Terrorism - National Security Law

By Cynthia Mbugua LLB and Lujain Abbas LLB

Introduction

Terror" comes from the Latin  word terrere meaning "to frighten.“ It was first coined in the 1970’s to refer to the terror used during the French Revolution by the Revolutionaries against their opponents. The Jacobin party of Maxim lien Robespierre carried out a Reign of Terror involving mass executions by the guillotine. Although terrorism in this usage implies an act of violence by a state against its domestic enemies, since the 20th century the term has been applied most frequently to violence aimed, either directly or indirectly, at governments in an effort to influence policy or topple an existing regime.

Terrorism is the premeditated use or threat to use violence by individuals or subnational groups to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims (Enders & Sandler, 2012) This EA region is vulnerable to terrorism because countries in the region experience: conflicts, weak governance, collapsed state institutions; porous borders the allowing extensive and uncontrolled movement of people and illegal weapons; increased extremist religious ideology and radicalisation of vulnerable groups. These factors generally coincide with poor socio-economic conditions and create fertile ground for the existence of terrorism.

Domestic Terrorism

This is the use of terrorist tactics by non-government actors in one country against citizens of own country. According to Enders, Sandler and Gaibulloev (2011) a terrorist incident is domestic if the perpetrators and the target are from, and in, the same country. Thus it has only consequences for the host country, and its institutions, people, property, and policies. In addition, there is no foreign sponsorship or involvement in a domestic terrorist event.

Transnational terrorism

A terrorist incident is transnational if:

· Through its victims, targets, supporters, or perpetrators, an incident concerns more than a single country.

· The nationality of the perpetrators differs from that of one or more of the victims. · The nationality of a victim differs from the venue country.

· Terrorists transit an international border to perpetrate their attack. · Terrorist attacks against foreign diplomats.

 · It is a terrorist event that commences in one country but ends in another. For instance, if a midair hijacking of a plane that leaves Athens bound for Cairo and is made to fly to Algiers. 14

· A terrorist attack targets an international organization or international peacekeepers.

Assessing the threat: The law of intelligence

Intelligence is  important in homeland defense and security. Our society is suspicious of intrusions on personal liberties. Mandated identity cards, restricted vehicle access and random searches of airline passengers are generally not well received. That makes it especially important to prevent terrorist attacks by interdicting the terrorists and their resources before they can reach their targets. The primary means of accomplishing this is through a combination of intelligence and law enforcement work.. In the past decade, the United States has helped bolster Kenya’s domestic security and military capacity, assisting in the development of the National Intelligence Service­—Kenya’s domestic and foreign intelligence service.

Criticisms have been mounting against NIS’s capacity to collect valuable information that would prevent possible terror attacks with Members of Parliament calling for reforms in the intelligence agency to boost its capacity to protect Kenyans. The lawmakers have expressed outrage at the security lapse that allowed the terrorists, among them foreigners, into the country smuggling in arms and holding the military in a standoff for four days during the Westgate attack. The NIS has been proved to be more concerned with political intelligence than security intelligence and therefore so long as corruption continues to thrive in the country, terrorists will attack Kenya

COUNTER-TERRORISM AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Q. What is Counter Terrorism?

·         These are the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.

Q. What is Criminal Justice?

·         This is the set of agencies and processes established by governments to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate laws.

·         In Kenya, the criminal-justice system consists of laws, the legislature, the courts, the police, and the prisons department

Q. What are the Approaches to counter terrorism?

1.      Coercive Counterterrorism

Coercive counterterrorism relies on the state’s monopoly on the use of violence, i.e., the exercise of hard power. Strict limits are placed on who can be subjected to state violence. These restrictions form the basis of the legitimacy bestowed upon the state by the rule of law, whether national or international.

Without legally mandated restrictions on the use of state violence, the exercise of violence by state agents such as the police or the military would itself be criminal, violating either domestic criminal law or international law. When state agents acting in the name of counterterrorism consistently contravene the rule of law or the laws of war with impunity, using their coercive powers in ways that create a reign of terror that is sanctioned by the state, then they have become state terrorists, mirroring the behaviour of the terrorists they are fighting.

