The truth about the chaos in Mombasa

The Somali youths at the forefront of running battles with police seem determined to escalate the violence and insecurity in Mombasa to the kind of levels they are used to back home in Mogadishu. Muta-do?

Yesterday police commissioner Mathew Iteere lost his cool when he was put on the spot over the security situation in the country. In my view he had every right to lose his temper because the police are NOT to blame for what is going on and if you understand the way Kenya works you will agree with what I am saying.

Mombasa is perfect, most of all because it is a coastal town just like Mogadishu.

My late dad used to complain (until I got sick of hearing it) about how the government had lowered the standards of the police force they inherited from their former colonial masters and continued to do so on a daily basis for political reasons not realizing that the “snake” they were rearing and feeding would one day turn against them and bite so hard that they would never recover. Okay my dad was not that eloquent in portraying his ideas but that was the gist of what he used to say over and over again during his retirement. He would finish off by emphasizing that standards would take years to build but could be destroyed in a flash.

The problem with our police force started when a deliberate effort was made to ensure that the top brass was always “politically correct.” That necessitated favoring the home boys for the top positions and shunning others who came from the wrong part of the country. If you investigate the history of the force properly you will quickly discover that the first commissioner should have been a man who was brushed aside simply because he hailed from Luo Nyanza.

Later on it became purely commercial in the police where the corrupt were quickly promoted to the top while those who blocked the high and mighty from doing their deals and refused to be bribed were forced out of the police force. I actually witnessed a senior police officer who stole cash raised by his juniors get promoted to police commissioner at the expense of other better qualified and principled policemen who refused to accept bribes let alone “steal.”. What would you expect from a force run by such a man?

Over the years the police force was reduced to a private army of the political elite. And so if you were a criminal who happened to be from the ruling tribe and close to State house no policeman would dare dream of arresting you, even if they caught you red handed. Everything had to wait for orders “from above.”

Now let’s get relevant to what is happening in Mombasa. When illegal immigrants started crossing over to Kenya from Somalia in the 1980s the Moi government did not see this as a security risk. They yawned and went to sleep. Security organs who were very aware of what was happening did nothing because they were waiting for orders from above that never came. This security problem that the government ignored spilled over to the United Kingdom where prior to the late 80s Kenyans did not need a visa to travel to the UK. Everything changed when Heathrow started being choked by Somalis with Kenyan passports arriving but hardly leaving. Most of these Somalis were illegal immigrants to Kenya who had easily obtained national identity cards and then Kenyan passports.

Today Somali immigrants are so many in Kenya that they have the kind of numbers that can easily tilt a closely fought presidential elections.

Impeccable sources from Mombasa have confirmed to this blogger that these “foreigners” are the ones causing chaos in Mombasa. Mombasa youths have always been outspoken in many ways but they have never been radicalized and cannot stand violence. The kind of youths throwing grenades at the police in Kenya’s coastal city are battle hardened and you can guess where they got all their experience from.

Word on the street is that the assassinated sheikh was murdered by his own people and judging from the well co-ordinated chaos that have followed in such an intricately choreographed manner that is becoming increasingly believable. The Somali youths at the forefront of running battles with police seem determined to escalate the violence and insecurity in Mombasa to the kind of levels that they are used to back home in Mogadishu. Mta-do?

Folks we are paying the price of decades of laxity in security where the idiots making the decisions spend most of their time barking orders like “kwenda rokoto hio mtu” (go and pick up so and so). And many times this order was given for the flimsiest of reasons like you delaying to pay somebody’s debt of a few hundred Kenya shillings.

And so while the cops were collecting petty debts for individuals and serving only the interests of the elite, security went to the dogs where it is now irretrievable. Yes, it is not Iteere’s fault is it? I would direct most of my security questions at one Daniel Toroitich arap Moi.
==========================

Breaking News: Mombasa erupts yet again;

This evening the uneasy but optimistic calm that had settled into Mombasa was shattered when a grenade was hurled into a police car seriously injuring at least 7 police officers. There were unconfirmed reports of deaths from the incident that took place very close to the Mombasa Pentecostal Church.

