In the Mail & Guardian from Joseph Burite, Ilya Gridneff, Bloomberg:
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Islamist militants carrying out attacks on Kenya are exploiting the state’s failure to overhaul its security apparatus, which analysts say leaves the country vulnerable to further strikes.
At least 147 people, most of them students, died on April 2 when al-Shabaab gunmen stormed the Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya. The raid, the deadliest since al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Nairobi, in 1998, was at least the fifth massacre by al-Shabaab since it stormed the upmarket Westgate shopping mall less than two years ago.
The attacks could have been foiled had the country implemented reforms introduced five years ago to reorganise its police, intelligence and defense forces, said Ndung’u Wainaina, executive director of the Nairobi-based International Center for Policy and Conflict.
Those changes are aimed at improving the coordination of security agencies and intelligence gathering, the lack of which has undermined the authorities’ ability to deal with the threat posed by militants, he said.
“There is a serious lack of political will to ensure there is a transformation of security in Kenya,” Wainaina said. “We have a plethora of policies, a legislative framework that has been done along with a government commitment to reform, which consistently have never been implemented.”