Thursday February 9, 2023
By CHARLES MGHENYI
Kenya Defence Forces officers take residents of Hindi in Lamu county through the Security Sector Counter Violent Extremism (SSCVE) programme. Image: HANDOUT
On September 21, Kenya will be marking a decade since the deadly terror attack at the upscale Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, where 67 people were killed.
Perplexed Kenyans were glued to the televisions as they watched the live coverage of the incident, where Kenyan elite police squads and the Kenya Defence Forces battled only four al Shabaab fighters for four days.
At the end of the four-day siege, 62 civilians and five Kenyan security personnel were killed. Approximately 200 people were wounded.
All four terrorist suspects were also eliminated.
The following year, in June 2014, al Shabaab fighters yet again staged a daring attack in Mpeketoni, Lamu county, killing 48 people and burning down several police stations.
As the country was still coming to terms with the Westgate and Mpeketoni attacks, in April 2015, the Garissa University College was attacked by al Shabaab and 148 people killed.
In January 2019, five al Shabaab fighters staged yet another bold attack in the upscale dusitD2 complex in Nairobi’s Westlands area, killing 22 civilians and one officer from the elite squad of GSU.
All five terrorists were gunned down in the attack. This time around, Kenyan security forces acted promptly and seemed prepared for such attacks.
Lamu has continued to bear the scourge of al Shabaab fighters, who are believed to be hiding in the vast Boni forest.
Al Shabaab has on many instances said the attacks on Kenyan soils are because of KDF’s entry into Somalia in 2011 to pursue their members who had abducted a tourist in Lamu county.
To date, Kenyan soldiers are still in Somalia, pursuing the terrorists.
February 11 is the International Day for the Prevention of Violence Extremism and Terrorism, and Kenya has been very susceptible to terror attacks because it borders the politically unstable Somalia.
Most recently, Kenya has suffered attacks in the Northeastern region and the border county of Lamu despite the heavy security presence in these regions.
KDF officers educate young girls at Madrastul Husna in Gede, Kilifi county, on Counter Violent Extremism Image: HANDOUT
CLASSIFICATION OF TERROR
Dr Mustafa Ali, a security expert focusing on terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, describes the magnitude of the current terror attacks as ‘substantial’.
Ali says terrorism in Kenya was classified as ‘moderate’ at the turn of the century, as ‘substantial’ from 2007, and ‘severe’ from 2010 onwards, when terrorists started to threaten Kenya's vital interests.
“They hit critical classification from 2012 to around 2020, when attacks were frequent and regular,” he says.
“Today, while the threat of terror to the country is generally contained, and perhaps classified as substantial, it still remains high, and severe in pockets such as Northeastern and Coast, and can easily go to the critical classification if the nation relents.”
Ali says while marginalisation, lack of opportunities and grievances do not directly cause terrorism and extremism, they serve as contributing factors to making radicalisation thrive in a country.
“These factors provide fertile grounds for indoctrination and subsequent recruitment into terrorist groups,” he says.
Initially, most youth who were being recruited to join the terror outfit were from the coastal counties. But recently, Kenya has witnessed youths from upcountry also joining these groups.
Ali says significant work has been done to counter terrorists’ ideologies. At the Coast and in Northeastern, the terror group's actions are seen as an affront to the very society they claim to be fighting for.
“Their ideologies were de-legitimised, and with populations in those areas more aware and less intimidated, terrorist groups have opted to go elsewhere to recruit unsuspecting youth,” he says.
“They are now going as far as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and other countries far afield.”
Since 2011, when the Kenya Defence Forces landed in Somalia to pursue al Shabaab, Kenya has been a victim of numerous attacks within its borders.
Ali says to deter these attacks, Kenya should exert ideological and military pressure on all terrorist groups inside and outside the country that threaten its vital interests.
“More importantly, Kenya should lead in seeking ways to peacefully transform existing conflicts,” he says.
“This includes addressing, redressing and resolving motivations that lead to and convince young men and women to join terrorist and armed groups.”
To ensure that Kenyan youth do not become an easy target for extremists, the national government should first work hard to delegitimise ideologies that perpetrate extremism and terrorism, says Ali.
“Secondly, create awareness on extremism and terrorism, and involve the youth in the fight against terrorism,” he says.
A third dimension of understanding security is also required.
“Shared security adds to that decisive third dimension. This approach of shared security supplements and complements the national security and human security approaches,” he says.
While national security focuses on the state and human security focuses on the individuals, shared security focuses on people's interrelatedness, he says.
“Simply put, the vulnerability of one individual or society is a source of insecurity to all. Your well-being is mine, and mine is yours,” Ali says.
