Politics
Kenya’s War on Graft: Reasons to be Wary
10 min read.Unwieldy prosecution strategies have in the past been used as a guise under which the government appears to prosecute corruption while simultaneously taking steps to guard the prosecuted from legal culpability. This article aims to examine current anti-corruption efforts in light of similar efforts in the past in order to glean lessons and hopefully see what can be expected of current initiatives.

More than 200 people, among them senior government officials, principal secretaries and CEOs of state agencies, have been arrested, arraigned in court and charged with diverse criminal offences as a result of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s renewed war on graft.
On 22 July 2019, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) ordered the arrest of and proffered charges against 28 senior government officials, among them Henry Kiplagat Rotich and Kamau Thugge respectively the Cabinet and Principal Secretaries of the National Treasury, the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of the East African Community, the Managing Director of the Kerio Valley Development Authority, a state corporation, and the Director of CMC di Ravenna, an Italian company. According to the DPP, investigations have established that the charged officials flouted procurement rules and abused their oath of office in awarding or otherwise ensuring that CMC di Ravenna secured the contract for the construction of the Arror and Kimwarer dams. The contractual amount is in the region of $600 million.
Prosecuting corruption in Kenya: A troubled past
From Kenya’s independence in 1963 to the establishment of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority in 1987, the duty to prosecute government corruption fell on the Office of the Attorney General (AG) who simultaneously happened to be the government’s chief legal advisor and chief legal defender. Requiring an office to prosecute its chief client yielded predictable results. Despite damning reports by the office of the Auditor and Controller General, as well as independent reports of the Parliamentary Public Accounts and Investment Committees, the AG remained resolutely intransigent towards bringing charges against government officials of any stripe, and outrightly protected senior government named in the reports.
In the Goldenberg scandal – an export compensation scam under the Daniel arap Moi regime that is estimated to have cost Kenya 10 per cent of her GDP – the AG at the time (and current Senator for Busia County), Amos Wako, failed to initiate proceedings for four years after the scandal came to light, and was only moved to do so by a suspension of International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid and the combined pressure of the Law Society of Kenya, donor nation governments and an increasingly outraged and assertive public.
Notwithstanding the said pressure, Wako used a variety of guises to impede the prosecution, including attempting to oust the jurisdiction of the High Court in the matter, numerous adjournments, withdrawing charges altogether and then being compelled by foreign pressure to reinstate them. The Minister of Finance at the time was never so much as charged and to date nobody has ever been convicted.
In the Goldenberg scandal, the AG at the time (and current Senator for Busia County), Amos Wako, failed to initiate proceedings for four years after the scandal came to light, and was only moved to do so by a suspension of IMF aid and the combined pressure of the Law Society of Kenya, donor nation governments and an increasingly outraged and assertive public.
Kenya then moved to break the prosecutorial monopoly of the AG. The Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority (KACA) was established in 1987 by the amendment of the Prevention of Corruption Act (Cap. 65) but was hampered by legal, administrative and budgetary constraints that appeared deliberate. Its first director, John Harun Mwau, was appointed 10 years after the establishment of KACA, for instance, and was shortly thereafter sacked by the president at the recommendation of a tribunal of inquiry after the director had obtained warrants of arrest against high ranking officials of the Treasury as well as the Kenya Revenue Authority.
It is noteworthy that Mwau was not conventionally qualified for his post nor was the process of his appointment subject to a transparent recruitment process. Indeed it is believed that the appointment was a quid pro quo in return for his dropping out as a presidential candidate. Nonetheless he was fired just as he appeared to make progress.
As such, whereas his successor Aaron Ringera was undoubtedly well qualified for the post, being a well-respected High Court judge, his appointment was nonetheless greeted with scepticism. Justice Ringera took office in 1997 and by 2000 KACA had been declared unconstitutional by the High Court before any of the cases it had instituted had been, the court finding that the existence of KACA infringed upon the constitutional powers of the offices of the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police for two main reasons: first, that Justice Ringera, being a judge and simultaneously the head of an organ of the Executive, offended the doctrine of separation of powers; and second, that under section 26 of the Constitution (as it then was), the AG had the exclusive power to prosecute. The cases that KACA was handling were handed over to the AG. These cases were either not continued or ended up being dismissed by courts.
