Our leaders: They Can't or They Won't

After the April 2^nd Garissa University attack and the postmortem is continuing in all it’s heart wrenching goriness. I can only imagine what the families of the victims including those who are still missing loved ones must be going through.

As details emerge of what went down on the days leading to the attack as well as on the material day itself. A litany of mistakes, gaffes, incompetence and downright treachery by the different people who played a part (willingly or not) in the horror that was meted out on the Kenyans’ who lost their lives at Garissa University.

If I was to write about all the errors they would fill a book. From the security personnel who were given intelligence about the attacks, to the Kenyans who provided for the attackers (with intelligence, logistics, sanctuary and supplies in the lead up to the attack) to the security services who didn't coordinate their response to the attacks (with no coordination so that the actual rescue began at 5 pm in the evening) when the attackers ammunition was almost exhausted and they had killed the majority of their victims.

What really irks me though is looking at the decision makers who are charged with our safety I have to ask myself –if they care for ordinary Kenyans. Because  looking at how our leaders react (throughout the entire levels of leadership)  to the challenges we face in security can only  be explained in one of two ways from the way I see it and neither way bodes well for the future of this country.

Il-equipped: we have equipment to secure and build this country however the application of those tools by individuals at decision making levels exhibits a lack of knowledge despite all their training on how to apply those tools – there seems to be an inflexibility to adapt to situations that require a flexible response to counter them. Taking the issue that is most discussed with respect to Garissa – dispatching of the Recce team to Garissa. 

The attacks began between 0500 – 0600hrs, the commandant of the GSU was on his way to Turkwel that morning to reopen a road that had been blocked by locals. The Recce team was ready to leave for Garissa by 0800hrs. At that time one of the Cessna 208B’s that would have been used by the team was on its way on a training/family flight to Mombasa.

At that point the decision makers would, should have done two things reason would dictate:

Firstly: turn back the 208B to Nairobi, immediately make sure that they requisition whatever air resources would be necessary to take the entire team to Garissa immediately (there are a operators of Dash 8 aircraft at Wilson – the very same ones used to evacuate the wounded; which combined with the 208B that was still at Wilson would have been enough to get the team to Garissa in at most 2 hours.

Secondly: Immediately dispatched the Recce team to Wilson airport – it begs belief that they took two hours in Nairobi traffic – they should have been driven on the wrong side of the road on pavements, dammit through gardens and back yards to get to Wilson.

They should have been at Wilson by 0900hrs to be dispatched by 0930hrs at the latest. While this was happening the person in charge of the Recce team should have been in touch with the security decision makers in Garissa to get the Recce team what they needed to create a plan of attack on the way to Garissa. This would be plans of the buildings (floors, rooms entrances, emergency exits), the layout of the surrounding area (observation points, lines of sight, high grounds and roads) as well as real time intelligence on where the attackers were holed up. The campus was surrounded by security personnel from different commands – the information was readily obtainable from the county offices as well as officers on the ground. This plan is a simple plan it’s not rocket science and anyone who has been to command school, management school anyone making decisions for a nation should have thought of something along these lines.

How is it that the press got to Garissa before the Recce squad and it can’t be money because the government surely has enough of that, so then we have a tool (Recce) that can adopt to complex situations fluidly but a command and control structure that cannot adapt itself to wield the tool in fluid situations. Begging the question, are these, our leaders ill-equipped to adapt to complex security situations. This option assumes that our leaders do earnestly care about our nation’s security but are out of their depth in the face of the current challenges we are facing as a nation – to remedy this we need to equip our leaders better to give them the skills they need to apply the tools of our safety.

Competent but don’t care: which is the worse sin because it would mean that the people in charge with the leadership are first of all don’t care about what they are in those positions to do, their focus is on other things and so instead of being motivated to do the best job they can at all times, which would mean that on their order of priorities keeping the peace is quite low, the peace exists to enable our leaders to continue their most important interests while enjoying the benefits of leadership.

Leadership at all levels whose motivation isn't the mantle of their leadership but something else (whatever that may be) then the people who they lead are worse off. This kind of leadership is reactionary, they don’t seek to adapt and anticipate or improve responses beyond what is necessary to keep their leadership intact. As an author in the Daily Nation said our security leadership while presiding over an archaic inflexible security apparatus run thriving private entities with truly Buffetesque flair.

For your review check out this article in the Daily Nation from April 14th 2015

Could that explain why the most the reactions in the wake of the attack are knee jerk reactions that in the short term will be seen to be doing something while in the long run may not be for the benefit of the people of this nation. As always let’s look at an example:

Security Crackdown: in the wake of the attack the government machinery has swung into gear freezing accounts, blacklisting individuals, closing businesses, demanding the closure of the world’s largest refugee camp (in direct contradiction of international conventions) and building what would be Kenya’s longest wall. These activities paint a worrying picture for me. The financial measures: how long has the government had this list? Unless it’s a PR list – equally as bad isn't it?

Then lets discuss the wall, 700 kilometers long in all its anticipated glory, is that the best use of our resources? Is it guaranteed to improve the safety of this nation? Will that wall keep out of this nation the habits that are killing us? Or are those habits already firmly entrenched within our borders the antithesis of the plenty that should be found in our borders.

Closing of Dadaab – the largest refugee camp on the planet, how much will it cost?

To begin with being that international refugee law doesn't confine refugees to camps and that our government hasn't allocated an adequate budget to the Department of Refugee affairs – what exactly will this accomplish?

How are we sending people back who can’t properly identify or of whom have no exhaustive database of origins, do we see that happening? Visit the Department of Refugee Affairs and find out for yourself.

We all know that the government won’t do a proper job in any of the initiatives taken by the government, none of them will last beyond the first phase and will leave in us (Kenyans) a bitter taste, fear and a suspicion of Somalis’ - it's already happening just talk to your neighbor. 

What I fear this may entrench is a mindset of us vs them – further dividing this nation, wasting our resources and killing us.

These actions then are populist, designed to show us in a very simplistic way that our leaders believe will convince us that they do care about us and that the attacks are not events that distract them from their primary agenda (enjoying the benefits of leadership and furthering their personal enterprise) but serious threats to us the people they care about and who their prime objective is to serve and lead.

Soon everything will return to normal, there will be no accountability for our leaders everything will return to normal and all of us (leaders and the led) will return to our primary objectives – the advancement of our individual enterprise by all at our disposal to the detriment of  all else.

So then you tell me are our leaders ill-equipped or do they just not care about us enough and chose to direct energies to personal advancement with the tools of their office and treat the objectives of leadership as secondary (stability to ensure longevity in office) and ultimately that fault is ours as the fabric of society.

To paraphrase a famous tweet,

“individualism has killed football, cricket and now it’s killing us”