In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a soothsayer bids Caesar to “beware the Ides of March,” a portent it turns out, since on that very day, the 15th of March, Caesar is assassinated and, as we know from history, Rome the Republic, soon becomes Rome the Empire.

The Ides of March may not be as portentous for Kenya. Nonetheless, where fighting terrorism is concerned, March has spawned a raft of truly foolish, even dangerous ideas. First off, Lamu County Governor Issa Timamy, proposed to build a wall along the Kenya-Somalia border to check immigration and, hopefully, confine Al Shabaab to Somalia.

Then a day after an armed gang killed four people, including two policemen, in a terror-like attack targeting Mandera County Governor Ali Roba, the National Assembly majority leader Aden Duale tells BBC Somali that some accommodation with the homicidal group would be possible if only “our Al Shabaab brothers” could hold onto Somalia but “leave us alone in Kenya.” Though Duale has subsequently tried to finesse what he said, the fraternal call to “our Al Shabaab brothers” sticks bitterly in one’s craw.

Let’s set the context and then see why these two are clearly wrong-headed.

Two weeks before Duale’s call for a powwow with Al Shabaab and only one week after Governor Timamy’s, the militia released a sleek and sickening documentary on the Mpeketoni attack containing the whole works: Full-blooded executions and even an agit-prop session, town-hall style, in which a youthful Al Shabaab “leader” herds together a group of locals and tries to incite them against “up-country” land grabbers.

Our security chiefs should watch it if they have not done so already. That film should chastise Governor Timamy: Fighting Al Shabaab, is first a battle for the mind and no government can build concrete battlements against extremist ideas, it must confront them. It should also scotch Duale’s harebrained idea that dialogue with those murderers is possible or even desirable.

Indeed, to begin with Timamy’s Wall, history offers no example of a country that ever fully secured itself with a wall. Military technologies evolve to remove the obstacles that stop current weapons. In the medieval world, invading armies could starve a walled city into surrender by a long siege but the invention of the cannon allowed conquerors to blast down such walls.

Walls, in short, will always be porous. The Great Wall of China was built to keep out the Mongols of the Eurasian steppes. Not only was it breached many times by those meant to be locked out but also proved useless when the Europeans circumnavigated the Eurasian landmass and arrived in China by the sea.

Walls have been built to separate East from West Berlin; to divide the Turkish North from the Greek South in Cyprus; to cut out Thai migrant labour from Malaysia; to separate Israel from Palestinian lands and secure Israel from suicide bombers and, most fatuously, a fence as sturdy as any wall, has been built to prevent illegal migration across the US-Mexican border.

What lessons can we learn from the history of walls?

First, they may be impressive in their solidity but the truth is that walls are more effective as PR showpieces to impress the public than as deterrents against enemies. The world’s most famous wall, the one that separating Israel and Palestinian lands, is an example in point. It has certainly reduced suicide attacks but a little scratching on the surface undermines all claims of success.

In 2002 — the first segment of the wall had not been built then — Israel experienced 452 deaths from Palestinian suicide attacks. From 2005 to 2014, that is, the period after the first segment of the wall was opened, there were only 193 such suicide fatalities.

So the numbers seem impressive. In context though, the fatalities between 2000 and 2005 can be explained by the fact that those were also the years of the Second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israel driven, in material terms, by the frustration of the hopes raised by the 1993 Oslo accords and triggered by Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount, easily the world’s most contested religious site. The point though is that so long as the fate of Palestine remains as is now, it is just a matter of time before this wall is circumvented.

Costly walls

Secondly, both the political and economic costs of such walls must be reckoned.

Politically, the Israel/Palestine wall of separation has merely hardened positions on both sides and, as the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrates, helped radicals and conservatives outflank moderates in both Palestine and Israel.

This has made peace even harder to negotiate. In a region in which legal borders are so contested, a physical wall has proved both potent and vulgar in its twin ability to provoke the Palestinians and to symbolise the impunity of the Netanyahu administration.

Economically, it has been a huge, perhaps unsustainable cost. Building it cost over $2 billion — an average of $2 million per kilometre and its annual maintenance cost is $260 million. To put things in context: The 2014 budget of the Palestinian National Authority is $4.6 billion. You have to wonder: Would Israel not be safer if this money were invested in peace efforts and setting up a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza?

The formidable, prodigiously expensive fence along the US-Mexico border underlines the same point. As the Economist noted last year, in total “border enforcement costs the US $18 billion a year, more than all other federal criminal-law-enforcement agencies combined.” A large part of this goes to securing the Mexico/US border. Yet it is unclear what America really gets for this.

On average, the US spends $44,000 to catch one illegal immigrant. Supporters of these measures argue that tighter security has led to a one-third drop in illegal immigration. True, but it has also made people trafficking across the Rio Grande more profitable for criminals.

The point is: The harder the crossing becomes, the more likely it is that undesirable immigrants — those involved in activities that make enough money to finance the higher crossing costs such as drug dealers — are willing to risk it.

