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Seeing the State
The Securitisation and Desecuritisation of Eastleigh
during Operation Usalama Watch
Master of Science in African Studies
University of Oxford
2015-2016
Candidate Number: 1002169
Word Count: 14,997
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Table of Contents
Map of the Northern Frontier District .................................................................................................... 3
Map of Eastleigh ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Acronyms ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................... 6
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 7
Structure of the Dissertation ................................................................................................................ 10
Chapter 1: Literature Review and Methodology .......................................................................... 11
Literature Review – Securitisation Theory ........................................................................................ 11
Literature Review – Criticisms of Securitisation Theory ................................................................... 14
Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 18
Interviews ...................................................................................................................................... 18
Focus Group .................................................................................................................................. 21
Digital Archival Research ............................................................................................................... 22
Chapter 2: Securitisation of Somalis in Kenya in Historical Perspective ........................................ 24
History of Eastleigh ........................................................................................................................... 24
History of North Eastern Kenya ........................................................................................................ 26
Chapter 3: The Contemporary Securitisation of Eastleigh ............................................................ 32
Performative Enactment ................................................................................................................... 36
The Discourse of Cleanliness ............................................................................................................. 38
Chapter 4: Resistance to the Securitisation of Eastleigh ............................................................... 45
Twitter ............................................................................................................................................... 45
YouTube ............................................................................................................................................ 48
Acts of Defiance ................................................................................................................................ 49
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 53
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 55
Interviews.......................................................................................................................................... 55
Books and Journal Articles ................................................................................................................ 56
Social Media: Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr .................................................................................... 58
Websites and Newspaper Articles .................................................................................................... 59
Human Rights Reports ...................................................................................................................... 61
Unpublished Sources ........................................................................................................................ 61
Secondary Sources ............................................................................................................................ 61
Annex 1 - #KenyaImNotATerrorist Pictures .......................................................................................... 63
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Map of the Northern Frontier District
(Whittaker, 2015: 4)
4
Map of Eastleigh
(Ballard, 2015 cited in Carrier, Forthcoming)
5
Acronyms CBD
Central Business District
DRA Department of Refugee Affairs EBA Eastleigh Business Association FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office HRW Human Rights Watch ICC International Criminal Court IG Inspector General IPOA Independent Police Oversight Authority KAR Kings African Rifles KBC Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation KDF Kenyan Defence Force KHRC Kenyan Human Rights Commission KNCHR Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights NEP North Eastern Province NFD Northern Frontier District UNHCR United Nations Human Commissioner for Refugees
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Acknowledgments
In Nairobi, I’d like to thank everyone who agreed to be interviewed and took the time out of their
day to meet with me to discuss the operation. Every effort has been made to obtain their consent
and to make sure the information included in this dissertation is accurate. Whilst I did not use the
information from all the interviews, they all structured my thinking and indirectly shape the final
outcome. I am also grateful to George Omondi and Elyas Issack who helped with the research as well
as all those who put me in touch with contacts in Nairobi. In particular, I would like to thank Bryson
Ddaddah as well as the whole Ddaddah family for their generous hospitality.
In Oxford, Neil Carrier has been an invaluable sounding board and mentor, providing great feedback
and advice. I’d also like to thank him for letting me read the manuscript of his forthcoming book,
Little Mogadishu: Eastleigh, Nairobi's Global Somali Hub, whose crystalline prose beautifully capture
Eastleigh’s complexity in a way I could not do it justice here (unfortunately, due to the constrained
word limit, Neil, I couldn’t preface every quote with such praise so I hope this will do instead!)
Dominic Burbidge’s patience in first term helped me narrow my topic when I was a supervisor’s
nightmare with too many ideas and a constantly changing focus. Andrea Purdeková’s comments on
my proposal also led me to explore a body of literature that was completely different to the one I
had initially anticipated using, which was both a rewarding and interesting experience. Tutorial
discussions from Andrea’s Violence and Historical Memory option have also heavily influenced the
argument made here.
Conversations over dinner and in the St. Antony’s bar with Kholood, Ella, Ryan, Arnold and James
also shaped my thinking. A special thank you to Remi, David and Klara who took the time to provide
comments on earlier drafts, which – as always – proved insightful and thought-provoking. I am also
grateful to the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) for their financial support, without which I
would not have been able to conduct the research for as long a period as I would have liked.
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Introduction
In April 2014, a sustained counterterrorism operation was conducted by various agencies of the
Kenyan security apparatus in the Nairobi neighbourhood of Eastleigh. The stated objective of the
operation, which later came to be known as Operation Usalama Watch or ‘Security Watch’, was: ‘to
flush out Al-Shabaab’s adherents/aliens and search for weapons, improvised explosive devices
(IEDs)/explosives and other arms so as to detect, disrupt and deter terrorism and other organised
crime’ (IPOA, 2014: 2-3).
In large part, the operation was conducted in response to a deteriorating security situation in Kenya
that was arguably accentuated by the 2011 incursion into Somalia against Al-Shabaab by the Kenyan
Defence Force (KDF) under the auspices of Operation Linda Nchi or ‘Protect the Country’.
Paradoxically, the operation was meant to render Kenya safer, but instead since 2011, Al-Shabaab
have retaliated by launching a string of over 50 separate terror attacks in Kenya several of which
have targeted Eastleigh (Warah, 2014: 138, 151). In the week leading up to Operation Usalama
Watch, there were two notable incidents. The first was an attack on March 23 on a church in Likoni
constituency of Mombasa County killing 6 churchgoers (Botha, 2014: 895). The second were two
simultaneous grenade attacks on March 31 in Eastleigh that killed 11 people (KNCHR, 2015: 3). In
retaliation, the operation was launched was on 1 April 2014.
In total, around 6,100 police and army personnel were involved in Operation Usalama Watch, which
far outnumbered the number of Kenya troops fighting Al-Shabaab in Somalia (Anderson & McKnight,
2015a: 21; Warah, 2014: 125). During the operation, security officials put Eastleigh on lockdown,
setting up checkpoints on all the major roads leading into the neighbourhood. According to the
Minister of Interior, over 4,000 people were arrested, many of whom were taken to Kasarani
Stadium where they were supposedly screened (Amnesty International, 2014: 6). Numerous
allegations of human rights abuses emerged during and after the operation. In particular, human
rights organisations stressed that Kasarani was a detention facility that had not been properly
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gazetted, that those detained there were held beyond the 24-hour constitutional limit and often in
unsanitary and overcrowded cells (HRW, 2014b; Amnesty International, 2014; KNHCR, 2015, IPOA,
2014). Of the 4,000 arrests, 359 people were deported to Somalia (HRW, 2014c: 11), but the vast
majority were released without charge (Botha, 2014: 895). Moreover, in contravention of
international law, the UNHCR were only given very limited access to the detention facilities and were
unable to vet those who were deported (HRW, 2014b).
Yet, whilst the outcry from human rights organisations is well documented, the reactions of ordinary
residents of Eastleigh have been less documented. It remains understudied partly because the
characterisation of Eastleigh is often driven by outsiders, leading to a warped view of what is an
extremely complex neighbourhood. The stereotypical depiction of Eastleigh is that it is a
marginalised and neglected space, which is dominated by Somalis earning it the nickname ‘Little
Mogadishu’ and a reputation as a terrorist safe-haven. Dilapidated infrastructure and poor public
services are said to typify daily life in the estate.
In short, Eastleigh is seen as a dangerous and dirty place, but as any visitor to Eastleigh will attest
there is another side to the neighbourhood. Daily life is characterised by the need to ‘hustle’ to
make a living, as many of my interviewees put it. It is a bustling and intensely entrepreneurial
neighbourhood of Nairobi that is marked by change and transnational connections. The rise of over
40 shopping malls in Eastleigh is a testament to its economic might (Carrier and Lochery, 2013: 393).
According to Ahmed Mohammed, Eastleigh’s reputation as a terrorist safe haven is also overstated
and he jokingly warned to ‘be alert but not alarmed’, for there is a higher likelihood of being hit by a
car in Eastleigh, than of being the victim of crime or a terrorist attack (2016).
Using the voices of ordinary residents of Eastleigh, this dissertation provides a more nuanced view
that recognises Eastleigh’s complexity and dynamism. As such, my research concentrated on the
following questions: How has Eastleigh been mischaracterised? What are the historical antecedents
that led to the marginalisation of Eastleigh and Kenyan Somalis? How has the state discursively
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constructed Eastleigh as a site of intervention and justify Operation Usalama Watch? In what ways is
the characterisation of Eastleigh as a marginal area being challenged by residents of Eastleigh? What
attempts were there to ‘desecuritise’ Eastleigh and how do they manifest themselves?
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Structure of the Dissertation
The first chapter of the dissertation begins with an overview of the literature written on
securitisation theory, more popularly known as the Copenhagen School of International Relations as
well as some of the criticisms it has attracted. Subsequently, the strengths and limitations of the
methodology employed during the field research are then examined in detail. In Chapter 2, the
parallels between Operation Usalama Watch and other screening operations conducted by the
Kenyan government are drawn. Despite some continuities in the government’s approach, Chapter 3
explains how the manner in which Eastleigh was discursively constructed differed over time, in
particular in terms of the justification employed by the Kenyan security apparatus. Specifically, I
draw on Mary Douglas’ (1966) work on the notion of purity and cleanliness in dissecting the
discourse that framed and legitimised the operation.
Last of all, in Chapter 4, I turn to forms of resistance that emerged during and immediately following
the operation. The #KenyaImNotATerrorist Twitter campaign started by young residents of Eastleigh
to challenge the characterisation of their neighbourhood as a terrorist safe haven is one such form
of resistance I take as a case study. I argue that the Copenhagen School’s notion of the ‘speech act’ is
limiting when considering alternative media through which subtle forms of dissent are channelled
and counter-narratives may be expressed. Securitisation theory has predominantly focused on
discursive attempts to construct rather than deconstruct security threats. Therefore, in drawing
together securitisation theory and subaltern studies, I argue that there are many forms of resistance
that do not resort to overt contestation through speech. Instead, they employ novel, and often
informal, means to speak back to power, challenge convention and ultimately contribute to a
process desecuritisation.
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Chapter 1: Literature Review and Methodology
Literature Review – Securitisation Theory
Successful securitisation is not decided by the securitizer but by the audience of the security speech act.
– Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 31
In many ways securitisation theory emerged as a reaction to what was viewed as a narrow and
restrictive conceptualisation of security that had dominated traditional security studies. Within this
simplistic understanding of traditional security studies, a state-centric lens was adopted i.e. the state
was the primary unit of analysis in understanding international relations. Traditional security studies
was also premised on an objectivist identification of concrete threats posed to the state, which were
dealt with primarily, if not solely, through military means. In short, ‘traditional security studies gives
permanent priority to one sector (the military) and one actor (the state) (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde,
1997: 207).
By contrast, in Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1997), Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde seek to
widen or broaden the conventional definition of security by moving beyond the purely military
sphere in order to analyse how security threats are constructed through discourse. It was through
this foundational text, that the Copenhagen School and securitisation theory were born. For these
authors, security operates along a spectrum (see Figure 1). Labelling something a security issue ‘is
the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as
a special kind of politics or above politics. Securitisation can thus be seen as a more extreme version
of politicisation’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 23).