The demise of KACA led to widespread civic and international outrage. Following the general elections in 2002 – widely believed to be the first truly free elections of their kind in Kenya’s history – Mwai Kibaki was elected president on a broad reform mandate, key to which was fighting corruption. He established KACA’s successor, the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) in April 2003 by way of the enactment of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act. Exactly one year later, in April 2004, KACC was to face an acid test following the coming to light of what would prove to be the new administration’s nemesis, the Anglo Leasing Scandal (Anglo Leasing).
Anglo Leasing was a government procurement scandal in which a diverse array of fraudulent entities were secretly and unlawfully awarded large security contracts, and subsequently failed to deliver goods or services or grossly overcharged for them. In total it was estimated that there were at least 18 such contracts with a total value of $721 million.
The scandal reached the highest levels of government and was well-documented by the whistleblower John Githongo, who was then the Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics. Githongo was a former Executive Director of Transparency International in Kenya and was widely regarded as a person of integrity. Indeed his appointment was intended by Kibaki to signal his seriousness in the fight against corruption. Githongo’s report implicated the president himself, his vice president as well as various cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries.
The consequences were limited. The newly established KACC cleared three cabinet secretaries of obstructing the investigation using the novel and startling legal innovation that the whistleblower was not an investigator as defined by law. Far from playing the role of an independent prosecutor, KACC either did not investigate the most culpable, or when it did, it resorted to technicalities in order to defeat the very purpose it was formed to serve.
Anglo Leasing was a government procurement scandal in which a diverse array of fraudulent entities were secretly and unlawfully awarded large security contracts, and subsequently failed to deliver goods or services or grossly overcharged for them. In total it was estimated that there were at least 18 such contracts with a total value of $721 million.
In what is likely to exert a chilling effect on the exposure of government scandals, Githongo has recently had judgement entered against him personally in the amount of $270,000 for defamation in a suit brought by Dr. Christopher Murungaru who as Minister of Internal Security at the time of the coming to light of Anglo Leasing, was perhaps the leading figure under investigation in the scandal. This is the latest in a long series of legal setbacks which Githongo has faced since doing Kenya the immense service of bringing Anglo Leasing to light.
The Executive: Questionable tactics
Prosecution is no easy task. Prosecuting economic crimes such as corruption is even more so. These crimes tend to be characterised by a high degree of sophistication in terms of commission as well as concealment. Payments to those concerned, for instance, may be in the form of ‘commissions’ by shadowy organisations to multiple offshore jurisdictions, which are hard to trace and whose illegality is difficult to prove.
Unlike other crimes, a disproportionate amount of evidence tends to be in the hands of those who are already suspects. Gathering such evidence takes a great deal of time and expertise, involving teams of professionals applying specialised forensic techniques. The suspects themselves tend to be wealthy and powerful. They are able to hire large teams of lawyers who take advantage of every legal loophole, technicality, adjournment, appeal and delay in their client’s favour. They are able to apply pressure to witnesses and even to those working within the prosecution. Cases are likely to drag on for a long period of time and a government that wishes to see quick results in the war against corruption would be ill-advised to rely on prosecution as its primary and most visible strategy.
The DPP and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) have conducted much of the war on corruption as a drama played out in the public eye. Press releases are issued and persons high and mighty are arrested with great fanfare. These persons are arraigned in court in vast numbers, and when bail is granted, the DPP cries foul. One of the major reasons that inform opposition to bail by the DPP is that the accused may interfere with investigations. This then implies that investigations were incomplete at the time suspects were arrested. This working methodology appears to essentially be a public relations exercise that fundamentally undermines successful prosecution.
Unlike other crimes, a disproportionate amount of evidence tends to be in the hands of those who are already suspects. Gathering such evidence takes a great deal of time and expertise, involving teams of professionals applying specialised forensic techniques.
Furthermore, those accused are often skilled political operatives, with established relationships within media. Charismatic and often able to appeal to ethnic loyalties, they can use the media as a tool to gain public sympathy and scuttle efforts at holding them accountable. In addition, early engagement of the media by the DPP as part of political theatre is likely to expose strategies and information prematurely, forewarning the accused. It must also be acknowledged that media organisations are corporate profit-making entities with interests of their own that may or may not align with the public interest.
Take for example the second National Youth Service (NYS) scandal. At one point there were 30 accused persons on one charge sheet in one case. Each was represented by at least one lawyer, and frequently by a team of lawyers. Each individual had to be put on their defence separately; each called and cross-examined their own witnesses. This takes about four days per witness. No country in the world can conduct a speedy trial, or even a fair one, under such circumstances. Even a matter as basic as a courtroom was a problem: there exists no courtroom in Kenya large enough to conduct this case, which had to be held in a ceremonial hall.
