Unpacking the Anatomy of the Mpeketoni Attacks in Kenya

Unpacking the Anatomy of the Mpeketoni Attacks in Kenya

Herman Butime

Abstract

This article examines the origins, organization and execution of the Mpeketoni terror attacks in Kenya. The central argument of this debate is that Mpeketoni came under attack because its simmering social tensions fitted in with the fluid interaction between the dynamics fuelling instability in the coastal region of Kenya and the Islamist insurgency in Somalia. In this direction, Mpeketoni cannot be stabilized in isolation. Kenya has to work towards effecting equitable redistribution of political and economic power in the wider coastal region and tightening border control to limit insurgent infiltrations from Somalia.

Introduction

The attacks on Mpeketoni, a small coastal town located near Lamu, a popular tourist resort, have re-cast the spotlight on Kenya as a terrorism hotbed in East Africa. On 15^th June, 2014, nearly nine months after suspected operatives of Al Shabaab attacked Westgate Mall in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, a group of assailants conducted multiple attacks in Mpeketoni targeting government, security, financial installations and population centres.[1] Although Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attacks, among others, citing Kenya’s intervention in Somalia as a motivating factor, the Kenyan government attributed them to domestic politics rooted in ethnic and religious tensions in the country.[2] While generating debate over their underlying causes, the Mpeketoni attacks are significant in the way they showcase emerging modifications in the modus operandi of some terrorist outfits in East Africa and the Horn of Africa. Unlike previous attacks, the operatives were selective in targeting their victims. Whereas men were killed, women and children were spared suggesting a deliberate attempt by these groups to improve their image.[3] The attacks claimed 60 lives and further hurt Kenya’s tourism sector which has been reeling from the negative effects of previous attacks.[4]

This article unpacks the anatomy of the Mpeketoni attacks. It examines the causes, phases and tactics that underpinned the execution of the attacks. The central argument of this debate is that Mpeketoni came under attack because its simmering social tensions fitted in with the fluid interaction between the dynamics fuelling instability in the wider coastal region of Kenya and the conflict in Somalia. In this direction, Kenya’s colonial and post-colonial resettlement policies upset the ethnic and religious setup in Mpeketoni thereby creating a prospective conflict environment that partially fitted in with the motivation underpinning the Al Shabaab Islamist insurgency in Somalia. These transnational social contradictions in turn partly shaped the manner in which the operatives executed the attacks.

Seeds of Instability

Mpeketoni owes its origins to Kenya’s colonial and post-colonial population resettlement schemes. The evolution of the name itself attests to this history. Mpeketoni is a combination of the Swahili word ‘Mpe’ which translates as ‘give’ and ‘Katoni’ which is a corruption of the English word ‘carton.’ When the first batch of immigrants arrived in the area, it was customary for the resettlement officials to instruct their juniors to give each settler a carton of supplies to kick-start their lives as settlers. Over time, the pronunciation of the name of the area, ‘Mpekatoni’ evolved into ‘Mpeketoni.’ [5]

The roots of instability in Mpeketoni lie in both Kenya’s anti-colonial struggle and the collapse of the first East African regional integration initiative. Following the onset of the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule in Kenya, the colonial administration instituted a State of Emergency in the 1950s that saw Kikuyus (Kenya’s most populous ethnic group) relocated from their ancestral lands in the Central Highlands to the area that became Mpeketoni.[6] Later, in the 1970s, following the disintegration of the East African Community and the expulsion of Kenyans from Tanzania, the government of President Jomo Kenyatta (a Kikuyu) encouraged Kikuyu returnees to join their kin-and-kith in Mpeketoni.[7]

While alleviating the plight of displaced Kikuyus, the above relocations altered the ethnic and religious composition of Lamu, the county in which Mpeketoni is located. Over time, the influx of Kikuyus, Luos and Akambas constituted the indigenous Wabajuni (Swahili) and Wasanye hunter-gatherers into ethnic minorities. To date, Lamu is the only county in Kenya where nearly 50% of the population is non-indigenous.[8] Also, with Lamu predominantly inhabited by Muslims, the influx of the mainly Christian migrants into Mpeketoni altered the religious composition of the area.[9]

It could be argued, therefore, that alterations in the ethnic and religious composition of Mpeketoni in the colonial and post-colonial eras presented potentially exploitable parameters for the fomentation of social tensions in the area. However, these factors by themselves did not precipitate conflict in Mpeketoni and Lamu County. It had to take the interaction of these parameters with struggles over power and resources in the wider coastal region of Kenya and neighbouring Somalia for Mpeketoni to evolve into a hub for conflict.