Figure 1: Security Spectrum
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The Copenhagen School also differs from traditional security studies because it favours a social
constructivist position and seeks to understand the process by which an issue becomes securitised
or ‘constructed’ as an existential threat. Key to the process of securitisation is what they term a
‘speech act’ whereby, ‘it is the utterance itself that is the act. By saying the words, something is
done.’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 26). Speech acts do ‘not simply describe an existing security
situation, but bring it into being as a security situation by successfully representing it as such’
(Williams, 2003: 513). As Williams goes on to note, there are several implications to bear in mind:
Not only is the realm of possible threats enlarged, but the actors or objects that are threatened (what are termed the “referent objects” of security) can be extended to include actors and objects well beyond the military security of the territorial state.
(2003: 513)
Indeed, what makes the Copenhagen School’s approach novel is that ‘successful securitisation is not
decided by the securitizer but by the audience of the security speech act’ (Buzan, Wæver & de
Wilde, 1997: 31). As a result, the decision about whether or not to accept an issue as ‘securitised’
ultimately lies with individuals rather than the state; no one entity has the power to control
securitisation, instead it becomes diffuse. The securitisation approach also opens up the possibility
of who can construct a threat and ‘one soon discovers that security has many potential referent
objects’ (Buzan, 1991: 26). That is not to say, that all attempts at securitisation are successful, but
even ‘unsuccessful or partially successful attempts at securitisation are interesting primarily for the
insights they offer into the stability of social attitudes toward security legitimacy’ (Buzan, Wæver &
de Wilde, 1997: 39). The Copenhagen School therefore provides a framework that can analyse the
emergence and eventual acceptance or rejection of a new referent object in a given context.
Drawing on the work of Walter Bryce Gallie, Buzan notes that security is ‘an essentially contested
concept’ (1991: 7). By this he means, determining what constitutes a security issue is perpetually up
for debate and the definition is constantly being renegotiated; as David Baldwin puts it ‘redefining
“security” has recently become something of a cottage industry’ (1997: 5 cited in Wilkinson, 2007:
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6). So much so that Arnold Wolfers controversially maintains that it ‘may not have any precise
meaning at all’ (cited in Buzan, 1991: 4-5). These are problems that the Copenhagen School theorists
were well aware of, recognising that ‘widening endangered the intellectual coherence of security,
putting so much into it that its essential meaning became void’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 2).
The value of their approach is in being able to identify the manner in which the very meaning of
security is contested for as they point out ‘it is always a political choice to securitise or to accept a
securitisation’ and that ‘actors and their audiences securitise certain issues as a specific form of
political act’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 29, 33). In adopting this framework, ‘the actual
definition of security [becomes] dependent on its successful construction in discourse’ (Hansen,
2000: 288).
Furthermore, in order to prevent the meaning of security becoming void, they limit their framework
by clearly pointing out that ‘a successful securitisation has three components (or steps): existential
threats, emergency action, and effects on interunit relations by breaking free of rules’ (Buzan,
Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 26). They further specify that the distinguishing feature of a securitisation
is the construction of an existential threat that poses a risk to the survival of the referent object. For
something to constitute a security issue it must ‘be staged as [an] existential threat to a referent
object by a securitising actor who thereby generates endorsement of emergency measures beyond
rules that would otherwise bind’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 5). Performance is therefore key
to the successful creation and identification of a security issue in order to convince an audience that
the issue poses an existential threat. This is what the Copenhagen School term a ‘securitising move’,
but an issue only goes from simply being politicised to fully securitised when the intended audience
accepts it as such. The inverse is possible too. A desecuritising move or desecuritisation occurs when
an issue is moved ‘off the “security” agenda and back into the realm of public political discourse and
“normal” political dispute and accommodation’ (Williams, 2003: 523). Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde
argue that ‘security should not be thought of too easily as a good thing’ and a more favourable
14
position is ‘to aim for desecuritisation’ (1997:4). Indeed, for them, desecuritisation is the optimal
outcome and ‘security should be seen as a negative, as a failure to deal with issues as normal
politics’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 29).
Literature Review – Criticisms of Securitisation Theory
A broader understanding of the rhetorics of securitization is required. – Williams, 2003: 527
Following the publication of Security: A New Framework for Analysis, criticism started to emerge
that took issue with some of the core assumptions of securitisation theory (McSweeney, 1996;
Stritzel 2007). Chief amongst these criticisms was the centrality of the notion of the ‘speech act’.
One of the first critics to identify this shortcoming was Lene Hansen who pointed out that ‘speech
act theory presupposes the existence of a situation in which speech is indeed possible’ (2000: 285).
Absent from the Copenhagen School’s theorisation was any consideration of how power dynamics
influence who can and cannot define what constitutes a successful securitisation. Power was only
considered insofar as it related to the interplay between the referent object and the audience.
Securitisation theorists were only partially aware of the absence of power considerations from
theorisation, writing that ‘one danger of the phrase securitization and speech act is that too much
focus can be placed on the acting side, thus privileging the powerful while marginalising those who
are the audience and judge the act’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 41)1. Yet, they do not go as far
as considering how power can influence the ability of the referent object to construct a successful
securitisation.
Therefore, despite the claim that they were purportedly ‘broadening’ and ‘widening’ the security
debate, in actuality they were simply redefining the parameters of the security debate or as Taureck
puts it:
1 Emphasis in the original
15
In practice, securitization is [...] far from being open to all units and their respective subjective threats. Rather, it is largely based on power and capability and therewith the means to socially and politically construct a threat.
(2006: 55)
For instance, Hansen utilises the example of victims of rape in Pakistan who run the risk of being
further victimised and stigmatised if they decide to speak out. He terms such a situation ‘security as
silence’, whereby ‘the potential subject of security has no, or limited, possibility of speaking its
security problem’ because the very act of ‘raising something as a security problem… might even
aggravate the threat being faced’ (2000: 294, 287). He concurs that security is a politically created
phenomenon, but as such it is fundamentally about power and who has access to power in order to
then shape the security debate. At the very core it is power that determines whether a speech act is
successful, yet it is also ‘deeply implicated in the production of silence’ for ‘all speech involves an
attempt to fix meaning, to define a particular situation and the subjects within it, and any successful
act implies as a consequence the exclusion of other possible constructions of meaning’ (Hansen,
2000: 306).
Citing Judith Butler, Hansen explains how the production of silence categorises subjects and creates
taxonomies of order, for subjects ‘can be interpellated, put in place, given a place, through silence,
through not being addressed’ (cited in Hansen, 2000: 304). Hansen recasts the speech act as ‘a
practice which constructs subjects at both “ends” of the speech act (the speaker and those spoken
to)’ or more importantly, those who are not spoken to and deliberately ignored and deliberately
silenced (2000: 303). As Arundhati Roy put it ‘there’s really no such thing as the “voiceless”. There
are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard’ (2004).
Similarly, Claire Wilkinson contends that the Copenhagen School puts undue focus on the centrality
of the speech act ‘to the exclusion of other forms of expression, such as physical action’ (2007: 5). In
part, she attributes this to what she terms the ‘Westphalian straightjacket’ namely the tendency to
assume ‘that European understandings of society and the state are universal’ (2007: 5). Through
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such Eurocentrism, ‘security is seen from the point of view of outsiders and using their terms and
interpretations rather than local ones’ (2007: 15). Building on Hansen’s notion of ‘security as
silence’, she holds that it is Eurocentric to assume that free speech is assured in all contexts or that it
is possible and desirable to speak out. Instead, she posits that in societies where censorship and
repression are commonplace, people often to turn to alternative forms of expression above and
beyond resorting to speech. In particular, she focuses on the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan where
‘people felt unable to get their security concerns addressed adequately through politics, official or
otherwise, resulting in a leapfrog over securitization into physical action, first peacefully, then
involving the use of force’ (Wilkinson, 2007: 21). However, she also highlights that exclusion need
not necessarily be overt or actively repressive, for: ‘even underdevelopment of a country’s
infrastructure or high levels of poverty can effectively “silence” people, potentially leading them to
seek other means of expressing concerns and gaining support’. Breaking free of the Westphalian
straightjacket thus involves being cognisant of the manifold ways in which structural violence and
exclusion from power can take root, whilst simultaneously trying to acknowledge and incorporate
alternative forms of expression into securitisation theory.
This lies at the heart of Michael Williams’ argument which stresses that ‘securitization theory must
develop a broader understanding of the mediums, structures and institutions, of contemporary
political communication’ (2003: 512 cited in Wilkinson, 2007: 12). In particular, Williams focuses on
the role that images and television have to play in constructing security threats. For instance, he
cites the example of the images that came out during the attack on the World Trade Centre or of
migrants trying to jump on trucks to cross the Channel Tunnel, which have become increasingly
important for the construction of security threats:
Security policies today are constructed not only with the question of their linguistic legitimation in mind; they now are increasingly decided upon in relation to acceptable image-rhetorics.
(Williams, 2003: 526-527)
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Therefore, in criticising the Copenhagen School Williams questions:
Whether a theory so closely tied to speech for its explanatory and ethical position is capable of addressing the dynamics of security in a world where political communication is increasingly bound with images and in which televisual communication is an essential element of communicative action2.
(2003: 524)
For a school of thought that claims to be interested in ‘broadening’ and ‘widening’ the meaning of
security, the centrality of the speech-act to securitisation theory does the opposite: constricting and
narrowing the space in which securitisation can take place. Consequently, Williams contends that as
the importance of images become more central in the age of electronic media, ‘a broader
understanding of the rhetorics of securitization is required’ (Williams, 2003: 527). Moreover, as
Williams goes on to argue:
In this sense, therefore, the speech-act of securitization is not reducible to a purely verbal act or a linguistic rhetoric: it is a broader performative act which draws upon a variety of contextual, institutional, and symbolic resources for its effectiveness. Crucially, however this aspect of securitization theory remains almost wholly undeveloped.3
(2003: 526)
It is thus the intention of this dissertation to contribute to the development of this field of study and
to explore alternative forms of expression that remain hitherto under-theorized or even un-
theorized. Moving beyond the confines of the notion of a speech act, this dissertation builds on
Williams attempt to broaden the mediums through which securitisation can occur, by considering
the place of social media and subtle forms of everyday defiance in defining and contesting the very
meaning of security. It also explores how social media can contribute to processes of securitisation,
but equally and perhaps more importantly, how these same attempts to securitise an issue can be
challenged and undermined by a variety of actors.
2 Emphasis in the original
3 Emphasis my own
18
The Copenhagen School is very much focused on how successful attempts at securitisation are
brought about and yet devotes very little time to explaining how desecuritisation can be achieved,
even though it is depicted it as a more desirable outcome. Drawing on Operation Usalama Watch as
a case study, this dissertation seeks to broaden the scope of what can be understood by
desecuritisation by incorporating forms of resistance and defiance that emerged on social media and
in other forums. These actions can be interpreted as ‘desecuritising moves’ that contested the
construction of Eastleigh as an existential threat. In so doing, these desecuritising moves marked a
shift along the security spectrum (see Figure 1), that attempted to turn the operation into politicised
issue debated as a matter of public policy, rather than a securitised one that justified the use of
extraordinary and extra-legal measures.
Methodology
We are no longer studying things, but the making of them. – Stoler, 2002: 89
In conducting the research for this dissertation I employed a mixed methods approach that
combined semi-structured interviews and focus groups with digital archival research that involved
looking through olds tweets, newspaper articles and blog posts about Operation Usalama Watch. In
the following sections I describe how the research was conducted and discuss some of the
limitations associated with each method.
