Politics
The Miraa Route: How a Road Changed Marsabit’s Fortunes
11 min read.To trace the history of the transport of a single commodity like miraa into Marsabit is to watch a slow and organic change in the market, in social and economic dynamics, and in the culture of the people.
For the people of Northern Kenya, the center-periphery dichotomy and its attendant consequences is not a mere framework but rather a lived reality that is burned into their collective consciousness. Their othering and un-belonging continue to animate and mediate their negotiation with the rest of Kenya. It is not uncommon for someone from Northern Kenya to say he is traveling to Kenya when visiting other parts of Kenya, or inquiring when someone visits from other parts of Kenya, “How is Kenya?”
Their sense of un-belonging is magnified by the hierarchy of citizenship imposed on them, by both policy and entrenched official attitude; where they are citizens, but terms and conditions apply. As “Contingency Citizens”, the terms and conditions are always mediated by the disproportionate power asymmetry in relation to the state, which inevitably induces precarity. The state is not, however, the only institution that sees them as contingent citizens; even other Kenyans see them in a similar way.
This state of affairs has a rich historical antecedent beginning from the colonial era but has been deepened by the post-independence administrations. The colonial government saw little economic utility of investing in the region, a trend post-independence governments followed. But that is changing and with it the social-economic reality of communities.
Development and its discontents
One of the central milestones to that change is the completion of the Isiolo-Marsabit-Moyale road, which until now had been a sore reference point for the intergenerational sense of marginalisation the community harbours. The road has made it easier for people and goods from Marsabit to reach the rest of Kenya, and for other Kenyans to also easily get to Marsabit. But with it comes inevitable friction.
The decades-long failure to tarmac the Moyale-Marsabit-Isiolo road was seen as the irreducible sum total of the country’s imagination of Marsabit and the policies that flowed from it. Conversely, the now tarmacked road is seen as a symbol of development. At the immediate level, the road has made travel to and from southern Kenya practically much easier and faster. But at a deeper level, it has also induced a sense of belonging – a sense of Kenyan-ness, of “We are all Kenyans and deserving of the development opportunities that accrue from being Kenyan.”
At face value, development is concrete and an unambiguously positive thing. In fact, when the people of Northern Kenya complain about marginalisation, they say the state has ignored their development needs. However, development is not a straightforward process; it is complicated and at times a source of contention.
The decades-long failure to tarmac the Moyale-Marsabit-Isiolo road was seen as the irreducible sum total of the country’s imagination of Marsabit and the policies that flowed from it.
One such moment came in 2014 when a group of greengrocers and market traders, most of them women, protested in Marsabit over what they termed the “unfair invasion” of Marsabit market by vegetable farmers from the neighbouring areas of Meru and Timau. According to the market traders, most of them women “mama mboga” farmers who supplied them with vegetables at wholesale prices in Meru were now selling the same supplies to Marsabit customers from the backs of their lorries at retail prices. The local branch of the Chamber of Commerce also raised alarm over what they termed an unfair competition from hawkers.
The women wanted the Marsabit County Government to regulate the “outsiders” doing business in Marsabit County. Unbeknownst to them, they were reproducing the same Us vs Them pathologies they had decried in the past. Ideally, development represented by the tarmacking of the road was meant to allow free movement of goods and eventually bring people together.
Paradoxically, in this case, these market women felt that development was disrupting the status quo. Before this incident, the people of Marsabit had enjoyed a symbiotic trading relationship with the people from Meru. Meru has supplied Marsabit with vegetables for decades, and Marsabit has bought the mild-stimulant miraa leaf from Meru for decades.
The mama mboga incident is not an isolated situation but part of an emerging paradox of development versus social harmony in Marsabit following the tarmacking of the Marsabit-Isiolo road.The movement of people and goods is at the centre of this paradox.