2.      The Criminal Justice Model. A criminal justice approach treats acts of terrorism as crime. If one considers the most common terrorist tactics, such as kidnapping, assassination, bombing and armed attacks, the end result is usually the infliction of injury or loss of life or the destruction of property, all of which are universally proscribed in the criminal law of all nations.

Treating terrorism as ordinary crime—rather than as a special offence requiring special procedures or punishments—has a delegitimatizing effect on the terrorists. By criminalising the acts that terrorists commit, emphasis is placed on their criminal nature and not on their political or ideological motive.

All this changed after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Many Western countries created special terrorist offences after the 9/11 attacks: the US and Canada in 2001; Australia and Norway in 2002; Sweden in 2003. In many of these special offences, motive became a central element of the legal definition of terrorism. Offences have included committing terrorist acts or committing acts for terrorist purposes, as well as membership in a terrorist organisation and providing material support for terrorism, such as money, weapons or technical expertise, and recruitment. The creation of speech offences has also increased. UN Security Council Resolution 1624 (2005) calls for Member States to take steps aimed at prohibiting by law and preventing incitement to commit terrorist acts. The glorification of terrorism has become an offence in several countries, such as the UK and Spain.

The criminal justice model relies on a complex bureaucracy with strict rules of governance and many interacting institutions, with their own traditions, culture and language. It can be slow and ponderous, with appeals stretching the process out for years. For some, the model seems to favour the terrorist, especially over the victim. While the criminal justice model can achieve some important goals in terms of deterrence, retribution, education, incapacitation and rehabilitation, these benefits are largely dependent upon how the system is used, how fair it is seen to be used by others, and how committed individuals are to terrorist violence either as a means to other goals or as an end in itself.

3.      The War Model. The war model of counterterrorism treats terrorism as if it were an act of war or insurgency. Because wars are usually fought between states, countering terrorism within a war model implies that the terrorist group represents the equivalent of a state. Treating terrorism as war therefore tends to credit the terrorist with the status of equal partner in a zero-sum conflict. This is why many terrorist groups use the word ‘army’ in their names. Although the central element of the war model is the use of maximal force, designed to overpower the enemy, the conduct of war does not occur in a legal vacuum. The laws of war lay down rules for how wars should be fought and how noncombatants should be treated. The 1949 Geneva Conventions represent a kind of trade-off that legitimizes killing or detention without trial in time of war, as long as it is directed at overpowering an enemy combatant. The trade-off is that once a combatant is captured and disarmed, or gives up and abandons the fight, he must be accorded humane treatment, protection and care.

The term ‘illegal enemy combatant’ attempts to create an exception to this rule for combatants who use stealth and do not wear uniforms or insignia identifying them as enemy combatants, namely terrorists, guerrillas or insurgents. In a war model of counterterrorism, success tends to be defined in terms of victory or defeat. A ‘war on terror’ only ends when the terrorist enemy is defeated. If the struggle is a protracted one, even spanning generations, then counterterrorism efforts must be maintained as long as a state of war exists. This has led some to argue that we are engaged in a ‘long war’ or even a ‘never ending’ war with Islamist terrorism. This infinite vision of the war on terror has important policy implications, including constitutional ones.

The war model is considered quick, effective and ideally suited to the new kinds of threat posed by decentralized, ideologically driven terrorist networks whose adherents are not deterred by traditional criminal justice or contained by traditional military power. It places great value on the remarkable things that science and technology can achieve. Examples include remote sensing, satellite imagery, spy drones, missile technology, smart bombs and other sophisticated weaponry, as well as facial recognition and other biometrics. Some of the capabilities being discussed in recent years include ‘the need for ‘‘birth to death’’ tracking and identification of critical targets, whether they are people or things, anywhere in the world.’ The idea that a nation’s military can watch, listen, record and track anyone or anything anywhere in the world and strike at will with guided, pilotless attack planes or space-based weaponry is the ultimate individualised war model, designed to fight an atomised, dispersed enemy rather than the traditional hostile state or terrorist group. Since Barack Obama became President in 2008, the military dimensions of counterterrorism policy have expanded further to include a formally authorised system of intelligence-led drone strikes and targeted assassinations.