Unwieldy prosecution strategies have in the past been used as a guise under which the government appears to prosecute corruption while simultaneously taking steps to guard the prosecuted from legal culpability. During the Goldenberg scandal, the Attorney General, against the advice of his own Director of Public Prosecutions, framed more than 90 counts in one charge despite clear evidence that this would invalidate the charges, which is precisely what happened.
Given the difficulty of corruption investigation prosecution, cases should be restricted and prioritised based on pre-established criteria. Such criteria would include prosecuting the most senior figures, establishing judicial precedent and the probability of a successful outcome, for example, by targeting offences such as tax evasion that are relatively easier to prove.
Moreover, strategies such as plea bargaining and summary proceedings have proven useful in other jurisdictions as a means of shortening litigation and also gathering evidence of criminal activity that would otherwise be unavailable or require an enormous expenditure of surveillance and forensic resources.
The President
Prosecuting corruption amounts to locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Prevention is by a huge margin the better strategy, a large responsibility that lies with the Executive headed by the President. That we are experiencing corruption at all means that the Executive has failed to stop it and must now rely entirely on prosecuting those whom it has allowed to raid public coffers.
The Executive does not appear to have a coherent professional strategy to fight corruption. In the recent past, buildings on riparian land were brought down in a flurry of activity. Now there is sudden silence. This work has not been completed. Also forgotten is NYS 1, in which the central figure is now a governor. There needs to be a demonstrated professional understanding of corruption in Kenya and its underlying causes that drives the war on corruption; absent that the process will appear ad hoc and susceptible to being interpreted as a platform to selectively seize and exploit the weaknesses of political opponents.
The Executive does not appear to have a coherent professional strategy to fight corruption. In the recent past, buildings on riparian land were brought down in a flurry of activity. Now there is sudden silence.
Furthermore, the close relationship between the presidency and prosecutorial agencies is problematic. Factual independence of prosecutorial agencies from members of government is crucial towards the effectiveness of prosecution as an anti-corruption strategy. Components of factual independence include stable and widely applied legal foundations for the prosecution of crimes. As such, prosecutions ideally should emanate from an independent office exercising a constitutional and legal mandate independently, rather than following directions from any one office, however well meaning. Trust in the war on corruption and the legitimacy of the ruling regime as a whole could be undermined if it is perceived that those closely aligned to State House are unlikely to be prosecuted.
The blame game: The Judiciary
The Judiciary has been accused of granting bail with alarming ease to the high and mighty, while simultaneously denying the same benefits to ordinary citizens. Chicken thieves are subject to incarceration while those who have stolen millions roam this land free and unburdened.
The President himself, on the occasion of his Jamhuri (Republic) Day speech on December 12 2018, accused the Judiciary of granting “ridiculously low bail terms”. The Judiciary has been accused of misunderstanding the presumption of innocence and equating it with a presumption of virtue, being divorced from the aims of society in general and in particular being insensitive to the scourge of corruption. Indeed political actors have not shied away from accusing the Judiciary of outright collusion with accused persons. Individual judges have also been mentioned adversely in social media in ways ranging from the mildly disturbing to the downright scandalous.
It is germane to the President’s comments on “ridiculously low bail” that in the preceding week, top officials of the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) and the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), including Joe Sang, the Managing Director of KPC and Geoffrey Mwangi, CEO of NHIF, had been charged with abuse of office leading to the theft of billions of shillings. They were released on a bail of Sh2 million each. In July 2018, top officials of the Kenya Power Company, including the CEO Ken Tarus, his predecessor Ben Chumo and senior managers were similarly charged and released on bail terms of Sh1 million.
Where the Judiciary has been criticised for giving bail, no evidence has been proffered of the compelling reasons against it that the Judiciary ignored. Suspects have presented themselves to police stations and have attended court proceedings voluntarily. The purpose of bail is to secure attendance, not to act as some sort of premature punishment prior to conviction by its denial.
Conclusion
While it is still too early to pass definitive judgement on the effectiveness of this new wave of prosecution against corruption there is a key historical hurdle that Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration will have to overcome. The prosecution or lack thereof of Anglo Leasing suspects in a scandal that was enormously well-documented leads us to the inevitable presumption that that those crucial to the campaign of the next general election in 2022, either by dint of being sufficiently wealthy and willing to fund the election campaign or perceived as being able to guarantee key ethnic loyalties, will not be successfully prosecuted and that after the dust and fanfare settles those most culpable will not be held accountable. Shifting the blame to other institutions has already begun and is likely to continue.
