INTRODUCTION
As peace loving beings in all parts of the world absorb
the enormity of the extremists attack on innocent civilians in Kenya leading to
the deaths of over 70 persons, it is important to start out by condemning in no
uncertain terms the cowardly nature of this attack by the fanatics who claimed
responsibility in the name of Al Shabaab. This attack on innocent civilians at
the Westgate Mall in Nairobi had nothing to do with Islam and everything to do
with the debasement of human beings in Africa and the need for a clear
political project to expose and isolate the extremists.
One of the many realities of this form of violence and
low intensity warfare is the ways in which global competition for African
resources have served to manipulate gullible elements within and outside of
Africa. While the media has sensationalized this attack, it is worth reflecting
on some of the underlying contradictions inside the region of Eastern Africa
and how these contradictions are being played out inside of Kenya and the
region. For many entrepreneurs in the strategic industries that profit from
militarism, the event in Nairobi is a godsend in so far as it vindicates the
argument that Africa is a hotbed of terrorism and it is not possible to wind
down the war on terror. For the planners who are strategizing for the rich oil
and gas resources of the East African coast, this episode provides another
opportunity to deepen the divisions within Eastern Africa and pump out more
stories and images of ‘failed states.’ For the discredited leaders of Kenya,
Rwanda and Uganda, this episode provides an opportunity to grandstand in
support of the Kenyan political leadership against the International Criminal
Court (ICC). In a speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations on
Tuesday September 24, Museveni said, “The ICC, in a shallow, biased way, has
continued to mishandle complex African issues. This is not acceptable. The ICC
should stop."
That Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda serving for
27 years, has now stood before the 68th session of General Assembly of the
United Nations as a champion of Pan Africanism and African independence is most
ironic in so far as the army of Museveni has been the most servile in the
interests of US forces in Eastern Africa. These distortions call for clarity in
the ranks of the peace and justice forces internationally and for sharper
analysis and actions within the global Pan African Movement.
Kenya is an important base for the consolidation of the
unification of the peoples of Africa and the recent experiences of warfare,
famine, alienation and militarism point to the urgency for coordination for
peace from the peoples of Africa. The massive discovery of oil and natural gas
off the East African Coast from Djibouti down to Mozambique has the possibility
of changing the geo-political map of the world as all and sundry now see the
future of the world economy as centered in the Indian Ocean as opposed to the
Atlantic Ocean. The genius and creativity of the youths of Eastern Africa can
be mobilized by the progressive Pan African forces if there is slow and careful
planning for the Pan African project of removing the artificial boundaries that
were established at the Conference of Berlin in 1884.
In our contribution this week we assert our opposition to
the extremists who are manipulating Islam in the name of violence. At the same
time we are opposing the imperial forces in Africa and their allies in the Gulf
who are opposed to the dignity and peaceful existence of African peoples. The
veteran Pan African writer Prof Awoonor, 78, was a one of those who lost their
earthly lives in this senseless attack by individuals who are as anti-African
as they are anti-human. Awoonor had served in the literary ranks of the Pan
African movement with distinction in areas of importance for the Global Pan
African family, Brazil, USA, UK and Africa. He had been in Nairobi to commune
with other literary Pan Africanists in the Storymoja Hay Festival.
Kenya is the base of a vibrant populace whose creativity
in literature has produced some of the leading Pan African writers and
activists such as Micere Githae Mugo and Ngugi Wa Thiongo. It is from the same
Kenya where we are in the midst of new platforms for finance and technology
that have democratized banking and changed the political economy of Kenya and
East Africa. The challenge for the progressive wing of the global Pan African
movement is to mobilize energies in the midst of this tragedy to speed the
processes of political transformation and unification in Africa.
WHO CONTROLS THE NARRATIVE
ON KENYA AND SOMALIA?
When tragedies such as the killings and hostage taking in
the Westgate Mall occur, there are immediate calls from within the movement for
the right kind of literature and analysis that can make sense of the nonsense
that comes from the western media. As the images were being played out in the
media in print and television, I remembered the many meetings that were held by
Fahamu staff and this writer at that mall. The office of Fahamu (parent
organization for Pambazuka News) is just next door to this mall. This is just
one of the messages that I received from comrades in Kenya,
“Hi Prof,
Many days? 'Ope you've been keeping' well. Trust me, I'm
safe and sound. Do you remember the last time I was with you, we sat at Art
Cafe at Westgate? Just thought of all the times I've been at the shopping mall
and I recalled meeting you there, last year.”
