For the New York Times, Nicholas Kulish reported yesterday that a representative of al Shabaab tweeted: Kenyan forces who’ve just attempted a roof landing must know that they are jeopardizing the lives of all the hostages at #Westgate It’s beyond offensive to see an...
Over the weekend, as you no doubt know, the Somalian Islamist militant group al Shabaab attacked a mall in Nairobi, Kenya. They killed, at last count, between 58 and 69. At the moment, Kenyan security troops are blowing their way in through the roof in and it will...
The British government’s offer of monetary compensation of £20 million to over 5,000 living Kenyan survivors of systematic torture during the Mau Mau anti-colonial revolt is a historic reckoning with an ugly past. It also dispells the myth that the British were more enlightened, benevolent, or liberal in their self-anointed “civilizing mission” than their imperial European counteparts.
Soren Ambrose is the Development Finance Coordinator at ActionAid International, based in Nairobi, Kenya.
From the eight-lane Nairobi-Thika highway built by Chinese construction companies to the ubiquitous Chinese restaurants around town, the signs of China’s activity are everywhere in Kenya—right down to the friendly nihao called out by Kenyans as I walk down a Nairobi street. Elsewhere on the continent, however, the seams of this tight relationship are becoming stretched.
I distinctly remember watching on television with concern how young men from the Coast province of Kenya were ambushed and rounded up by security forces who busted them in the midst of military training with homemade wooden rifles a few years ago. Given the ragtag nature of this wannabe “army,” my initial reaction was to dismiss them as a bunch of loonies. But a few months to roughly a year later, I again saw in the news this time a group of well-clad young men being frog-marched by police in the streets of Mombasa, the second biggest and oldest trading city in Kenya on the Indian Ocean that is also home to the country’s naval force. This group, it was later to emerge was the secessionist Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) that is no doubt one of the biggest headaches for Kenya’s political leadership, and to some extent a great concern to the international community of nations considering the geo-political significance of Mombasa, which is a remarkable commercial and military nerve centre. The MRC has dominated national news for the last few months as their secessionist demands have hit a new high octave. These young men, women and children are not a passing cloud that can be wished away and their existential frustrations and subsequent pain and distress motivating them to secede from Kenya after almost fifty years ought to be an issue of great concern to all.
The recent indictment of four Kenyan leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes represents the culmination of a remarkable process of local and international peacemaking. It also stands in stark contrast to Western military invasions in Ivory Coast and Libya last year. The ICC indicted four Kenyan leaders on January 23 for their role in the orgy of political violence that followed the disputed December 2007 election and left 1,200 dead and 250,000 displaced.
As a result of Kenya’s recent invasion of Somalia, the situation in Kenyan refugee camps has sharply deteriorated and is now on the verge of a full-scale humanitarian crisis. In Dadaab, the largest refugee camp on earth with close to half a million people, cholera has broken out, services have deteriorated, and access for both humanitarian agencies and international observers (including press) has become even more difficult.
U.S. support for the recent Kenyan invasion of Somalia is disheartening for a number of reasons. Perhaps most disturbing, though, is that it provides further proof of a U.S. policy toward Kenya that emphasizes short-term interests in counterterrorism at the expense of long-term commitments to peace and stability. As Kenya’s next national elections approach and the potential for renewed violence in the country increases, the United States can and should shift its priorities toward those that will foster sustainable Kenyan and regional security – rather than those that threaten to undermine it entirely.
Kenya’s ill-advised incursion into Somalia on Oct. 16 after a rash of kidnappings in the tourist paradise of Lamu will most likely lead to a long and expensive quagmire. The escalation will further destabilize a region already reeling from war, piracy, famine, and international terrorism.