While the relocation to Mpeketoni presented the displaced Kikuyu with an opportunity to pursue an agricultural livelihood, the post-colonial, geo-political development of the area made it an attractive target for terrorist groups in East Africa and the Horn of Africa. The Kikuyu in Lamu County mainly settled around Lake Kenyatta pointing to the consideration that the fertile soils of the area were best suited to support farming, their traditional economic activity.[10] Over time, this factor has been offset by the growth of the area’s geo-political susceptibility to transnational conflict.

Predisposition to Attack

Greater Mpeketoni is a farming area located along the East African coastline that runs from Mombasa to the Kenya-Somalia border.[11] It lies 20 miles (30 kilometres) South West of Lamu, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the oldest continually inhabited town in Kenya; 60 miles (100 kilometres) adrift of the Kenya-Somalia border; and 360 miles (600 kilometres) from Nairobi.[12] Mpeketoni town itself is situated along the main coastal road leading to the Lamu tourist resorts.[13] Unlike Lamu, Mpeketoni does not host foreign tourists.[14] Although Mpeketoni’s proximity to Somalia potentially constituted it into a prospective target of Al Shabaab, the absence of tourist attractions there made it an unlikely target of groups seeking to disrupt Kenya’s tourism industry unless their operational objective were to strike at foreign tourists heading to Lamu. The fact that there were no foreign nationals among the victims of the attacks strengthens the argument that the motivation for orchestrating Mpeketoni was internal to the politics of Kenya and the calculations for selecting the target had less to do with the drive to hurt the East African country’s tourism sector.[15]

Rather, the existence of an ethno-religious dichotomy coupled with the area’s geographical propensity to provide assailants with escape routes may have dictated the selection of Mpeketoni as a target. Given that ethnic Kikuyus and Christians were selectively attacked, it is plausible to deduce that the terrain of Mpeketoni’s simmering social tensions had presented the attackers with a canvass on which to violently express their ideals. Tactically, this consideration was augmented by the geography of the area which presented opportunities for egress for the assailants. Located within Mpeketoni settlement scheme, Mpeketoni Township has got three exit routes: the first that heads South East towards Lake Kenyatta; the second that heads East towards Mokowe; and the third that heads West to Witu.[16] While presenting multiple escape routes, Mpeketoni’s location adjacent to the expansive Pandaguo forest to the North that extends into Boni wildlife forest that connects into Somalia also offered the assailants access to a safe sanctuary beyond the frontiers of Kenya.[17]

The significance of the above calculations may be contested on grounds that the concentration of security installations in the area should have made the area an unattractive target of terrorists. The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and the General Service Unit (GSU) paramilitary force have bases in Hindi, Witu and Mokowe respectively.[18] By attacking Mpeketoni, the assailants would have been risking a costly confrontation with security forces commanding a conventional military capability. However, given that the attacks targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure (soft targets), the fact that they occurred in an area proximate to security installations in itself accorded the assailants the opportunity to ‘demonstrate their capability.’

Contending Motivations for the Attacks

The challenge in explaining the rationale behind target selection for the attacks stems from conflicting perspectives on the causes of the Mpeketoni attacks. Whereas the domestic motivations relate to uneasy relations between the wider coastal region and the Kenyan central government, the foreign ones regard Kenya’s intervention in Somalia. The difficulty in separating the two sets of factors springs from the notion that religious tensions permeate both the insurrectional tendencies in Kenya and the Al Shabaab insurgency in Somalia pointing to prospective interaction between the two conflict situations.

The probable external motivations for the Mpeketoni attacks emanate from Kenya’s intervention in the conflict in Somalia. In 2011, the East African country undermined Al Shabaab’s insurgent campaign by sending troops to Somalia to shore up the government there.[19] By claiming responsibility for the attacks and warning foreign tourists to stay away from Kenya, the Somali group appears to have constituted the tourism sector into a canvass for punishing the East African country for its interventionist policy.[20] Yet an attack on Mpeketoni, an area that does not host foreign tourists appears to have contradicted that strategy and strengthens the argument that the attacks were rooted in domestic politics. In which case, Al Shabaab would not have been the authentic perpetrators of the attacks.