This was a journalist from a prominent daily in Nairobi
who has kept in touch over the past six years. One of our students from our Pan
African Master’s Program in Syracuse wrote to ask, 'What should I be reading?'
I referred him to the writings of Abdi Samatar and alerted him to the fact that
I had been in the middle of reading the book by James Fergusson, The World's Most Dangerous Place:
Inside the Outlaw State of Somalia. This book written by an English journalist
is presented in the mode of psychological warfare from the British point of
view. It represents the disinformation from the British journalistic world to
reinforce the arguments about failed sates in Africa. From the contents of the
book, especially the sections n Al Shabaab, one can see that the writer had
access to British intelligence sources on the different factions in the
differing regions of Somalia, Somaliland, Puntland and the areas of central
Somalia around Mogadishu.
The other noteworthy book to have come out recently by a
British writer is that by Mary Harper, Getting Somalia Wrong.: Faith and War in a Shattered State.
Although less strident in its vilification of Africans and praise for western
humanitarianism, this book again carries the underlying analysis of Somalia as
a ‘failed state.’ These writers are part of the network of experts and journalists
who are then fed into the networks for consultancy and news that forms the
background for the reports to the Security Council of the United Nations. What
was significant about the book by Mary Harper was that in its discussion of the
numerous resources in Somalia: livestock, cattle, camels, charcoal, qat, etc,
there is no mention of the massive oil resources that lie off the coast of
Somalia and East Africa. Instead the topics of piracy and terrorism grace the
pages without clarity on the interconnections between the so-called pirates and
the international insurance companies. In an effort to control the narrative on
Somalia and Africa we are bombarded with details of the ‘tribal’ and clan
factions in Somalia. African anthropologists and social scientists who have
written extensively on the politicization and militarization of the clan
structures in Somalia are not usually cited in the reviews and commentaries
about the rise of violent extremism in Somalia. There are a few Kenyan
researchers who have been writing and commenting on the conflagration but their
output has come in the form of consultancy report. One of the better studies
from the pan African point of view was that by Afyare Abdi Elmi,
Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and
Peace-building on the decomposition of the Somalia state and the responsibility
of progressive Somalis and Africans to rise above political Islam.
Abdi Samatar has been consistently working and writing to
articulate a Pan African analysis of the conflagration in Somalia and from time
to time the public broadcasting stations in North America call on him for
commentaries but the resources for labeling Somalia as a hotbed of terror
ensure that progressives in the Pan African intellectual circuits do not have
access to the big research budgets. I remember vividly the differences between
Professor Abdi Samatar and Jendayi Frazier (then Assistant Secretary of State
for Africa) over how the world should view the response of the peoples of East
Africa to the Ethiopian invasion and incursions into Somalia. Somalia’s Islamic
Courts Union, a coalition of a dozen groups, had created the basis for a
peaceful life and had isolated the military entrepreneurs who the West called
warlords. We now know that the violence and destruction of the past seven years
could have been avoided if the arguments of Samatar and other peace activists
in and outside Somalia had been heeded. The Ethiopians and the Bush
Administration could not tolerate peace breaking out in Somalia because
instability in Somalia and Eastern Africa served the geo-strategic interests of
war planners in Washington. Along with its allies in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and
Yemen the networks for violent extremism were tolerated while the United States
rolled out the Africa Command to fight terrorism in Africa. That fight against
terror has now been complicated by the intense competition between the
differing states of Europe over the future oil and gas mining in Somalia.
