Any hopes that this year’s festive season would be a peaceful one were blown away when a grenade, destined for Uganda, blew up in downtown Nairobi killing one person and injuring dozens.
The attack sent panic waves across East Africa, prompting governments to up security alert status to red, ahead of Christmas and New Year.
The governments have also asked their nationals to be on the lookout for any suspicious individual and share information on suspected terrorists with the police.
Despite the minimum damage, thanks to the hawk-eyed employees of the Kampala-bound bus, the blast has left the region’s security agencies searching for answers on how to prevent such acts from becoming commonplace.
There are conflicting reports on the identity of the person behind the December 20 bus attack.
While the Kenya police insist the mastermind was Tanzanian, others say he was a Congolese national.
Nationality issues aside, the recent attack comes a few days after a grenade planted in a police vehicle blew up, killing one officer in the refugee-dominated Eastleigh estate.
A few hours later, two individuals riding motorcycles hurled grenades after being stopped by police officers in Nairobi’s Kasarani area. The two were pursued and shot dead.
According to police investigations, the duo were found to be members of a local criminal gang and some of the telephone contacts retrieved from their mobile phones were traced to influential individuals in war-torn Somalia.
New move
Police now believe that the Somali militia group, Al Shabaab, has changed tack and are now using locals to execute their plans.
The group has in the past warned the EAC member states of dire consequences for supporting the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and sending soldiers to be part of the peacekeeping African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom).
Both Kenya and Uganda police are of the view that Al Shabaab used local people in planning and executing the twin Kampala bombings, on July 11, which killed 83 people and left hundreds injured.
It is these self-made terrorists, on East African soil, who have taken extremist inspiration, who are of great concern to the region’s security personnel.
“We believe Al Shabaab militants are paying locals a lot of money to facilitate terrorism plans in the region,” said a security officer.
Even worse, this kind of homegrown terrorism is hard to detect, and is leaving security personnel badly exposed, threatening to throw them into reactive rather than preventive mode.
Though Uganda had earlier warned of the possibility of a terrorist attack targeting the country, its Kenyan neighbour was caught off-guard.
The latest incident has also reinforced a growing perception across the region that its governments are in no position to mount a robust response.
Stopping determined terrorists is difficult for even the most able governments in the developed world, but analysts say that Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam, have failed to take leadership on a basic counterterrorism strategy in the East African heartland.
“We need to share intelligence even more as well co-ordinated cross-border terrorism is now becoming evident. We also need to start joint drills and training in how to counter terrorism,” says the Kenyan officer.
So far, the governments have been passive in their response, favouring “defensive measures” such as checkpoints — involving police peeking into vehicles and inspecting car boots — and unco-ordinated operations in estates teeming with refugees.
Human rights
In the Kenyan case, accusations that police officers are targeting members of the Somali community, and by extension Muslims, have put security officers in a fix on how to balance security demands and respect for human rights.
The officers also believe the region has entered a new age of terrorism.
While the Kampala Coach bus bombing showed how ordinary people, in this case employees, can thwart a major act from happening, due to the high level of awareness of the dangers of terrorism, as a result of the breakdown of global terror networks, the latest acts are now becoming small-scale, amateurish and dependent on rudimentary technology like homemade bombs and hand grenades.
Some analysts and security officers also believe that political forces in the region are taking advantage of the situation and later blaming it on terrorists.
“During general elections, for example, opposing groups take advantage of the volatile situation to push their cause,” says another security officer. Grenade attacks, for example, were experienced in Rwanda and Burundi during the electioneering period, with fingers pointed at groups opposed to the re-election of Presidents Paul Kagame and Pierre Nkurunziza.
Governments on terror alert as Nairobi hit by grenade
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