Ideas & Debate

State must reclaim monopoly of force to ensure security

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Kenyans protest against harassment by the Mungiki gang. The State’s inability to control the monopoly of legitimate force encourages the growth of such gangs. PHOTO | FILE

The persistent state of insecurity in Kenya recently drew my attention to Susan Mueller’s well-argued treatise on the political economy of Kenya’s crisis.

Ms Mueller travels far and wide to explore the genesis of insecurity in Kenya from an economic and political stand point.

Today, Kenya is not only facing security threats from domestic criminals pursuing purely socio-economic interests but also from external groups like the Al-Shabaab.

Our response, to say the least, has been found wanting making the case for a closer look at the underlying issues.

Kenya has in the recent years gone through a period in which the wave of insecurity rose sharply causing fear throughout the country. But it cannot be said that insecurity is a new development in Kenya.

This is because a closer look at the phenomenon of insecurity reveals that it has its right at the time of independence. Part of the reason is that Kenya has since independence failed the test of what really defines a state and how that state then relates with the citizens.

It was Max Weber, the father of modern thinking on government and its bureaucracy who said that a State should be defined by its ability to control the monopoly of legitimate force over a given territory.

With all the private militia and gangsters in possession of lethal weapons operating in many corners of the country, including the capital Nairobi, Kenya flatly fails the test of statehood when this parameter is applied.

Besides, a closer look at the progression of the Kenya state reveals that the 1982 attempted coup on the Moi regime brought upon the country a change in the system of governance.

Kenya moved from being a de facto state to a de jure state as a result of the attempted coup. Some members of the ruling party disagreed with the status quo and became vocal about it.

In order to deal with the dissidents, the then President Moi used both institutional and extra judicial groups to unleash an unprecedented level of violence on the citizenry targeting an emerging opposition to his rule.

People lived in terror of finding themselves on the wrong side of the divide. The perceived and real dissidents found themselves harassed politically, financially and even physically through incarceration at the infamous Nyayo House torture chambers.

In response, politicians took to hiring own bodyguards and goons who not only protected them from possible attacks by rivals, but were also used intimidate opponents.

Unfortunately, this culture has persisted to date and is manifest in the MPs frequent threats to law enforcers with the aim of evading the law.

During elections in the 90s, the ruling party used the Curley effect to ensure it got the votes it wanted. The Curley effect – originates from the actions of Boston’s Irish Catholic Mayor James Curley, who pushed out the Protestants from the city by letting their part of the town fall apart and giving jobs to his Irish Catholic base.

In Kenya, the Curley effect has been regularly used to retain power. The Maasai enclave of Narok became the classic case study, when a prominent local politician warned a certain community to lie low like envelopes in the run-up to the first multi-party elections in 1992.

Unknown to many, this type of organised diffused crime often has a trickle- down effect. Lawlessness permeates a society that is bereft of proper institutions to fight bigger crimes.

Extra state violence is used to ensure those in power hang on to it as was the case with the re-introduction of multi-party system in Kenya in the early 90s.

Groups like the Mungiki, Kamjesh, Jeshi la Mzee kept dissidents in check through intimidation and harassment. Different political parties, from KANU to FORD Asili used the goons for this purpose.

The nature of these non-state bearers of force, though at first controlled by the government, often runs out of hand as the number of recruits increase and money flows in.

The Mungiki, for instance, later featured in the 2007 post-election mayhem killing and maiming perceived opponents with abandon.

Kenya’s annual bandit economy was in 2004 estimated to be worth Sh357 million ($3.8 million) making it hard for the state to control such groups. Loss of control in turn allows petty criminals to deepen the lawlessness further spreading the wave of crime.

This is basically how the government lost control of its key mandate of being the sole wielder of legitimate force. It all began with a deliberate weakening of institutions that are legally meant to protect the public.

When a country has a powerful executive with personalised power at the centre, the Judiciary and Parliament become appendages of the executive.

It is no wonder then that even when power changes hands across time, tribes or ideals, the problem of insecurity persists.

Take corruption, for instance, which has proved to be resilient by outliving every regime since independence. There was Goldenberg in the early 90s followed by the Anglo-leasing scandal in the early 2000s.

When the monopoly of legitimate force is dismantled, security becomes a big problem. In this day and age of terrorism the true status of our security machinery has been revealed as wanting.

The system is porous because it has been weakened over the years.

Unless we are able to look into the roots of the problem no amount of machinery, intelligence and strategies will change our ability to defend our borders. We must address the past to be able to deal with the present.

Ms Muthamia is an International Development Masters student at the University of Birmingham, UK.