It is now clear that there are some elements within the town who are very determined to ensure that peace is not restored in the coastal city any time soon. Attacks of this magnitude against police officers during riots and demonstrations are very rare in the country and yet this is the second such incident in the last 3 days or so.

Can extra-judicial killings be justified?

"Muslims must take the matter into their own hands, stand united against the Kuffar [non-Muslims] and take all necessary measures to protect their religion, their honour, their property and their lives from the enemies of Islam," ...........Al-Shabaab statement 

There was a time in this life that I was pretty naïve. These days I am little less foolish in the ways of the world. Over the years experience and especially the perils of running this political blog have taught me plenty.

The truth of the matter is that the world is not a simple black and white affair like so many seem to think. Most issues are pretty complex and some of the decisions that the chief executive of any nation has to take can be agonizing and very difficult. That is why things get worse when you have a man or woman who hates to make a decision leading a nation. A bad decision is quite often better than a good one that takes too long to make.
 
A terrible thing for a child to see (her father getting killed). 5 year old daughter of Aboud Rogo is consoled by her grand father Rogo's father in-law moments after the shooting.
 

This photo of controversial cleric Aboud Rogo was taken minutes after the shooting. His killing sparked off riots in Mombasa's Majengo and Kingorani areas and beyond. Even this morning the situation is still tense in Kenya's coastal city.

Yesterday a controversial Muslim cleric linked to Somalia's Al-Qaeda-allied Al-Shebab militants was assassinated. Aboud Rogo died in a most horrible way as his wife, child and father in law watched. A car overtook them on the Mombasa/Malindi Road near the famous Pirates night club and the gunman using what must have been an automatic weapon sprayed enough bullets to kill 10 men all directed at the driver’s seat. It is obvious that the job was executed by a trained marksman because there were no other fatalities in the car, only small easily treatable injuries amongst the other occupants of the car.

How many people in the country can execute that kind of shooting? Not many I can assure you and only those who have handled a firearm will understand what I am talking about. Don’t forget that the car was speeding past and slowed only momentarily for the shooting. So you have two moving vehicles and a target.

To cut a long story short the whole thing has extra-judicial assassination executed by the government written all over it.

It would be wrong for us to pass judgment over the Aboud Rogo case without all the facts before us, and especially the kind of details which are never made public for security reasons. And so let us leave Mombasa for now and imagine another typical scenario for a minute shall we.

Our local intelligence services gets wind of a terrorist who has crossed our usually porous borders from Somalia and is headed for Nairobi. It quickly becomes clear that this man is not visiting relatives in Eastliegh but is on a bombing mission to harm Kenyans. What should be done in such a case? If the man is arrested there will be no evidence to convict him successfully and revealing some of the information our security agents have in a court of law would compromise our intelligence gathering and monitoring methods and enable terrorists to evade detection much more easily in future. And so the kind of solution that would save Kenyan lives in such a case would be to execute the terror suspect before he gets to Nairobi. The press and Kumekucha informants witnessing police dragging the man out of a bus and pumping bullets into him on the side of the road would be aghast. But they would not have all the facts would they.

The terrible truth is that extra-judicial killings happen all over the world all the time and not just in Kenya. The nation of Israel for instant is a small nation with a few million Jews surrounded by hundreds of millions of hostile Arab enemies. In such a situation there is very little room for errors and numerous extra-judicial killings over the years have kept Israel safe.

Indeed these kind of killings have been recorded from as early as Biblical times.

But even more interesting is the current plan by the Obama administration to use technology in the form of Drones to execute “lawful” extra-judicial killings internationally and at home. Read about that controversial plan and the legal implications HERE.

All that brings us back to the big question. Are there times when extra-judicial killings can be justified?