Sarah ElderkinSarah Elderkin
For once, I agree with Uhuru Kenyatta. I don’t believe the attacks in
Mpeketoni that left tens of people dead were the initiative of
Al-Shabaab. I think Kenyatta is correct when he says that politics was
at the heart of the incident.
Al-Shabaab sympathisers might have been involved and only too glad
to help perpetrate the attacks, just like at Westgate. But have you ever
heard of contract killing? Contract killing must be doubly satisfying
where it serves the purposes of both the initiator and the perpetrator.
The Mpeketoni attacks were indeed “well planned and orchestrated”, as
Kenyatta put it – again, just like Westgate. But it wasn’t the
opposition that did the planning and orchestrating.
The politics Kenyatta referred to had nothing to do with the
opposition in the form of Cord, much as he came out heavy-handedly to
hint – without actually saying so – that it was.
Rather, during the past 50 years of our colourful (and deadly)
political history, a terrible, shocking cynicism has allowed our
government leaders to embrace, make use of and protect those operating
in the murkiest depths of the underworld (drug-traffickers, ivory
poachers, international fugitives, shady European ‘brothers’, murderers,
thieves etc) to achieve nefarious aims. Now Al-Shabaab sympathisers can
be added to that list.
What is most significant is that, on many occasions through history,
the resulting incidents have been planned and perpetrated precisely at
times when the government has desperately needed diversionary tactics in
order to reign in the opposition and shore up fast-receding support.
Let’s briefly revisit 1969, when Tom Mboya was killed. This happened
at the height of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Bildad Kaggia’s opposition
to the government through the Kenya People’s Union, which was loudly
vocal in its condemnation of the theft of land and property being
perpetrated by Kanu’s top officers, led by Jomo Kenyatta.
The KPU had to be stopped. What better way than to assassinate an
esteemed son of Luoland (Mboya), in the hope that this might be blamed
on rivalry with a fellow Luo (Jaramogi) and would thus undermine support
for the KPU?
And it would kill two birds with one stone. At a time when Kenyatta
was looking old and tired, and panic was setting in among his kinsmen,
leaders close to him would be rid of a Luo who was getting a shade too
popular, and who might have been in line to succeed the ageing
president. It offered a neat solution.
In the event, the killing backfired, at least in one sense. Mboya’s
death only succeeded in galvanising support around Jaramogi, forcing
Kenyatta three months later to ban the KPU, and shortly thereafter to
detain Jaramogi.
Undoubtedly, Mboya’s death was a political assassination. But no
individual in government did it with their own hands. It was it done
through a contract killer.
A ruthless government achieved its aim by using someone else to
perpetrate the crime and then – in an increasingly common scenario – it
engaged in public weeping and wailing over the same crime, in order to
fake its innocence.
Mboya, 1969. Then came JM Kariuki, 1975, killed at a time when
Kenyatta was frailer than ever. The president’s ill-health was making
his henchmen very nervous.
In their eyes, JM was too great a defender of the poor, and too
popular with the people. In the event of Kenyatta’s death, he might just
win the presidency.
The unholy rich around Kenyatta had much to fear and even more to
lose if Kenyatta’s successor was not ‘one of them’. A solution was
found. JM’s killer was never apprehended. Was it a contract killing?
A couple of years later came the ‘Change the Constitution’ movement,
led by Gema politicians still panicking over ‘losing’ the presidency to
a non-member. If Kenyatta died, Daniel arap Moi, as vice-president, was
constitutionally in line to ‘inherit’ the post.
Gema, led by politicians including Njenga Karume, Kihika Kimani and
Dr Njoroge Mungai, could not stomach this idea, and they hatched a plot
to change the Constitution to prevent Moi’s accession.
In the event, they did not succeed. But history shows repeatedly
that the Gema hierarchy has never been happy at the idea that someone
from outside their own inner circle or from a different ethnic community
might take power.