The war model carries a high risk of unintended consequences that can escalate violence, undermine the legitimacy of governments that use it, or pull governments along a dangerous path to anti-democratic governance. This does not mean, however, that the war model cannot be a useful and valuable tool in an overall counterterrorism strategy. As in just war theory, the use of force can be justified under certain strict conditions. It must be discriminate, proportionate, declared by a proper authority, used for a justifiable cause, with just intentions that outweigh the evil of the means used by the good of the ends sought, have a high probability of success, enjoy public support, and be used only as a last resort, when all other means have been pursued.

4.      Proactive Counterterrorism

Proactive counterterrorism aims to prevent terrorism before it happens. Through the merging of internal and external security, the mandates of domestic police, security intelligence agencies, and border and customs officials have all combined around the problem of tracking the movement of people, goods and money. Through intrusive techniques involving surveillance, wiretapping, eavesdropping and other means of spycraft, agents of all stripes have devoted their energies more and more to stopping terrorists before they act and thwarting terrorist plots before they develop too far. These trends have led to the emergence of a hybrid model of coercive counterterrorism that combines elements of both the criminal justice model and the war model.

The increased focus on proactive counterterrorism has important implications for a variety of institutions and policies. In the area of criminal justice, it means more proactive and intelligence-led policing, increasing use of sting operations and informers, more reliance on preventive detention, and early arrests to disrupt plots. In the area of intelligence, it means widening surveillance nets, the identification of dangerous classes of people, increased use of profiling, increasing focus on radicalisation to violence and counter-radicalisation, and increased focus on terrorist financing and fund-raising. In the area of criminal law, it means more speech offences, criminalising membership in organisations, and “material support for terrorism” offences aimed at fundraising, recruitment and training. In the military realm, it means more reliance on drones for surveillance and targeted killings, more intervention in failed and failing states to strike terrorist training camps and militant groups directly, such as the recent French intervention in Mali, and even pre-emptive war, such as the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

A more proactive approach requires coordination and integration across a wide range of policy domains: criminal law, policing, intelligence, finance, border control, immigration and refugee policy, military strategy and tactics, diplomacy, development, and humanitarian intervention. As such, it places a greater demand on government to coordinate across previously distinct domains, jurisdictions and agencies, domestically, and across the increasingly blurry boundaries between domestic and foreign policy. This whole-of-government imperative can create tensions between intrinsically conflicting goals.

5.      The Intelligence Model. The intelligence function is an important element in any counterterrorist effort. In a proactive approach, it becomes central. In proactive policing and security intelligence, information is not gathered for evidentiary purposes but for intelligence purposes. The ultimate goal is not necessarily criminal prosecution. Instead, the goal of intelligence operations is to learn more about what the terrorist suspects are up to. The demands of information gathering can therefore conflict with those of criminal investigation and due process.

Proactive counterterrorism is therefore a double-edged sword. It can nip a burgeoning threat in the bud or destabilize a terrorist network enough so that its operatives cannot move from the planning stage and go operational. On the other hand, apprehending a terrorist operative can diminish opportunities for learning more about their connections with other terrorist or criminal networks.

The merging of national and societal security has led to massive surveillance of a wide category of individuals and detention without trial of citizens as well as resident aliens. Much of the post-September 11 debate surrounding counterterrorist efforts in the area of intelligence and surveillance relates to how wide the net should be cast and whether profiling of specific target groups is justified or acceptable.

Two opposing concerns underlie honest efforts to address both security concerns and concerns about democratic acceptability. On one hand, a fear of false negatives (failure to detect a threat) can lead to widening the surveillance net as much as possible, thereby running the risk of infringing upon civil liberties of those targeted and, ultimately, facilitating the commission of human rights violations by control agents. On the other hand, a fear of false positives (targeting innocent individuals, organisations or communities) can lead to the imposition of onerous judicial restrictions upon intelligence gathering, the creation of oversight committees with political agendas, and the creation of sunset clauses on anti-terrorism legislation that activate at inappropriate times, thereby running the risk of attenuating the effectiveness of intelligence gathering operations.

Both fears can be socially constructed or exaggerated by those with a stake in the outcome: politicians, policy-makers, law enforcement, media, communities at risk, private security companies and entrepreneurs.