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Politics
The Dictatorship of the Church
From the enormously influential megachurches of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa to smaller ‘startups,’ the church in Zimbabwe has frightening, nearly despotic authority.

In Zimbabwe, the most powerful dictatorship is not the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. Despite the party’s 40 year history of ruthlessly cracking down on opposition parties, sowing fear into the minds of the country’s political aspirants, despite the party’s overseeing of catastrophic policies such as the failed land reform, and despite the precarious position of the social landscape of the country today, neither former president Robert Mugabe, nor the current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, nor any of their associates pose as significant an existential threat to Zimbabweans as the most influential dictatorship at play in the country: the church.The church has frightening, near despotic authority which it uses to wield the balance of human rights within its palms. It wields authority from enormously influential megachurches like those of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa, to the smaller startup churches that operate from the depths of the highest-density suburbs of the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare. Modern day totalitarian regimes brandish the power of the military over their subjects. In the same way, the church wields the threat of eternal damnation against those who fail to follow its commands. With the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, for example, Emmanuel Makandiwa vocally declared that the vaccine was the biblical “mark of the beast.” In line with the promises of the book of Revelations, he declared that receiving it would damn one to eternal punishment.
Additionally, in just the same way that dictators stifle discourse through the control of the media, the church suppresses change by controlling the political landscape and making themselves indispensable stakeholders in electoral periods. The impact of this is enormous: since independence, there has been no meaningful political discourse on human rights questions. These questions include same-sex marriage and the right to access abortions as well as other reproductive health services. The church’s role in this situation has been to lead an onslaught of attacks on any institution, political or not, that dares to bring such questions for public consideration. But importantly, only through such consideration can policy substantively change. When people enter into conversation, they gain the opportunity to find middle grounds for their seemingly irreconcilable positions. Such middle-grounds may be the difference between life and death for many disadvantaged groups in Zimbabwe and across the world at large. The influence of the church impedes any attempt at locating this middle ground.
Additionally, because the church influences so many Zimbabweans, political actors do not dare oppose the church’s declarations. They fear being condemned and losing the support of their electorate. The church rarely faces criticism for its positions. It is not held accountable for the sentiments its leaders express by virtue of the veil of righteousness protecting it.
Furthermore, and uniquely so, the church serves the function of propping up the ZANU-PF party. The ZANU-PF mainly holds conservative ideals. These ideals align with those of the traditionalist Zimbabwean church. In short, the church in Zimbabwe stands as a hurdle to the crucial regime change necessary to bring the country to success. With a crucial election slated for the coming months, this hurdle looms more threatening than at any other time in the country’s history.
The impact of the church’s dictatorship on humans is immeasurable. Queer people, for example, are enormously vulnerable to violence and othering from their communities. They are also particularly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and infections due to the absence of healthcare for them. The church meets the attempts of organizations such as the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe to push for protection with cries that often devolve into scapegoating. These cries from the church reference moral decadence, a supposed decline in family values, and in the worst of cases, mental illness.
Similarly, the church meets civil society’s attempts at codifying and protecting sexual and reproductive rights with vehement disapproval. In 2021, for example, 22 civil society organizations petitioned Parliament to lower the consent age for accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Critics of the petition described it as “deeply antithetical to the public morality of Zimbabwe” that is grounded in “good old cultural and Christian values.”
Reporting on its consultations with religious leaders, a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee tasked with considering this petition described Christianity as “the solution” to the problem posed by the petition. This Committee viewed the petition as a gateway to issues such as “child exploitation … rights without responsibility … and spiritual bondages.” The petition disappeared into the annals of parliamentary bureaucracy. A year later, the Constitutional Court unanimously voted to increase the age of consent to 18.
A more horrifying instance of this unholy alliance between the church and the state in Zimbabwe is a recently unearthed money laundering scheme that has occurred under the watchful eye of the government. Under the stewardship of self-proclaimed Prophet Uebert Angel, the Ambassador-at-Large for the Government of Zimbabwe, millions of dollars were laundered by the Zimbabwean government. Here, as revealed by Al Jazeera in a four-part docuseries, Ambassador Angel served as a middleman for the government, facilitating the laundering of millions of dollars and the smuggling of scores of refined gold bars to the United Arab Emirates. He did this using his plenipotentiary ambassadorial status to vault through loopholes in the government’s security systems.