THE FUTURE OIL BONANZA IN
SOMALIA
In the past two years the news from Somalia has been
dominated by the information that there could be as much as 110 billion barrels
of oil and gas off the shores of Somalia. There is also likely to be vast
natural gas reserves in Somali waters in the Indian Ocean. Fields containing an
estimated 100 trillion cubic feet of gas have been found off Mozambique and
Tanzania. British politicians and British oil companies have been the most
active in seeking to corner the future exploration of this oil and it is not by
accident that the most recent conferences on the future of Somalia has been
held in London and hosted by David Cameron, the Prime Minister and head of the
Conservative Party of Britain. One of the first companies to have signed a
contract with the Government of Somalia is the front for British petroleum
interests that is now registered as Soma Oil & Gas Exploration Ltd. This
company was recently founded in the United Kingdom and its chairman is Michael
Howard, a former leader of the Conservative Party. We are also informed that
CEO Robert Sheppard has experience as an adviser for the U.K. oil company BP
PLC (LON: BP) in Russia.
Very soon after the long transition and the more than
fifteen meetings to organize a sensible form of governance in Somalia, the British
moved in to muscle out an African as the Special Representative of the
Secretary General (SRSG) for Somalia. Nicholas Kay has emerged as the SRSG for
Somalia at a moment when Britain is seeking to dominate the institutions and
organizations that will have control over the decision making processes for the
oil and gas exploration in Somalia. From the moment of the decomposition of the
Somalia government and the manipulation of the military entrepreneurs by
western forces, Britain had been cooling its heels working with the political
elements in that section of Somalia that had been colonized by Britain after
the Berlin Conference. During the colonial era Britain had used this region to
provide meat for its troops in the Gulf and British Somaliland was governed
from India.
British oil companies for decades had knowledge of the
massive oil reserves off the coast of Somalia and the British teased the
‘leaders’ of Somaliland with the gesture that they would recognize this
secessionist region as a breakaway state. Pan Africanists will remember that at
the Berlin Conference in 1885 the peoples of Somalia were divided in to five
areas (French Somaliland, -now called Djibouti, British Somaliland, Italian
Somaliland, the Ethiopian areas of Somalia –in the Ogaden and the Somalia
peoples who were located in what came to be known as Kenya), There are up to
300,000 citizens of Somali extraction in Europe and while the racism of Britain
alienates the more than 100,000 Somali youth, Britain is opportunist and when Mo
Farah won the gold medal for the 10,000m at the London 2012 Olympics, the
British press forgot the jingoism that alienated and confused many youth of
Somali extraction who yearned for some purpose in their lives.
British newspapers and politicians had showered praises
on the breakaway region telling them that this was a region of peace in a haven
of violent Somalia. However, the British always had their eyes on the massive
oil resources. Some foreign companies signed deals with the breakaway
governments of Puntland and Somaliland but these entities were never recognized
by the African Union.
For about ten years the British were waiting in
Somaliland until they knew that Ugandans had cleaned up the situation and many
Africans died. They were quite willing for Africans (Ugandans and Burundians)
to die in the AMISOM operation while the western P3 members of the Security
Council quibbled over how much money the UN should spend on the peacekeeping
force in Somalia. Nicholas Kay, the new SSRG, has traveled to the General
Assembly this week to lobby for more resources for AMISOM, presumably because
it will be important to guard the British nationals who will be flocking to
Mogadishu. Kay is by no means a small player in the British political
establishment. Before he was deployed to Mogadishu as the SSRG he had been the
Africa Director at the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Prior to
this position at the FCO, he served as Ambassador to the Republic of the
Democratic of the Congo and the Sudan from 2007 to 2010 and 2010 to 2012,
respectively. He was also the United Kingdom’s Regional Coordinator for
Southern Afghanistan and Head of the Provincial Reconstruction Team for Helmand
Province from 2006 to 2007. In short, he has the experience of serving British
interests in war zones. There are numerous other British elements in the
interstices of the United Nations system working to ensure the ascendancy of
British interests.
MOVING AGAINST AFRICANS AND
MANIPULATING AFRICANS
The US form of warfare in Somalia had followed the new
template of drones, local militia forces, private military contractors and
third party countries. In the war in Libya, this form of warfare had been used
with the army of Qatar acting as the third party country. In Somalia; Uganda
had been the country most willing to serve imperial interests after the
Ethiopians had invaded to oust the Union of Islamic Courts. The historic
differences between Somalia and Ethiopia ensured that Ethiopia could not be a real
force for peace, especially in the very undemocratic and repressive conditions
inside Ethiopia. Ugandans deployed more than 6000 fighters to Mogadishu and
hundreds lost their lives. The Ugandans and Burundians formed the bulk of the
African Union Peace Keeping forces (AMISOM) that drove Al Shabaab out of
Mogadishu
The reports from the families in Uganda were that
hundreds, if not thousands of Ugandans lost their lives in the forms of battle
that raged from street to street and alley to alley in Somalia. Reports of the
fighting were that it was similar to the kind of warfare of 1914-1918. While
this fighting was going on, the western countries were opposed to financing the
AMISOM mission and were quite willing and ready to have Africans die in the
streets of Mogadishu as it turns out now to serve the interests of western oil
companies.
