By Gitau Warigi
Sunday, April 13, 2014
There is a state of hysteria among the Somali community over the unprecedented screening in Eastleigh. The mood has been picked up by human rights activists.
Still, assertions about a “Nazi concentration camp” at Safaricom Stadium in Kasarani are way overblown. So are statements about mass rapes of Somali women by security forces.
Such are not constructive responses to a national security crisis that cannot be wished away. It is a fact that thousands of non-Kenyan Somali aliens have embedded themselves in Eastleigh. It is also a fact some of these are Al-Shabaab members or sympathisers.
It is a fact, too, that Al-Shabaab has been blowing up our people with bombs and grenades on numerous occasions. The last such attack, like many before, was in Eastleigh.
Neither the angry Somali politicians nor the human rights crowd have offered practical alternatives of how to flush out these undesirable aliens. Any such proposals would be more helpful than double-twisted rants that make us feel nice as a people but don’t remove the terror menace we face.
I have no doubt that corrupt policemen let these aliens in and corrupt immigration officers sold them Kenyan documents. It is also probably true that our intelligence tracking network is not up to scratch. So? Is it the suggestion that we should first clear up these corrupt networks before we think of doing anything else?
Meanwhile, the bombs and grenades will be popping off all over the place while we deal with these corrupt people. Once we are through with them, we can then turn our attention to the aliens. Or so this logic goes. You can see somebody is very keen we chase at the rat while the house is burning.
Luckily for our lives, counter-terrorism wars are never waged by people waving the Bill of Rights, unless they are suicidal. Or plain stupid. It is proper and justifiable to feel uncomfortable about profiling whole communities.
Under normal circumstances, that should not be done. In my book, terror attacks are not normal business. They are choices that must carry heavy consequences. In America, they have Guantanamo, which the so-so saintly Barack Obama has been unable to close.
Former Lagdera MP Farah Maalim has been making some spectacular allegations at press conferences; about “victimisation” of ethnic Somalis by the Kenyan State; about regular police extortion in Eastleigh; about “innuendoes” aimed at his community regarding money laundering and piracy. He seems to have a lot to say. I wish he could tell us more, never mind that the priority problem at hand which he is skilfully navigating away from is Al-Shabaab and not pirates or clan warlords.
(It is also quite a surprise to learn from Mr Maalim and his fellow travellers that the wealth of this country, and its enterprise, resides in Eastleigh! I am certain plenty of places, not least Mogadishu, can do with a bit of this wealth.)
For the record, I don’t suppose anybody with a properly verified Kenyan ID is being taken to Kasarani. I assume the ones being screened are those without papers or those with forged ones. Such people, of course, do not belong in Kenya. They must be deported back to their country or returned to the designated refugee camp at Dadaab. What, pray, is illegal about that?
The local attacks have been concentrated in Eastleigh, in Garissa, in Wajir, in Dadaab, and in Likoni. That is a fact. We should get beyond hypocrisy. It would be quite strange if you went out to clamp on this terrorism by setting base in, say, Maasailand, or Makueni. Who was the (late) minister who told Parliament that the tail of Al-Shabaab was in Mogadishu but the head was somewhere else?
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Still on terrorists, somebody in the know tells me that the intelligence services have a pretty good idea of who the key players are. They have infiltrated the main networks thoroughly. But their hands are often tied by the fact the they cannot make timely arrests (only police do), thanks to new laws.
Terrorists are highly mobile characters. They also enjoy intricate support networks. Once you disable these support networks, they are easy to pick out.
[email protected] Twitter:@GitauWarigi
This article was originally published in the Daily Nation