Something wrong in Kenya

There can be no denying the extraordinary challenges facing the Kenyan government. Yet as the last terrorists were being rooted out of Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall at the end of a slaughter spree that has killed some 70 people and injured hundreds more, the Kenyan authorities need to be asking themselves some hard questions.

This is a country which because it is actively involved in combating Al-Shabab terrorists in Somalia is supposed to be on the very highest state of alert. Kenya did not choose this confrontation. In 1998 it was an amiably corrupt and easygoing country with merely a nasty record of armed robberies, mostly of rich Western tourists.

Then Al-Qaeda launched one of its very first international attacks, a deadly assault on the US embassy in the Kenyan capital which left 224 people dead the great majority of them Kenyans. Thereafter, there was a succession of small attacks by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab which culminated in raids on Kenyan coastal tourist resorts and a Somali refugee camp, targeting and kidnapping foreigners.

It was the final straw. Nairobi sent troops into Somali striking Al-Shabab fighters in the rear as they were pressed from the north by African Union forces. Thereafter, the terrorists resorted to low-level violence, mostly hit and run grenade attacks across the Somali border, until the attack by some 15 heavily armed men on the supposedly well-guarded up-market Westgate shopping center. The attackers managed to negotiate their way with all their weaponry through the capital’s roadblocks. They contrived to organize their deadly assault without the Kenyan intelligence services picking up the slightest inkling of what was about to happen.

Something has got to be wrong somewhere. And the closer one looks at the way the tragic events unfolded, the more difficult questions it seems that the Kenyan authorities have to answer. Why for instance did it take almost half an hour for the first properly armed and equipped teams to arrive at the shopping mall? Why was there no proper building evacuation scheme nor any obvious plan to respond to a terrorist outrage within the complex?

Acts of bravery by shopping center staff, individual police officers and ordinary members of the public cannot mask what appears to have been a series of bungles by all those who should have been responsible for the safety of the complex and its visitors. Journalists noted that when heavily-armed special forces arrived, some seemed nervous and confused, perhaps as a result of the shouting that could be heard from senior officers who themselves seemed poorly briefed and unprepared and as a result unsure of how best to proceed. The inevitable report into this horrific event may find that by delaying a rapid and firm response to the attack, the authorities permitted the terrorists to continue their killing spree and also allowed them to consolidate their position within the mall.

Perhaps a clue to what went so disastrously wrong at the Westgate mall can be found in the devastating fire at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last month. Though the blaze broke out in the early morning, meaning no one was killed, the extent of the fire and the extraordinary delays in getting fire appliances to the scene raised major questions about the competence of the Kenyan authorities. The Westgate tragedy must compound these serious concerns.