Interviews
During the field research, I conducted 35 interviews over the course of a month in Nairobi with a
wide cross-section of business leaders, politicians, academics, journalists, poets, community
organisers, youth leaders, social media activists, human rights workers, representatives of the NGO
community and residents of Eastleigh. Mainly due to time constraints, the participants were
identified through snow-balling, which meant that the sample for interviews was not randomised
and a limited network was being tapped into. There was also a gender bias with only nine of the
19
total 35 interviewees being women. This proved particularly problematic when organising interviews
with some female Muslim residents of Eastleigh, as they did not want to meet a male alone in a
public place with some requesting to do interviews over the phone.
The interviews were semi-structured and used visual aids to elicit responses. They were also often
adapted to the profile or occupation of the individual being interviewed. For example, when
speaking with human rights activists, questions were centred on the investigations they carried out
at the time. In contrast, when talking with residents I asked them about their experience of the
operation or that of their acquaintances. Participants were also shown pictures printed on paper
from the #KenyaImNotATerrorist campaign (see Annex 1), which saw residents of Eastleigh taking to
Twitter to condemn the actions of the government during the operation and to debunk many of the
stereotypes about Kenyan Somalis prevalent in Kenya society.
For these interviews I relied upon photo elicitation, for as Collier and Collier put it, ‘photographs
sharpen the memory and give the interview an immediate character of realistic reconstruction’
(1986: 106). In using this method, I was able to broach topics that might not have ordinarily surfaced
had I conducted a simple question and answer interview. Indeed, as Collier and Collier write,
‘photographs can also be tools with which to obtain knowledge beyond that provided through direct
analysis’4 (1986: 99). The pictures facilitated the interview process, by sparking people’s memory
and bringing out anecdotes about the stereotyping of Kenyan Somalis, experiences from the time of
the operation and even jokes about the police. Buckley distinguishes between two forms of analysis
when employing photo elicitation: direct and indirect. Direct analysis is when the interviewee
‘identifies the content of the photos and provides commentary on the context for that content’,
whereas during indirect analysis responses ‘may instead result from evocation’ (2014: 771-772). By
introducing the pictures from the Twitter campaign, ‘the informants are relieved of the stress of
being the subject of the interrogation… Photographs allow them to tell their own story
4 Emphasis in the original
20
spontaneously’ (Collier & Collier, 1986: 106). The images also make sure that the participants stayed
on topic and did not stray out of the area of interest.
Sitting down with residents of Eastleigh as well as the creators of the campaign helped me to better
understand the context behind the photographs. Just Collier and Collier’s describe, ‘we were asking
questions of the photographs and the informants became our assistants in discovering the answers
to these questions in the realities of the photographs. We were exploring the photographs
together’5 (1986:105). Moreover, I was also conscious of the way in which different participants
handled the photographs or their ‘sensory engagement’ with the photographs in Edwards’ words
(2005:36). Some chose to rifle through them quickly, merely glancing at the messages, others
diligently read each message. One participant even looked to see if they recognised anyone and
pointed out those involved in the campaign they knew. For Edwards, noticing the different ways in
which people handled the photographs stems from an understanding that they are ‘not merely a
result of social relations but active within them, maintaining, reproducing and articulating shifting
relations’ (2005: 29). To me, these contrasting reactions to the photographic material in part seemed
to illustrate how seriously they took the campaign and whether for them it represented a short-lived
outburst of a transient nature or a lasting attempt to effectuate change and alter attitudes.
Apart from broaching new subjects via the photographs, I found that in several of the interviews
showing the pictures also put the participants at ease. They did not feel they had to explain the ways
in which Eastleigh has been mis-characterised and or to deconstruct the prevalent stereotypes that
abound about Kenyan Somalis. They were more relaxed and more informative as a result of the use
of photos from a Twitter campaign that was familiar to the participants and on the whole they
approved of. One notable restriction of this method was that I could not show images over the
phone with female participants who did not want to meet in person. Somewhat paradoxically, using
photo elicitation was thus both restricting and methodologically enriching.
5 Emphasis in the original
21
Aside from this limitation, other problems I encountered whilst conducting the interviews were
occasional language barriers, some initial scepticism about being recorded using a tape recorder and
altered behaviour on the part of the participant depending on the setting in which the interview was
being conducted. Despite these methodological constraints, however, I felt that on the whole I was
able to glean an interesting and diverse set of perspectives. In terms of my positionality as a
researcher and the attendant ethical considerations of using such a methodology, I don’t purport to
speak on behalf of those interviewed as part of the research. Instead, I seek to amplify a counter-
narrative that emerged within Eastleigh at the time of Operation Usalama Watch. This concern
stems from a desire to bridge a gap between academia and activism, for too often academic work
assumes that it is neutral and apolitical (Foucault, 1969). This dissertation is political. It recognises
that choosing which message to amplify and deciding who to interview are inherently political
decisions, for they represent the subject matter in a particular way.
Focus Group
At the very end of my fieldwork I also conducted a focus group discussion with 6 residents of
Eastleigh (3 male and 3 female). The participants were all under 30 and the focus group was held in
Eastleigh at the offices of a local youth forum. During the discussion, various forms of media were
shown to the participants using a PowerPoint presentation. These included quotes from
parliamentarians about Eastleigh, the trailer for Eye in the Sky (a recently released Hollywood movie
set in Eastleigh) and government advertising campaigns about security and de-radicalisation issues.
The intention was to generate a discussion about how Eastleigh and Kenyan Somalis are perceived
both by Kenyan society and internationally, as well as to get the participants to discuss among
themselves what they thought of the material introduced. The dynamic in the focus group was very
different to one-on-one interviews because, as Morgan and Krueger write:
Having the security of being among others who share many of their feelings and experiences, the participants possess a basis for sharing their views. Thus focus group interviews […] are especially useful when working with categories of people who have historically had limited power and influence.
22
(1993: 17)
In this respect, I acted more as a facilitator, as participants build off each other’s points and shared
anecdotes that might not otherwise have surfaced through direct questioning. As such, the focus
group was useful ‘in revealing not only what participants think but also why they do so’ (Bratten &
Liatto-Katundu, 1994: 537).
Digital Archival Research
In many ways, the internet has come to constitute an ‘archive of archives’ in Sentilles’ words (2005:
136). As such, it comes laden with problems with that plague the conventional archive namely, those
associated with power and silence. In speaking about the colonial archive, Stoler notes how there
was a shift from studying the archive-as-source to the archive-as-subject, for she contends that ‘we
are no longer studying things, but the making of them’ (2002: 89). Put more succinctly, the archive
can be construed as a ‘system of statements… that shape the specific regularities of what can and
cannot be said’ (Foucault cited in Stoler, 2002: 97). These are considerations I kept in mind when
searching for content about Operation Usalama Watch online. Evidently, determining who has the
power to speak and who is silenced online depends primarily on the digital space in question. There
is a clear power differential in terms of who can and cannot speak on Twitter and who writes the
column articles in Kenya’s daily papers. Generally speaking however, Turner has argued that the
growth of online media has led to what he terms a ‘demotic turn’ (2010), whereby ordinary people
have an ever increasing presence online and ‘are able to break “news”, produce media content, or
voice their opinions publicly’ (Murthy, 2012: 6). However, this does not imply that there are no
power considerations to be taken into account when using online sources. Turner cautions that ‘one
can’t jump to the conclusion that a widening of access necessarily carries with it a democratic
politics’ (2010: 1).
To the contrary, there are clear ways in which online content is controlled by those in power and can
be manipulated to amplify a particular message. For instance, the Kenyan government has been
23
accused of creating fake Twitter accounts that generate pro-government messages (Kamau, 2014).
This was confirmed by a source who works in government and wanted to remain anonymous:
It is part of politics. There are some things you can’t say through official accounts. There are some things you cannot release or be seen to be the one saying them. We used to use [fake accounts] to release certain kinds of information, especially on the opposition.
(Anonymous A, 2016)
Quite patently, the manner in which digital content is contested online is very different from the
colonial archive Stoler was writing about, but to some extent her assertion that ‘there is no political
power without control of the archive’ rings true online too (2002: 96). My interest thus lies in the
way in which the digital archive concerning Operation Usalama Watch was negotiated, contested
and shaped through a variety of mediums and actors, all wielding various degrees of power.
In searching for relevant content online about Operation Usalama Watch, I searched the Twitter
accounts of government departments, officials and security personnel as well as prominent
members of the online Eastleigh community and filtered the content for April 2014 (when the
operation occurred). In this sense, Ovadia points out that Twitter is unique for ‘even a standard
Google search does not provide a way to search results chronologically’ (2009:202). I also searched
for hashtags associated with Operation Usalama Watch both on Twitter and Facebook such as:
#KasaraniConcentratonCamp, #KenyaImNotATerrorist and #UsalamWatch. Hashtags such as these
‘allows searchers to capture the Zeitgeist of certain events’ (Ovadia, 2009: 202). Bruns and Burgess,
building on Benedict Anderson (1983), argue that hashtags create a temporary ‘imagined
community’ (2012: 804) and instantaneously ‘provide access to conversations’ (Ovadia, 2009: 204).
Furthermore, I searched YouTube for content that mentioned Operation Usalama Watch in the title
or description. This included clips of press conferences and interviews given by security and
government representatives at the time of the operation uploaded onto official government and
local media YouTube channels as well as songs written about the operation that were uploaded by
Eastleigh residents. I also used quotes from articles and blogs I had read at the time of the operation.
24
Chapter 2: Securitisation of Somalis in Kenya in Historical Perspective
If you have to go fish, you go to the lake, you don’t go up a mountain. In Kenya, naturally
Eastleigh is the catchment area.
– Marvin Tumbo, CEO of Socialight Media Kenya, (2016)
For the average Kenyan who is in the police, I am the other in his world.
– Ina Cawsgurow, a Kenyan Somali Poet and Playwright, (2016)
This chapter traces how Eastleigh and Kenyan Somalis were historically securitised, highlighting
some of the parallels and differences in their treatment over time. It seeks to debunk certain
misconceptions about Kenyan Somalis and to provide historical context through which to interpret
how Operation Usalama Watch was legitimised and justified.
History of Eastleigh
One of the most pervasive misconceptions that persists today is the assumption that Kenyan Somalis
are only temporary residents in Nairobi. On the contrary, Whittaker has demonstrated how ‘Somali
claims in Nairobi can be traced back to the first establishment of the British East Africa Protectorate’
(2015: 117). Many came to Nairobi in the early 1900s through trade or ‘with Europeans as askaris
[guards] and gun-bearers, or entered government service as clerks, interpreters, or soldiers in the
King’s African Rifles (KAR)’ (Whittaker, 2015: 120).
Under colonial rule, Nairobi was segregated by race. In the eyes of the colonial administration,
Somalis were seen as nomads or livestock traders and were thus not seen as natural urban dwellers.
When Eastleigh was first established in 1921, it was a predominantly Indian neighbourhood.
