Saudi Gazzette Editorial

At a time when Kenya is at war with terrorism, the last thing that it needs is to go to war with itself. Nairobi’s intervention in neighboring Somalia helped to oust the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab from much of the territory it had seized.

However as regular armies the world over have always discovered to their cost,  defeating irregular forces on the battlefield is easy but beating them once their have reverted to their hit-and-run terrorist roots is entirely another matter.

Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta joined George W. Bush and Tony Blair in deluding himself that a conventional battlefield victory was all that would be necessary. Kenya is now paying a rising price for Kenyatta’s bland assumption that there would be no blowback from his Somali intervention.

The latest retribution meted out by Al-Shabaab terrorists has seen at least 22 defenseless villagers massacred in settlements close to the Somali border. This is the third such attack in three weeks. There is a tragic similarity with Nigeria in the apparent inability of the Kenyan security forces to protect citizens exposed to terrorist outrages. Boko Haram is running riot in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state despite sonorous pronouncements by President Goodluck Jonathan that the police and army are determined to crack down on the terrorists.

The Kenyan government would argue that events along the border with Somalia have not yet got as out of hand as in Nigeria. Yet the growing number of bombing and gun attacks, not least the terrible massacre in the Nairobi shopping mall last year which saw 67 people slain, suggest that there is indeed a deadly likeness to what is happening in Nigeria.

Now therefore is not the moment for the long-standing ethnic and political divisions in Kenya to be once again coming into the open with the government displaying no obvious determination to address grievances. One key issue is that the coastal areas that Al-Shabaab has been targeting were long occupied by Muslims. However, the president’s late father, Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first post-independence president began seizing land there and giving it to his fellow Kikuyu tribesmen. These largely Christian incomers proceeded to dominate local administration and, with the power of the government behind them, complaints by the traditional Muslim inhabitants over discrimination and lack of opportunity were completely ignored.

The upsurge of Kenya’s tourist industry, which has made coastal property highly desirable and therefore valuable, has exacerbated local Muslim feeling. Much of the touristic development, planned and already undertaken is on land now controlled —arguably illegally — by Kikuyu. Moreover with Kenya’s strengthening economic position — it just raised $2 billion in the largest every African debut bond issuance — plans for new ports and trade infrastructure on the north-east coast are similarly being dominated by Kikuyu speculators.

Kenyatta has suggestedthat local Muslims have been supporting Al-Shabaab killers. However strong his evidence, his wisest response would not be a security crackdown on Kenyan Muslims living in coastal and border areas but rather positive moves to address their issues. It would be a deadly error for Kenyatta to assume that just because Al-Shabaab killers claim blasphemously to be acting in the name of Islam, Kenya’s Muslim minority is supporting them. Indeed many have died resisting the terrorist attacks. Further discrimination will only make matters very much worse.

Source: Saudi Gazzette