6.      Persuasive Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism involves understanding and dealing with the ideas that underpin the use of terrorism in social and political life. This has ideological, political, social, cultural and religious aspects. Terrorists have constituencies which include followers, sympathisers, potential recruits, active or passive supporters, and state sponsors. Counterterrorists have constituencies which include state actors within government ministries, agencies and bureaucracies, including those of allies, as well as non-state actors within civil society and the private sector, such as victims’ groups, citizens, mass publics and the media, both domestic and international, and employers and employees within industries, private companies and corporations. Counterterrorism must deal with these wider audiences.

Counterterrorism, like terrorism, is inherently communicative. Propaganda, psychological warfare, “hearts and minds” campaigns, and the idea of providing incentives for terrorists to abandon violence and seek nonviolent paths instead all refer to this notion of counterterrorism as a form of communication, where different messages are conveyed to different audiences. Just as terrorist discourse and propaganda can blind followers and recruits to alternative pathways and options, so counterterrorism discourse and propaganda can blind citizenries and publics, as well as policy elites and the media, to alternative means of countering the terrorist threat.

7.      The Communication Model. All response options convey information of some sort to different audiences; they are expressive and symbolic as well as instrumental. The particular messages that are actually received by a particular audience may not be what the sender intended to convey. This lends an inherent complexity to counterterrorism and can lead to unintended consequences. It is therefore important to understand the different kinds of messages, audiences and communicative pathways involved in the complex web of terrorist-counterterrorist interaction.

In addressing terrorists’ constituencies, persuasive counterterrorism can try to promote desired perceptions among individual members of terrorist organisations, their sympathizers, and their foreign supporters, such as the message that terrorism is counterproductive and that other means are more useful to achieve their goals. Counter-narratives that foster cross-cultural and inter-ethnic understanding can undermine those aspects of terrorist propaganda and ideology that promulgate hatred and demonise particular groups of “enemies”.

The prevention of undesired perceptions among terrorists and their constituencies is another aspect of persuasive counterterrorism. Two of the most powerful beliefs that bind individual members to a terrorist group are the idea that once violence has been committed, you cannot go back, and the idea that the group is the only place where a sense of identity, belonging, importance or existential meaning can be achieved.

Laws that provide reduced sentences for cooperation with authorities or that offer amnesty for renouncing violence, coupled with official assurances that exit from the group is always possible and that those who cooperate and who renounce violence can be accepted back into society, could help to prevent certain individuals from remaining trapped in the self-contained world of the terrorist organisation. Psychological, material and economic concerns that make individuals vulnerable to recruitment can be addressed by creating alternative incentive structures for people to move away from embracing violence and terrorism. Talking to one’s enemies and their constituencies, though an anathema to many governments, can serve an important function in challenging and perhaps refuting undesired perceptions whose very existence can be missed in the absence of dialogue and exchange of views.[18] Counter-radicalisation efforts aimed at potential recruits and communities at risk, and deradicalisation efforts aimed at current or imprisoned members are central to preventing undesired perceptions and belief systems.

In addressing counterterrorists’ constituencies, a central element is the maintenance of public trust and confidence in government. Public education about the nature and extent of the terrorist threat, as well as the limits and feasibility of policy options, would help to promote public understanding both before and after a terrorist attack.

Promoting public awareness without fuelling insecurity, apathy or intolerance and hate is an essential element of such an approach. An explicit policy to downplay the impact of terrorism, while condemning the terrorism itself, could help to promote the idea that terrorism is unacceptable in democratic society while minimizing the risk of public calls, fuelled by insecurity and terror, for repressive measures that undermine the rule of law and individual freedoms. Incessant warnings by politicians and security experts about the dangers of radicalisation or the risk of terrorist attack can create a kind of learned helplessness in the face of seemingly inevitable catastrophe. As the rule of law and individual rights are increasingly whittled away in the name of increased security, many citizens simply accept the fact that their rights have to be sacrificed.