However, poor infrastructure meant that over time many richer Indians chose to live in other parts
of Nairobi such as Parklands. ‘By the 1930s and 1940s, Eastleigh was the biggest settlement of
Somalis in Nairobi’ (Whittaker, 2015: 130), but even up until 1962, Carrier notes that it remained
25
more of a ‘Little India’ rather than a ‘Little Mogadishu’ with 764 Somalis compared to 17,811 Asians
living in the estate (Forthcoming: 36). It was not until the late 1980s, when the situation in
neighbouring Somalia worsened that the number of Somalis living in Eastleigh rose dramatically.
Moreover as Whittaker points out, Somalis have also asserted their right to be part of the city from
the very beginning. They confronted the colonial government when they were forcibly moved, made
to wear colonial identification documents and even when the colonial government threatened to
demolish their houses due to poor health standards (2015: 122-131). It is therefore important to
recognise, not only the Somali presence in Nairobi from its very inception, but also ‘the longevity of
Somali claims for rights and recognition from the state’ (Whittaker, 2015: 117).
Today, however, contemporary Eastleigh is characterised by paradoxes. Being located right next to
Nairobi’s Central Business District (CBD) it is a simultaneously included and excluded space,
straddling the divide between being central and marginal. As Carrier writes, ‘the Eastleigh story is
one of a dialectic between state absence and state presence’ (Forthcoming: 201); present during
swoops, but absent in terms of infrastructure provision, economic regulation and crime prevention,
thus creating the perception that ‘there is no government in Eastleigh’ as Lul Issack Ali put it (2016).
Indeed, the contrast between ‘public decay in the face of private development has become
increasingly stark’ (Carrier, Forthcoming: 67).
Moreover, the economy of Eastleigh has become a force to be reckoned with. Ahmed Mohammed,
the former head of the Eastleigh Business Association (EBA) reckons, ‘30% of Nairobi county revenue
comes from Eastleigh and over 100,000 people come to shop in Eastleigh daily’ (2016). Furthermore,
the Vice Chairman of the EBA, Hussein Guled, claims that ‘ethnic Somali entrepreneurs have
invested $1.5 billion in Eastleigh alone, and business worth $100 million is transacted every month’
(cited in Warah, 2014: 128). Though it is difficult to verify such figures, the power of private capital is
such that as Burhan Iman, the Director of Eastleigh-based youth group Eastleighwood, sees it,
‘Eastleigh is another CBD – it is a city-within-a-city’ (2016). Other interviewees were more sceptical
26
about the sustainability of the Eastleigh model arguing that whilst Eastleigh may indeed be on the
up, it does not actually produce anything itself. It is simply a ‘broker economy’ and there is ‘nothing
unique about it’ and as such anyone can enter the market and start competing (Cawsgurow, 2016). A
similar fear is that Eastleigh is simply a ‘displacement economy’ born out of insecurity in Somalia
through a process of creative destruction (Hammar cited in Carrier, Forthcoming: 48; Carrier &
Lochery, 2013: 335), which raises the question of what happens to Eastleigh if stability returns to
Somalia.
Another misrepresentation of Eastleigh which prevails is the automatic association with either
Somalis or Kenyan Somali, even though it was historically an Indian neighbourhood and its
contemporary demographic make-up is characterised by ‘super-diversity’ (Vertovec cited in Carrier,
Forthcoming: 14). Eastleigh’s nickname ‘Little Mogadishu’ is therefore misleading and conceals the
wide variety of nationalities and ethnicities that make up Eastleigh’s population. Moreover,
movement of goods and people typify the estate and lie at the very heart of its success as a business
hub. As Carrier writes:
Eastleigh can seem a peculiar place full of apparent contradiction: a place deeply associated with refugees and social marginality, yet also a thriving and dynamic hub of trade; a place long associated with a decayed public infrastructure, yet a place of great private wealth.
(Forthcoming: 203)
Yet despite these contradictions and tensions, there is a pervasive and conventionally held view
about Eastleigh and the Kenyan Somalis who live there that permeates Kenya society.
History of North Eastern Kenya
In part, this is because ‘Eastleigh is an extension of a historical problem that has existed in Kenya vis-
à-vis the Kenyan Somali population in Kenya’, as Yusuf Hassan the MP for Kamukunji (the
constituency in which Eastleigh is located) puts it (2016). Therefore, to fully understand
contemporary securitisation of Eastleigh and the discourse used to justify Operation Usalama Watch,
it needs to be placed in the context of key events that have affected the Kenyan Somali population
27
outside of Eastleigh. Even before independence, Kenya’s former Northern Frontier District (NFD)
where the majority of Kenyan Somalis live had been neglected and repressed by the colonial
government. In 1960, the whole of the NFD – an area covering approximately 102,000 square miles
or half of Kenya’s land mass (Whittaker, 2014: 2) – had only one secondary school (Glomnes, 2013:
6). In 1962, a referendum was held to decide whether the NFD would be part of the newly
independent Somali Republic or continue being part of Kenya. Even though over 80% voted in favour
of leaving Kenya to join the new Somalia (Warah, 2014: 130), ‘the British ignored the result of their
own referendum’ (Schlee & Abdullahi, 2012: 9).
With independence in 1963, the call for secession was left unsolved. The attitude of the Kenyan
government was summed up by Jomo Kenyatta, the first post-independence president, in a
statement to those in favour of secession who he dismissively told to ‘pack up your camels and go to
Somalia’ (Branch, 2014: 642). Over the course of the next four years in what came to be known as
the ‘Shifta War’, ‘somewhere between 2,000 and 7,000 people (out of a total population of 200,000
in 1963) were killed’ (Whittaker, 2014: 1). The word shifta is pejorative and means ‘bandit’ in Ge’ez,
though it is also used in Amharic and Tigrinya (Whittaker, 2014: 1). It was first used by Jomo
Kenyatta in parliament when he said ‘to the people who live in North Eastern region, I have this to
say: We know that many of you are herdsmen during the day and shifta during the night’ (Warah,
2014: 132).
Defining the enemy and labelling them as bandits instead of guerrillas was an important rhetorical
device employed by the government because it served to de-legitimise their cause of secession and
equated inhabitants of the region with petty lawlessness (Glomnes, 2013: 24-25). It also justified
continued repression and later the government’s policy of forced villagisation as a
‘counterinsurgency measure that [was] designed to separate civilians from the insurgents’
(Whittaker, 2014: 15). That being said, life in these villages was characterised by inadequate water
and food supply, crimes against villagers by the security services and poor health and education
28
facilities. Villagers were also routinely screened and sedenterisation through forced villagisation was
key in further extending what Scott has termed the ‘legibility’ of the state into areas that were
marginal and excluded (1998: 2).
Interestingly, Whittaker also draws a parallel between the colonial administration’s response to the
Mau Mau Rebellion and the policy of villagisation during the Shifta War. As she writes, ‘the use of
state sponsored violence within villages provides yet another example of the way in which the new
Kenyan postcolonial elite internalized colonial practices’ (2014, 125). More often than not these
practices were counterproductive as collective punishment and ‘state violence may have produced
new recruits for the shifta’ (Whittaker, 2014: 17).
In part this explains the significant role that propaganda played in the conflict, but as Glomnes notes
building on Jeffrey Herbst (2000), it was also a means through which the state compensated for its
weakness and projected its power in peripheral regions (2013: 44-49). One of the central challenges
it faced was that in an era when radio communication was paramount, the Kenyan Broadcasting
Corporation’s (KBC) transmission – i.e. the government’s mouthpiece – did not reach far-flung parts
of the North Eastern Province (NEP). Instead the region was tuned into the Somali Republic’s radio
station. Whittaker points out that ‘the extent of the Somali Republic’s radio war was such that the
Kenyan Ministry of Internal Security and Defence spent £130,000 on a new 100KW transmitter so
that the KBC’s own Somali service would be clearer to hear in northern Kenya’ (2014: 101). What is
notable during this period is the importance of propaganda for the government and how closely its
tactics resembled the colonial administration’s actions during the Mau Mau Uprising.
The continuities in behaviour between the colonial administration and the post-independence
government persisted even after the Shifta War, for as Otsieno Namwaya from Human Rights Watch
(HRW) notes ‘the war ended, but the hostility against the Kenyan Somalis didn’t’ (2016). In 1980,
under Daniel arap Moi, the Garissa Primary School Massacre took place when Kenyan security forces
first burnt the village of Bulla Kartasi and then interned residents on the primary school’s football
29
pitch depriving them of food and water for several days. Over 3,000 people were murdered or
starved to death (Naimasiah, 2015). This was followed by the Wagalla Massacre in 1984 where:
About 5,000 Degodia clansmen were rounded up and detained at Wagalla airstrip, nine kilometres outside Wajir town. Eyewitness accounts suggest that the men were subject to security force brutality, which included being burned, beaten, and shot. It is estimated that about 2,000 Degodia were killed.
(Whittaker, 2014: 139)
Whilst it is very difficult to determine whether these were state orchestrated massacres, they were
certainly perceived as such by most Kenyan Somalis and were made possible through the neglect of
the NEP (Lochery, 2012: 621). It was also only recently in 2014 that a monument to victims of the
Wagalla Massacre was unveiled to commemorate the 30th anniversary – prior to this it was simply
viewed as an understudied chapter in the history of the ‘forgotten north’ (Anderson, 2014: 658,
671).
Furthermore, Emma Lochery explores screening exercises that were conducted under Moi in 1989
similar to those carried out as part of the forced villagisation programme during the Shifta period.
The Kenyan government framed these screenings ‘as a response to disorder and insecurity in
northern Kenya – problems blamed on the increased presence of “aliens” from Somalia’ (Lochery,
2012: 615). As part of the screenings, Somalis were made to recite the genealogy of their family and
sub-clan which would then be confirmed by elders in their home area, in order to determine
whether they were Kenyan Somali or Somalis from Somalia (Lochery, 2012: 629). The screenings
were not confined to the NEP, but even occurred in Eastleigh. In describing the raids in Eastleigh,
Lochery writes:
Police raided homes, businesses, hotels, restaurants, and matatus [public mini-buses] in Eastleigh and Pangani, checking for identity papers. Police surrounded a mosque in Eastleigh, arrested worshippers, and confiscated identity cards.
(2012:624)
30
As such, Lochery argues that the screenings were ‘not just about drawing lines between insiders and
outsiders, but about which insiders belong to which territorial space’ (2012: 615). In so doing, the
state reinforced the colonial fixation with territorially demarking and reifying identities. Under
colonialism, movement between regions was regulated by identity cards known as kipande in
Kiswahili that prevented people from straying too far from their home region. Over time, Kenyans
were discouraged from intermingling and came to perceive themselves in terms of their ethnicity
(Muigai, 1995:163).
