Saturday, August 30, 2014
There exits Major General (Rtd) Michael Gichangi and in comes Maj-Gen Phillip Kameru at the helm of National Intelligence Service. History shows that the Kenyan number one spy agency is entrusted with the military.
So, when the President announced the nomination of Kameru to succeed Gichangi on August 20, it was no surprise to security experts. Strategic Intelligence, a local security think tank, saw the appointment at least 24 hours after Gichangi announced his resignation.
With three Master degrees in International Relations, Security Management and National Resource Strategy, Kameru brings a wealth of academic skills that is unique only to a few classroom lectures. Additionally, his character stands out. In his profile sent to the National Assembly, the President described him as a reliable and resourceful leader with a lot of competence in national and international security management.
Kameru has a wealth of experience in intelligence. With assumption that KDF incursion in Somalia was informed by the spy agency, Kameru as the then head of military intelligence is likely to have been the right hand man of General Julius Karangi when the later led Kenyan forces into Somalia in 2011. As the head of military intelligence back then, Kameru takes part of the credit for success of KDF in Somalia.
However, al Shabaab must have caught us flat-footed. When Kenya went into Somalia, they shifted their battlefield from Somalia to Kenya. Yet we had not organised our internal security well enough to handle this. As KDF liberated more towns, al Shabaab targeted installations, social centres, villages and other public amenities in Kenya.
Al Shabaab strategy reminds us of Clausewitz thinking of the triage of war; ‘the population support, national policy and flexibility provided by the military’. The three components must converge for any victory. By moving into Kenya, al Shabaab are targeting the Kenyan population, and by extension one of the components of the triage to make the government pool back our army.
Understanding these aspects of al Shabaab is important in securing Kenya. The shifting of the grounds in which al Shabaab is waging war from Somali to Kenya; from insurgency in Somalia’s large swathes of land to Kenyan towns, and now weakly protected villages for example in Lamu county.
Can the man, who by virtue of his then appointment, be assumed to have been instrumental in defeating al Shabaab in Somalia save Kenyans of this agony? Can he put hope on the face of the citizens who cry for protection against the heinous conduct of al Shabaab? Can he save the face of the government whose decision-making seems to have been clouded by the speed of al Shabaab activities?
Only prophets can give definite answers to these futuristic questions. However, with Kameru’s successes in Somalia, he may just succeed the only handicap he has - in that unlike in the military, National Intelligence Service has no auctioning arm. They bear no arms and naturally rely on the National Police Service.
I would propose that the solution to this lies in the President militarising all the arms of security in this country. We know that the police do not trust the intelligence from National Intelligence Service. Indeed in July this year rumours had it that they had intention of forming their intelligence wing.
Thanks God that already there are talks of bringing in the former Maj-Gen Joseph ole Nkaissery as the Cabinet Secretary for Interior and Coordination of National Development. The ministry in charge of the police, which is the primary implementing authority of intelligence, briefs National Intelligence Service.
If the President makes such a move, then he shall have completed the hypothesised militarisation. In the face of al Shabaab and insurgency threats we face domestically, this is what we desire. And let it not just stop with the top echelon but introduce military training and discipline down the chain of command of the National Intelligence Service and National Police Service.
When President Paul Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni realised that their states faced insurgent threats that the police could not handle, they militarised the police. They introduced military training to the police and gave their militaries greater roles in internal security.
President Kibaki tried this by appointing Maj-Gen Ali as the police commissioner and Gichangi as director of NIS. The results were fabulous albeit with the failures of the former during the 2007–08 post-election violence.
However, despite greater chances of success, failure is a possibility in the diary of the new director, especially if he is not supported. Already there are media allegations of senior directors not being happy with his appointment.
Time and space will provide answers to all these. We wait with eagerness to see the strategies that the Army General will bring from the military to NIS. He is in a new space no longer characterised with strict ‘yes-sir’ answers. Only time will tell.