The challenge is to prevent the legitimation of terrorists and terrorism without resorting to censorship, intimidation or outright repression. The controversies surrounding Wikileaks, the trial and harsh punishment of Private Bradley Manning, and the Edgar Snowden case all suggest that transparency and accountability have become a casualty of the war on terror.

8.      Defensive Counterterrorism

Defensive counterterrorism assumes the inevitability of some kind of terrorist attack and prepares for it by affecting the variables that determine the nature of the attack and identity of its target. There are two basic approaches: preventing attacks and mitigating attacks. Prevention aims to minimise the risk of terrorist attack in certain places and at certain times. The second approach is to mitigate the impact of successful attacks.

9.      Prevention (before an attack)

The Preventive Model. There are three primary means of prevention: target hardening, critical infrastructure protection (CIP), and monitoring and regulating the flow of people, money, goods, and services. Target hardening aims to make potential targets less attractive or more difficult to attack. It has traditionally focused on important people (e.g., VIPs, government officials) and important places (e.g., government buildings, military bases) at particular times (e.g., major sporting events, international summits, special anniversaries). Making favoured targets less vulnerable to attack forces terrorists to innovate and to find alternatives, tying up resources and planning. This often leads to target substitution or a displacement to softer targets. The hope is that deterring attacks against obviously important targets can channel potential terrorists towards less damaging or less costly forms of attack.

Government and industry are often at odds over financing, training, effectiveness, technology, responsibility and timetables for implementation, and potential impacts on operations. Partnerships between government, industry and other stakeholders are therefore essential.

While opinions vary on what infrastructure is critical, the areas of energy, transportation, industry, communications, banking and urban living are widely recognised as key sectors that need to be protected. Potential targets include hydroelectric and nuclear facilities, oil and gas refineries and pipelines, telecommunications, banks, airports, railways and bridges, urban transport and shopping malls.

Most critical infrastructure is in the hands of the private sector. Government regulation is often weak or nonexistent and industry resistance to any attempts to strengthen security can be intense. Therefore, the most important part of critical infrastructure protection is to identify fruitful points of intervention where physical, structural or procedural changes can be made that reduce the likelihood of attack, and to share this information across government departments and agencies, across different levels of government, and with stakeholders in the private sector.

The third prong of the preventive model is to track the movement of people, money, goods and services in an effort to discover plots in the making and thwart them or to impede their preparation. Terrorists need food, shelter, training, weapons, explosives, safe houses, communications, travel documents, financing. When these are not available or difficult to acquire, the risk of terrorist attack drops. Border and passport control, customs and immigration, refugee determination, and the monitoring and regulation of the flow of people and goods in and out of a country, as well as within its borders, can help identify and track potential terrorists and the plots they devise. The regulation of banking and money transfers can impact terrorist financing, which in turn can make the implementation of terrorist attacks more difficult.

Illegal arms sales, weapons smuggling, theft of poorly guarded materials, corruption, and collusion to break sanctions or to circumvent tracking and monitoring efforts, or simply seeking profit at the expense of considering the impact of sales on future security, all constitute persistent impediments to reducing the likelihood that dangerous goods fall into terrorist hands. Terrorist groups often engage in auxiliary criminal activity to support their terrorist activities and the possibility that they could cooperate with transnational criminal organisations to procure weaponry or other materiel has long been a concern.

10.  Mitigation (Response to an attack)

The Natural Disaster Model. Moshe Dayan, Israeli Minister of Defence from 1967-1974, suggested that ‘terrorist incidents more closely resemble natural disasters than acts of war.’ Terrorist attacks do share many of the same elements as any natural disaster: dead and wounded people; damaged or destroyed infrastructure; uncertainty about what may happen next; people fleeing in panic or rushing to the scene to help; an urgent need for rescue workers, ambulances, transportation routes to hospitals; and intense media coverage that may interfere with rescue operations or create pressure on crisis managers and other authorities. Contingency planning, established chains of command and communication networks, stockpiles of emergency supplies, training of first responders, and strategies for dealing with victims, their families, and the media can be arranged in advance. Such an ‘all-hazards’ or ‘all-risks’ approach means that it can be more cost effective to prepare for a wide spectrum of risks.

