Kenya: The perils of racial profiling

By launching a campaign against ethnic Somalis , the Kenyan
government perpetuates a dangerous policy of exclusion .
Speaking recently during the commemoration of the 20th
anniversary of the genocide in his country , Rwandan
President Paul Kagame argued that the catastrophe had
been decades in the making :
"The most devastating legacy of European control of
Rwanda was the transformation of social distinctions into
so-called ' races '. We were classified and dissected , and
whatever differences existed were magnified according to a
framework invented elsewhere […] The colonial theory of
Rwandan society claimed that hostility between something
called 'Hutu ', 'Tutsi ', and 'Twa ' was permanent and
necessary ."
Today, it seems obvious that the murder of 800 ,000 people
is not an overnight event but rather the result of
deliberately cultivated hate over a lengthy period . It begins
with the classification and dehumanisation of people and
communities, with differences magnified according to
frameworks invented elsewhere and leads to "permanent
and necessary " hostility , and eventually, disaster .
These are important lessons for the rest of the continent .
They are particularly relevant for Kenya today .
Following a series of terrorist attacks across the country ,
the government has launched a crackdown on supposed
criminal and terrorist elements, but one which actually
seems to target the country 's minority Muslim and Somali
populations. As the country marks a year since the swearing
in of President Uhuru Kenyatta , the venue of his
inauguration - Kasarani Stadium - has been playing host to
thousands of almost exclusively ethnic Somalis who have
been arrested for not producing proper identification
documents.
For many of them , officially sanctioned harassment is
nothing new. For the last half- century , Kenyan authorities
have treated Muslims and ethnic Somalis with suspicion,
seeing them at best as just short of being Kenyan and at
worst as a fifth column - the enemy within . In fact, as an
essay by Professor Jeremy Prestholdt of the Department of
History at the University of California , San Diego states:
"The government of Kenya's antiterrorism initiatives have
compounded an already deep sense of alienation among
those most severely affected by the new measures : Kenyan
Muslims, particularly those of Arab and Somali ancestry . "
In colonial times, their status as native Africans was at best
ambiguous and in the run - up to independence , a push
towards greater autonomy at the coast and the desire of the
Somali population in then Northern Frontier District to join
Somalia, heightened perceptions of these communities as
traitors to the Kenyan cause . The paranoia of the upcountry
elites who took over from the British simply served to
reinforce these views.
As the report of the Truth , Justice and Reconciliation
Commission showed, for most of independent Kenya's
history, the government has systematically marginalised and
oppressed these populations. Its policy towards them has
been one of demonisation and collective punishment. It is a
history replete with rape, massacres and other human rights
abuses, one in which the differences magnified according to
frameworks invented elsewhere became defining features
of a "permanent and necessary " hostility. It has to be noted
that the same treatment, though not necessarily to the
same extent, was meted out to other communities , such as
the Luo , who were also perceived as a threat to the Old
Establishment .
Seen within the context of this history, the current
administration's actions are perhaps not surprising. Today
the language of counter -terrorism is being employed to
continue this tradition of dehumanisation and
delegitimisation. It is a tradition that allows "Kenyans" to
identify with the tragedy and triumph of baby Satrin
Osinya while remaining blind to the suffering of Somali
infants spending their nights in police cells . "Refugee " has
been made synonymous with illegality and terrorism , with a
status undeserving of rights . Like the Kenyan Somalis and
the Muslims of the coast , their presence has been shown to
be merely tolerated rather than accepted , and deeply
suspect to boot.
In these populations, as marginalised at the centre as they
were in the periphery, the government has found a
convenient scapegoat for its failures. According to a report
titled Kenya and the Global War on Terror by Samuel
Aronson of the London School of Economics , "The current
anti- terrorism strategy in Kenya neglects the history and
geopolitics of the nation and is thus flawed in its most basic
capacity ." But I think the reality is a lot more sinister. The
government doesn't ignore this history. It exploits and
fortifies it .
What it deliberately ignores is that "Wahhabism is being
rejected by most Kenyan Muslims and that of the roughly
200 mosques in Mombasa , 'maybe five [ can ] be considered
extremist '". What it is unwilling to acknowledge is "the
difference between radicalised terrorists and theologically
conservative Muslims ", or that "the predominantly Sunni
coastal population takes issues with Shia and Wahhabi
foreigners who, according to many on the coast , lure the
'lesser educated and financially needy Africans away from
the true faith'" . It is more convenient to believe "the coastal
[and Somali ] population is mainly terrorists ".
That makes it easy to distract from the real failures -
corruption and incompetence . Counter - terrorism efforts
have been more about racial profiling and less about
intelligence gathering and actual police work .
But worse than that , by following in the footsteps of
previous regimes , the government not only makes us all less
safe, it perpetuates the very logic of exclusion that led to
the terrible events in Rwanda 20 years ago.