If Museveni was a front for the US military in Somalia,
by the time the body bags were being flown back to Kampala, Museveni had his
own interest in ensuring that the violent extremists in Somalia were
decapitated. Museveni worked closely with Augustine Mahiga who had moved from
the safety of Nairobi when he took up the position of SRSG in 2010. Both Mahiga
and Museveni had worked closely with Nyerere and both had been on the periphery
of the Dar es Salaam school in the era of Walter Rodney, Issa Shivji and the
period when all operatives in Tanzania identified with the African liberation
project. When Britain wanted to get the position of SRSG, the campaign of
disinformation intensified about the diplomatic and military capabilities of
their African allies such as Mahiga and Museveni.
After the Ugandans died in the hundreds, the Western
military lobby moved against Augustine Mahiga the Special Representative of the
Secretary General. Mahiga is a Tanzanian and he worked hard from Mogadishu
while the European members of the UN team spend their time in Nairobi. There
had been a struggle between Germany, Norway, Britain and South Africa to get
this SRSG post that can be like the neo-colonial governor in Mogadishu. Kay won
out using the British special relationship with the USA to succeed.
The Norwegians wanted the position of SRSG and promised
$30 million in aid to the new Somalia government, but the British muscled out
the Norwegians. The secessionist state of Somaliland had signed a production
sharing agreement with DNO, a Norwegian oil and gas company, but British
interests were working hard against Norway. Enter David Cameron who became the
champion for the convening of conferences to reconstruct Somalia. This very
same Cameron who had been attacking Somali nationals in Britain as the forces
that ensured that multiculturalism does not work was the same who dispatched
William Hague to Mogadishu in n 2012. The Prime Minister of Turkey, Edrogan had
been the first leader of a foreign government to visit Mogadishu in 2011 and
Britain wanted to be counted as a state that supported the people of Somalia.
More recently in September 2013, there was the convening of a special EU New
Deal for peace meeting in Brussels. The European Union pledged 650 million
euros to help Somalia's peace and rebuilding process but after one read the
fine print one could see that most of what was said amounted to pledges. The
British Department for International Development (DFID) rolled out and
published its own commitments made in the meeting but when the sums were added
it did not come to the $30 that had been pledged by Norway and rejected by the
Government of Somalia in favor of the British promises.
REGIONAL DIMESNIONS
The heavy fighting to remove Al Shabaab from Mogadishu
had been undertaken by Ugandans and Burundians but in September/October 2011,
the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) invaded Somalia under the banner of Linda Nchi
(Kiswahili for defend the nation). At the time of the Kenyan incursion in 2011,
I had written in Pambazuka that the intended remilitarization of Africa will
fail. I had written,
“The government of Kenya has declared that it will end
its military campaign against Al-Shabaab in Somalia when it is satisfied it has
stripped the group of its capacity to attack across the border. If one goes by
the experience of the past 18 years, then this statement can be read that Kenya
will be in for a long-term deployment to Somalia. The corollary to this is the
reality that Kenya and its cities will be spaces of war, security clampdown and
general destabilisation of the population. Since the Kenyan foray, there have
been two grenade attacks at a bar and a bus terminal that killed one person and
wounded more than 20 people in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. These attacks have
already affected the tourism industry, one of the most important sources of
revenue for the government of Kenya.”
From the books mentioned above we have read that the
Kenyan incursion into Somalia had been planned long in advance by the KDF and
that the Kenyans were looking for the most opportune time to justify the
incursion into Somalia. The international media blitz about famine, refugees
and Al Shabaab in 2011 provided the right background for the Kenyan people to
support the KDF into Somalia. Kenyans had been lukewarm towards the military
after the security forces had failed to protect innocent civilians after the
violence of 2008.