These are facts. They might be stark and difficult to confront but we
can’t wish them away. This is history. These things happened.
In 1990 came Robert Ouko’s turn. He was killed for being on the brink
of exposing high-level corruption in government, at a time when calls
for a return to multi-partyism were becoming a clamour too difficult to
ignore.
President Moi and his cohort sycophants still believed they could
continue keeping their hold on monolithic power, but they knew the
exposure of rampant corruption by senior government members could prove
the nail in the coffin. Once again, something had to be done. No killer
was convicted of Ouko’s assassination. Was it a contract killing?
Then came the murder of Crispin Mbai, in 2005. He was killed for
spearheading a new Constitution that embraced the startling idea of
devolving power away from the presidency (something that is still being
resisted today – never mind about any new Constitution). Again, no
killer was apprehended. Was it a contract killing?
Each time, leaders with sorrowful faces have announced that “no stone
will be left unturned” in finding and punishing the perpetrators. Each
time, nothing of the kind has happened. (In the case of Mboya’s
convicted alleged killer, he was allegedly later spotted safely outside
the country, a free man.)
Even where there have been official inquiries into these violent
deaths, the resulting reports have been either bastardised or buried.
The JM Select Committee report fingered Kenyatta’s lieutenant Mbiyu
Koinange. Kenyatta decreed that the report could not be published unless
the name of “my minister” was omitted. So it was.
Collateral damage
Those were the days. It’s not so easy to get away with it now but
throughout our history there has been a pattern that is difficult to
ignore.
And now, because the stakes are even higher, current events are even
more brutal, and they affect many innocents who are simply
‘unfortunate’ collateral damage. These innocents fall by the wayside in
deaths that are of as little importance as those of victims in a
computer game.
In fact, disregard by our leaders for justice and for the lives of
ordinary people affected by these high-stakes political games has been
Kenya’s story ever since Independence.
Before JM was finally killed, there had been several attempts to
assassinate him. These culminated, the day before his actual murder, in
the bombing of a Mombasa-bound OTC bus on which he had been scheduled to
travel.
The 27 ordinary citizens killed in that incident were collateral
damage – just as the tens of people killed in Kisumu during Kenyatta’s
visit in 1970 soon after Mboya’s assassination were collateral damage,
and just as the 1,500 people killed after the 2007 general election were
collateral damage.
For years, so-called ethnic clashes have claimed the lives of
thousands in many parts of the country. Strangely, these ethnic clashes
hardly ever occur at any time other than election-time, when people need
to be intimidated, displaced or murdered, so that they are rendered
unable to vote freely, or at all.
They are mere collateral damage. And the increasing blatancy since Independence of murder-for-power has been breathtaking.
Now innocent shoppers and shop assistants, and innocent World Cup TV
viewers, killed at Westgate and Mpeketoni respectively, have likewise
become collateral damage in what appears to be nothing less than a
desperate bid for personal ambition and survival that grows ever more
deadly.
It all makes the Moi government-inspired Mwakenya witch-hunt of the
late 1980s – which was used to tame the opposition and consolidate power
in Moi’s hands – look very feeble by comparison (see box).
Uhuru Kenyatta assured us that Westgate would be investigated via an
inquiry. We were promised “full accountability”. That was before he did
an about-turn on the matter.
There are many who believe that the Westgate attack was staged to
divert attention away from the leadership’s difficulties with the
International Criminal Court, and to change international attitudes to
that.
If so, it was hugely successful. In such a situation, something had
to give – either Kenya’s part in the fight against terror, or the ICC
cases. The sympathy vote had been called in and the hoped-for response
assuredly came back.
The west’s opposition to the Jubilee head-honchos all but crumbled in
the face of Kenya’s role against terrorism, which was characterised by
its army fighting in Somalia and by its homeland taking what appeared to
be a major revenge hit at Westgate.
