By Eric Wamanji
Schools in Kenya are on at one of the most sensitive periods in our history. A time when, it appears, going by the Garissa Campus atrocities, terrorists are developing higher penchant for the soft belly such as schools, and children.
We should be a petrified lot.
And this is not farfetched. On December 16 2014, murderous Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) rebels attacked a military school killing 141, mostly children, in Peshawar, Pakistan’s northwest.
The audacity of striking at the nerve center of security left everyone’s mouths agape. It was an indication of determination unrivalled.
Unfortunately, terrorists are agile when it comes to devising attacks as much as good students of copycatting others’ tactics. And that’s whence my worries stemeth.
Indeed, the ISIS, Boko Haram and even Taliban in Afghanistan have employed similar crude tactics before, targeting children.
How much has the ministries of education and that of interior prepared for this, God-forbid, goddamned possibility?
Terror tricks
The truth is that our schools are ill prepared to constrain the pain of a potential attack. Our classrooms or dormitories are still designed in the old colonial way of ‘no exit.’ Our children are not equipped even in simple tricks like feigning death, or how to react in the event of terror. Nor our teacher and head teachers even empowered to know whom to reach out to in the event of such an attack.
I shudder the thought of a Peshawar-style attack. The tears, and the emotional wound, will be unbearable. These terrorists want to gain supporters and money. Soft targets in our ideologically porous nation, gives them an edge.
As we speak, the terror attack in Garissa, is a stark reminder that in all its desperation, Shabaab doesn’t necessary need to tackle high end trophies like Westgate. In fact it has smelled and tasted blood; its evil head is in a spin.
It is not far fetched to imagine where this phantom will strike next. It will target innocent, hapless kids in one of our schools. They know the power of children and the emotions they elicit.
By now, the ministry should have organized a head teachers briefing workshop on how to deal with terror. It should also be working closely with the Ministry of Interior to provide security service to these schools.
For instance, all head teachers and senior teachers need to be empowered. They must be supplied with cell phones, provided with communication allowance, and provided with contacts of police officers within their areas. Besides, discourses on terrorism, terrorists and their manifestations should be encouraged in schools, and children should be encouraged to participate.
Structure and instruments
All Locations of this country, especially the easy targets in Shabaab prone areas, should now have a patrol car to ensure that response to a potential terror is swift and polished. We need to have at least choppers in most of the country, if possible in all the 48 counties for quick response. Whether we like it, or not, we are at war, and the systems and structures that we put into place to contain terror attacks will determine the extent of pain inflicted – physical, social or psychological.
Sadly, our so called elite thinkers ain’t thinking at all. Instead, we are treated to theatrics and sideshows between Jacob Kaimeny and Knut on trivialities. Instead, gentelemen, think of solutions and provision of leadership, not the billions at stake.
It’s a tall order, yet it is an order that has to be scaled.
It would be naïve to imagine that terrorists have not infiltrated our societies. Don’t be surprised that the are entrenched in our systems, carrying all sorts duties including espionage. The state has to act.
Social contract
The classical Hobbesian insight of “the mutual transferring of rights.” And thus, as in his Artificial Man or Laviathan, Hobbes, aptly reminds us that salus populi (the people security) is the business of the state. The police are representatives of this state, and therefore under the obligation to honour the social contract.
School children need to be in an environment assured of their security. Children should also be trained about terror. What happens should a terrorist strike? Are there bunkers or escape routes. Are there alarms to be sounded that would snatch a second from terrorists to allow for a life or two to escape? How about our classrooms, dorms, are they redesigned to keep the new terror threat at bay?
Train the school managers, and cascade the training to the grounds man. Afford Head teachers and teachers cell and satellite phones for rapid communication to sound alarms. Make sure that the nearest police command centre has cellp-hones that are active and reachable. Restructure building and dorms for easy escape should danger strike, and of course increase surveillance.
Enemy within?
But, perhaps the biggest danger to our security, comes from the most unlikely of quarters – the police force. Revelation of complacency and unresponsiveness from the police on intelligence in relation to the Garissa attack should send shivers down our spines. For, folks, no matter how much prepared we are, in the lack of support from the agencies with instruments to counter terror, we are doomed.
So Mr. Inspector General, Joe Boinnet, what is ailing your force? Methinks, we need a radical ideological shift and transformation in the rank and file of the forces. (Call for papers on reviving the blue force, and we may provide it even for free). It may be painful, it may be brittle, it may be costly, but so be it, as long as our security is guaranteed.
But even while at it, be reminded, you, and Joe Nkaissery, of the Social Contract: that the state is obliged to provide such protection because, we, the citizens, forfeited massive rights and fortune to the state. Now, when the state breaches this contract, we are agitated. We can’t keep leaving like impalas unaware where the marauding lion will strike.
Indeed, it is the general will of the people that they be accorded the entire package owed to them by the state as per the contract. And so, matters of security are a common good for the people and for republic. Now, when agencies entrusted to contain them fail by design or default, any right thinking society has a right to be afraid, in fact, very afraid.
For now, empower our schools to deal with terror. Our children should be protected from the menacing teeth of this monster threating to crush us under the barrel and the bomb.