Similarly, Lochery also contends that the screenings created ‘graduated citizenship’ or a citizenship
ladder, whereby the difference between groups is rendered more overtly visible with some groups
becoming considered more Kenyan than others (2012: 617). As a result, many Kenyan Somalis
regard themselves as second-class citizens that are not quite Kenyan. Or as Daud Yussuf, the CEO of
Key FM put it, ‘for a young Somali boy or girl who has been brought up in Northern Kenya there is
this feeling that we are still not Kenyan. People who are coming from Nairobi are being asked “how
is Kenya?”’ (2016). Hassan Wario Arero makes a similar argument in a piece entitled Coming to
Kenya, where he details how ‘minority groups such as the Borana still feel detached from the Kenyan
nation, a nation that continues to appear to them as something very remote’ (2007: 293). This sense
of marginalisation and alienation from the benefits of being full citizens persists today, as the
Kenyan Somali poet and playwright Ina Cawsgurow puts it:
The common Kenyan is misinformed in the sense that he is made to understand that I don’t belong to Kenya. He is made to understand that I belong to Somalia. The history that I lived here even before them is never discussed so for the average Kenyan who is in the police, I am the other in his world.6
(2016)
In part, this sentiment of ‘othering’ stems from these repeated attempts by the colonial and post-
colonial state to deal with the ‘Somali problem’. Considered as a whole, they form a distinct pattern
and are symptomatic of the state’s continual project to entrench the ‘territorialisation of ethnicity’
6 Emphasis my own.
31
(Schlee, 2013 cited in Carrier & Kochore, 2014: 2), further the sedenterisation of nomadic people
and improve the legibility of the state. These continuities suggest that all that has changed are the
labels: ‘shifta’, ‘alien’ and now ‘terrorist’, are all seen as semantic devices used to justify and
legitimise intervention.
In conducting interviews about Operation Usalama Watch, parallels with the historical treatment of
Kenyan Somalis were often mentioned by respondents. For instance, Daud Yussuf, even went as far
as to describe Kasarani Stadium, which was used as a screening venue during Operation Usalama
Watch, as ‘the third concentration camp that Somalis have been taken to by the Kenyan government
since independence’ after the Garissa and Wagalla (2016). Parallels were even being drawn in the
media at the time of the operation. For example, in one column in The Standard, one of Kenya’s
leading newspapers, Senator for Mandera Billow Kerrow likened Operation Usalama Watch to
Britain’s gulags in Kenya (see Elkins, 2005) and Kenyatta’s policy during the Shifta War. For him:
The script is the same; the actors are different. The British Gulag policy that incarcerated Kikuyus is now the government’s prescription for Somalis… Regrettably, the government seems to be reading from Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s script.
(Kerrow, 2014)
Daud Yussuf expressed a very similar opinion, arguing that ‘it is like President Uhuru has been
reading from the book of his father on how to deal with dissent in the Somali community’ (2016).
Many of those interviewed were all too aware of this history and felt it necessary to preface any
discussion of Operation Usalama Watch by drawing direct comparisons with the state’s past actions.
32
Chapter 3: The Contemporary Securitisation of
Eastleigh
We get used to it.
– Abdulaziz Bishar, Eastleigh Resident, (2016)
We were powerless, we just sat and watched what happened.
– Joan Nyongesa, Kituo cha Sheria, (2016)
Though parallels to colonialism and post-independence rule abound, when interviewing Ahmed
Mohammed he began by highlighting that more recently ‘there were other operations before
Operation Usalama Watch, but not of the same scale’ (2016). A Human Rights Watch report
published before the operation in 2013 highlights how: ‘police extortion and arbitrary arrests of
refugees in Eastleigh is not new, nor is discrimination and abuse by Kenyan security forces of Somali
Kenyans and Somali refugees’ (2013: 12). Even more unprecedented was the launch of Operation
Usalama Watch in April 2014, which was an intensification of what was fast becoming standard
practice. Extortion, corruption and screenings were becoming so commonplace that one resident of
Eastleigh, Abdulaziz Bishar remarked ‘we get used to it’ (2016).
Moreover, the screenings in Eastleigh are also intimately linked to the manner in which the Kenyan
government has sought to deal with refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya. On 13 December 2012,
the government announced the suspension of the registration of all asylum-seekers and refugees in
urban centres, which prevented anyone from obtaining refugee or asylum status and documentation
(Amnesty International, 2014: 13). On the same day, it also ‘ordered all 55,000 refugees and asylum
seekers living in Nairobi back to Kakuma or Dadaab [refugee camps] or they would face forcible
relocation’ (HRW, 2013: 2). The encampment policy, as it has come to be known, was then
challenged on 23 January 2013 by Petition 19 in the High Court by the Legal Advice Centre, Kituo cha
33
Sheria, which works closely with urban refugees. The High Court ruled in favour of Kituo cha Sheria
and stipulated that the government would have to wait before implementing the encampment
policy because it had ‘not demonstrated that the proliferation of the refugees in urban areas is the
main source of insecurity’ (Amnesty International, 2014: 9). In spite of this ruling, the Department of
Refugee Affairs (DRA) closed its offices and stopped registrations. As Human Rights Watch reported
at the time:
Asylum seekers in Nairobi and other cities are therefore unable to apply for asylum with the authorities and refugees are unable to renew their identity cards, increasing the risk of arbitrary arrest and detention for unlawful presence in Kenya.
(2013: 43)
In the run up to Operation Usalama Watch and roughly one year later, on 26 March 2014, the
Minister for Interior, Joseph Ole Lenku, issued a government directive that directly contradicted the
High Court’s ruling, ordering all refugees to go back to the camps citing security issues as the primary
reason for pursuing this action (KNCHR, 2015: 3). Operation Usalama Watch was thus interpreted as
an attempt to implement the encampment policy by force (Carrier, Forthcoming: 194).
Again, Kituo cha Sheria sought legal recourse in the High Court, but was blocked from doing so. As
Solomon Wasia Masitsa who used to work at Kituo cha Sheria phrased it:
When the directive came out we were ready to rush to the High Court to cite the government for contempt of court, but the UNHCR […] told us to shelve that because they thought that ligation at this point in time would amount to antagonism that would jeopardise UNHCR's engagement with the government in camp operations.
(2016)
At the time the UNHCR was the sole contributor to Kituo cha Sheria’s forced migration programme
and as such, Joan Nyongesa, who currently works the organisation, felt that during Operation
Usalama Watch ‘we were powerless, we just sat and watched what happened’ (2016). The only
institutional challenge to the government during the operation came from the Eastleigh Business
Association (EBA), which managed to get an interim order from the High Court to stop the operation,
but the government ignored it. For the most part, institutional recourse failed because Eastleigh had
34
been successfully constructed as a security threat both over the long and the short-term. The
historical securitisation of Eastleigh has been examined, but the manner in which it was securitised
in the years prior to the operation has yet to be explored.
The latest phase in the construction of Eastleigh as an existential threat to Kenyan society arguably
began in 2011 when the Kenya Defence Force (KDF) went into Somalia. During the debate in
parliament on whether or not to intervene in Somalia, the Assistant Minister for Internal Security,
Joshua Orwa Ojode, told parliament that Al-Shabaab was ‘like a big animal with a tail in Somalia. We
are still fighting the tail while the head is resting here in Eastleigh’ (Mzalendo, 2011). Yusuf Hassan,
the MP who represents Eastleigh, remembered that:
We had an interesting debate on the subject and I was a minority because the entire Parliament agreed with [MP Joshua Ojode]. There were Members of Parliament who said send troops to clear and to pacify Eastleigh.
(2016)
The following week the same quote was picked up on in a column by Macharia Gaitho in the Daily
Nation. He wrote that:
To kill a snake, goes the popular truism, you cut off its head. Perhaps, then, somebody should explain why Kenyan soldiers are pursuing Al-Shabaab militants deep inside Somalia instead of taking out the nexus right here at home.
(Gaitho, 2011)
Over time, Eastleigh gradually became associated with terrorism and public opinion was very much
in favour of some form of intervention. Eastleigh’s reputation as a dangerous place is one that was
constructed through discourse, but also by action taken on the part of foreign governments. For
instance, the US, UK and France have issued travel warnings advising against all but essential travel
to Eastleigh, which remain in place today and further entrench the perception that Eastleigh is a ‘no
go area’ (Carrier, Forthcoming: 2).
35
Picture 1: Maps of British and French travel advice for Kenya (FCO, 2016; Ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Développement international, 2015)
As Abdi Latif Ega wrote at the time, ‘the current imaginary, hard driven by the media, is that
Eastleigh is just another country at our doorstep, the barbarian at the gate’ (cited in Warah, 2014:
143). Indeed, such characterisations of Eastleigh, far from being neutral and harmless, have a
concrete and tangible impact on the way policies are drawn up or as Myers puts it ‘representations
of space have consequences’ (cited in Carrier, Forthcoming: 205). In the same parliamentary debate,
Joshua Ojode went on to say, ‘after the Somalia thing is over, I am going to do a mother of all
operations here in Nairobi to remove all Al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda’ (cited in Lochery, 2012: 637).
Consequently, even before the operation was conducted the stage was set. By depicting Kenya as a
‘frontline state in the war against terrorism’ (KNCHR, 2015: 3), the government was able to
intervene in Eastleigh how it saw fit, whilst continuing to maintain popular support. For as Marvin
Tumbo, who manages President Uhuru Kenyatta’s social media accounts, put it ‘for every message
that was attacking Uhuru [Kenyatta] for Operation Usalama Watch, there were 5-10 people saying
kick the Kenyan Somalis out’ (2016). The Executive Director of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission
36
(KHRC), George Kegoro, concurred with this assessment stating: ‘the operation was highly popular at
the street level’ (2016).
Performative Enactment
To a certain extent, the popularity of the operation stemmed from the government’s highly effective
communications strategy. As one interviewee who wished to remain anonymous framed it, the
current government ‘have perfected the art of PR’ so much so that Uhuru Kenyatta has jokingly
come to be referred to as the ‘PResident’ (Anonymous B, 2016). In effect, Operation Usalama Watch
had more to do with the performing security than the provision of it. Indeed, the dichotomy
between perception and reality is reoccurring theme in much of the literature on statecraft in Africa.
For instance, Richard Reid draws a distinction in his work on war pre-colonial Africa between ‘war as
fact and war as image’ (2007: 8). Similarly, in their work on public bureaucracies in Africa, Bierschenk
and de Sardan use Migdal and Schlichte’s work to differentiate ‘the image of the state’ from ‘the
practices of the state’ or between ‘seeing like a state’ and ‘doing the state’ (cited in Bierschenk & de
Sardan, 2014: 14). More specific to Kenya, Moss and O’Hare consider the centrality of performance
to Kenyan politics during the 2013 televised election debates (2014: 78). During these debates, there
was a pressing need to convey the peace narrative following the 2007-08 post-election violence by
staging democracy in a visible, open and transparent manner with all its attendant hallmarks.
Clearly, performativity is central to the way in which statecraft in various African contexts has been
theorised. However, it is equally applicable outside Africa and can be used as a general framework
for analysing how states function in a variety of contexts. Cynthia Weber uses the notion of a
‘performative state’ to argue that sovereignty in all states has to be transmitted and conveyed
through ‘foreign policy speeches, cables, press conferences, etc.’ and as such, these mediums can
‘be analysed as performative enactments of a state’s sovereignty’ (1998: 92). Her argument is not
dissimilar from Michael Billig who contends that forms of ‘banal nationalism’ such as flag-raising
ceremonies, national anthems, national holidays and other mundane, everyday acts of patriotism,
37
are central to the manner in which national identities becoming ingrained and to the manner in
which states become accepted as legitimate entities (1995). They are not to be ignored and should
instead be studied to understand how the sovereignty and territoriality of the state are maintained,
or as Weber writes:
A performative understanding of state sovereignty suggests that sovereignty is undecidable because its meaning cannot be fixed, for whenever the meaning of sovereignty is stabilised one finds that the meaning of sovereignty has already moved on to something else.
(1998: 90)
For her, sovereign states are continually in the process of becoming and constantly being
performatively enacted.
