President Obama is set to visit his father’s homeland, which no doubt will be meaningful for Mr. Obama and for Kenyans who share a special connection to this US president with ancestral roots in Kenya.
The President is also visiting Kenya because the country is America’s closest ally in the Global War on Terror in East Africa. Kenyan troops, with U.S. support, are fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia and it isn’t going so well. While Kenyan airstrikes are targeting civilians in Somalia, al-Shabaab has continued to carry out brazen attacks across the border in Kenya including the April 6 attack on university students in Garissa and most recently an attack in Mandera claimed 14 lives.
President Obama’s visit to Kenya comes at a time when Kenya is in the midst of soul searching on how to deal with violent extremism. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration has come under heavy criticism for failing to provide security and for harassing Kenya’s Muslim community. Muslim human rights groups that have been documenting abuses by the security forces have also come under pressure and harassment from the government.
The U.S. has made some efforts to highlight the importance of including civil society voices in efforts to counter violent extremism. At a regional summit on countering violent extremism in Nairobi, Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights Sarah Sewall expressed her disappointment with the Kenyan government for excluding Muslim civil society by saying:
“To enable civil society to contribute to the prevention effort, governments need to protect space for those groups to act. To be frank, this is why the United States is disappointed that some of the Kenyan civil society groups so central to the discussion about security and terrorism such as Muhuri and Haki Africa, which President Obama welcomed at the February White House summit - are not able to participate in our discussion today. Governments are stronger in their fight against extremism when they make all citizens feel included, protected and respected. At a minimum, governments should not create grievances by tolerating incompetence, corruption, or the abuse of human rights.”
President Obama should publicly condemn abusive behavior by Kenya’s security forces.
These are nice words and it is a good start that lays the ground work for President Obama’s visit to Kenya. However, the president must go beyond words and platitudes during this high level visit. He should publicly condemn abusive behavior by Kenya’s security forces. While Kenya is America’s closest ally in the region, these human rights violations actually undermine US efforts. Rather than building trust and good will, it serves as an underlying driver of violent extremism.
Furthermore, it is important to recognize that there are no military solutions to preventing or countering violent extremism. In a statement to the White House more than 41 non-governmental organizations, many of whom work worldwide with vulnerable communities, urged the President to seek alternative measures to ending terrorism. The letter states: Military capacities are ill-suited to address either the drivers or entrepreneurs of violence. Eighty-three percent of terrorist movements that ended between 1968 and 2006 were done so through political settlements or improvements in policing. An emerging body of evidence argues that domestic governance capacities are more effective than increased military capacities in sustainably addressing community grievance.
A sober reality that both Kenya and the United States should come to grips with is the fact that there are no winners in war on terror. More fourteen years of fighting this war with no end in sight and increasing number ofattacks and people killed should easily lead us to this conclusion.
The only way forward is to abandon a military-first approach and seek solutions that address the root causes of terrorism.
The NGO statement to the White House calls for an evidence based approach that prioritizes civilian led prevention efforts to address human rights grievances and build inclusive governance structures. It calls for reversal in cuts to the State Department’s democracy, rights and governance programs. If we want democracy to flourish, we must invest in programs that can actually make that happen.
President Obama would do well to listen to these recommendations on his visit to Kenya.
