Are we to blame for terrorism spread?

By Kipkoech Tanui

Imagine if you are a Muslim, anti-terrorism police raid your mosque during prayers and there is a shoot-out. You pull out your phone from pockets and call one of the top State security chiefs to alert him of what is going on.

He does not pick, but what strikes you is the ringtone he has recorded on his phone — a popular Kiswahili Christian song! You think it is not from him that your help would come from. To you, he probably is getting the brief of how the operation is going on and smiling delightedly in his office.

That is exactly what a Muslim leader told me happened to him on the day police raided what was formerly Masjid Musa Mosque before Sheikh Makaburi was killed.

Today, let us revisit the issue that is the hottest topic of national dialogue today: security swoops targeting foreigners.

We begin with the premise that Somalia is the nursery of Al Shabaab’s terror against Kenyans.

This implies chances are high the terrorist nearest you is likely to be a Somali, but from Somalia. The question then would be, how do you distinguish who is actually Somali from Somalia? The average Kenyan would then tell you they look alike, speak the same tongue, have curly hair, fair skin and most likely are in Somali flowing garb.

Someone else will tell you that the distinction would come on how fluent their Kiswahili is and if they have a Kenyan Identity Card. This is the script the police are following and I can tell you for sure that from our own history, for foreigners to secure a Kenyan ID is no big deal; you can buy it. As for Kiswahili, you just learn it and if you have been to North Eastern or Eastleigh you must have known by now that Kenya’s major export to Somalia, in this ugly barter trade, is Kiswahili. In exchange, we get grenades and guns.

Of course the other import we get from Somalia is human cargo, illegally entering Kenya either through our porous borders, or through doorways of corruption in Police, the defunct Provincial Administration or Immigration.

I have my own reservations whether a digitised data would help stop the infiltration of Kenya by Somalis from Somalia. Why? Because computers are fed data by humans and they take in whatever you give, process, and give you back what you want.

So you see, so long as our citizenship can still be auctioned by corrupt officials, we are just like that chicken Mark Twain says makes so much noise after laying an egg because it thinks out of her has come forth a meteorite!

Now you understand where we are headed: even as we fight terrorists we must do so within the confines of the law and must ensure we are both humane and civil. I have a few friends who see nothing wrong with the swoops around certain quarters of Nairobi and Mombasa deemed to be the concentration of Somalis, or Muslims for that matter.

But this is not a licence to knock on people’s doors at night, then goad mothers, fathers, children and other relatives into sitting rooms and then ask them for their IDs. The fact that a few aliens were arrested does not warrant the demeaning and discriminatory manner in which the many more innocent Somali or Muslim families have gone through.

I know you will remind me of my tears, first of pain and later joy, for Baby Satrin, who is now home with father and siblings but no mother after she died of a terrorist’s bullet. Some will even say I am not sensitive to families hit be terrorists, but to them I will say that if we follow the path we are now on, worse will come and we all are in the crosshairs.

The war against terror isn’t after all more about courage but tactics. It just can’t be won on the power of the gun and bayonet. I also appreciate the fact that most terrorists are Muslims, but again I will remind you that not all are Somalis — we have had several Kikuyus, Luhyas and even Luos listed on the terror list.

Again, we know our churches have been hit and some Muslim leaders are on record advising their youth that the best lesson to teach a Kaffir is to unleash a gun on him or her.

But I doubt this is the trajectory that all Muslims have taken, which means that the sum total of the siege mentality they have been pushed to by ongoing swoops, is dangerous to our national security. In short, we are forcing a marriage between moderate and fundamentalist or jihadist Muslims, while widening the wedge of suspicion between Muslims and Christians. This then is what the real terrorists like most — religious wars, which will help advance their cause.

Not long ago, I wrote that much as I hated Makaburi for what he thought about me and the rest of Christendom, I would not support his killing by whoever because this action alone would transform him into a symbol of martyrdom and inspire many more to come out and take up where his acid tongue left.

It is against this background that I am still stunned by the following line in the President’s speech yesterday: “This nation was built on the hard toil of 50 years, and it will not be divided by the atrocities of fools and murderers.”

Just like it would require sensitivity for the top cop to remove his Christian ringtone — not just because it will not be on this account that he will be adjudged if he is going to Heaven or Hell — but so too must the Presidency guard against being too judgmental and unsavoury over an issue layered with deep-seated religious belief and other prejudices.

We must also embrace the kind of technology that would make it hard for a non-Kenyan to pass himself or herself as one.

Finally, yes sweep away the aliens, but don’t trample on the rights of the innocent and leave homes traumatised, cowed and feeling very un-Kenyan.

The writer is Group Managing Editor (Print) at The Standard.

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