The probable internal motivations for the Mpeketoni attacks could be linked to emerging separatist tendencies in the wider coastal region of Kenya arising from lingering social tensions and inequitable control of the area’s resources.[21] The relocation of Kikuyus to Mpeketoni upset the balance of population power constituting the natives of the area into ethnic minorities.[22] Whereas the alteration of the population equation created parameters for the potential fomentation of social tensions in Mpeketoni, the restiveness of the area appears to have resulted from the interaction of these parameters with struggles over power and the control of resources in the region.

In the lead-up to the 2013 elections, Uhuru Kenyatta, the current Kenyan President attempted to broker an ethnicity-based power-sharing deal aimed at easing tensions in Lamu County. While the natives of the region would vie for the top political positions, the Kikuyu would play a subsidiary role. The refusal by some Kikuyu politicians to stick to this alleged plan reinforced ethnic tensions in the region.[23] Tied in with the failed power-sharing, the emergence of Lamu as a critical economic node for Kenya’s economy has consolidated the region’s susceptibility to conflict. The discovery of offshore oil in Lamu and the commissioning of the multi-billion dollar Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopian Transport (LAPSSET) corridor, the biggest ever Kenyan government project has led to the speculative rise in the price of land and land grabbing by non-natives of the region. Although in the aftermath of the Mpeketoni attacks, Issa Timmamy, the Governor of Lamu was arrested on charges of involvement in the attacks, his opposition to outsider control of the region’s economy cannot be ignored as a probable reason for his incarceration.[24]

From the foregoing, it is evident that the political and socio-economic contradictions in Lamu fit in with the dynamics fuelling instability in other parts of the coastal region of Kenya. For example, like Lamu, Mombasa is restive partly because its economy is allegedly controlled by non-natives.[25] The commonality of grievances cutting across the wider coastal region of Kenya coupled with the ethno-religious selectiveness in the targeting of victims points to the possibility that the Mpeketoni attacks were primarily a product of internal politics. However, the propensity for Al Shabaab to exploit the religious dichotomy to punish Kenya for intervening in Somalia strongly lends credence to the possibility that the Somali group may have extended support to what was primarily a domestic insurrection.

Trajectory of the Attacks

Whereas Mpeketoni is situated in the restive coastal region of Kenya, early warning indicators of its susceptibility to attack have not been concrete. Up until June 2014, the area was outside the epicentre of attacks in the coastal region apparently because it was not a foreign tourist destination. That terror threat perception may have informed the travel advisories that have mainly targeted areas to the South of Mpeketoni.[26] For example, by the time of the attacks, Britain had closed its consulate in Mombasa and evacuated its nationals from beach resorts there.[27] Thus, when in May 2014, Fuad Muhammed Khalaf, an Al Shabaab commander called for revenge attacks on Kenya for her intervention in Somalia, the conventional expectation was that areas hosting foreign tourists would be the prospective targets of attack.[28]

With Mpeketoni not specifically covered in the coastal travel advisories, there was a possibility that there would be no stringent security arrangements in the area to counteract attacks in the immediate future. Yet the assailants conducted lightening operations typically designed to beat an environment of heightened security. To that effect, the assault unfolded in form of sustained action spread over a relatively short duration.  

There are some indications that the attacks may have commenced with the assailants infiltrating and assembling in the targeted area. Some eye witnesses reported seeing the red and white Matatu shuttle vans (suspected to have been used in the attacks) parked at Garsen Bridge in Mpeketoni at 5pm local time on the day of the attack. Moses Munyua specifically recounts that there was a carton in one of the vans which he suspects may have contained ammunition.[29] These accounts, however, contradict the widely held view that the attacks begun with the assailants forcefully acquiring the means for accessing the targeted area.

The conventional position is that 8 gunmen commandeered 2 vans in Witu before storming Mpeketoni.[30] If we adopt the position that the acquisition of the means of movement was done coercively and it almost immediately preceded the actual attacks, then the reported sightings at Garsen Bridge were probably unrelated to the attacks. Between the sightings at Garsen Bridge and the commencement of the attacks (8:30pm), there was a relatively long three and a half hour time lag which does not fit in with the notion that the assailants struck almost immediately after acquiring the means for accessing the targeted area.[31]

However, the account that the in-coming 8 gunmen found other operatives already in Mpeketoni strengthens the credibility of the Garsen Bridge sightings.[32] Whereas the events surrounding the first phase of the attacks are contested, the trajectory of the subsequent ones is not in dispute: After accessing the targeted area, the assailants beefed up their means of coercion; disabled the area’s communication infrastructure, conducted selective attacks and recuperated before withdrawing from Mpeketoni. According to Abdiaziz abu Mus’ab, an Al Shabaab Military Spokesman, the assailants controlled Mpeketoni for 10 hours.[33]