A second incidence was witnessed in 2019 when the newly established transport Sacco “MEISO” (Meru and Isiolo transporters) engaged in a physical altercation with Nanyuki Cabs, which was a more experienced transport Sacco with more employees and 14-seater Nissan vans. The local grievance was that Nanyuki Cabs had a wider reach and had denied MEISO space in Nanyuki. The fear that such players had a competitive advantage over local, inexperienced transport service providers has led to control over who does what and how. The same is witnessed in how Crown Bus, which has a countrywide reach, was limited by the local bus companies to operate only two of its buses on the Nairobi-Moyale route.
Lorries, cows and miraa
The distance between Marsabit and Isiolo is 258 kilometers (160 miles). The dry, hot and endlessly picturesque landscape is dominated by acacia trees, acres and acres of land and livestock grazing in the savannah.
Until the Marsabit-Isiolo road was tarmacked, the only means of travel from Marsabit to Nairobi was to, on occasion, catch a lift with Government of Kenya (GK) 110 Land Rovers or lorries transporting livestock to Nairobi and bringing back consumer goods to Marsabit. The Land Rovers’ departure times from Marsabit were kept top secret; drivers kept the dates and times like state secrets as there were few of them and many customers. Unless you worked for the government or knew someone who did, chances are you would not find out.
There were no designated public transport vehicles. The few companies that tried their luck at operating public transport buses eventually gave up because of the inordinate running costs involved due in part to the unforgiving terrain.
Lorries were the other option. They had no designated departure time and embarkation point – they departed from anywhere if they had enough livestock, their primary “passengers”. This left travelers at the mercy of the lorry drivers, turning them and their turnboys into arguably some of the most powerful people in the area. They determined the return to school days, which day people could travel to attend interviews, graduations etc. They wielded this power with elaborate abandon. It was not uncommon for the lorries to leave passengers by the wayside when they would disembark for bathroom breaks or to buy something to eat. They went about their business with a degree of gleeful terror, simply because they could.
Until the Marsabit-Isiolo road was tarmacked, the only means of travel from Marsabit to Nairobi was to, on occasion, catch a lift with Government of Kenya (GK) 110 Land Rovers or lorries transporting livestock to Nairobi and bringing back consumer goods to Marsabit.
It is not as if traveling on top of a lorry was some luxurious treat; it was, in fact, an extreme sport. Perched on top, one was exposed to the elements – heat, cold or rain – and had to be aware of acacia thorns pricking their faces, or falling off as the lorries were jolted by the potholes, or in certain cases losing a hat due to the strong winds. That lorry ride demanded one to be tough because of what we used to call korogeshen, a corruption of corrugation, or in some cases, or fall onto the livestock.
On the return trip, lorries would bring miraa, the mild stimulant plant grown in the Nyambene Hills by the Tigania and Igembe sub-groups of the Meru, and chewed mostly by men from Northern and coastal Kenya.
Unlike cows, miraa (also known as khat) is perishable, and therefore it has to be transported when the temperature is low, which means mostly at night. This remains the case to date. To be able to stay up late and drive, lorry drivers and the turnboys would something to keep them up at night. This made the drivers and the miraa traders, mostly women, strike a mutual alliance, and a powerful one at that. There was a period in Marsabit and Moyale when the miraa traders and lorry drivers were considered the trendiest people. Miraa traders got the best seats in the lorry. (Back then, riding with a shotgun was considered classy.) The drivers and the turnboys got the best miraa cut, of course for free. If you ever wanted to invite the wrath of the driver, you’d mess around with the miraa.
Nothing exemplifies people of means even in the middle of nowhere than the two small towns between Marsabit and Isiolo – Merile and Laisamis. Because of the time the lorries would leave Marsabit, one had to get lunch or supper either in Laisamis or Merille. The food here primarily involved chapo-karanga (chapati and fried meat). The best bit of chapo-karaga was mainly reserved for the drivers and mama miraa. Before mobile phones came, hotel owners would rely on instinct to keep food for the drivers and mama miraa. (Now they call ahead to place their orders.)