Likewise, a wall on the border with Somalia will encourage Al Shabaab to hijack planes into Nairobi or make night-landings in Kipini, Ngomeni — or anywhere else on the Coast of Kenya south of Lamu — more likely.

Even more instructive, consider this: Up to 40 per cent of illegals in the US are expired visa hold-outs, not people who crossed illegally. So if illegals are terrorists, those terrorists first entered the country legally.

None of the September 11 hijackers entered the US through Mexico — where the bulk of the migrant interdiction measures are taking place — and none came illegally. Likewise, there is no evidence, so far, that either the July 1998 US embassy attackers or the Westgate suspects entered Kenya illegally or that they did so at the border crossing in Lamu.

To sum up this point: Nothing in the experience of Israel or the US suggests that building walls or forbidding fences makes political or economic sense. And, truth be told, Kenya is not Israel. Israel is a $240 billion economy of eight million people; Kenya is an $80.4 billion economy with 44 million people; that is, Israel has an economy three times as large and a population five and a half times as small. They can afford some extravagance.

Let’s now turn to Duale’s proposal, which might seem sensible but proves no less incoherent on scrutiny. For some time now, KDF has been telling Kenyans that the military war against Al Shabaab has been won and that the terrorists have been routed from their strongholds in Jubaland.

That said, many people will fret at the paradox that more Kenyans have died from Al Shabaab terror attacks since the group was declared defeated than before. Given that, why would Duale, considered by many to be a regime insider, urge us to negotiate with an enemy that has already been defeated?

The truth is that the paradox is only apparent. Strictly speaking, Al Shabaab may well have been routed from the lands it once held but the government senses that it has won no war. The real problem, which Duale actually notes, is that the government lacks an anti-terrorism strategy. Without a strategy, it is unclear what victory against Al Shabaab actually looks like.

Matters were much clearer in 2011 when a testosterone-fired KDF blitzed into Somalia. The enemy was then tailor-made for a military showdown: Al Shabaab had an army with command and control structure; it controlled territory; was massed in specific towns and hamlets, where it effectively ran a rump-state of the larger Somali state.

The military objective was to invade; rout this army of terror and create conditions for a legitimate Somali government to take over. That mission was soon accomplished and KDF duly declared victory.

But the problem that now riles Duale began almost immediately. With the military objective apparently secure, Kenya’s second goal was strategic: To create a buffer state to secure its border with southern Somalia. It is how Kenya went about this that is the problem.

KDF, it seems, started to play local politics as well as profit from the local economy. First, it allied itself with Sheikh Ahmed Madobe, the head of the Ras Kamboni militia, a “reformed” offshoot of Al Shabaab. This immediately undermined KDF’s political neutrality, exacerbated inter-clan conflicts and, in the intestinally complex politics of Somalia, came to look like an imperial strategy to occupy and partially control Somalia. Even Mogadishu felt that Kenya’s role was no longer benign.

The KDF then made a bad situation worse by trying to profit from its invasion. First, it cobbled together several fifty-fifty revenue sharing agreements with friendly militia over the management of both the airport and port of Kismayo. Second, it got involved in the local contraband economy, principally the $250-million charcoal business.

READ: Mogadishu-Jubba peace deal clears air over loyalty of KDF

Playing favourites

The trouble with this second involvement is that some crucial links in the charcoal value-chain — about a third in value according to UN estimates — are controlled by Al Shabaab, our ostensible enemy. To give an example, by running shake-down operations along rural transport networks — according to Tom Keatinge, writing in Foreign Affairs last year — al-Shabaab extracts up to $25 million per year.

The point is that through KDF’s involvement in carbon economics in Somalia — a role that was first highlighted in a 2013 study by the US based Institute of Defence Analyses (IDA) — Kenya has provided a double benefit to Al Shabaab — income from the trade and potential recruits from the local clans disenchanted by KDF’s policy of playing favourites.

READ: Trouble in Somalia over world’s largest charcoal stockpile

Here lies the crunch: KDF’s mission-drift means that we have undermined the intervention in Somalia without in any way strengthening security back home. It is in this, the gap between KDF’s aspirations and its performance, that Al Shabaab has very effectively unleashed its devastation.

Even as its leaders are taken out in drone attacks, Al Shabaab has pursued a clear two-track strategy: One track involves demobilising its standing army and waiting out the KDF and Amisom and the second involves taking the fight back to Kenya by terrorising the public.

The first strategy is clear enough: Since Kenya invaded Somalia in 2011, KDF has constantly made very large claims about the scale of Al Shabaab casualties. It turns out that in some of those “comprehensive victories,” Al Shabaab fighters simply abandoned territory and melted into the population. KDF, it is even alleged, then vented its frustrations in such instances by indiscriminate violence.

To hear it told by some Somalis, KDF’s role in Somalia is no better than that of the Ethiopian army that left Somalia in ignominy in 2009 after a two-year campaign in which it failed to meet its twin goals of rooting out the Islamic Courts Union, ICU, and shoring up the Transitional Federal Government, TFG.

