[quote_center]Some gruesome images are used. Hence the reader’s discretion is strongly advised.[/quote_center]
The warning was in the air. The people of the town of Garrisa where Garrisa University College was situated had spotted suspicious men lurking around the town. A nearby college had taken the warnings seriously and had sent the students home. Garrisa University College, which was attacked did not do so.
The refusal to heed the warnings had tragic consequences when terror struck at the gates of the university. This resulted in the deaths of 148 students and security personnel, including 4 or 5 of the attackers.
Let us analyze the sequence of events that led to this ghastly massacre of innocent students, the world reaction and the bitter but necessary lessons for Africa.
Days prior to the attack, local police in Garrisa had received intelligence warnings that a terrorist attack was being planned on the university or the medical training college. But surprisingly only four local policemen were deployed to protect the university.
In the early hours of April 2 at 5.30 AM local time, at least five gunmen stormed the campus on Garrisa University College armed with AK-47 rifles and strapped with explosives. A brief shootout occurred at the gates of the campus where two of the policemen deployed to guard the university were killed by the terrorists.
According to Fred Mukinda of the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation, an alarm was sounded by 6.00 AM at the Ruiru base of the Recce Company of the General Service Unit in Nairobi which is a two hour flight from Garrisa. Mr Mukinda goes on to tell us that the officers of the elite paramilitary unit were briefed that there was a possible terrorist attack launched against Garrisa University College by gunmen suspected to be Al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab is a jihadist terrorist group based in Somalia. In 2012, it pledged allegiance to the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda. In February of that year, some of the group’s leaders quarreled with Al-Qaeda over the union, and quickly lost ground. Al-Shabaab’s troop strength was estimated at 7,000 to 9,000 militants in 2014. As of 2015, the group has retreated from the major cities, controlling a few rural areas in Somalia.
When the alarm about Al-Shabaab blew, the elite forces of the Recce Company quickly sprang into action and got their gear ready for deployment. They acted with professionalism and were ready to act.
But that was when the spectacular drama of failure by incompetent Kenyan officials started.
While the highly professional officers of the Recce Company were ready to be flown to the theater of operation, the Kenyan authorities were not ready. 7 hours later at 12.30PM local time, the Special Forces unit was still in Nairobi!
Why?
The order to deploy by Kenyan law must come from the Inspector-General of Police, who is now Mr Boinnet. But what was Mr Boinnet doing all this time?
He quickly got himself on a plane together with the cabinet secretary Joseph Nkaissery to fly to Garrisa for PR purposes! A breakdown in basic operational discipline and a display of sheer incompetence.
Finally, the order to deploy was given to the Special Forces Unit and 25 men were now set to go to Garrisa. But the air assets to fly them and their gear was not enough. Only two old fixed wing planes operated by the Kenyan police were ready to fly and could only carry 18 of the elite troops. The remaining seven had to make the journey by car to Garrisa.
If Mr Boinnet and Mr Nkaissery had not flown there first, there might have being enough air assets to fly all the 25 members of the elite squad to Garrisa.
So finally the special squad arrived in Garrisa about 8 hours after the hostage crisis had started later to be joined by the members who had traveled by road.
But the Kenyan military with a garrison in Garrisa had responded almost immediately to the distress calls from local policemen involved in a firefight with the gunmen. They quickly cordoned off the perimeter of the campus and managed to help evacuate many of the students although some escaped on their own.
While the special anti-terrorism squad was still stranded in Nairobi, the Al-Shabaab gunmen who had stormed the campus had achieved operational and tactical control over the campus of Garrisa University College. They then proceeded to calmly segregate the students they had captured into Moslem and Christian students and began the massacre of the Christian students.
The pictures are horrifying with dozens of students lying dead in classrooms and dormitories. We wonder what the Kenyan Inspector-General of Police was doing all this time.
After the anti-terrorism squad was briefed for two hours and had been joined by members of the squad who had traveled by road, they began the storm the facility at around 5.00 PM, that is, almost 12 hours after the terror attack!
They moved quickly and professionally neutralizing the gunmen in about 30 minutes. But in the almost 12 hours before this highly trained group of special forces could move into action, 148 students had been murdered in cold blood by Al-Shabaab terrorists. 4 police and military men also lost their lives in the carnage.
Later on, the notorious Paris Hilton copying the publicity seeker in the Inspector-General of Police of Kenya bleated away a tweet to say that all the Special Forces had been flown by air to Garrisa!
If these elite troops of the General Services Unit had been flown to Garrisa by 8.00 AM, barely two hours after the terror attack started, many of the students would have lived.
The reaction of the “best friends forever” of Africa, the West, has been deafening. There is no call for a Charlie-Hebdo like solidarity march for the young victims of this ghastly massacre.