The Public Health Model. Terrorism, particularly mass-casualty terrorism, has an impact on public health and the psychological well-being of citizens. As a result, public health, environmental safety and local emergency preparedness have all been incorporated into defensive counterterrorism. Strengthening public health systems would create an infrastructure that can respond efficiently and effectively to a whole range of threats, whether a disease like SARS or swine flu, an industrial accident, an environmental disaster, or an intentional release of a pathogen or explosion of a radiological, chemical or biological device.

11.  The Psychosocial Model. Interest in social and psychological defences and the development of citizen resilience in the face of terrorist threats has increased greatly in recent years. The terror in terrorism is most directly felt by those who fear terrorist attack themselves because of specific threats or because they belong to the same category as past victims. In the case of indiscriminate, mass terrorism, the terror is much more widespread. Add to that the power of television and the internet to bring images from far away into our homes, constantly barraging us with reports of terror strikes from around the world, and the psychological impact of terrorism can be quite invasive and pervasive. Doomsday predictions of new and frightening attacks can spread the terror even further. Chronic anxiety and stress about the threat of terrorism can be a serious problem in societies geared to expect that an attack is imminent or inevitable. It can even increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Promoting citizen resilience means preparing people ahead of time and strengthening their capacity to cope with the stress, anxiety and fear that particular kinds of terrorist attack provoke. This can help to take the terror out of terrorism.

12.  Long-Term Counterterrorism

Long-term counterterrorism refers to initiatives that do not promise quick fixes, but play out in the long term. This includes the realm of ‘root causes’ and the more structural factors that can create a suitable climate for the promotion and use of terrorism. What are often assumed to be causes, for example, poverty, alienation, personality, discrimination, ideology, are often either facilitating factors, which are usually structural, or triggering factors, which are usually ideational in that they involve interpretations of an event, situation, or conflict. It is these interpretations that are then used to mobilise and recruit people to adopt terrorist violence. Radicalisation, mobilisation and recruitment processes become central to understanding how the terrorist option comes to be seen as the appropriate tool for achieving particular goals and how it is justified to those who are recruited and trained to carry it out.

Because structural factors usually change and evolve very slowly, action taken now may not have a clear and discernible impact until much later. Short-term successes can evolve into long-term failures, and vice-versa. The key to effective long-term counterterrorism is to focus on long-term strategies that can make choosing pathways to terrorism more difficult and less attractive. 

13.  The Human Security/Human Rights Model. The concept of human security reflects the view that international security cannot be achieved unless the peoples of the world are free from violent threats to their lives, their safety, or their rights. The focus of security is the individual, not the state. Promoting social and economic rights can reduce the inequities that fuel radicalisation and facilitate terrorist recruitment.           

The promotion of political and civil rights can clearly have an impact on the attractiveness of the terrorist option. By giving voice to disenfranchised or oppressed groups, other options are provided that make the terrorist option less compelling. In the short term, however, allowing excluded groups access to the political process can increase conflict and even violence. It is only when rights are fully entrenched and institutionalized, and applied uniformly to all societal groups, not just the majority, that the use of violence becomes counterproductive. This was made painfully clear by events in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, where the early optimism of the Arab Spring has soured, thus giving new impetus to Al-Qaeda’s radical Islamist message that terrorism and violence, not democracy, is the only way to create an Islamic state.

A related challenge is the problem of anti-democratic political or religious movements and whether there are acceptable limits to the right to free expression, assembly and participation in political life: the balance between freedom of expression and freedom from expression.

Many international conventions on human rights single out education as a fundamental right and emphasize education as a vehicle for promoting democratic, pluralistic and anti-racist values. Education can help create a social and political environment that is sensitive to human rights and mutual understanding across cultures and civilizations. Teaching methods that foster an understanding of the interdependence of human beings and an appreciation of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious and historical diversity can contribute to reducing the fear and cultivated ignorance that lie at the root of much hatred and violence. Support for extremist and terrorist groups would become harder to sustain and recruitment would become more difficult.