Who hasn’t seen the ICC process subsequently dragged out with
continual changes and delays – and the near-collapse of the entire
process, without a squeak from any gainsayer?
Where are the bodies?
As far as Westgate is concerned, we have been told that the perpetrators had escaped/been killed/been arrested.
But do we know what happened to them? Have any bodies been
identified? Has anyone stood trial? Have we seen them? Do we actually
know anything about what happened inside that mall? Do we even know the
identities of all the innocents who were killed? Are some still missing?
Ultimately, the inquiry promised by Kenyatta was just another unkept
promise, just like all those other inquiries and unkept promises made
over the years in events where government has acted with complete
disregard for human life – and has then found itself with too much at
stake, and too much to cover up, to reveal any truths.
In the Westgate case, there remains no proof of anything whatsoever,
only a government statement of ‘facts’ forced down our throats:
Al-Shabaab was responsible and the attackers are nowhere to be seen. Job
done, end of story, how convenient.
Fast-forward eight months and Jubilee is in trouble again. After more
than a year in power marked by blunder after blunder, ever-greater
tolerance of corruption, failure to deliver on key promises, insecurity
nationwide and the possible sale of our birthright to China (who knows
what was in THAT deal?), public approval is falling fast and things look
elephant.
At the same time, the pesky Raila Odinga is back from the US and is
more troublesome than ever. Can nobody stop that man pointing out where
things are going wrong and demanding accountability and national
dialogue? Can no way be found comprehensively to turn the tide of public
opinion against him and stop him in his tracks?
Well, perhaps someone thought of a way.
There are some very curious aspects to the Mpeketoni case and as a
result some very pertinent questions are being asked – not least
concerning the response of our security personnel. The overriding
question is, Where were they?
According to many reports, the authorities received information from
residents about a planned attack in the Mpeketoni region a week earlier –
and they apparently thought (according to information in a Nation
report) that this might be an appropriate time (a) to change the shifts
of GSU security personnel in the area, resulting in having a team on
duty that was unfamiliar with the terrain, and (b) for all the
commanding officers to be out of town and unreachable.
To any reasoning person, this seriously looks as if there was a plan
afoot, and that Al-Shabaab sympathisers must have been part of that
plan.
What is more, an opportunity was presenting itself irresistibly. Not
only was there the background (excuse) of the presence of the Kenya
Defence Forces in Somalia, but there was a neat precedent offering a
timely copycat idea.
During the World Cup in 2010, terrorists burst into a hall in Uganda
where people were watching a match on TV, and massacred 74. Déjà vu.
It is not as if there is not a large security presence in the
Mpeketoni area, with GSU camps barely half-an-hour away at Witu and
Mukowe, a Kenya Defence Forces base at Magogoni, and an Army base and
National Youth Service training centre at Bargoni.
Al-Shabaab’s modus operandi has usually involved military targets,
and they were certainly spoilt for choice in this area. But instead, in a
complete departure from their usual style, they went into a village. Or
so we are supposed to believe.
In addition, Al-Shabaab strikes indiscriminately. It doesn’t leave
aside women and children, as the attackers did in Mpeketoni. Its
adherents certainly don’t go round asking who is a Kikuyu, as the
Mpeketoni attackers were reported to have done.
Isn’t that a bit of a giveaway? If you want to tarnish the
opposition, feign an attack on your ‘own’ people. That’s an old trick.
(And – viewed very cynically – with 1,500 people killed in post-election
violence and no one yet held accountable, what’s a few dozen more, if
it serves the purpose?)
One officer in charge of a GSU platoon has said that, during the
attack, he repeatedly tried to get help from his senior officers but
they were nowhere to be found – one of them, notwithstanding the threat
of a terrorist attack hanging over his area, reportedly up in Nairobi.
To add to the difficulties, the mobile phone networks jammed. How much of a coincidence was that?
This all brings back too uncomfortably the way the police stood by
and watched as people were butchered on Rift Valley roads during the
2007 post-election violence. Were these personnel, in both cases, under
orders?