Al Shabaab’s second strategy needs explaining. Inserting itself into the civilian population has given it the tactical flexibility it needs to wage an asymmetric war that relies on infiltrating terror squads back into Kenya rather than confronting KDF openly in Somalia. It is this tactical shift in Al Shabaab’s methods since 2011 that explains why Kenya has become most insecure at the moment of its greatest military victory abroad.

But Al Shabaab has not been merely tactically flexible, it has also been politically astute. In Westgate, Mpeketoni and Mandera, the attackers separated Christians from Muslims and made clear that the Muslims were safe.

Unlike Boko Haram, which targets the “Islamic” establishment, Al Shabaab’s goal is both to scare Kenyans and to provoke an insurgency in the country by exploiting local political grievances, such as the land question in Lamu. If the ploy works, it would tie down the security forces, free Al Shabaab to wage war in Somalia and undermine public support for future military adventures in Somalia.

READ: Divided Kenyans disagree over strategy to end terror attacks

Unfortunately, the government response has played straight into Al Shabaab’s strategy. Last year, the police conducted an indiscriminate anti-terror sweep against Somalis, Operation Usalama Watch, in which it arrested and dragooned 4,000 of them to Kasarani Sports Complex. Not only did this rather inept scatter-gun strategy fail to catch a single terrorist, it also left many law-abiding Muslims angry and unco-operative with the authorities. Even worse, it failed to prevent the two terror attacks in Mandera later that year. Those who are not very reflective will begin to think that maybe — just maybe — on this issue Al Shabaab has a point.

READ: Kenya deports scores of Somalis in crackdown on rampant insecurity

Needed: A different approach

All things considered this far, then, it is clear that Kenya’s anti-terror strategy is not working. Therein lies Duale’s intuition: Kenya needs something different. That something, though, is not dialogue with Al Shabaab. Two things are needed, going forward.

One, it is obvious that the KDF mission in Somalia is over. If the military objective were to reclaim land from Al Shabaab, that is now complete. Any further involvement makes Kenya an army of occupation. If the goal were to eliminate Al Shabaab, it is clear that that won’t be done by the army, at least not so long as Al Shabaab remains self-demobilised as a standing military force.

What is urgently needed in Somalia is an effective constabulary service, something like an effective police service or some specialised units such as the General Service Unit. Few modern armies, much less the KDF, are trained to offer these constabulary services; the KDF’s “crash, blast and bang” show at Westgate Mall clearly demonstrates the ineptitude of armies called out to civilian operations.

If the intervention was meant to secure Kenya against terror attacks, it was a clear failure: Kenya has been attacked more often and with more fatalities ever since the Somalia invasion.

What reason, other than ego, is the point of remaining in Somalia?

This discouraging fact arises from KDF’s failure to learn from the mistakes of invading armies elsewhere. On March 20, 2003 the US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq ostensibly to find and destroy the weapons of mass destruction, WMD, that Saddam Hussein was said, erroneously, to have salted away into secret bunkers across Iraq. Twenty-seven days later, the triumphant armies entered Baghdad.

So far, only 150 of their troops had died. A fortnight after that triumphant entry, President George W. Bush declared mission accomplished. In the years after that victory was declared, an additional 4,000 coalition troops would die in Iraq. Lack of a post-victory political strategy and inability and unwillingness of the military to provide constabulary services to deal with criminals and insurgents left Iraq unstable and dangerous. Sounds familiar? It is the story of KDF and Amisom in Somalia.

Two, it is obvious that our strategy abroad is not backed up by appropriate measures back home. The government needs to change how it sees and provides security.

In Somalia, KDF found an Al Shabaab with a definite command and control structure; in short, an army it could engage. However, in its terror operations in Kenya Al Shabaab is decentralised; acephalous, that is, without a clear leader; geographically diffuse and, very often, opportunistic in choice of targets.

In short, it does nothing that the military knows how to deal with. When a terror groups works this way, it will not be stopped by inserting police squads in communities or billeting soldiers in every county headquarters. Not even a “nyumba kumi” surveillance machinery will work.

READ: Why splintered al Shabaab worries security experts

More modest things are likely to yield better results: Reform the police and build public confidence in the service so that citizens feel safe reporting suspected threats. The current system where criminals caught red-handed are released with a sly wink and a nod to the wise merely foment the impunity that terrorists thrive on.

Work with trusted community-based groups — including the NGOs that the government loathes so much — so that the state has a finger on the pulse of the nation. Bring in county governments on security so that security is applied where the people are and citizens become the eyes of the government.

Finally, building public resilience by preparing the people for the next attack — first, by making investments in emergency services and second, by rehearsing coping measures and simulating response times, as the FBI has recently done after getting Al Shabaab-like threats on shopping malls in North America.

In short, forget walls-across-borders and negotiations-with-Al Shabaab. Only a clear, comprehensive anti-terror strategy can get Kenya out of its sputtering, scatter-gun approach.

On that, at least Duale is on the money. It is on this, a strategy to protect Kenya from Al Shabaab and allied groups, rather than an inept strategy to secure the political fortunes of the Jubilee Alliance Party’s (JAP) in Kajiado Central, that Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery and security team should have been working last week.