswahili, not Arabic.
