AND WHITE

BLACK AND WHITE Kenya’s Criminal Racket in Somalia
Foreword
Kenya’s very survival is dependent on the capacity of the country to stem the wave of
insecurity that terrorist attacks associated with the al-Shabaab group have wrought on the
country. The human cost of these attacks is already very high, with more than 400 deaths
since Kenya’s incursion into Somalia in 2012. The insecurity has also caused massive
economic disruption in the country, with businesses in the coastal region having to close
down because of travel warnings. Beyond the loss of investments, which these closures
usually signify, is the loss of livelihoods often by the poorest and most vulnerable people
whose lives depended on such economic activities.
In the northeastern part of the country, insecurity has also caused massive disruptions
in the education system, with teachers who do not come from these areas fearing to
report to work since the government cannot guarantee their safety. The reversals in
the education system threaten further marginalisation to a part of the country that was
already heavily marginalised, and will feed into the grievances that drive insecurity in the
first place.
There has been no shortage of evidence that the responses to Kenya’s terrorism-induced
insecurity have suffered significant slippages -- with the country’s political and military
leadership lodging a personal interest in the war economy that exists in Somalia, and
whose disruption Kenya’s military incursion was meant to achieve.
It is to be hoped that this brilliantly-written report by Journalists for Justice, which
expertly marshals the latest evidence of what is wrong with Kenya’s continuing presence
in Somalia, will spur a public discussion in Kenya that will, at last, lead to action towards
accountability for the mistakes that have been made. Each passing day of inertia in the
face of the overwhelming evidence of what has gone wrong further imperils the country
because, as the report warns, Kenya’s invasion of Somalia has brought Somalia’s conflict
dynamics into the heart of Kenyan society.
George Kegoro
Nairobi
November 11, 2015
Journalists for Justice Nairobi November 2015