The political leaders of Kenya had been working with
French companies to map out the future of the recovery of oil resources in
Kenya on land and offshore. There had been disputes between Kenya and the
Federal Transition Government of Somalia over the Exclusive Economic Zones of
Kenya and Somalia. Both countries had produced competing maps to lay claim to
the EEZ off the coast of Southern Somalia. The Kenyan forces had collaborated
with a questionable military entrepreneur of the Ras Kamboni group and the
Ugandans were not happy that Kenya had intervened in Somalia after hundreds of
Ugandans had already lost their lives.
CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN KENYA
AND BRITAIN
There is now a major contradiction between Britain and
Kenya over the future of Somalia. In the past one hundred years, Kenya had been
the base for British imperial operations in East Africa. From Nairobi, British
capitalism had sought to dominate the East African region and Britain had
encouraged Kenyan capitalists to break up the East African community. British
exploitation of the resources of Kenya was originally concentrated on
agriculture with the production of tea, coffee, flowers and other products high
on the list. In the era of energy, consumer products, telecommunications and
security, British companies did profitable business in Kenya while the academic
institutions of Britain and the USA churned out data on the tribal differences
in Kenya.
After the contested elections in 2007, the Kenyan
political leadership had gestured economically to China while firmly linked
ideologically to western capitalism. Britain was most concerned about this
gesture of the Kenyan leadership towards China crowned by the successful visit
of Mwai Kibaki to China in 2010. Bilateral trade volume between Kenya and China
has increased significantly in recent years, with China becoming Kenya's major
trading partner. In 2012, imports from China were $1.92 billion, imports from
the United States $776 million, and from the United Kingdom $575 million. When
the Kenyans rolled out plans for the Lamu port and the corridor to link the
coast to South Sudan and Ethiopia, western capitalist companies could not
compete in the bidding and so Britain decided to switch and plan to control
Somalia.
The impressive Lamu Port and South Sudan Ethiopia
Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor project involves the development of a new
transport corridor from the new port of Lamu through Garissa, Isiolo, Maralal,
Lodwar and Lokichoggio to branch at Isiolo to Ethiopia and Southern Sudan. This
will comprise of a new road network, a railway line, oil refinery at Lamu, oil
pipeline, Isiolo and Lamu Airports and a free port at Lamu (Manda Bay) in
addition to resort cities at the coast and in Isiolo. It will be the backbone
for opening up Northern Kenya and integrating it into the national economy.
Despite this impressive planning for LAPSSET, the shortsightedness of the
Kenyans about the future Pan African Unification meant that the planning for
this project fell under the banner of the dubious Kenya 2030 project.
Britain had been the number one trading partner of Kenya
right up to 2008. France waited quietly and patiently while the relationship
between Kenya and Britain deteriorated and the French oil company Total
prepared itself to be the major partner of the Kenyan financial and real estate
barons. France has methodically maneuvered to become a force in the English
speaking enclaves of Eastern Africa.
US PRIVATE CONTRACTORS AND GULF CONSERVATIVES
For the preservation of the investment in militarism in
Africa, Somalia had been the most important talking point for the strategic
planners in Washington. With the awareness that the presence of US troops had
fuelled a massive anti-imperialist consciousness inside Somalia, the US
maintained a very low profile with in Somalia working with drone warfare and
private contractors. In the book by James Fergusson on Somalia we have the most
detailed information of Bancroft International as a CIA front in Mogadishu and
Nairobi. Western intelligence agencies cannot deny knowledge of the various
networks of violent extremists because it is from this very same network that
the west is now recruiting Jihadists for its war in Syria.
From the Reports of the Secretary General of the United
Nations to the Security Council we have the names of the ten or so prominent
private contractors that are involved in the war against Africa in the
differing parts of Somalia. According to the press, all of these private
military contractors dream of being as successful as Bancroft International.
According to the UN Report of June 2013,
“In Kismaayo, the United States-based Atlantean Worldwide
represented itself to the Monitoring Group as a “life support” company.
