The Westgate debacle, a Kenyan 'mashruuc'?

[Carafaat]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/us-kenya-attack-kenyatta-analysis-idUSBRE98P0HY20130926

 

 

Analysis: Mall raid rallies foreign support for ICC-indictee Kenyatta

 

NAIROBI | Thu Sep 26, 2013 9:00am EDT

 

(Reuters) - While it hurts Kenya's tourism and investment, the bloody

Nairobi mall assault by Islamist militants will help President Uhuru Kenyatta bolster international support as he confronts charges of crimes against humanity at The Hague.

 

Accused by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court of fomenting post-election bloodletting in 2007/2008, Kenyatta leads a nation that is now in the spotlight as a victim of crimes punishable under international law.

 

Saturday's raid on Nairobi's upscale Westgate mall, in which Islamist militants killed dozens of civilians in a hail of gunfire and grenades, has won Kenya words of support and firm condemnations of "terrorism" from leaders around the world.

 

This could shift the diplomatic scenario for a 51-year-old president, whose election in March as Kenya's head of state had already added a new dimension to the ICC prosecution against him. He denies encouraging the post-election violence that killed upwards of 1,200 people.

 

Kenyatta's allies are arguing that the security implications for Africa and the world of the weekend mall attack claimed by the Islamist militant group al Shabaab from neighboring Somalia should take priority over the president's obligations to the ICC, where he is due to face trial on November 12.

 

"Do you want to focus on the ICC when so much has to be done?" Moses Kuria, a strategist for Kenyatta's Jubilee coalition who has worked alongside him, told Reuters.

 

He suggested the ICC suspend its ongoing prosecutions against Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, for two to three years, to allow them to confront a threat to Kenya's security that the Kenyan leader has called an "international war".

 

"The security concerns of the world at this time would better be served by us focusing all our energies on fighting terrorism, and ... ensuring the whole of Africa will not be a safe haven for terrorism," Kuria said.

 

"Therefore, it will be untenable to have these cases continue," he added.

 

ICC judges on Monday adjourned Ruto's trial, which began this month, for a week to allow him to return home and deal with the mall attack crisis.

 

ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdallah said Kenyatta's defense lawyers had filed a request for the Kenyan president to not physically appear at his trial in the Hague next month, but participate via video link.

 

All requests for adjustments, suspensions or postponements would be considered by the judges on a "case by case" basis, he told Reuters, without commenting further.

 

Western governments, obliged to walk something of a diplomatic tightrope in their relations with the ICC-indicted pair after their election, now seem willing to work more closely with them, especially in anti-terrorism cooperation.

 

TACKLING TERRORISM: "ESSENTIAL BUSINESS"

 

"I would regard the need to combat terrorism as essential business," the European Union's Africa Director Nick Wescott told Reuters. He was in Nairobi specifically to discuss with the Kenyan authorities the security implications of the weekend attack, which killed several expatriates as well as Kenyans.

 

Asked whether this would mean greater Western flexibility towards dealing with Kenyatta, Wescott said the two issues - the Kenyan leader's ICC trial and his international role in fighting Islamist extremist violence - should be kept separate.

 

But he added: "Let's see how it goes. It is essential that we all work as closely together as possible to deal with threats like this in Kenya, in Somalia, everywhere."

 

Reflecting this intensified cooperation, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph ole Lenku said the United States, Israel, Britain, Germany, Canada and the police agency Interpol were assisting in the investigation of the Westgate mall incident and the identities of the attackers.

 

But for those who want Kenyatta to face justice and an end to what they call a culture of impunity in Africa, the idea of giving the Kenyan leader any judicial leeway is anathema.

 

"As tragic as the events at the Westgate mall are, the number of people killed there is a fraction of the people who were killed in the course of the events Kenyatta is accused of orchestrating," said Makau Mutua, a Kenyan-born law professor at New York's State University.

 

He criticized the one-week postponement of the Ruto trial, saying the ICC acted emotionally rather than logically. He added he saw "short-term sympathy" over the mall attack but "for Kenya, not for Kenyatta".

 

Global risk consultancy Maplecroft said the Shabaab attack on Kenya's leading shopping mall showed up how the ICC trials against the Kenyan leaders would be "hugely disruptive to the processes of governance" in east Africa's biggest economy.

"As such, the attack will provide another opportunity for Kenyatta and Ruto to demand that their hearings are switched from The Hague to Arusha in neighboring Tanzania, or postponed altogether," Maplecroft said in a briefing note.

 

Ratings agency Moody's said the assault would dent Kenya's growth, particularly by depressing tourism.