Importantly, Prophet Angel was appointed in 2021 as part of a frenetic series of ambassadorial appointments. President Mnangagwa handed out these appointments to specifically high-profile church leaders known for their glamorous lifestyle and their preaching of the prosperity gospel. Through these appointments, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government earned itself a permanent stamp of approval from the church and access to a multi-million member base of voting Christians in the country. Mnangagwa’s gained access to freedom from accountability arising from the power of the endorsements by “men-of-God,” one of whom’s prophetic realm includes predicting English Premier League (EPL) football scores and guessing the color of congregants’ undergarments.
In exchange, Prophet Angel has earned himself a decently large sum of money. He has also earned the same freedom from critique and accountability as Zimbabwe’s government. To date, there is no evidence of Angel ever having faced any consequences for his action. The most popular response is simple: the majority of the Christian community chooses either to defend him or to turn a blind eye to his sins. The Christian community’s response to Prophet Angel’s actions, and to the role of the church in abortion and LGBTQ discourse is predictable. The community also responds simply to similar instances when the church acts as a dialogical actor and absolves itself of accountability and critique
Amidst all this, it is easy to denounce the church as a failed actor. However, the church’s political presence has not been exclusively negative. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, for example, was the first organization to formally acknowledge Gukurahundi, a genocide that happened between 1982 and 1987 and killed thousands of Ndebele people. The Commission did this through a detailed report documenting what it termed as disturbances in the western regions of the country. Doing so sparked essential conversations about accountability and culpability over this forgotten genocide in Zimbabwe.
Similarly, the Zimbabwe Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission has been involved in data collection that is sparking discourse about violence and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. In doing so, the Commission is challenging Zimbabweans to think more critically about what constructive politics can look like in the country. Such work is hugely instrumental in driving social justice work forward in the country. What uniquely identifies the church’s involvement in both of these issues, however, is that neither touches on matters of Christian dogma. Instead, the Commission responds to general questions about the future of both God and Zimbabwe’s people in ways that make it easy for the church to enter into conversation with a critical and informed lens.
The conclusion from this is simple: if Zimbabwe is to shift into more progressive, dialogical politics, the church’s role must change with it. It is unlikely that the church will ever be a wholly apolitical actor in any country. However, the political integration of the church into the politics of Zimbabwe must be a full one. It must be led by the enhanced accountability of Zimbabwean religious leaders. In the same way that other political actors are taken to task over their opinions, the church must be held accountable for its rhetoric in the political space.
A growing population has, thus far, been involved in driving this shift. Social media has taken on a central role in this. For example, social media platforms such as Twitter thoroughly criticized megachurch pastor Emmanuel Makandiwa for his sentiments regarding vaccinations. This and other factors led him to backtrack on his expressed views on inoculation. However, social media is not as available in rural areas. There, the influence of the religion is stronger than elsewhere in the country. Therefore investments must be made in educating people about the roles of the church and the confines of its authority. This will be instrumental in giving people the courage to cut against the very rough grain of religious dogma. Presently, few such educational opportunities exist. To spark this much-needed change, it will be useful to have incentivizing opportunities for dialogue in religious sects.
More than anything else, the people for whom and through whom the church exists must drive any shift in the church’s role. The people of Tunisia stripped President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of his authority during the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011. The women of Iran continue to tear at the walls that surround the extremist Islamic Republic. In just the same way, the people of Zimbabwe have the power to disrobe the church of the veil of righteousness that protects it from criticism and accountability.
In anticipation of the upcoming election, the critical issues emerging necessitate this excoriation even more. This will open up political spaces for Zimbabweans to consider a wider pool of contentious issues when they take to the polls in a few months. Above all, the people of Zimbabwe must start viewing the church for what it is: an institution, just like any other, with vested interests in the country’s affairs. As with any other institution, we must begin to challenge, question, and criticize the church for its own good and for the good of the people of Zimbabwe.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Politics
Pattern of Life and Death: Camp Simba and the US War on Terror
The US has become addicted to private military contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability” in the so-called war on terror.

Though it claimed the lives of three Americans, not 2,403, some liken the January 2020 al-Shabaab attack at Manda Bay, Kenya, to Pearl Harbour. The US would go on to unleash massive airstrikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia.
“We Americans hate being caught out,” a spy-plane pilot and contractor recently told me. “We should have killed them before they even planned it.”
Both the Manda Bay and Pearl Harbour attacks revealed the vulnerability of US personnel and forces. One brought the US into the Second World War. The other has brought Kenya into the global–and seemingly endless–War on Terror.
