African securityKenyan security forces hobbled by lack of funds
Kenya may be facing a heightened risk from regional terrorism, but security forces in Kenya are hobbled by glaring underfunding due to government corruption and mismanagement. The Anti-Terror Police Unit in Nairobi, the main force set up to combat terrorist acts, has only $2,205 for its operations during the first quarter of the year — coming to just $735 for March. In comparison, an average parliamentary salary is around $45,000 for the same period.
Nigerian security forces during the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi // Source: www.presstv.ir
Kenya may be facing a heightened risk from regional terrorism, but security forces in Kenya are hobbled by glaring underfunding due to government corruption and mismanagement.
The Toronto Star reports that the Anti-Terror Police Unit in Nairobi, the main force set up to combat acts such as the deadly 21 September 2013 attack by al-Shabaab on an upscale shopping mall in the city, has only $2,205 for its operations during the first quarter of the year — coming to just $735 for March. In comparison, an average parliamentary salary is around $45,000 for the same period.
It is exactly these high salaries that the Kenyan government is reporting as responsible for the crisis. In response to the revelation, Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto announced that they would each take a 20 percent pay cut. “For a long time, the security sector has not been given the attention it deserves. We are changing that,” Kenyatta told theStar.
Similarly, Mwenda Njoka, a spokesman for the Internal Security Ministry, said that “Somali terrorists are financing their terror attacks with more funds than Kenya is spending on the Anti-Terror Police Unit.” Njoka was referring to a September 2012 incident in which a man was arrested in Nairobi with a number of AK-47s, suicide vests, and explosive devices. Purportedly, the suspect had said that he was paid $82,000 to carry out an attack. Njoka said that following the arrest, the suspect claimed he had been previously detained by police but was released after he paid a $470 bribe.
Bribery goes “deep and wide,” within the culture, he says, and is rampant in part due to the underfunding.
Others, however, argue that further funding, likely with Western aid, would cloud the purpose of the Anti-Terror Police Unit. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” says Alamin Kimanthi, a human rights activist and critic of the unit. Kimanthi goes on to say that “18 people suspected of having links to terror networks had either been executed or disappeared in 2012; 13 people suffered the same fate in 2013.”
Despite these arguments, officials acknowledge that the anti-terrorist force is underpaid, even amid corruption and abuses of fundamental rights.