Education can also inform people of injustices and inequities around the world. As they become exposed to the realities of our complex world, they often search for answers and solutions, and can be attracted to the simplistic explanations and solutions offered up by ideologues and fanatics. Many seek refuge in the past or in the rigid authoritarianism of political or religious dogma. This is why education must stimulate critical thinking as well as greater awareness of issues and facts. The ability to think for oneself and to research issues by collecting data from many sources is a good antidote to the propensity to succumb to ideological fads or exclusionary, racist theories. Many educated terrorists come from professions like engineering and medicine. Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, for example, studied engineering in Cairo and pursued graduate studies in urban planning at a technical university in Hamburg. Few terrorists come from the humanities, where literature, history and philosophy promote critical thinking and self-awareness.

Q. What is the Effect of the Al Shabab attacks on Kenyan Soil?

Al-Shabab means The Youth in Arabic. It emerged as the radical youth wing of Somalia's now-defunct Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled Mogadishu in 2006, before being forced out by Ethiopian forces. The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in December 2006 marked a watershed in the transformation, legitimation and radicalisation of Al-Shabab. First, it provided Al-Shabab with the opportunity to draw on deep-seated Somali hostility towards Ethiopia to recruit thousands of nationalist volunteers (Wise, 2011), as well as to legitimize its existence by discrediting the TFG and external actors like Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and AMISOM, and also to mobilise public support for its armed rebellion, especially jihad. Consequently, ‘Al-Shabab emerged as the main source of armed resistance to the Ethiopian occupation and combined its jihadist rhetoric with Somali nationalism and anti-Ethiopian sentiment to win both passive and active support from many Somalis, including those who had been wary of its extremist Islamism’ Second, the invasion forced Al-Shabab to adopt an effective guerrilla-style operational strategy as a means of resisting Ethiopian advance into the South. Third, ‘by forcing the Islamic Courts Union leaders who had exerted a level of moderating influence on Al-Shabab to flee Somalia, the invasion allowed the group to become even more radical, while at the same time severing its ties to other Somali organisations’. Although the Ethiopian invasion succeeded in routing the ICU and pushing Al-Shabab to the south of the country, it failed to curb Islamic radicalism in Somalia; in fact, it was a primary factor in the ultra-radical turn of Al-Shabab, ‘transforming the group from a small, relatively unimportant part of a more moderate Islamic movement into the most powerful and radical armed faction in the country’ In January 2009, Ethiopia withdrew its troops from Somalia, replaced by the AMISOM comprising thousands of Ugandan and Burundian peacekeeping forces Since 2008, Al-Shabab has demonstrated that it has the operational capability to launch deadly attacks against outposts of the West and perceived enemies outside Somalia

In 2011, the Kenyan Government started an operation called “Operation Linda Nchi” meaning ‘Operation Protect the Nation.’ This came after the Al-Shabaab were blamed for a series of kidnappings of aid workers from refugee camps in North Eastern Kenya and some tourists from the coastal area of Lamu. The idea of the operation was aimed at pushing back the Al-Shabaab from southern Somalia and to weaken their operation. The presence of Al-Shabaab in the southern part of Somalia was a threat to the Kenya tourism industry. The operation to push back this terror group Al-Shabaab to keep Kenya safe was led by the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF).

Although the war against Al-Shabaab is being fought by the joint forces of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Burundi and Somalia, it seems that Kenya is paying the highest price in this war. In retaliation to Operation Linda Nchi, the Al-Shabaab has carried out a number of attacks in Kenya from 2011. The attacks aimed to force Kenya to withdraw her soldiers from Somalia where they are jointly fighting as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia.

This has therefore led to the following impacts;

i)                    Psychological Impact: Fear and Paranoia was experienced by a significant number of respondents and Kenya as a whole, exemplified by an increase in security checks in major buildings and during travel. Trauma was similarly an effect, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder having been experienced by a number of people. Hatred and Islamophobia was another reaction.

ii)                  Economic impact: Terrorism in Kenya has affected the businesses of areas which have been frequently plagued by terrorism. Eastleigh is a good example. Tourism, a major foreign exchange earner for Kenya, has also been negatively impacted upon.

iii)                Political Impact: Locally, Kenya implemented the antiterrorism law, the Security Laws (Amendment) Act in 2014. Internationally, terrorism has had an impact on Kenya’s relation with the West with the government taking issue with the fact that western nations had issued travel advisories against Kenya.