Mr Yayi Boni of Benin who flew to France like a good obedient mouse of a misruler to empathize with the French did not order a day of morning in Benin nor did he have flags flying at half-mast like he did for the victims of Charlie Hebdo.
I wonder if Mr Yayi Boni is African. Or, is he French? I tend to think he is a Frenchman who happens to be black and happens to rule an African country called Benin for a country that happens to be called France.
The African Union (AU) has condemned the ghastly attack so has ECOWAS after an agonizingly long wait. The sad logistical issues and competency issues surrounding the time lag from alert to deployment of the anti-terror squad is unacceptable.
Preparation
We can only salute the bravery and professionalism of the elite troops that finally ended the reign of terror at Garrisa University. But for the Kenyan authorities not being able to deploy enough air assets is unpardonable. What prevents the Kenyan government from purchasing specialized helicopters that can carry the troops and heavy gear of its elite squads?
For example, why not like India and other countries, purchase the Russian made Mil MI 26 helicopter? It is the largest and most powerful helicopter in the world and can carry up to 150 people. The price tag is 15 million dollars, but Kenya should afford one and reverse engineer the rest for her needs!
With a range of almost 2000 KM, the 400 KM distance from Nairobi to Garrisa could have been covered in 2 HRS and Kenyan lives would have been saved.
All that it takes is to reduce the money transfers by African officials to private Swiss banks by a little under 20 million dollars. That would save African lives.
Lessons Learned
Terrorism is a threat to the stability and development of Africa. It can and has been used as a geopolitical tool by our ‘friends’ and enemies to stop the rise of Africa as an economic power.
Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by the US Secret Service, the CIA, which has masterminded the overthrow of several leaders who would have launched their African states into economic prosperity. Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara and more recently, Muammar Gaddafi, are a few names that come readily to mind.
Today, Ebola has killed more than 10,000 in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. That has also been shown by many science critics on the continent to be biological weapons deployed by parties that are bent on stopping Africa from rising.
Boko Haram in Nigeria and its French connection-support is another case in point.
Even further, mercenary vigilante in Africa stopped a British led terrorist group that included Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of a former Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, from overthrowing the government of our oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004.
Therefore, African governments should consider establishing at the level of the AU an All-Africa Anti-terrorism Center with agencies in member countries to coordinate the sharing of data, threat information, troops and cross training to deal with terrorism both on religious grounds and as a geopolitical tool by our ‘friendly’ in the West.
Such an All-Africa Anti-terrorism Center can and should be equipped with all the assets to carry out its mandate to prevent and respond quickly and efficiently to any terror attack in any part of Africa.
We express our deepest sympathies to our fellow Africans who have lost their loved ones in this ghastly attack and hope that the right lessons on a continental level will be learned from this. We should always remember, Africa has no ‘friends’ but herself.
Most of Africa’s problems is not the West, you may have inadvertently alluded to that as the significant threat. No. As you mention, if African leaders can stop shipping African resources and hiding the proceeds in Swiss Banks, African will be fine, or turn into an economic power. Start looking inward and demand that your leaders are accountable. Demand it. The West and its intentions in Africa might be inimical to Africa’s growth, but every collapse, or growth, starts from inside.
If the Kenyan government was not inept and clueless, 147 lives would have been saved. This article makes it abundantly clear that threats will always exist, but the resolve to confront them is the key. The Kenyan government failed its people. All it took was to wake up and go to work for your people. But no. They were still in bed.
So Kenya’s problem, is not the West necessarily, it is not the fact that they do not have an expensive helicopter from Russia necessarily; it is the Christian Mission School educated leaders who we have as administrators – who think they can lead our Africa? That is the biggest mismatch.
Today is a sad day for me, and for all Africans. For Africans to kill each other based on other people’s religious inventions, is the bottom of hopelessness. Muslims against Christians in Kenya, Christians against Muslims in CAR, etc. The Judaic religions are by nature callous, you gotta read their Old Testament to understand the level of callousness and man’s inhumanity to man. Or yet, God’s inhumanity to man.
God’s inhumanity to man? Woow! I no hear that before. True thing though. Where was Jesus when 148 people were being shot by Satan’s children?
Or, are we going to be fed another dose of, ‘God knows best?’ “Jesus knows why but he refuses to tell us,’ and the like?
Jesus will tell a pastor why 148 people died in Kenya and the pastor will come and tell us in church today. That is how Jesus operates, at arm’s length. But when we pray, he is not at arm’s length. He listens? How Africans came to believe in a white Jesus, and an Arab Mohammad, is what baffles the heck out of me. It’s ludicrous. But I digress.
Superb reporting. Thanks for shedding some light on this massacre. It behooves African leaders to take pragmatic steps to forestall any such occurrences in the future. Terrible, terrible, terrible!