Once the attackers had reached Mpeketoni, they attacked a police station and stole weapons.[34] The pursuit and realization of this operational objective points to one of two possibilities: Either the assailants were short on start-up coercive capability or they needed to strengthen that area to counteract government security reinforcements that would be sent to Mpeketoni. Probably due to the latter consideration, they also destroyed the Safaricom mobile telephone communication infrastructure in order to prevent people from alerting the security forces. [35]

With the police force having been put out of action and other branches of the Kenyan security services initially unaware of the attacks, the assailants commenced the attacks at about 8:30pm while recreational centres in Mpeketoni were showing the Ecuador versus Switzerland match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.[36] While the cover of darkness accorded the attackers the benefit of stealth, the gathering of football fans at the recreational centres availed them with victims to target.

Although the assailants had managed to conduct the initial phases of the attacks without encountering much resistance, they may still have been weary of government security reinforcements disrupting their egress. This consideration may have dictated the timing of their exit from Mpeketoni. At 11pm, they effected a pose in operations.[37] Perhaps, this may have signalled the attainment of most of their set objectives. When a GSU unit from Nyongoro arrived in Mpeketoni at 4am, the assailants turned their vans and faced them towards Kibaoni before burning them and disappearing into Boni forest.[38] That they appeared to have completed most of their operations by 11pm and yet did not leave Mpeketoni until after the GSU unit had arrived in the town points to the possibility that due to limitations in coercive capability, they may have been weary of encountering and being overwhelmed by stronger government security reinforcements while disengaging from the area of operations.

Strategy and Tactics

Whereas the attackers may have been constrained by shortages in coercive capability, their over-arching strategy appears to have been to try to conduct effective operations with available means and psychologically disorient the enemy. In pursuing the former objective, they were fairly well equipped for coercive action; selected soft targets; and were guided by a precise criterion for identifying prospective victims. In pursuing the latter objective, the assailants employed communicational warfare aiming to demonstrate capability and control over the area of operations.

In seeking to conduct effective operations, the assailants were a sizable number. There were between 30 and 50 of them.[39] This number allowed the group the leverage to split into smaller units to simultaneously pursue different operational objectives. James Mwangi, an eye witness recounts seeing “…a group of armed men standing then dividing themselves into groups. One went to the police station, one towards the town centre to attack the banks and businesses.” [40]

The composition of the group points to the probable intention to marshal the communicational terrain of Mpeketoni and also benefit from external combat expertise. The attackers mainly spoke Swahili (one of Kenya’s national languages) and Somali.[41] According to some eyewitnesses, the group was commanded by an English and Arabic speaking Caucasian man.[42] The use of Swahili not only suggests the involvement of Kenyans in the attacks but also the assailants’ intention to effectively interface with the targeted population. The Somali, English and Arabic elements in the group’s composition points to the involvement of foreign fighters in the attacks and the assailants’ probable intention to tap external expertise.

Whereas they may have been weary of facing a stronger Kenyan security apparatus, the assailants were fairly well equipped for combat. They had automatic rifles, grenade launchers and explosives. This equipment aided them in overrunning the Mpeketoni police station.[43] Noting the imbalance in confrontational capabilities between the assailants and those, who in the absence of the army and the police would have tried to put up resistance, David Njue Elija, a police reservist observed: “But we were far outnumbered and they had crazy weapons. If we had fired, they were surely going to rain bullets and grenades on us.”[44] Also, since the assailants had chosen to conduct the attacks at night, they needed to marshal vision. To that effect, they used flares to illuminate the operations area.[45]

Given the probable start up deficiency in coercive capability, the assailants avoided hard targets (KDF and GSU garrisons) and instead attacked semi-hard and soft targets. By selecting targets that cut across the spectrum of the political and socio-economic life of Mpeketoni, the assailants may have intended to demonstrate the apparent ‘limitlessness’ of their capacity to destabilize the state. Their targets ranged from the Mpeketoni police station (a semi-hard target), government offices (pillars of the state’s authority), a bank (financial institution), hotels and restaurants (centres for the recreational life of the area). [46]

In seeking to execute the attacks selectively, the attackers were guided by precise criteria for distinguishing between ‘enemy’ and ‘ally.’ Commanding a Mpeketoni-relevant linguistic capability (having Swahili speaking operatives), the assailants were able to invoke the area’s ethno-religious dichotomy to identify their prospective victims. Anne Gathigi, a local resident recounts: “They came to our house at around 8pm and asked us in Swahili whether we were Muslims. My husband told them we were Christians and they shot him in the head and chest.”[47] Precision in the selection of victims may have been intended to steer the attacks clear of ‘collateral damage’—unintentionally attacking the ‘wrong’ people thereby undermining their prospective support base.