And what about the Mpeketoni police? Where were they? One police
officer was killed, said to have been off-duty at the time – something
senior officers have strenuously gone out of their way to deny so that
it looks as if police were in combat.
No one else thinks so, and anyway, Lamu County Commissioner Stephen
Ikua is reported as having said that the perpetrators knew exactly where
police officers were situated. How, unless they had been tipped off?
Perhaps the most curious thing about the Mpeketoni attack is the
so-called claim of responsibility by Al-Shabaab. This was made on the
Al-Shabaab-friendly website Somalimemo, which regularly hosts Al-Shabaab
propaganda, and on the pro-Al-Shabaab radio station Al-Andalus,
operating from Mogadishu.
Neither of these is Al-Shabaab per se – but no doubt any
self-respecting Al-Shabaab-sympathising organisation would be only too
keen to align itself and Al-Shabaab with any ‘successful’ operation.
Also, perhaps the claim was part of the ‘contract’.
Those people saying airily that “Al-Shabaab doesn’t claim
responsibility for things it hasn’t done” should get a reality check. We
are talking about extremist murderers here, engaged in a jihad.
Are they likely to be bound by the kind of moral code that prevents
their cashing in on any kind of publicity and propaganda they can get?
Let’s be realistic.
In the responsibility claim, the terrorists are alleged to have said
that Mpeketoni was a Muslim town before it was “invaded by Christian
settlers” – apparently a reference to the mostly Kikuyu immigrant
population there.
Al-Shabaab terrorists are not in the habit of politely referring to
their enemies as “Christians”. They call them ‘infidels’ or ‘kafir’.
Additionally, they are more prone to issuing such triumphant
declarations as “Allahu Akbar! May Allah’s anger be upon those who are
against us” – than to indulging in the somewhat chatty nature of the
alleged statements by Al-Shabaab after Mpeketoni.
These went something along the lines (after the second night’s raid)
of “We raided villages around Mpeketoni again last night … We have been
going to several places looking for military personnel.”
Nonsense! Which conquering jihadist speaks like that? Was this
reference to ‘military personnel’ employed to make it look and sound as
if it was Al-Shabaab searching for their usual targets – because very
clearly the attackers were certainly not in villages searching for
soldiers, when several military encampments lay untouched close by.
Was whoever issued these statements speaking to a script? Was this a
torturous shared plan, out of which everyone was supposed to emerge a
winner – that is, if you discount the ‘collateral damage’ and Kenya’s
political opposition?
Was the ‘Al-Shabaab’ claim of responsibility and Kenyatta’s almost
open accusation of the opposition meant to give the impression that
Al-Shabaab and Cord were working together, to divert suspicion that it
might in fact be Al-Shabaab and certain authorities in Kenya who had a
common plan?
In the aftermath, to top it all, Kenyatta, having pinpointed
interior secretary Joseph ole Lenku, inspector-general of police David
Kimaiyo and CID boss Muhoro Ndegwa as having serious questions to answer
about the response to the incident, decides to put Kimaiyo in charge of
a cluster of security forces!
How sincere can we believe Kenyatta was in questioning the conduct
and abilities of the three? It looks as though this was simply for
form’s sake.
And the latest decision looks like an offshoot of the main objective –
or perhaps it was even the main objective, and the start of a plan for
executive control of the security sector in its entirety, completely
reversing the gains (so far only on paper) of the new Constitution.
Clearly, some people know exactly what is happening. Nothing is as it seems.
Is a ruthless government again achieving its aims by contracting
someone else to perpetrate a crime, and then engaging in public weeping
and wailing over the same crime, in order to fake its innocence?
Many current events could be seen as part of a plot to ensure the
‘100 years’ rule. We ignore the undertones at our peril. And we need to
ask ourselves: Are we being set up?
Sarah Elderkin is a freelance journalist
click