Meanwhile, it is marketing its presence in Somalia to oil and gas companies
with the image of a risk management company, as well as portraying itself to
several Nairobi-based diplomats as the “Bancroft of Kismaayo”.
It is from Kismayo where Kenya is seeking to create a
buffer state called Jubaland, dividing Somalia even further so that the Kenyan
bourgeoisie can control the oil of the coast of Kismayo.
SALAFISTS AND WAHABISTS
We now know from the information provided by Edward
Snowden that the National Security Agency of the USA has a massive information
gathering apparatus all around the world. Hence, it would be incredible to
believe that the US does not have the information about the foundations and
organizations in the Gulf that finance the violent extremists that are labeled
as Al Shabaab. The spoilers for the Kenyan bourgeoisie in their manipulation of
the war on terror are the conservative fronts from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.
They finance the religious extremists in Somalia who have links to the
militarists. These spoilers finance extremists all over East Africa. It is here
important that these extremists act in the name of Islam but their activities
have been most unislamic. As Samir Amin rightly observed, “The Islam proposed by
political Islam in all its diverse organizations (‘extremist’ or even
‘terrorist’ and so-called ‘moderate’) is definitely an obscurantist Islam,
unable to help understand the nature of contemporary world challenges. It is a
version of Islam at the service of primitive and brutal forms of exploitation
of the weak (‘the people’) by the ‘strong’ (the ruling cliques who exploit the
return to religion). And these ‘strong’ are nothing but transmission belts for
the country’s integration into the global system dominated by the monopolies of
the Triad (USA, Europe, Japan). The Somalian ‘small market’ provides no means
of resistance to this domination, and the leaders of Islamic movements may not
even be aware of this.”
Somalia must be kept unstable in preparation for the
coming war in the region. Africa must be destabilized so that imperialism and
their allies can use African resources in the coming wars.
INTELLECTUAL AND IDEOLOGICAL
WARFARE
The intellectual and ideological war over the future of
Africa is now intense and it is important that Somalians at home and abroad
along with their allies in the overseas Somali community as well as in the
wider Pan African community to get more information on how this attack on the
Mall fits into the overall imperial strategy. Whatever the outcome of this Mall
event, it will be used to strengthen repression and to isolate progressive
forces. Progressive forces internationally must intensify our opposition to
religious extremism and at the same time expose how the Global War on Terror
fuels actions such as the one that took place at the Mall.
Kenya is in a very difficult situation because the Kenyan
leadership will want to gesture in an anti-imperialist direction over the
International Criminal Court. They also want to be anti-imperialist so that the
financial forces that control banking and telecommunications can branch out
into the energy sector and control the oil in Somalia
PSEUDO ANTI-IMERIALISM AND
THE AFRICAN UNION
Progressives in Africa cannot fall for the pseudo
anti-imperialism of Uhuru Kenyatta that is now being voiced by Museveni. This
anti-imperialism is so layered that it will require a high level of
sophistication to grasp the subtexts of game playing that is going on with the
Kenyan leadership. At the time of the 50th anniversary of the struggles for the
unification of Africa the discussions were hijacked by Kenya who called for the
African Union to boycott the ICC in solidarity with the leadership of Kenya. After
the meeting in May, that same leadership went on a diplomatic offensive to call
on African people to oppose the ICC. Yoweri Museveni was the front person for
this task and his presentation before the General Assembly this week was part
of the alliance between the Ugandan leadership and the Kenyan leadership.
Museveni had been one of the first leaders in Africa to refer a case to the ICC
when he cooperated with the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Kony of the
Lord’s Resistance Army to the ICC.
Kenya had mounted a diplomatic offensive using Museveni
as a front calling on the African Union to hold a special summit on the
question of the trial of the President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice
President William Ruto before the ICC. The Kenyan information platforms had
argued that, “the trial of Kenya’s top two executives will undermine their
ability to govern the country; that a lot of work has already been done to
resettle the people displaced by the post-election violence in 2008; that the
trial will reopen old wounds; that Kenya has a new Constitution that can be
used to create local courts to try the cases; and that the AU request to have
the case moved to Kenya has been ignored by the ICC.”