The selection of victims was also dictated by gender and age considerations pointing to the notion that unlike in previous terror attacks in Kenya, the assailants in Mpeketoni aimed to ‘distinguish’ between ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ targets. They singled out men (whom they probably perceived as prospective enemy fighters) and killed them while sparing the women and children.[48] In choosing to kill the men while the women and children watched, the assailants reasoned that they wanted Kenyans to experience the kind of atrocities their forces were allegedly committing in Somalia.[49] This factor raises the possibility that the gender- and age-based approach to victim selection may also have been a propaganda tool intended to undermine the credibility of Kenya’s intervention in Somalia.

The assailants used communicational warfare not only in the selection of their victims but also in overtly communicating their identity, keeping a record of their operations and acting as a source of information on the Mpeketoni attacks. During the attacks, they openly hoisted the black flag of Al Shabaab and chanted “Allah Akbar” (God is Great).[50] This bold act was intended to leave no shred of doubt as to the Somali Islamist group’s involvement in the attacks. In addition, the assailants recorded the attacks probably for future training and propaganda purposes. Daniel Kahosho, an eyewitness recounts “One of them had a video and he was recording them. It was a huge one, almost the size of the ones used by TV crews.”[51]

In order to demonstrate credibility as the authentic authors of the attacks, Al Shabaab kept posting updates through its media outlets during and after the attacks. On its Twitter account, the group posted the following message: “Kenya is now officially a war zone and as such any tourists visiting the country do so at their own peril.”[52] The Al Shabaab-operated Radio Andalus was also another source of updates on the attacks.[53] All the above communicational operations were intended to demonstrate the assailants’ capability and control over the area of operations.

Conclusion

Mpeketoni was targeted because it’s simmering social tensions fitted in with the fluid interaction between the dynamics fuelling instability in the wider coastal region of Kenya and the conflict in Somalia. The colonial and post-colonial resettlement policies of the Kenyan state altered the ethnic and religious setup of Mpeketoni creating prospective parameters for the fomentation of social tensions in Lamu, the county in which Mpeketoni is located.[54] Whereas these factors by themselves were insufficient to trigger off the attacks, their fluid interaction with secessionist tensions in the restive coastal region of Kenya and the Al Shabaab Islamist insurgency in Somalia constituted Mpeketoni into a prospective target of attack.

The above overarching factor significantly shaped the constituent aspects of the attacks: Mpeketoni’s proximity to the restive coastal areas of Kenya (Mombasa and Lamu) and Somalia made the area susceptible to infiltration. Also, its urban design accorded prospective assailants avenues for disengaging from the theatre of operations and retreating into a sanctuary beyond the territorial jurisdiction of Kenya. Although Mpeketoni had the ethno-religious profile that would have constituted it into a conflict hotspot, it lacked the specific target selection credentials for the coastal region.[55] By not being a foreign tourist destination, Mpeketoni accorded the assailants the opportunity to exercise the element of surprise in attacking an area the Kenyan security apparatus least expected. 

The fluid interaction between the insurrectional tendencies in Kenya and the conflict in Somalia also shaped the tactical framework for the attacks. The ethno-religious dichotomy in Mpeketoni not only presented Al Shabaab with an exploitable parameter related to its motivation but also a precise criterion for meeting operational objectives. What was particularly novel about these attacks was the assailants’ selectiveness in attacking the targeted constituency. This points to the possibility that some terrorist outfits in the region are beginning to become sensitive about their image and its impact on their insurgent campaigns.[56]    

Given the connections between the insurrectional tendencies in the coastal region of Kenya and the conflict in Somalia, Mpeketoni cannot be stabilized in isolation. Equitability in the control and distribution of political and economic power should not only be effected in this settlement but also extended to Lamu, Mombasa and other restive parts of the Kenyan coastal region. Stabilizing the political situation in Somalia is also critically important for the security of Mpeketoni. Whereas the deployment of Kenyan forces in Somalia has lowered the propensity for Al Shabaab to attack the East African country, more work still needs to be done to secure the forested frontier separating the two countries to prevent cross-border insurgent infiltrations.  

End Notes