Months before launching the assault, members of the Al Qaeda-linked faction bivouacked in mangrove swamp and scrubland along this stretch of the northeast Kenyan coast. Unseen, they observed the base and Magagoni airfield. The airfield was poorly secured to begin with. They managed not to trip the sensors and made their way past the guard towers and the “kill zone” without being noticed.
At 5.20 a.m. on 5 January, pilots and contractors for L3Harris Technologies, which conducts airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for the Pentagon, were about to take off from the airfield in a Beechcraft King Air b350. The twin engine plane was laden with sensors, cameras, and other high tech video equipment. Seeing thermal images of what they thought were hyenas scurrying across the runway, the pilots eased back on the engines. By the time they realized that a force of committed, disciplined and well-armed al-Shabaab fighters had breached Magagoni’s perimeter, past the guard towers, it was too late.
Simultaneously, a mile away, other al-Shabaab fighters attacked Camp Simba, an annex to Manda Bay where US forces and contractors are housed. Al-Shabaab fired into the camp to distract personnel and delay the US response to the targeted attack at the airfield.
Back at the Magagoni airfield, al-Shabaab fighters launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the King Air. “They took it right in the schnauzer,” an aircraft mechanic at Camp Simba who survived the attack recently recalled to me. Hit in the nose, the plane burst into flames. Pilots Bruce Triplett, 64, and Dustin Harrison, 47, both contractors employed by L3Harris, died instantly. The L3Harris contractor working the surveillance and reconnaissance equipment aft managed to crawl out, badly burned. US Army Specialist Henry J Mayfield, 23, who was in a truck clearing the tarmac, was also killed.
The attack on Camp Simba was not the first al-Shabaab action carried out in Kenya. But it was the first in the country to target US personnel. And it was wildly successful.
AFRICOM initially reported that six contractor-operated civilian aircraft had been damaged. However, drone footage released by al-Shabaab’s media wing showed that within a few minutes, the fighters had destroyed six surveillance aircraft, medical evacuation helicopters on the ground, several vehicles, and a fuel storage area. US and Kenyan forces engaged al-Shabaab for “several hours”.
Included in the destroyed aircraft was a secretive US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) military de Havilland Dash-8 twin-engine turboprop configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. A report released by United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in March 2022 acknowledges that the attackers “achieved a degree of success in their plan.”
Teams working for another air-surveillance company survived the attack because their aircraft were in the air, preparing to land at Magagoni. Seeing what was happening on the ground, the crew diverted to Mombasa and subsequently to Entebbe, Uganda, where they stayed for months while Manda Bay underwent measures for force protection.
I had the chance to meet some of the contractors from that ISR flight. Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu, the coastal town where I live. On one recent afternoon, they commandeered a bar’s sound system, replacing Kenyan easy listening with boisterous Southern rock from the States.
Sweet home Alabama!
An ISR operator and I struck up an acquaintance. Black-eyed, thickly built, he’s also a self-confessed borderline sociopath. My own guess would be more an on-the-spectrum disorder. Formerly an operator with Delta Force, he was a “door kicker” and would often—in counter-terror parlance—“fix and finish” terror suspects. Abundant ink on his solid arms immortalizes scenes of battle from Iraq and Afghanistan. In his fifties, with a puffy white beard, he’s now an ISR contractor, an “eye in the sky”. His workday is spent “finding and fixing” targets for the Pentagon.
Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu.
He tells me about his missions—ten hours in a King Air, most of that time above Somalia, draped over cameras and video equipment. He gathers sensitive data for “pattern of life” analysis. He tells me that on the morning of the attack he was in the King Air about to land at the Magagoni airstrip.
We talked about a lot of things but when I probed him about “pattern of life” intel, the ISR operator told me not a lot except that al-Shabaab had been observing Camp Simba and the airstrip for a pattern of life study.
What I could learn online is that a pattern of life study is the documentation of the habits of an individual subject or of the population of an area. Generally done without the consent of the subject, it is carried out for purposes including security, profit, scientific research, regular censuses, and traffic analysis. So, pattern-of-life analysis is a fancy term for spying on people en masse. Seemingly boring.
Less so as applied to the forever war on terror. The operator pointed out the irony of how the mile or so of scrubland between the base and the Indian Ocean coastline had been crawling with militant spies in the months preceding the attack at Camp Simba. Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”
ISR and Pattern of Life are inextricably linked
King Airs perform specialized missions; the planes are equipped with cameras and communications equipment suitable for military surveillance. Radar systems gaze through foliage, rain, darkness, dust storms or atmospheric haze to provide real time, high quality tactical ground imagery anytime it is needed, day or night. What my operator acquaintance collects goes to the Pentagon where it is analysed to determine whether anything observed is “actionable”. In many instances, action that proceeds includes airstrikes. But as a private military contractor ISR operator cannot “pull the trigger”.