“In a very practical and realistic sense, it is impossible to assure security to all. But it is possible to reduce excessive and intensive vulnerabilities all communities face.”
MOTIVATION FOR JOINING
Dr Hassan Kinyua, a lecturer of religious studies and Arabic language at the University of Nairobi, says the reason why most al Shabaab recruits are from within Kenya is that the youth feel marginalised.
“Unemployment must be sorted out, otherwise youth will continue joining terrorist groups not for anything but for money, greed and quick wealth. Terrorists’ recruiters lure our youth with money,” he says.
The university don, who has over 20-year experience working in various fields, especially interfaith dialogue, says religion is also sometimes used as a motivation for the youth who join terror outfits like the al Shabaab.
“Religion, whether Islam or Christianity, if not regulated can cause harm. As Karl Marx said, 'Religion is the opium of the masses,'” he says.
Kinyua said the Kenyan government ought to work with learned Muslim scholars to teach positive ideology.
“When I served as director of religious affairs at Supkem, I really helped solve radicalisation problems in the country between 2007 and 2017,” he says.
He also says the Kenyan government needs to justify its continued stay of KDF soldiers in Somalia through Muslim scholars and other religious leaders.
“When Kenya began its mission to Somalia, Sheikhs in the entire country were mobilised to inform the masses why it is important for the KDF to pursue the al Shabaab into Somalia,” he explains.
Kinyua says many people had anticipated that the fight would have taken at least one year, but it is still raging on.
“We need justification again through Muslim leaders why it is important to have these soldiers continue working in Somalia,” he adds.
In his parting shot, Kinyua says Kenya can improve its security by first eradicating corruption.
“This is the mother of all our problems,” he says.
KDF’s APPROACH
According to officers from the KDF’s National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), to win the war against the al Shabaab militants, there is a need first to understand the enemy’s ideologies.
Col Yahya Mohammed, programmes coordinator of KDF's Security Sector Counter Violent Extremism (SSCVE) programme, says they have developed a soft power strategy that focuses on understanding the al-Shabaab moral fabric.
“You cannot decisively defeat the enemy unless you are intimately familiar with the ideologies they use to mobilize their threat doctrine that drives its violence,” he says.
He says this program was designed to fit within the existing Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) strategy that is supported by the Kenya National Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism (NSCVE).
SSCVE is domiciled within the county action plans generic pillars, and fully supported by the NCTC.
“It provides means and ways of attacking the radical’s drivers of violence while challenging the radical moral legitimacy,” he explains.
Currently, the program focuses on the high-at-risk counties where the general populace is vulnerable to and are victims of violent extremism.
They may be considered at risk of turning from non-violence to violent extremism, or may be targeted as they can play a role in influencing others' choices, he says.
The counties of implementation are Mandera, Garissa, Wajir, lsiolo, Marsabit, Kilifi, Kwale, Tana River, Lamu, Machakos, Mombasa and Nairobi.
The goal is to develop an all-around national response mechanism from all sectors across Kenya in addressing and responding to the radical extremism agenda.
The programme brings together security actors involved in preventing and countering violent extremism to understand the al Shabaab moral component and defeat their legitimacy by building resilience against their potent narrative.
It focuses on capacity building of uniformed and non-uniformed security officers as well as civilians and special groups, Col Yahya says.
The SSCVE programme creates awareness of drivers of radical ideology, demystification of al Shabaab physiological operation effects and building community resilience.
He says the uniqueness of the programme is that it is driven by uniformed officers in a multi-agency fusion.
This strengthens coordination, cooperation and collaboration between all security stakeholders involved in preventing and countering violent extremism.
That includes harnessing the grassroots knowledge of local communities and involving them as active participants against radicalisation vectors.
The SSCVE programme was also designed while considering uniformed operators as vulnerable to the al Shabaab communication strategy, Yahya says.
He says al Shabaab fighters were already rolling robust campaigns on its opponents in the Somalia Jihadi arena and Kenya's eastern borders, which are predominantly Muslim counties.
“As such, the programme focused on countering the lethal ideas and legitimacy of terrorists' potent narrative, which was driving their agenda with impunity,” he says.
Yahya says al Shabaab fighters have also grasped the knowledge of media and social media to propagate their propaganda.
To al Shabaab, media remains its vital battle space, he says.
“Terrorist groups use media as a tool for communication at all spectrums of their target audience. They prosecute the war of ideas in a captivating and balanced messaging,” he says.
Radical groups attract the youth through interactive Internet messages. They focus on winning hearts and minds.
“The radicals have proven difficult to deal with because they have been trained to accept death. The conventional forces have to position the war of ideas as their vanguard, too,” he says.