In the same way, Operation Usalama Watch was intimately linked to performance and the need to
create the perception that the security apparatus was in control of the security situation as well as
responsive to public opinion. In this sense, MP Yusuf Hassan contends that ‘the government
objective was achieved in Eastleigh because the government was able to turn away the heat. Some
people think [the operation] was a total failure, but it depends on which perspective you were
looking at it from’ (2016). Framed in this way, it raises the more fundamental question that John-
Allan Namu, a Kenyan journalist, expressed to me in these words: ‘then again, ‘what is security? It is
action, but it is also performance… You have to make people believe that you have a whip you can
crack’ (2016). Marvin Tumbo interpreted the operation in similar terms, ‘for me Operation Usalama
Watch was very deliberate because it served a purpose, it created the impression that something is
being done… It was a show of force’ (2016).
Put more simply, states don’t just speak security they also do security through performance. In this
sense, Eastleigh has come to resemble ‘a stage where the government can act the authoritarian
state with apparent impunity, as it has been able to do in Kenya’s north since Independence’
(Carrier, Forthcoming: 180). For as Solomon Wasia Masitsa at the KNCHR contends Operation
Uslama Watch showed that ‘the government wanted to make a statement. Unfortunately, the
38
refugees found themselves to be the subject matter of that statement’ (2016). Resultantly, there
ought to be a greater appreciation for the ‘theatre of power’ as Scott terms it (1985: 288) or the
‘theatrics of violence’ (Carrier, Forthcoming: 198), not just the rhetoric used to justify it.
Nevertheless, performance theory does not capture the entire dynamic at play in this regard. It
explains primarily how the state performs security, but not at how this performance is accepted and
internalised by society at large. In this sense, the term ‘enactment’ is more accurate in describing
whether or not the state’s attempt to create the perception of security has been accepted, as it
implies there is a relationship between the state and the audience of a securitisation.
The Discourse of Cleanliness
Another key way in which the state was able to construct Eastleigh as a site of intervention was
through the language used to frame the operation. The IPOA’s report into the operation specifically
refers to operation’s original name: ‘Operation Sanitization of Eastleigh’ (2014: 2). A fact that MP
Yusuf Hassan did not want people to forget: ‘sanitisation is like you are killing cockroaches and pests
– that is the mentality [the security apparatus] have’ (2016). It was only later when allegations of
racial profiling and police brutality emerged, that it was duly renamed ‘Usalama Watch’ or ‘Security
Watch’. Despite these allegations, David Kimaiyo, the Inspector General of Police at the time of the
operation, thought the operation was ‘very successful and peaceful’ (2016).
However, as Burhan Iman is quick to point out, ‘even the word “usalama” – I hate it. You are talking
about “amani” [peace], but in fact you are doing the opposite’ (Iman, 2016). Though the name of the
operation was altered, the language used to describe it was still heavily dependent on the metaphor
of cleanliness and tidying up. For example, in the IPOA report the stated objective of the operation
was ‘to flush out Al-Shabaab’s adherents/aliens’ (IPOA, 2014: 2-3). During the operation, Kimaiyo
also wrote that the intention of the operation was to ‘weed out criminals from society’ (2014a),
whereas Joseph Ole Lenku, the Minister of Interior, was more forthright tweeting that ‘for the last
few months we’ve had heightened insecurity. time [sic] has come for a mop up to restore order.
39
#UsalamaWatch’ (InteriorCNG Ministry, 2014a). As was put more crudely to me by a taxi driver,
there is a prevalent perception that ‘Eastleigh is dirty’.
Ole Lenku’s call for a ‘mop up to restore order’ can be read using Mary Douglas’ work on the
concepts of purity and danger. She writes:
Dirt […] is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systemic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.
(1966: 35)
Labelling something as dirty or in need of sanitization, frames the object – Eastleigh in this instance –
as ‘matter out of place’ as she terms it, which ‘implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and
a contravention of that order’ (Douglas, 1966: 35). Within this orthodox conception, Eastleigh – with
its reputation for pirate money, rubbish-lined streets and repeated terrorist attacks – falls outside
the norm and contravenes the vision of an ordered, structured and above all, legible society.
Tellingly, Ole Lenku stated during a television interview during the operation that ‘Eastleigh has
operated as if it is not part of Kenya. It is time as a government to bring order to every part of this
country’ (NTV Kenya, 2014b) and took to Twitter with a similar message where he expressed that a
‘state of lawlessness has existed in Eastleigh for more than 20 years’ (InteriorCNG Ministry, 2014b).
The message is clear: Eastleigh is depicted as a space that had yet to be incorporated into the state
structure and Operation Usalama Watch was the means by which to achieve this end. A virtual
quarantining of Eastleigh followed with checkpoints set up at all the entrances to the
neighbourhood. The government was able to act ‘like there was an emergency although [they] had
never declared that there was an emergency’ (Hassan, 2016). This is the very essence of
securitisation, as Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde write: ‘securitisation… means to present an issue as
urgent and existential, as so important that it should be exposed to the normal haggling of politics
but should be dealt with decisively by top leaders prior to other issues’ (1997: 29).
40
Similarly, the rhetoric of cleanliness can be applied to anyone who looks Somali and does not
conform to the ideal conception of what a model citizen looks or acts like. According to one of the
Managing Editors of the Daily Nation, ‘it would appear that every little, two-bit Somali has a big
dream – to blow us up, knock down our buildings and slaughter our children’ (Mathui, 2014). For
some, Somalis are all too easily associated with terrorists. There was also a widespread ‘perception
that terrorists must be foreigners. They are not legitimate Kenyans’, as Billow Kerrow put it (NTV
Kenya, 2014a). For example, at the time of the operation Joseph Ole Lenku described Eastleigh as an
area where ‘we have aliens who do not even speak our national language (Kiswahili or even English)
or people who are clearly not Kenyan’ (NTV Kenya, 2014b). The politics of labelling communities or
spaces as such is never neutral and instead with time and frequent use become reality-forming, as
Douglas notes:
As learning proceeds objects are named. Their names then affect the way they are perceived next time: once labelled they are more speedily slotted into the pigeon-hole in the future. As time goes on and experiences pile up, we make a greater and greater investment in our system of labels.
(1966: 36)
The combined history of labelling in Kenya has come to create categories and boxes, which
taxonomise the world into simplistic and easily understandable format. The discourse of cleanliness
that surrounded the operation not only invoked this long history of labelling, but actively
dehumanised the residents of Eastleigh as well. As Keguro Macharia wrote at the time of the
operation:
Framed variously as “anti-Kenyan”, “illegal”, “alien”, “terrorists”, Somalis are framed as unassailable to “project Kenya”, that is, at base, devoted to keeping Somalis killable. In a very important way, Kenyan-ness is defined against Somaliness, even as Kenya-ness required disposable Somali communities, lives and bodies.
(cited in Warah, 2014: 134)
In essence, the operation contributed to a process of de-personification that relegates those of
Somalis heritage to the status of ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966: 35). The operation thus did
41
‘not simply acknowledge[e] that Somalis are unhuman; it is also actively unhumanising Somalis, a
fact acknowledged in one person’s question, “why are you treating us like livestock?”’ (Macharia,
2014).
In a similar vein, one of my interview participants described Kasarani stadium as being ‘like a place
where you keep cattle’ (Abdi, 2016), whilst another interviewee who went to the stadium to bargain
for the release of a family friend called it the ‘worst place I have ever seen in my life’ going on to
mention how ‘it was inhumane’ (Bishar, 2016). Hamza Egal, one of the people involved in the
#KenyaImNotATerrorist campaign went as far as to suggest that this was the very purpose behind
the operation, which sought to actively ‘segregate who is human from who is not’ (2016). In the
weeks that followed the operation this rhetoric became internalised and there were incidents of
ordinary Kenyans ‘expelling Kenyans of Somali descent and Somalis from public transport and
denying them rental accommodation’ (Wanyeki, 2014a). Very quickly the discourse of cleanliness
translated into action and a ‘state of exception’ (Agamben, 2003) was created whereby it became
permissible to violate basic human rights and for David Kimaiyo, the Inspector General of Police at
the time, to issue a shoot-to-kill order (Warah, 2014: 140).
Even the term ‘operation’, depoliticised an intensely political decision and implied that it was carried
out with surgical precision. Interestingly however, many of the residents of Eastleigh I interviewed
did not use the term ‘operation’, but other names such as ‘swoop’, ‘lockdown’, ‘crackdown’ or even
‘the troubles’. Over time however, the arbitrary nature of the arrests became the focus of reporting
prompting David Kimaiyo to write:
The operation is aimed at restoring law and order and it is unfortunate that some Kenyans have trivialised the exercise to the view [sic] that it is aimed at certain religious groups and members of one particular community.
(2014b)
By the same token, during a live television appearance Ole Lenku also reiterated that ‘this is not
something that is targeted on one community, on one religion, it is targeted on criminals’ (NTV
42
Kenya, 2014b). In response, to these allegations the government started broadening the scope of
the operation to include other parts of Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Thika, Eldoret, Lamu, Malindi,
Garissa, Mandera, and Kitale (KNCHR, 2015: 4), but for MP Yusuf Hasan ‘this operation really was not
national. It was a deception by the authorities to say that this was a nation-wide operation’ (2016).
In the same way, it was also a misnomer to describe Operation Usalama Watch as a counter-
terrorism operation, as Otsieno Namwaya mentioned ‘no one was charged for terrorism, no one was
arrested even on a terrorism charge’ (2016).
Moreover, the state-led attempts to craft a compelling narrative surrounding Operation Usalama
Watch did not end with the operation. Two months afterwards, the government launched a
television and poster advertising campaign with the slogan ‘ulinzi unaanza na mimi, ulinzi unaanza
na wewe’ or ‘security starts with me, security starts with you’. In the television advertisement,
President Uhuru Kenyatta proclaims: ‘citizens and residents of Kenya we are together in the fight
against terrorism and together we will prevail’ (Uhuru Kenyatta TV, 2014). In speaking to Mukhtar
Abdi Ogle who works in the Executive Office of the President, he told me that the campaign was
designed to ‘allay the fears of discrimination… It was meant to restore confidence and trust in the
government and to distance themselves from the claim that they are targeting’ (2016).
The campaign was also linked to the installation of a new CCTV system across Nairobi and Mombasa.
The implication was that the state is always watching, yet many interviewees did not believe that the
CCTV cameras worked. This perception arose following the murder of MP George Muchai who was
shot on Kenyatta Avenue in the CBD roughly 20m from a CCTV camera, but to date no one has been
convicted of the murder (Cherono & Zadock, 2015). One taxi driver even likened the new cameras to
‘scarecrows in the shamba [field or farm]’.
43
Picture 2: A bill board from the government’s advertising campaign (Torfinn, 2014)
The contention that the government was performing the functions of security resonates here, as the
CCTV cameras were used as a deterrent instead of a functional tool for policing. As George Kegoro,
Executive Director of the KHRC notes ‘this government gets 100% on form. In terms of spectacular
performance they are very good, but that is probably where it ends’ (2016).
Following the operation, pictures were circulated of Uhuru Kenyatta in military fatigues (Daily
Nation, 2014), the government declared its intention to build a wall along the Kenya-Somalia border
(Lynch, 2015) and the government announced that Dadaab camp and the Department of Refugee
Affairs (DRA) were to be closed7 (Agutu, 2016b). These routine performances by the government is
representative of what Ahmed Mohammed called ‘management by crisis’ where the government
had to be seen to be doing something (2016). All these actions can be interpreted as instances of
performance on the part of the government that convince an audience that an existential threat
exists. But as John-Allan Namu points out ‘that a government would focus more on performance
than action is really where things go wrong… What this government has got wrong is that they are
over-performing, they are over-acting’ (2016). By over-acting they effectively shift the blame for the
7 More recently, the government announced for the second time that it would close Dadaab refugee camp and
permanently shut down the DRA because Dadaab represents ‘a dire threat to our people’s security’, according to Karanja Kibicho, the current Principal Secretary for Interior (2016).
44
security situation onto scapegoats and craft the impression that the problem is external not internal
(Lynch, 2015). Yet, while the government invested a lot of time and effort into defining Eastleigh in a
particular way and crafting the narrative surrounding Operation Usalama Watch, there were
informal means by which the very definition of Eastleigh was challenged and desecuritised.
45
Chapter 4: Resistance to the Securitisation of
Eastleigh
You don’t use a hammer to kill a mosquito.
– Mukhtar Ogle, Executive Office of the President, (2016)
They are catching the small fish and not looking for the shark.
– Muna Abdi, #KenyaImNotATerrorist campaigner, (2016)
Kenyan Somalis found justice on social media.
– Daud Yussuf, CEO of Key FM, (2016)
One of the main platforms of resistance was Twitter. Kenyans on Twitter are notoriously vocal and
active to the extent that they have their own hashtag: #KOT8. At the time of Operation Usalama
Watch, the two principle hashtags being used were #KasaraniConcentrationCamp in reference to the
unconstitutional and inhumane conditions that residents of Eastleigh were subjected to in Kasarani
Stadium and #KenyaImNotATerrorist, which was a photo-campaign on Twitter instigated by several
Eastleigh residents as a form of protest against the operation. It was inspired by the
#ITooAmHarvard campaign in which participants were photographed holding messages written on a
small whiteboards detailing micro-aggressions or instances of racism they had experience whilst
studying at Harvard. As the organisers of the #ITooAmHarvard campaign state on their Tumblr page,
‘this project is our way of speaking back, of claiming this campus, of standing up to say: We are here.
This place is ours. We, TOO, are Harvard’9 (itooamharvard, 2016). The #KenyaImNotATerrorist
campaign was construed in a similar fashion, or as they describe it on their Tumblr page:
We aim to highlight the abuse and discrimination against the Somali ethnic minority whenever any terror attack occurs and to break the negative stereotype which the media
8 Last year Kenya had the fourth largest number of geo-located tweets on the continent (Agutu, 2016a).
9 Emphasis in the original
46
enhances. Somalis are speaking and sharing their stories through these pictures in a peaceful and creative way.
(kenyaimnotaterrorist, 2014)
To achieve this aim, they took pictures of residents of Eastleigh with messages that spoke back to
both the government, but also to wider Kenyan society and dismantled the misconceptions they
held about Kenyan Somalis (see Annex 1). In speaking with one of the creators of the
#KenyaImNotATerrorist campaign, Muna Abdi, she argued that the ‘the media coverage was biased
and all of it was on the same side. They weren’t showing our side… No one does the PR for Eastleigh’
(2016).
On Twitter, the government narrative could be challenged in a way that had hitherto not been
possible, according to MP Yusuf Hassan ‘the democratisation of the media gives marginalised people
a bigger voice than they would have’ (2016). As Daud Yussuf put it to me, the ‘mainstream media has
failed us so it is time for us to resort to uncensored social media’ (2016). Compared to the era of the
Shifta War, the asymmetry of power that determined the success of the war of words has been
completely reworked. The government’s rhetoric tried to create the impression that Eastleigh was a
threat and ‘anyone who was against Operation Usalama Watch was sympathetic to terrorists’
(Namwaya, 2016).
Yet, when all avenues were closed and institutional recourse failed, ‘Kenyan Somalis found justice on
social media’ (Yussuf, 2016). Abdulaziz Bishar expressed a similar opinion, describing Twitter as:
The only place where we had a voice… Twitter really stood up for us when no one was standing up for us. [#KenyaImNotATerrorist] felt like there was someone who was thinking differently, someone who was not prejudiced from the start… We had our voices heard.
(2016)
Consequently, the propaganda battle that ensued on Twitter was a struggle over the very definition
of what constitutes Eastleigh in the popular imaginary, with one image from the campaign stating
that ‘Eastleigh isn’t a refugee camp nor a terrorist haven, it’s an area resided by peace-loving and
hardworking people’ (kenyaimnotaterrorist, 2014). Other messages challenged the stereotypical
47
description of Kenyan Somalis and their position within Kenyan society by asking ‘does my hair
texture make me a terrorist?’ or stating that ‘not speaking Swahili does not make me any less
Kenyan!’ (kenyaimnotaterrorist, 2014).
Picture 3: Pictures from the #KenyaImNotATerorrist campaign (see Annex 1)
It may be a cliché to state that ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’, but in this instance what is
notable is how communication can occur in the absence of speech. Though no words are spoken, a
clear message is transmitted both by the paper the individual is holding and the physical appearance
of the subject in the photo. For instance, the message about profiling on basis of the texture of
someone’s hair is only understandable when the physical appearance of the subject in the photo is
taken into account. As such, the Copenhagen School’s notion of a speech act cannot fully capture
these dynamics and the visuals at play. In focusing purely on that which is spoken, securitisation
theory is not alive to the manner in which cyber-protests of this nature can shape or undermine a
securitising move. As the principal theorists of the Copenhagen School state, a ‘successful
securitisation is not decided by the securitizer but by the audience of the security speech act’
(Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1997: 31). In large part the audience of the securitisation of Eastleigh
were its residents many of whom did not fully accept the narrative that was being spun and chose to
take a stand against it.
48
YouTube
The forms of media used to voice dissent were not limited to Twitter. Several months after
Operation Usalama Watch, a song was uploaded to YouTube entitled nduli or ‘terrorist’ that was
critical of the government’s conduct during the operation. In speaking with the Ina Cawsgurow who
wrote the lyrics for the song he said he resorted to composing it because:
Social media gave us the platform to vent and say this is not right. You are not helping the country and if anything you are helping the terrorists in spreading the anger among the people.
(2016)
Though the song has over 31,000 hits on YouTube, Ina Cawsgurow told me that local radio stations
in Nairobi refused to play it because it was deemed too controversial. Below are the lyrics of the
chorus and a particularly pertinent verse:
He who does not have an ID Hey! You go to Kasarani!
---
The police came and harassed My fellow Kenyans kept quiet
Supposedly I am a refugee, my hair is the sign It is a problem you don’t know your country’s map
From Marsabit to Mandera, this is the hair From Moyale to Ijara, it is truly part of Kenya
I am not asking free born Kenyans to be a Kenyan I am already a true Kenyan!
(Cawsgurow, 2014)10
The lyrics upbraid Kenyan society for staying quiet during the operation and accuses it of ignorance
concerning the map of Kenya, echoing John-Allan Namu’s sentiment that ‘Kenyans have no idea who
a Kenyan Somali is and what their history is’ (2016). These lyrics can also be read as a reaffirmation
of belonging and a means through which to make claims to citizenship. In particular, the two final
lines ‘I am not asking the free-born Kenyans to be a Kenyan, I am already a true Kenyan!’
(Cawsgurow, 2014). This act of self-affirmation recalls Lochery’s notion of ‘graduated citizenship’
10
Translation my own.
49
(2012: 617) and challenges the attitude that Kenyan Somalis ‘are more subject than citizens’, as Ina
Cawsgurow put it to me (2016).
Interestingly, the word used in the chorus to refer to an ID is kipande – instead of the more formal
kitambulisho – which is reminiscent of the colonial form of identification that was also referred to as
a kipande. Most of the people I interviewed in Eastleigh also used kipande, highlighting the
continuities between the screening operations of the past and those of the present (Ega, 2014).
Several tweets online also made the same comparison to the colonial kipande system with one user
noting ‘so I have to walk with a kipande? I think I am living in the 1950s’ (Sam, 2014), whilst another
asked ‘everyone being forced to produce an ID card or else end up at #Kasaraniconcentrationcamp. I
wonder if the Kipande system has been re-enacted’ (Milton, 2014).
Acts of Defiance
In one of my interviews, I was even told about a picture that was shared on social media of a man
who had grown so tired of constantly being asked to produce his ID during Operation Usalama
Watch that he ended up making a necklace out of it and wearing it constantly (Abdi, 2016). Whether
wittingly or unwittingly, wearing documentation echoes colonial practices. The gesture was also a
tongue-in-cheek way of defying an established protocol and usurping the convention of being asked
to produce an ID by an authority figure. In speaking with Ina Cawsgurow he jokingly asked ‘how does
an ID stop you from blowing something up?’ (2016). In the description of the song nduli, he also
explicitly mentions how ‘nduli laughs at how the Security Forces reduced the whole idea of
countering terrorism to rounding up people with no kipande, the Kenyan Identity Card’ (Cawsgurow,
2014). Laughing in the face of power is one of the few ways of creating what Scott terms a ‘hidden
transcript’, which ‘represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant’ (1990:
xii).
Banal, day-to-day practices such as these that ridicule or mock power gradually chip away at the
authority of the securitising agent. For instance, residents came to jokingly refer to Operation
50
Usalama Watch as ‘Operation Osama Watch’ after Osama Bin Laden, ridiculing the perception that
Eastleigh was a terrorist safe haven. At the time of the operation Boniface Mwangi, a
photojournalist, took to Twitter to proactively argue ‘a terror attack happens in Eastleigh and cops
do a swoop, arresting hundreds. They should have done the same in Westlands [a rich
neighbourhood of Nairobi] after Westgate’ (Mwangi, 2014).
Muna Abdi also told me how two of her friends who did not have proper documents were regularly
taken to Pangani Police Station as a result. However, during Operation Usalama Watch they were
taken to Kasarani Stadium instead, where conditions were so much worse that they joked ‘Pangani is
like 5-star hotel compared to [Kasarani]’ (cited in Abdi, 2016). People also made jokes at the expense
of the police. For example, MP Yusuf Hassan described how being posted to a police station near
Eastleigh such as Pangani or Sharimoyo was ‘like winning the lottery’ because of the bribes you
would collect (Hassan, 2016). One interviewee who wished to remain anonymous shared an
anecdote from the operation about witnessing a bribe being paid without any words being
exchanged. A friend of the interviewee had arrived from Mogadishu was sitting outside a restaurant
when a policeman walked up to him. He handed him money and as the interviewee recounted ‘not
even a conversation happened between them and they laughed’ (Anonymous D, 2016).
Humour was not the only means through which authority figures were undermined. An informal
WhatsApp group called ‘the Kamukunji Fact Files’ was set up to share information about police
harassment and crimes in and around Eastleigh. In this forum, the government’s rhetoric was
inverted and it was the police that were painted as a threat or as one resident of Eastleigh I spoke to
mentioned: ‘the terrorists are the police’ (Anonymous C, 2016). Ina Cawsgurow also explained how
he relied upon the clan system to release someone he knew who was arrested. He realised that one
of the policeman involved was a distant cousin and called the policeman’s father in Garissa. In turn,
the father called his son and threatened to cut him off if the acquaintance was not released, which
51
happened the following day. In this way, ‘the clan system acts as a kind of insurance company’
(Cawsgurow, 2016).
Scott cautions that ‘everyday forms of resistance make no headlines’ (1985: xvii) because:
Most subordinate classes are, after all, far less interested in changing the larger structures of the state and the law than in what Hobsbawm has appropriately called “working the system… to their minimum disadvantage”.
(Scott, 1985: xv)
As such, these forms of resistance fall short of overhauling societal structures and creating systemic
change. That being said, in time, these ‘weapons of the weak’, as Scott (1985) terms them, can
construct ‘a resistance culture that may eventually become capable, at certain historical moments,
of acting as a catalyst of broader, more openly oppositional liberation movement’ (Abrahamsen,
2003: 208). Each resistance culture takes root differently. In the case of Eastleigh during Operation
Usalama Watch, a variety of means and media coalesced to create a counter-narrative and to
question the legitimacy of the securitisation of Eastleigh. Therefore, in the same way that Williams
calls for ‘a broader understanding of the rhetorics of securitization’ (2003: 527), more attention
ought to be paid to the multiple platforms of resistance and the rhetorics of desecuritisation that
subtly defy securitising moves.
In this sense, to describe Eastleigh as a marginal space and Kenyan Somalis as excluded, silenced and
voiceless is inaccurate and fails to capture the complex, informal platforms of resistance used during
and after the operation. Whether it be ‘hashtivism’ on Twitter, protest songs on YouTube or every-
day jokes told on the streets of Eastleigh, all these sites of contestation display the agency exercised
by residents of Eastleigh at a time when their freedoms were severely limited or ‘agency in tight
corners’ as Lonsdale terms it (2000). At the same time, these forms of contestation, serve to
highlight that:
The power distance between [Kenyan Somalis] and the state has reduced over the years. They are not an outlying group that don’t have people who enjoy or have access to state
52
power as used to be the case during the Shifta time, when they didn’t have spokespeople and when the government narrative was the only narrative.
(Kegoro, 2016)
This shrinking power distance or ‘demotic turn’ as Turner calls it (2010), should not solely be
attributed to Kenyan Somalis occupying high-ranking government or civil service positions or the
growing importance of NEP as a political constituency (Carrier & Kochore, 2014), but also to the
ability of ordinary Kenyan Somalis to voice dissent. For Burhan Iman ‘the problem is us – we are not
telling our stories’ (2016). These changes paint a more complex picture of Eastleigh and of the place
of Kenyan Somalis within Kenyan society, highlighting not only the growing importance of Eastleigh
to the political economy of Kenya, but also the community’s strong, agentive voice.
53
Conclusion
In conclusion, Operation Usalama Watch prompted a reaction that questioned the very definition of
security, tackled long-established misconceptions about Eastleigh and challenged the widespread
perception that Kenyan Somalis are second-class citizens. Whilst the operation enjoyed popular
support and the securitisation of Eastleigh was initially accepted by a large swathe of Kenyan society,
within Eastleigh itself the securitisation was rejected using a variety of media to express dissent.
Though the government was ultimately able to successfully construct Eastleigh as a site of
intervention and conduct the operation, the reaction to Operation Usalama Watch opened up a
space where protest could be voiced and contributed to the entrenchment of a culture of resistance.
As such, the strength of securitisation theory explored in Chapter 1 is that it provides a lens through
which to understand attempts to construct an existential threat. By historically tracing the manner in
which Kenyan Somalis have been alienated and marginalised in Chapter 2, the contemporary
securitisation in Chapter 3 can be better understood. In so doing, the importance of rhetorical
devices that invoke a discourse of cleanliness and purity can be properly contextualised. Similarly,
the continuities in terms of the performative enactment of security by the state can be fully
appreciated.
Where the literature on performance and securitisation fall short however, is in explaining how
audiences accept or reject a securitisation. This is where the response to Operation Usalama Watch
in Chapter 4 proves instructive in illustrating how desecuritisation can occur, not simply through
speech acts, but also through a whole host of informal means or what might be termed the
‘rhetorics of desecuritisation’ to paraphrase Williams (2003: 527). Taken as whole, these rhetorics of
desecuritisation speak back to power and over time, can gradually chip away at the authority of the
securitising agent in a way that was not possible during the Shifta War or at the time of the Wagalla
Massacre.
54
That being said, resistance and contestation have always existed. What is new however, are the
mediums used to channel such dissent and re-work existing power relations. Twitter and YouTube
have seemingly altered the power dynamics and the conventions that shape the regularities of who
speaks and when, throwing open the arena for debate over issues such as security. As such, as I have
argued, there is a need to incorporate alternative forms of expression into securitisation theory and
move beyond the Copenhagen School’s reliance on the notion of the speech act.
55
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Anonymous A. Nairobi. 22 March – 18 April.
Anonymous B. Nairobi. 22 March – 18 April.
Anonymous C. Nairobi. 22 March – 18 April.
Anonymous D. Nairobi. 22 March – 18 April.11
Bishar, Abdulaziz. Eastleigh Resident. Eastleigh, Nairobi, 15 April 2016.
Cawsgurow, Ina. Kenyan Somali Poet and Playwright. CBD, Nairobi, 11 April 2016.
Egal, Hamza. #KenyaI’mNotATerrorist campaigner. Westlands, Nairobi, 24 March 2016.
Hassan, Yusuf. MP for Kamakunji Constituency. Spring Valley, Nairobi, 25 March 2015.Abdille, Abdullahi. Horn of Africa Researcher, International Crisis Group. Kilimani, Nairobi, 23 March 2016.
Iman, Burhan. Executive Director, Eastleighwood Youth Forum. Tomas Zak. Eastleigh, Nairobi, 30 March 2016.
Kasir, Abdi Ahmed. Eastleigh Resident. Eastleigh, Nairobi, 14 April 2016.
Kegoro, George. Executive Director, Kenyan Human Rights Commission. Lavington, Nairobi, 18 April 2016.
Kimaiyo, David. Former Inspector General of Police. CBD, Nairobi, 6 April 2016.
Masitsa, Solomon Wasia. Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. Kilimani, Nairobi, 13 April 2016.
Mohammed, Ahmed. Former Chariman of the Eastleigh Business Assocation. Eastleigh, Nairobi, 31 March 2016.
Munene, Macharia. Professor of History and International Relations, United States International University. Kasarani, Nairobi, 18 April 2016.
Namu, John-Allan. Investigative Journalist. Westlands, Nairobi, 1 April 2016.
Namwaya, Otsieno. Africa Researcher, Human Rights Watch. Kilimani, Nairobi, 29 March 2016.
Nyongesa, Joan. Assistant Programme Officer, Kituo cha Sheria (Legal Advice Centre). Shauri Moyo, Nairobi, 7 April 2016.
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Dates withheld to protect anonymity.
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Ogle, Muktar Abdi. Director of Strategic Initiatives, Executive Office of the President. CBD, Nairobi, 29 March 2016.
Omondi, George. Solidary Centre. Eastleigh, Nairobi, 14 April 2016.
Tumbo, Marvin. CEO of Socialight Media Kenya. Kilimani, Nairobi, 6 April 2016.
Yussuf, Daud. CEO of Key FM. Eastleigh, Nairobi, 31 March 2016.
Zeuthen, Martine. Team Leader Nairobi Office, Royal United Services Institute. Kilileshwa, Nairobi, 1 April 2016.
Books and Journal Articles
Abrahamsen, Rita. 2003. “African Studies and the Postcolonial Challenge.” African Affairs 102.407: 189-210.
Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.
Anderson, David, James McKnight. 2015a. “Kenya at War: Al-Shabaab and its Enemies in Eastern Africa.” African Affairs 114.454: 1-27.
Anderson, David. 2014. “Remembering Wagalla: state violence in northern Kenya, 1962–1991.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 8.4: 658-678.
Arero, Hassan Wario. 2007. "Coming to Kenya: Imagining and Perceiving a Nation among the Borana of Kenya." Journal of Eastern African Studies 1.2: 292-304.
Bierschenk, Thomas, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan. 2014. Studying the Dynamics of African Bureaucracies: An Introduction to States at Work. Boston: Brill.
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.
Botha, Anneli. 2014. “Political Socialization and Terrorist Radicalization Among Individuals Who Joined al-Shabaab in Kenya.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 37.11: 895-919.
Branch, Daniel. 2014. “Violence, decolonisation and the Cold War in Kenya's north-eastern province, 1963-1978.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 8.4: 642-657.
Bratton, Michael, Beatrice Liatto-Katundu. 1994. “A Focus Group Assessment of Political Attitudes in Zambia.” African Affairs 93.373: 535-563.
Bruns, Axel, Jean Burgess. 2012. “Researching News Discussion on Twitter.” Journalism Studies 13.5-6: 801-814.
Buckley, Liam. 2014. “Photography and Photo-Elicitation After Colonialism.” Cultural Anthropology 29.4: 720-743.
Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, Jaap de Wilde. 1997. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Buzan, Barry. 1991. People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security in teh Post-Cold War Era. New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
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Carrier, Neil, Emma Lochery. 2013. “Missing states? Somali trade networks and the Eastleigh transformation.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 7.2: 334-352.
Carrier, Neil, Hassan Kochore. 2014. “Navigating ethnicity and electoral politics in northern Kenya.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 8.1: 135-152.
Carrier, Neil. Forthcoming. Little Mogadishu: Eastleigh, Nairobi's Global Somali Hub. London: Hurst Publishers.
Collier, John, Malcolm Collier. 1986. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.
Edwards, Elizabeth. 2005. “Photographs and the Sound of History.” Visual Anthropology Review 21.1: 27-46.
Elkins, Caroline. 2005. Imperial Reckoning : the Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt and Co..
Foucault, Michel. 1969. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Paris: Gallimard.
Hansen, Lene. 2000. “The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School.” Journal of International Studies 29.2: 285-306.
Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lochery, Emma. 2012. “Rendering difference visible: The Kenyan state and its Somali citizens.” African Affairs 111.445: 615-639.
Lonsdale, John. 2000. “Agency in Tight Corners: Narrative and Initiative in African history.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13.1: 5-16.
McSweeney, Bill. 1996. “Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School.” International Studies 22.1: 81-93.
Morgan, David L., Richard A. Krueger. 1993. “When to Use Focus Groups and Why .” Morgan, David L. Successful Focus Groups: Advancing the State of the Art . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 3-20.
Moss, Natalie, Alasdair O'Hare. 2014. “Staging Democracy: Kenya's Televised Presidential Debates.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 8.1: 78-92.
Muigai, Githu. 1995. “Ethnicity and The Renewal Of Competitive Politics in Kenya.” Glickman, Harvey. Ethnic conflict and democratization in Africa. Atlanta: African Studies Association Press. 161-195.
Murthy, Dhiraj. 2012. “Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter.” Sociology 48.6: 1-15.
Ovadia, Steven. 2009. “Exploring the Potential of Twitter as a Research Tool.” Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 28.4: 202-205.
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Pierce, Stuart. 2006. “Looking like a State: Colonialism and the Discourse of Corruption in Northern Nigeria.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48.4: 887-914.
Reid, Richard. 2007. War in Pre-Colonial East Africa: The Patterns and Meanings of State-Level Conflict in the Nineteeth Century. Oxford: James Currey.
Schlee, