Empower the youth in bid to triumph over terrorists

By Kamotho Waiganjo

There is no doubt we are hurtling towards a grave security crisis. “Normal” robberies are routine occurrences in many parts of Nairobi and its environs.

In Mombasa and parts of the former North Eastern Province, terrorist attacks only get serious coverage when they hit sojourns of the middle class, like they did in Westgate.

The robbers and terrorists of today are so brazen that in a week they attack the President’s aunt, Deputy President’s senior staffer at his residence next to State House and launch a deadly attack in a church in Mombasa the same week the President and his Internal Security Minister are at the Coast.

When I visited Mombasa recently, I was sobered up when I visited an ultra-modern malls in the North Coast, only to find most of its shops empty.

I was reliably informed that many investors are hesitant to invest at the Coast until the security situation normalises.  The number of tourist is declining, even the once booming local tourism industry is taking a hit.

It is now clear previous strategies are not working and the matter requires a fresh approach to tackle insecurity threat.

 Our security chiefs would be well advised to spare us knee jerk reactions and recalibrate the entire security framework to deal with the crisis.

Though I am not a security expert, I feel obliged to deliver suggestions I believe would contribute to helping us climb out of the insecurity hole we are in. First, our security forces must realise that raw force will not by itself solve the insecurity problems.

In our collective anger, it is easy to celebrate calls for shooting to kill and other avenues that avoid due process, only to complain when they quickly mutate to avenues of score settling.

In my view, security related activities must be informed by deliberative intelligence gathering, professional intelligence analysis and more importantly, collaborative intelligence sharing.

I have no doubt that our security services collect enormous amounts of information in the process of security management. If there is anything that America learnt from the 9/11 occurrences, it is that raw information, unless well analysed, shared across all key agencies with an effective implementation strategy, is not useful.

We have heard on several occasions our national intelligence services allege that they have been providing intelligence with information regarding planned attacks, which is not acted upon.

This is unforgivable in our context. Our security services must establish collaborative ways of determining credibility of intelligence and ensuring that it is acted on promptly. 

Secondly, on the basis of credible intelligence, our security services must isolate and deal differently with the different cadres of actors especially in the anti-terrorism war. It is clear that we have at least two distinct groups of players in this regard.

We have ideological leaders of the extremism movement, who include some of the radical preachers and in some cases professional recruiters. At a lower level are the increasing numbers of recruits who have spent time in training and are now sleepers waiting for the next instructions. Members of this group are active war combatants and must be dealt with as such. 

The second group consists of disoriented youth who are generally unhappy with the status quo and in their idle but energetic state will express their discontent sometimes in violent ways.

These are potential recruits into extremist movements.

They are not yet a lost cause but if we deal with the expression of their discontent as if they belong to the first group, we inevitably slide them in that direction. Dealt with differently they may end up being our greatest allies in the anti-terror war.

Part of dealing differently will involve seeking opportunities to integrate their lot in the economy by opening opportunities for their involvement.

Fortunately, we have an empowering constitutional framework, through which many County governments with the support of the national government, are providing a game plan for youth empowerment. Hopefully the empowerment narrative is different from the message they hear every day, one that inevitably drives them closer into the arms of the extremists.