 

But Moody's Assistant Vice President Edward Al-Hussainy added in a statement: "We also expect it to give President Uhuru Kenyatta's new Jubilee coalition government an opportunity to galvanize a broader mandate and dull the international and domestic political effect of the ongoing International Criminal Court trial of the president and his deputy."

 

"STAND WITH US"

 

Kenyatta, who has up to now publicly pledged his cooperation with the ICC, has made clear that he is actively seeking international backing to confront the widening threat posed by cross-border jihadists like the weekend mall raiders.

 

In a speech addressing the nation and its "friends" late on Tuesday when he announced that security forces had defeated the attackers after a four-day siege, Kenyatta stressed that "terrorism is a global problem that requires global solutions".

 

"Kenya will stand with our friends in tackling terrorism and I ask our friends to stand with us," a somber president told his nation, adding that Kenya had "stared down evil and triumphed".

 

Since the mall attack, Kenyatta has received calls and messages of support from world leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

 

Kenya is seen as a key ally in the fight against violent Islamist extremism in the Horn of Africa and Kenyan troops form part of an internationally-backed African peacekeeping force in Somalia that has put al Shabaab on the defensive.

 

In contrast, another ICC indictee, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir, who is accused of orchestrating genocide in Darfur and is defying an arrest warrant, is treated as a pariah by the West.

 

Kenya's government, backed by east African states and some other nations on a continent that is increasingly suspicious of a perceived anti-African bias by the ICC, had already asked the ICC to suspend the hearings scheduled for Kenyatta and Ruto.

 

African leaders are due to discuss the Kenyan prosecutions at the African Union next month, amid some calls for a walkout by African states from the decade-old ICC.

 

The Hague court's prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, who is leading the cases against Kenyatta and Ruto, has given no indication so far that the ICC will ease up on the prosecutions.

 

In a statement on Tuesday, Bensouda said she was ready to work with Kenya and the international community to bring to justice those responsible for the weekend raid in Nairobi.

 

"Such attacks by armed groups upon innocent civilians are contrary to international law and may constitute a crime under the Rome Statute, to which Kenya is a State Party," she said.

 

Evelyn Ankumah, Executive Director of Netherlands-based Africa Legal Aid, said that from a legal point of view the Nairobi mall attack should not affect the ongoing ICC cases.

 

But Ankumah, whose organization supports human rights and criminal justice from an African perspective, said she could not rule out the possibility of the U.N. Security Council asking for Kenyatta's ICC trial to be deferred, maybe for a year.

 

"It would be naive to say that international criminal justice is not political," she said

 

(Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in The Hague, Carolyn Cohn in London, James Macharia, Drazen Jorgic and Kevin Mwanza in Nairobi; writing by Pascal Fletcher; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Two days after the attack and Kenyatta is asking the international community for suppport against the International Crimina Court.

[Carafaat]

http://allafrica.com/stories/201310030085.html

 

Somalia: Kenyatta - Kenyan Troops 'Will Stay in Somalia'

 

Kenya's top Christian, Hindu and Muslim clerics have led a multi-faith prayer service for the 67 victims of the Westgate shopping center attack, BBC reported. President Uhuru Kenyatta told the gathering that religion had been used to try and divide Kenyans but faith had instead united them.

 

There were plans to set up a commission of inquiry into the attack by Somalia's al-Shabab Islamist militants, he said.

Kenyan forces would remain in Somalia until order was restored, he said.

 

On Monday, Kenyan MPs called for camps for Somali refugees in the country to close in the wake of the siege. Al-Shabab, a Somali Islamist group, said its militants stormed the mall on 21 September in retaliation for Kenya's military involvement in Somalia.

 

Kenya is host to the largest refugee camp in the world, Dadaab - home to about half a million people - near the Somali border, while it is believed that more than 30,000 Somali refugees live in Nairobi alone. The prayers were hosted by Kenya's Inter-Religious Council with clerics from different faiths, who sat together on a stage facing the congregation, calling for national unity, reconciliation and healing.

 

President Kenyatta praised them for organising the prayers, which showed that "tolerance and mutual understanding are the cement holding" Kenyans together.

 

Faith "is one thing in 100 different languages, that's why faith unites us", he said.

 

Source: BBC

Exclusive - Kenyan peacekeepers aided illegal Somalia charcoal export - U.N.

.

 

(Reuters) - A confidential report by U.N. monitors accuses Kenyan soldiers in the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia of facilitating illegal charcoal exports from the port city of Kismayu, a business that generates millions of dollars a year for Islamic militants seeking to topple the government.

 

read more....