From the East African newspaper of the region, one can
see that there are many different levels to the manipulation. When William
Ruto, the Vice President of Kenya was slated to travel to The Hague to stand
trial, both Uganda and Rwanda asked President Uhuru Kenyatta to stop Ruto from
flying to The Hague as his trial on charges of crimes against humanity kicked
off.
According to the same newspaper, “the request was tabled
when President Kenyatta met Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa and
Rwanda’s Louise Mushikiwabo in Nairobi on September 8, two days before Mr Ruto
flew out to the International Criminal Court. The EastAfrican has learnt that
President Kenyatta insisted on his deputy attending court, arguing that failure
to appear before the ICC could trigger a warrant of arrest and “the argument of
whether they are innocent would be lost.”
Future revelations will inform the people of Kenya if
this is another layer of the financial and political struggles inside Kenya
where some sections may be willing to sacrifice Ruto.
There is genuine opposition within Africa to the
selectivity of the ICC but the progressive forces within Africa may oppose the
ICC but they cannot support the impunity that is embedded in the campaign of
Yoweri Museveni. In the post-election violence of January 2008 there were over
1300 Kenyans who died violently and more than half a million have been
displaced. Up to the present time of writing September 2013, five years after
the carnage no one has been held accountable for the deaths of these Kenyans.
Just as Uhuru Kenyatta has appeared on the world stage calling for the
prosecution of those who carried out the Westgate Mall attack, it is necessary
for Kenyans for find the right basis for holding accountable those who
orchestrated the post-election violence.
PAN-AFRICANISTS MUST BE
VIGILANT INTENSIFY POLITICAL WORK
Since 1992 Somalia has been destabilized by imperial
forces. Imperialism has attempted to solve the political problems of Somalia by
military means. This effort to militarize Somalia drew in the entire region as
the militarization of ethnicity emboldened military entrepreneurs who
understood the business of warfare. The peoples of Somalia are now spread over
the length and breadth of Eastern and southern Africa. What affects Somalia
will affect all of Africa. The political solution to the questions of
destabilization cannot be resolved outside a process of demilitarization,
reconstruction and unity. The new oil resources have provided the basis for a
new round of militarism as the British have switched sides in East Africa. The siege
of the Mall and the killing demand a higher level of understanding than to
shout about terrorists. There must be a sober inquiry into the nature of the
forces that carried out this terrible attack.
Kenyans and the peoples of East Africa have been suffering
from economic terrorism for decades. It is in Kenya where there are some of the
most sophisticated political forces. Imperial Britain, the USA understands this
and since the period of the Land and Freedom Army has worked to divide the
people of Kenya. Tribe was the preferred tool but in the era of extreme
fundamentalism, religion is now the tool to divide and dominate. These
extremists all thrive on the oppression of women.
The political leaders of Kenya and Uganda want to divert
the reconstruction project of Africa by calling a special session to defend
Uhuru Kenyatta. Progressive Pan Africanists cannot support this special session
that is called and being masterminded by Yoweri Museveni. There must be special
courts in Kenya and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal the wounds of
the political killings that took place in 2008.
Kenyan researchers and progressive intellectuals must go
beyond the media to work against impunity. Somalia will have to be integrated
into a people centered Eastern Africa. There is too much at stake.
The covert struggles between Britain and Kenya over oil
have to be uncovered while progressives find a way to undercut the Museveni
call for a special session of the African Union. Kofi Awonoor, Tajudeen Abdul
Raheem and Philippe Wamba were outstanding Pan Africanists who departed this
life in Kenya. They have joined the hundreds of thousands whose lives watered
the seeds for freedom and unity. We cannot disappoint them. As Tajudeen would
say, Don’t Mourn, Organize.
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* Horace Campbell is Professor of African American
Studies and Political Science, Syracuse University. Campbell is also the
Special Invited Professor of International Relations at Tsinghua University,
Beijing. He is the author of Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya:
Lessons for Africa in the Forging of African Unity, Monthly Review Press, New
York 2013
Podesta
Group is handling Somalia under a $120K, one-month pact to communicate
its priority issues to the U.S. government decision-makers, members of the
policy community and the U.S. press.
Barawe, Somalia - Al Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane [known as Mukhtar Abu
Zubeir] has warned against Kenya following Westgate Mall attack that
killed more than 70 people after four days of siege, RBC Radio reports.