In the six weeks following the attack at Magagoni and Camp Simba, AFRICOM launched 13 airstrikes against al-Shabaab’s network. That was a high share of the total of 42 carried out in 2020.
Airstrikes spiked under the Trump administration, totalling more than 275 reported, compared with 60 over the eight years of the Barack Obama administration. It is no great mystery that the Manda Bay-Magagoni attack occurred during Trump’s time in office.
Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”
Several al-Shabaab leaders behind the attack are believed to have been killed in such airstrikes. The US first launched airstrikes against al-Shabab in Somalia in 2007 and increased them in 2016, according to data collected and analysed by UK-based non-profit Airwars.
Controversy arises from the fact that, as precise as these strikes are thought to be, there are always civilian casualties.
“The US uses pattern of life, in part, to identify ways to reduce the risk of innocent civilian casualties (CIVCAS) (when/where are targets by themselves or with family) whereas obviously Shabaab does not distinguish as such and uses it for different purposes,” a Department of Defense official familiar with the matter of drone operations told me.
The Biden administration resumed airstrikes in Somalia in August 2021. AFRICOM claimed it killed 13 al-Shabaab militants and that no civilians were killed.
According to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Mustaf ‘Ato is a senior Amniyat official responsible for coordinating and conducting al-Shabaab attacks in Somalia and Kenya and has helped plan attacks on Kenyan targets and US military compounds in Kenya. It is not clear, however, if this target has been fixed and killed.
A few days after the second anniversary of the Manda Bay attack, the US offered a US$10 million bounty.
The American public know very little about private military contractors. Yet the US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”. “Americans don’t care about contractors coming home in body bags,” says Sean McFate, a defense and national security analyst.
These airstrikes, targeted with the help of the operators and pilots in the King Airs flying out of Magagoni, would furnish a strong motive for al-Shabaab’s move on 5 January 2020.
The Pentagon carried out 15 air strikes in 2022 on the al-Qaeda-linked group, according to the Long War Journal tracker. Africom said the strikes killed at least 107 al-Shabaab fighters. There are no armed drones as such based at Camp Simba but armed gray-coloured single-engine Pilatus aircraft called Draco (Latin for “Dragon”) are sometimes used to kill targets in Somalia, a well-placed source told me.
The US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”.
The contractor I got to know somewhat brushes off the why of the attack. It is all too contextual for public consumption, and probably part of army indoctrination not to encourage meaningful discussion. He had, however, made the dry observation about the al-Shabaab affiliates out in the bush near the airfield, doing “pattern of life” reconnaissance.
The strike on Magagoni was closely timed and fully coordinated. And it appears that the primary aim was to take out ISR planes and their crews. It was private contractors, not US soldiers, in those planes. I pointed out to the operator that those targets would serve al-Shabaab’s aims both of vengeance and deterrence or prevention. His response: “Who cares why they attacked us? Al-Shabaab are booger-eaters.”
With that he cranks up the sound, singing along off-key:
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord help me, I can’t change….
Won’t you fly high, free bird, yeah.
Politics
Breaking the Chains of Indifference
The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated, and represents more than just an end to violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people.

They say that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
As someone from the diaspora, every time I visited Sudan, I noticed that many of the houses had small problems like broken door knobs, cracked mirrors or crooked toilet seats that never seemed to get fixed over the years. Around Khartoum, you saw bumps and manholes on sand-covered, uneven roads. You saw buildings standing for years like unfinished skeletons. They had tons of building material in front of them: homeless families asleep in their shade, lying there, motionless, like collateral damage. This has always been the norm. Still, it is a microcosm of a much broader reality. Inadequate healthcare, a crumbling educational system, and a lack of essential services also became the norm for the Sudanese people.
This would be different, of course, if the ruling party owned the facility you were in, with the paved roads leading up to their meticulously maintained mansions. This stark contrast fuelled resentment among the people, leading them to label the government and its associates as “them.” These houses were symbols of the vast divide between the ruling elite and the everyday citizens longing for change. As the stark divide between “them” and “us” deepened, people yearned to change everything at once, to rid themselves of the oppressive grip of “them.”
