[kictanet] Incompetence gallore

[robert yawe]

Editorial from a Saudi Paper 

	* Something wrong in Kenya 

There can be no denying the extraordinary challenges facing the Kenyan 
government. Yet as the last terrorists were being rooted out of 
Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall at the end of a slaughter spree that 
has killed some 70 people and injured hundreds more, the Kenyan 
authorities need to be asking themselves some hard questions.

This is a country which because it is actively involved in combating 
Al-Shabab terrorists in Somalia is supposed to be on the very highest 
state of alert. Kenya did not choose this confrontation. In 1998 it was 
an amiably corrupt and easygoing country with merely a nasty record of 
armed robberies, mostly of rich Western tourists.

Then Al-Qaeda
 launched one of its very first international attacks, a deadly assault 
on the US embassy in the Kenyan capital which left 224 people dead the 
great majority of them Kenyans. Thereafter, there was a succession of  
small attacks by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab which culminated in raids
 on Kenyan coastal tourist resorts and a Somali refugee camp, targeting 
and kidnapping foreigners.

It was the final straw. Nairobi sent
 troops into Somali striking Al-Shabab fighters in the rear as they were
 pressed from the north by African Union forces. Thereafter, the 
terrorists resorted to low-level violence, mostly hit and run grenade 
attacks across the Somali border, until the attack by some 15 heavily 
armed men on the supposedly well-guarded up-market Westgate shopping 
center. The attackers managed to negotiate their way with  all their 
weaponry through the capital’s roadblocks. They contrived to organize 
their deadly assault without the Kenyan intelligence services picking up
 the slightest inkling of what was about to happen.

Something 
has got to be wrong somewhere. And the closer one looks at the way the 
tragic events unfolded,  the more difficult questions it seems that the 
Kenyan authorities have to answer. Why for instance did it take almost 
half an hour for the first properly armed and equipped teams to arrive 
at the shopping mall?  Why was there no proper building evacuation 
scheme nor any obvious plan to respond to a terrorist outrage within the
 complex?

Acts of bravery by shopping center staff, individual 
police officers and ordinary members of the public cannot mask what 
appears to have been a series of bungles by all those who should have 
been responsible for the safety of the complex and its visitors. 
Journalists noted that when heavily-armed special forces arrived, some 
seemed nervous and confused, perhaps as a result of the shouting that 
could be heard from senior officers who themselves seemed poorly briefed
 and unprepared and as a result unsure of how best to proceed.  The 
inevitable report into this horrific event may find that by delaying a 
rapid and firm response to the attack, the authorities permitted the 
terrorists to continue their killing spree and also allowed them to 
consolidate their position within the mall.

Perhaps a clue to 
what went so disastrously wrong at the Westgate mall can be found in the
 devastating fire at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last 
month. Though the blaze broke out in the early morning, meaning no one 
was killed, the extent of the fire and the extraordinary delays in 
getting fire appliances to the scene raised major questions about the 
competence of the Kenyan authorities.  The Westgate tragedy must 
compound these serious concerns.
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