IS KENYA A FAILING STATE?

The beautiful Manda island where a french woman tourist was kidnapped by the dreaded Al Shabab militia group of Somalia.


IS KENYA A FAILING STATE? This is the big question ordinary people are asking themselves on our streets and villages every passing day, as they wait for the six months a lost soldier is officially declared Missing in Action, something that is quite traumatizing to families and friends of the two Kenyan soldiers who are said to have disappeared in Somalia.

Then as we were still burying our heads in the sand hoping that the two Kenyans will come back to tell tales of their sojourn in the desert paradise, gunmen from the same lawless country of Somalia sneak into one of Kenya’s most expensive and exclusive resorts and tourist attraction sites at Kiwayu and kill a tourist before spiriting away his wife. Any one would expect Kenya government to protect this treasure. Yesterday another Frenchwomen tourist was kidnapped by the same group.
This happens right under the noses of local security personnel who should have been on red alert protecting any site that should have the capacity of attracting Prince William as a guest, especially at such a time as the world was marking the anniversary of Sept. eleven terrorist attack. This anniversary has in the past attracted copycat attempts by terrorist groups.

A few months ago, it was reported that several Kenyan solders were wounded as unknown people, believed to be Islamists from, now somebody gets tired of repeating the name, Somalia lobbed explosives at their convoy as they went about the business of securing this country. Now one would wonder what the soldiers are securing this country against if the marauding gangs can easily sneak in and out and even have the audacity to kidnap a couple of their ranks.Whether this is meant to vindicate Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni who quipped that Kenyan soldiers were merely career ones and too soft and white-collar to sustain an onslaught on the problem in Somalia is a story for another day. But the truth of the matter is that his sentiments could easily find approval by those who have lost friends and relatives to a shadowy militant group that has taken to playing ping pong with the Kenyan security apparatus and winning.

The government of Kenya, and particularly the ministry of Defense must come to terms with the fact that two Kenyans are still missing when the country is not at war and must move with speed, and not just parliamentary rhetoric to find the missing Kenyans. What they will say to the Western world over the in ability to protect its citizens and source of income, tourists, is besides the point. But this is how we end up with travel advisories.As if trying to explain off the disappearance of a couple of chicken from a barn, Kenyan assistant Minister for Defense, himself a veteran career peacetime soldier, Rtd Gen. Joseph Nkaissery gave a long account to parliament of how corporal Evans Mutoro and senior sergeant Jonathan Kipksgei Kangogo disappeared in the company of sergeant Said Abiaziz.

According to him the three were on a military re-supply mission in Wajir county of North eastern province in the border of the war-torn Somalia when they veered of the right road and got into trouble with the Somali government forces, the TFG.
At this point, any one who has been following the events in the Horn of Africa should have known that the TFG is supposed to be friendly to the Kenyan government and thus Kenyan soldiers were expected to be very safe in the hands of the Somali national forces. Question how and why did the two Kenyans flee from their colleague and how the latter found his way home and, what the Somali government forces did after discovering that those who fled were in fact from a friendly side.
Now following the lengthy delivery by the minister, an Islamist militia in Somalia has claimed they kidnapped the two Kenyan soldiers near the country's shared border of Dobley. The al-Shabab militia posted a statement on their website saying they caught the two men on a surveillance mission near the Somali town of Dhobley. Now no one knows whether they are bluffing just because they are aware that the government does not know of the whereabouts of its soldiers.Perhaps, the ministry of Defense should also explain what three soldiers were doing in enemy territory on their own and why the method used to recover Abiaziz could not be extended to the others and whether there are no games being played on the disappearance.

Serious countries hold the policy of recovering their citizens from enemy hands at whatever cost. There was a lot of noise made some years back when military equipment was seized by the former Islamist group of the Islamic Courts, making one to wonder whether military hardware is more important than human life. Countries have gone to war after others refused to surrender captured citizens, and Kenya has the capacity and now, the reason to force the government of Somalia to search for and deliver the Kenyans. Or else, we shall be loosing our sovereignty and honor in bits and pieces until Kenya will have nothing left for itself.

First, Kenyans made belated calls for military intervention over the grabbing of Migingo Island. Leaders insisted on diplomacy instead. The Al Shabbab struck and grabbed our hardware then wounded a good number of our soldiers. One wonders who is safe in Kenya now that the country’s Defense forces personnel are at risk.