Over the years, I understood why a pervasive sense of indifference had taken hold. The people of Sudan grew indifferent towards a government that remained unchanged. It showed no willingness to address the needs of its citizens unless it directly benefited those in power. For three decades, drastic change eluded the Sudanese people. They woke up each day to a different price for the dollar and a different cost for survival. The weight of this enduring status quo bore down upon them, rendering them mere spectators of their own lives. However, as it always does, a moment of reckoning finally arrived—the revolution.
Returning home after the 2019 revolution in Sudan, what stood out in contrast to the indifference was the hashtag #hanabnihu, which from Arabic translates to “we will build it.” #Hanabnihu echoed throughout Sudanese conversations taking place on and off the internet, symbolizing our determination to build our nation. To build our nation, we needed to commit to change beyond any single group’s fall, or any particular faction’s victory. Our spirits were high as everyone felt we had enough muscle memory to remember what happened in the region. We remembered how many of “them” came back to power. With the military still in power, the revolution was incomplete. Yet it still served as a rallying cry for the Sudanese people. It was a collective expression of their determination to no longer accept the unfinished state of their nation.
Many Sudanese people from the diaspora returned to Sudan. They helped the people of Suean create spaces of hope and resilience, everyone working tirelessly to build a new Sudan. They initiated remarkable projects and breathed life into the half-built houses they now prioritized to turn into homes. We had yearned for a time when broken door knobs and crooked toilet seats would be fixed, and for a time when the government would smooth out the bumps on the road. For four years following the revolution, people marched, protested, and fought for a Sudan they envisioned. They fought in opposition to the military, whose two factions thought that a massacre or even a coup might bring the people back to the state of indifference that they once lived in.
Remarkably, the protests became ingrained in the weekly schedule of the Sudanese people. It became part of their routine, a testament to their unwavering dedication and the persistence of their aspirations. But soon, the people found themselves normalized to these protests. This was partly due to the fact that it was organized by the only body fighting against the return of this indifference: the neighborhood’s resistance committees. These horizontally structured, self-organized member groups regularly convened to organize everything from planning the weekly protests and discussing economic policy to trash pickup, and the way corruption lowered the quality of the bread from the local bakery.
The international media celebrated the resistance committees for their innovation in resistance and commitment to nonviolence. But as we, the Sudanese, watched the news on our resistance fade, it was clear that the normalization of indifference extended beyond Sudan’s borders. The international community turned a blind eye to justice, equality, and progress in the celebrated principles of the peaceful 2019 revolution. In a desperate attempt to establish fake stability in Sudan, the international community continued their conversations with the military. Their international sponsors mentioned no retribution against the military for their actions.
During my recent visit to Sudan, the sense of anticipation was palpable. It was just two months before the outbreak of war between the army and the paramilitary group. The protests had intensified and the economy was faltering. The nation stood at the precipice as the activism continued and the tensions between “us” and “them” had begun to grow once again.
Now, as war engulfs the nation, many Sudanese find themselves torn. At the same time, they hope for the victory of the Sudanese Army. Despite the army’s flaws, Sudanese people hope the army will win against “them” while recognizing that this war remains primarily between different factions of “them.” We wake up every day with a little less hope. We watch them bomb Khartoum and the little infrastructure that existed turn to dust. We watch as the resistance committees continue to do the army’s job for them. They work fiercely to deliver medicine, evacuate people and collect the nameless bodies on the sides of the streets next to the burnt buildings that were almost starting to be completed.
Another battle takes place online. On Sudanese social media, people challenge the negative mood of the war. Sudanese architects and designers work from their rented flats in Cairo or Addis, posting juxtaposed images that place the grainy, rashly captured photos of the latest burnt-down building in Khartoum next to different rendered perspectives. These perspectives reimagine the same building in a rebuilt Sudan. They thus instantly force a glimpse of hope in what now looks like a far-fetched reality to most people.
Just as these young visionaries attempt to defy the odds, international intervention and support are pivotal to help Sudan escape the clutches of this devastating conflict. Let Sudan serve as a catalyst for the change that was meant to be. Diplomatic engagement, humanitarian aid, and assistance in facilitating peaceful negotiations can all contribute.
The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated. It represents more than just a cessation of violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people. The international community should dismantle the prevailing state of indifference worldwide. The fight against indifference extends far beyond the borders of Sudan. It is a fight that demands our attention and commitment on a global scale of solidarity. We must challenge the systems that perpetuate indifference and inequality in our own societies. We must stand up against injustice and apathy wherever we find it.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
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