Before social media and mobile phones, miraa journeys from Meru were tracked with an obsessive keenness in Marsabit. Although the lorries did not keep to specific schedules, people in Marsabit waiting for them would get the signal passed by word of mouth when a lorry left Isiolo and when it was about to arrive in Marsabit. When miraa would arrive in Marsabit, most often in the evening, certain parts of the town came to a standstill. But the tarmacking of the road has made the lorry drivers jobless and with this, small towns like Merille and Laisamis are collapsing due to lack of trade.
Miraa and Marsabit
To trace the history of the transport of a single commodity like miraa into Marsabit is to watch a slow and organic change in the market, in social and economic dynamics, and in the culture of the people.
In the 1960s, when colonial policy still regarded the region as a closed district, miraa used to arrive in Marsabit by plane. Local lore mentions Alex, a Caucasian pilot, who used to land twice or thrice a week with the town’s miraa supply before proceeding to neighboring towns, such as Moyale.
At the time, one required a permit from the colonial administration to chew miraa, but even with a permit, men went out of town in their different age groups to chew together. Later, women had to give convincing reasons why they should be allowed to sell miraa. This restriction lasted into the early years of the post-independence era, but was lifted in what a historian sees as a politically convenient move by the Jomo Kenyatta government: miraa was a diversionary tool to “relax” “shifta” fighters and the pro-secessionist agitators.
By the 1970s, miraa had enough consumers to allow a few businessmen to invest in its transport via “short chassis” Land Cruisers and lorries doing regular trips to the town. However, such transport was still quite slow for a perishable commodity.
Inadvertently, new players were emerging. Women were becoming key players, and with their involvement new needs were emerging. The transport of miraa, which was primarily through lorries and Land Cruisers, remained the preserve of local businessmen who owned lorries and Land Cruisers. The lorry owners, lorry drivers’ popularity and their dominance in the transport scene persisted through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. If transport and sourcing was men’s preserve, women emerged as principal players in the miraa supply and distribution scene.
While miraa in Marsabit was predominantly from Meru, a new dynamic emerged in 2000. Local Marsabit farmers started growing miraa in the place of maize and beans due to shifts in rainfall patterns. But this local supply hardly satisfied the demands that had expanded from the town centre to the lowlands of North Horr and the Rendile lands.
Some of the large-scale infrastructure projects launched courtesy of President Mwai Kibaki’s Vision 2030 programme, including Isiolo International Airport, were designed with the aim of transforming the meat and miraa market. The 3-billion-shilling airport at Isiolo is principally aimed to transport miraa from neighbouring Meru County to the Horn of Africa and meat exports from the Northern lands.
But it’s not the airport but rather the Marsabit-Isiolo road that is upending the miraa ecosystem. The tarmacking of Isiolo-Moyale Road in the 2010s heralded a new market supply dynamics: regular buses supplanted lorries, which significantly reduced the time spent on the road. The ripple effect from this came with dire impacts on many established businesses.
While miraa in Marsabit was predominantly from Meru, a new dynamic emerged in 2000. Local Marsabit farmers started growing miraa in the place of maize and beans due to shifts in rainfall patterns.
When the new road was completed, an earlier surprise was the infamous miraa transporting Toyota Hilux from Meru loaded to the hilt with miraa en route through Nairobi to Wajir and Mandera that changed its route and passed through Marsabit to Wajir. Even though this heralded a new era for miraa distribution for other regions, it was the first sign that there were changes coming to the miraa market in Marsabit.
The region’s miraa market dynamic was intractably altered; bigger political changes in the Horn of Africa countries started manifesting around this commodity. Whereas the type of miraa that used to arrive in Marsabit in the 60s on the plane piloted by Alex was Alelee, or Kangeta (expensive and slow withering) lucrative markets were opening up, with Alelee being entirely a reserve of a new wealthy market in Nairobi and in Somalia and Kenyan exports to the neighboring state constituting numerous daily flights from Wilson Airport in Nairobi.
