Is Kenya facing a security meltdown? - By Jeremy Lind

From African Arguments Tue Dec 2 2014, 17:56:45

Turkana, Kenya's poorest county, is once again experiencing a spate of violence. The situation in Turkana, and Kenya more widely has become so bad, that John Githongo, a highly esteemed whistle-blower of regime malfeasance, has called it a "security meltdown... unprecedented in Kenya's independent history". Writing in the Star, Githongo suggests that collapsing public confidence in Kenya's internal security apparatus has in part been driven by the government's mishandling of badly needed security and policing reforms. Instead of following through on reforms that should have come after Kenya's successful 2010 plebiscite, President Uhuru Kenyatta has, instead, increasingly turned to the military to address violence. Githongo notes that Kenya has descended into the absurd, where most Kenyans simply shrug at high levels of violence, disappearances and the creeping militarisation of security responses. So, too, has insecurity in Turkana reached new levels of absurdity. In Kapedo on Turkana's southern border, over 20 administrative police as well as civilians were killed in an ambush earlier this month carried out by a heavily armed group of fighters from neighbouring West Pokot. Mourners and security officials who attended the funeral for the first victims to be laid to rest were themselves ambushed on returning home. Kapedo remains [...]

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