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/14/uk-somalia-charcoal-un-idUKBRE96D01C20130714

Kenya's role was just being questioned by the UN. Another coincidence in the benefit of Kenya?

[Mad_Mullah]

I'm OG but Kenyan troops are being used by us to maintain dominance in the South. Real talk. Get the F out.

[Carafaat]

Mad_Mullah;980627 wrote:

I'm OG but Kenyan troops are being used by us to maintain dominance in the South. Real talk. Get the F out.

Somalida, including your lot of borderline Somalis, couldnt even make use of the worlds wealth if they hand it their hands. marka maxaa sheegisaa.

[Mad_Mullah]

They could make us of it but they wouldn't do it properly.

[Carafaat]

ANALYSIS - Westgate attack earns Uhuru Kenyatta fresh support

President Uhuru Kenyatta's own bereavement and new clothes as commander-in-chief after Westgate

 

NAIROBI

 

Until the Nairobi mall carnage, President Uhuru Kenyatta was a beleaguered and divisive president. But his own bereavement and new clothes as commander-in-chief have earned him fresh support and, some say, a "get out of jail free card" for the International Criminal Court.

 

The deadly September 21 raid on the Westgate mall brings new challenges to the government, which now has to explain why it failed to act on repeated warnings and find ways to thwart future attacks.

 

But President Kenyatta himself, who lost his nephew and his fiancee in the siege, has showed mettle that won him support beyond his tribal constituency.

 

"I did not vote for him but I have to say he showed real strength and determination. I was proud," said Alex Odhiambo, a young taxi driver, said the day after The Head of State announced the end of the siege.

 

"This attack has been a tragedy for him too and people across the country have been impressed that his ability to govern was not affected," said Mwalimu Mati, who heads the government watchdog Mars Group Kenya.

 

In his speeches to the nation during the crisis, President Kenyatta spoke of his loss, called for national unity and vowed to punish the perpetrators.

 

"Whether the security operation was well handled or not has not yet been laid at his feet. He sent the right signals, looked in control. Presidential," said Mati.

 

Not only has the 51-year-old scion of Kenya's founding president earned his stripes, he is now likely to enjoy better support than usual from his traditional enemies.

 

As the country held its breath while the drama unfolded inside the mall, The President strove to cast himself as the leader of all Kenyans and not just the champion of his tribe's interests he has often been seen as.

 

'The perfect doctor's note'

 

The ratings agency Moody's said it was not all doom and gloom on the economic front either.

 

It said it expected the attack to "galvanise a broader mandate and dull the international and domestic political effect" of President Kenyatta's impending trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

 

President Kenyatta was due in The Hague in November to face charges of crimes against humanity over the deadly tribal violence he is accused of having stirred after a disputed 2007 presidential election.

 

The Hague refused to postpone his trial after the attack but observers say he will be in a much stronger position to argue that he is now the guarantor of Kenya's unity and that the country needs his leadership.

"Kenyatta has the perfect doctor's note," a diplomat said.

 

With a string of key witnesses retracting or being compromised in dubious circumstances, the ICC case against President Kenyatta and his foe-turned-deputy William Ruto had already been losing steam.

 

"Now there really is a lot of pressure on the ICC," said Mwalimu Mati.

 

Kenya is one of the main purveyors of troops to the African force propping up the pro-Western government in Somalia and battling the Al Shabaab insurgents.

 

The group claimed the September 21 mall attack but is also increasingly recognised as a global threat that could strike Western interests and is turning Somalia into one of Al-Qaeda's main hubs.

 

When President Kenyatta argued before the attack that Kenya could ill afford an absentee president, it was a somewhat academic argument. Now he has a strong reason to ask for leniency.

 

"Kenyatta can now say: 'You cannot ask Kenya to help and at the same time persecute its president," said Mati.

 

Ngunjiri Wambugu, a young leader of President Kenyatta's Kikuyu tribe, wrote in a column on Sunday that as the nation still mourns its dead, there is a "silver lining for (Kenyatta) in this dark cloud".

 

"He now has an opportunity to remind Kenyans and the world that our country is at war, and point to Westgate as why we cannot afford to have a president with divided attention," wrote Wambugu, who heads the Change Associates Trust think tank.

 

Arguing that a crisis should never go to waste, Wambugu said that the raid even presented Kenyatta with a chance to heal the wounds of the post-election violence and completely reform his administration.

This attack seems to have secured Kenyatta juniors re-election. A 'perfect' doctors note copy pasted from Bush junior.

[Somalia]

The ICC has indicted thirty people - all Africans. That's all that needs to be said. Hopefully in a few days, the AU will withdraw from the organization.