The type of miraa that used to arrive in Marsabit in those earlier years now found a new market elsewhere and is currently sold in Nairobi for upwards of 3,000 shillings.
The road which links Kenya to Ethiopia has also meant that produce and products from Ethiopia easily find their way to the market in Marsabit. Miraa (Gafurr) from Ethiopia also supplements the local produce to meet the demands within the town, especially during the dry season.
With each change discernible in a decade, another equal change was becoming manifest in the region. A more sedentary population came into existence, and pastoral nomadism was ditched as schools, churches, hospitals, government services were concentrated around the newly emerging towns.
Jirma, women and cultural shifts
By its very nature, of course, a great deal of it is a function of making a virtue out of necessity. Pastoralism as a lifestyle tends to be austere. Chewing miraa is almost a luxury undertaking, although even within it, there are degrees. The shift in the political economy of the region has seen the pastoralist community’s shift from pastoralism to sedentary lifestyles.
This has been accompanied by women breaking barriers, with some becoming miraa vendors. The miraa- chewing culture has evolved quite dramatically, from the consumption of miraa at the vendor’s house in the 1960s through to the 1990s, to women selling miraa from an upturned carton at various spots in the town in the late 1990s to early 2000s, to the emergence of popular farms that provide fresh miraa to new chewing shops and bases where mostly single women sell tea, coffee, peanuts, Big Gs and miraa and provide the right atmosphere that fuels “handass” – the miraa high.
The road which links Kenya to Ethiopia has also meant that produce and products from Ethiopia easily find their way to the market in Marsabit. Miraa (Gafurr) from Ethiopia also supplements the local produce to meet the demands within the town, especially during the dry season.
In 2019, miraa supply and even retail had shifted from women to become a man’s industry. Cartons of a cheap miraa, Mogoka, now started arriving in the town by 11am. Portioned in small combinations of 100 shillings, Mogoka has found a younger, poorer and restless consumer base among the unemployed youth. About 200kgs of Mogoka arrives in the town every day in perforated cartons.
No one captures their trials and tribulations better than Abdullahi Jirma, the “Elvis Presley” of Borana Music. Mirga bitaa lalaann/Wann benni khess jiru/tahn irra namm gaha yathi namm huqissu/ fin akan akan ta ilme tenna thinnu. “If one looks to the east and to the west/ and regards people’s existence/ from this comes thoughts that waste one away/this kind of existence should not be for our children.
Jirma’s effortless lyricism shines through all his works and he has also become a cultural touchstone, especially in miraa “bases”, with his songs becoming the soundtrack during chewing sessions. While some marvel at the depth of his storytelling, unbeknownst to them they are the target of his incisive commentary. Despite being far removed in age from this generation, Jirma’s songs still capture the present cultural zeitgeist; the promise and peril of the rural-urban cultural shift, especially of youngsters who move to major cities to be club-wielding night guards, locally known as Kenya Rungu.
Jirma also speaks about the perishing of livestock, the allure of city freedom, new expenses in the form of school fees for children and spousal neglect that has come with this as women took to the towns to venture into small trade.
The grooves of the old lifestyle were completely worn out in those six decades between the 1960s and 2019, which for most Northern Kenya towns is the average lifespan. Cultural demands, changing sources of livelihoods and the tone of the muezzin’s adhan tossed women between them and they adapted accordingly because these demands were slower and discernible and in the longer arc of history a knowable thing.
Wherever transport and supply change direction so do the players. The new social trajectories are also forged as the new replaces the old.
In Kenya, the framing of transition in the development arena has changed from the ubiquitous “maendeleo” to acquire more sophistry, a transition from an “analogue” state to a “digital” status. In Marsabit, the consuming of Mogoka from Embu is the new digital, with a certain type of Mogoka even branded as Mogoka Digital. With this change, development isn’t the desirable concept of Moi’s famous rhetoric, “na hiyo ni maendeleo”, but a more sophisticated system.
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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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