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Militarisation of state no answer to insecurity

Saturday September 20 2014

It is a year after the attack on Westgate Mall. The media are full of reflective articles and talk and an American documentary has been released.

But the same questions linger: Was it a failure of intelligence or a failure to act on the same? Was there co-ordination — or lack thereof — between the security services involved or the questionable deployment of the military and the chaos and criminality that deployment wrought? How best can the impact be dealt with?

While there is consensus on conclusions arrived at and questions pending, there is little to demonstrate that the state has any intention of answering these questions publicly. We hope that it is posing them privately.

But hope in Kenya is more often dashed than not. The evidence is not encouraging: The presentation of the president decked out in military gear, the appointment of a new intelligence head from military intelligence and the deployment of the military in Mpeketoni.

Until 2008, when the joint military/police operations began, from Mount Elgon to Mandera, our military spent much of its time in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

That fact, on top of the post-1982 coup military reforms, led us to believe we had a fairly professional military. But the allegations of rights violations committed during those joint operations — torture, rape and general criminality — forced us into a shocked revision of those beliefs.

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Any remaining illusions were shattered following the Westgate Mall attack. A recent Human Rights Watch report on the rape and sexual violence committed by our military in Somalia is but another horrifying indictment.

The point is simply this: The slow but steady creep into internal security operations of the military is something that should be questioned. It was not for nothing that, following the attempted coup d’état of 1982, the military was restructured.

Secularists believe in the firm divide between state and religion. Our Constitution supports an equally firm divide between civilian and military affairs, with oversight of the latter meant to come from the former.

Beyond the apparently new place of the military in internal security and the problem of co-ordination between the security services—who is actually in charge?—is a different problem: That of co-ordination between the national and devolved governments with respect to security.

Yes, the Constitution defines security as the preserve of the national government. But it is at the devolved government level that problems of insecurity are most acutely felt.

And with respect to both addressing causes of insecurity—inequality and other grievances—as well as with respect to early warning and prevention, the devolved governments have potentially huge roles to play.

Meanwhile, the County Commissioners seem to run roughshod over the devolved governments, controlling the Administration Police and other security services on the ground. Thus, the turf wars at that national level play out in a different way at the local level.

We are meant to be at the tail end of the process of security sector reform. Somehow the point of that process got lost in the morass of subsidiary legislation, clawbacks on the same and on-going drama with respect to recruitment and vetting.

The militarisation of the state is not the answer. Co-ordination between security services and devolved governments may be more helpful.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, covering East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.

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