Garissa University Attack: The Inside Story

I have lived in Garissa. To be honest it is the kind of place where you cannot help but wonder if you are really still in Kenya. Even though you have to cross a famous Kenyan river, the Tana River, shortly before entering the town. The terrain is really close to what you would imagine a desert looks like.

Still it is the largest and most developed town in the semi arid North eastern province of the country.

A dark cloud hangs over the town this Easter holiday after 5 al Shabaab masked gunmen stormed Garissa University a few hours ago. The government says that four of them were killed by KDF soldiers and the fifth arrested as he was trying to flee the scene in the midst of all the chaos.

Before the incident few Kenyans knew that such a university existed in the country. Garissa University is actually an affiliate of Moi University in Eldoret.

In retrospect it was an ideal target for the terror group consisting of so many non-Somalia students from different parts of the country. It had a total population of over 800 students. In the past attacks in Garissa and most of the former northern frontier district have attracted little interest from the rest of the country. This one was different because of the extremely high death toll (147) and the fact that institutions of higher learning have always been considered a very unlikely target for terror attacks.

And yet this should not have been the case. For months intelligence reports have singled out some Night Clubs and generally places where drunkenness and  immorality go down as possible targets for terror attacks. These are vices that are deeply frowned upon by the terror group who view themselves as religious zealots. Now what do you expect in a campus anywhere in the world? Immorality and drunkenness is a way of life.

And to make matters worse Garissa is only about 90 Kms from the Somalia border and the porous borders mean that folks from that war-torn country frequently criss cross between the two countries coming and going. It would have been difficult not to notice the student presence and mostly "unacceptable to al Shabaab" activities in town, even for a visitor.

The inevitable criticisms against the nation's security organs are bound to emerge but experts agree that this time round the response was pretty fast. Impressive really. No doubt this was helped by the military barracks not too far from Garissa town and the fact that security top dogs in the country have been doing a lot of useful work in the area to ensure that Kenyans are protected as much as possible. Eyewitnesses say that they saw soldiers on the scene only minutes after that attack started. This undoubtedly saved plenty of lives.

KDF did an excellent job in ending the siege even as the militants held hostage non-Muslims in one of the buildings the most likely objective being to use them as human shields to slow down attacks. And also despite the terrorists cleverly positioning snipers at the top of the building to take out anybody who tried to approach it.

New Kenyan Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery (a former soldier turned-politician-turned-interior-cabinet-secretary) emerged as the kind of figure who inspires confidence even after such a horrible attack. He was quite convincing talking to the press about the situation on the ground and how it was being handled. No doubt a far cry from the former cabinet secretary (who was really a hospitality-industry-professional-turned-interior-cabinet-secretary).

The local media mostly left out the gory details. Like the fact that some eyewitnesses say that they saw bodies without heads meaning that some victims were beheaded, a common gruesome practice of the terrorists.

Why is it that Kenya has suffered the most from terror attacks, even long before KDF went into Somalia? After all there are a number of other countries that have sent troops to Somalia including Ethiopia and Uganda who have not suffered to the extent Kenyans have. Now that is a mystery that may have something to do with the fact that most Somalis, have relatives on both sides of the border.

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Is Kenya Serious About Fighting Corruption This Time Round?

Flashback to January 2003. President Mwai Kibaki, the very first popularly elected president in the history of Kenya repeated again and again that his new government would have zero tolerance for corruption.

Kenyans read with glee a story in the authoritative Eastafrican which said that various parastatal heads who had arrived at State house Nairobi with briefcases filled with cash had been turned away by the head of state who wondered what all the cash was for. "So this is what you used to do with Moi?"

The new dawn in the banana republic quickly spread amongst the public and a daily newspaper reported about a case where a traffic policeman asking a matatu driver for a bribe was "arrested" by wananchi and frog-matched to the police station.

It looked like the country had finally confronted the big bad wolf called corruption which had suffocated it for decades without mercy.

But then suddenly strange things began to happen in government and the Kibaki administration started looking extremely vulnerable and shaky. To cut a long story short it was corruption and going back to old habits that finally stabilized the Kibaki administration.

The terrible truth is that Kenya runs on corruption. In fact the view of a vast majority of experienced politicians is that corruption is the lesser evil because without it we would all have to contend with instability. Mwai Kibaki's intentions were good but he made the mistake of failing to find a strong alternative or "crutch" for the country to lean on for stability.

And so the question now has to be has President Uhuru Kenyatta found that alternative "crutch"? And if so what is it? What will oil the volatile political wheels in the country as dozens of public officers "step aside" to be investigated over corruption allegations?

Most analysts insist that nothing has changed and nothing will change. All we are witnessing is a massive PR exercise to clean up the image of the government. They point to the fact that we now even have tight timelines for the "stepping aside" circus which is 60 days. These analysts predict that at the end of the 60 days the said individuals will be found "clean" and will promptly return to their plum jobs and corrupt ways. There may be of course one or two scape goats who will carry the sins of all others.

Indeed who says that those charged with the investigations cannot be bribed to find their subjects "safi kama pamba" (clean as white cotton wool)?

This is Kenya my friend.


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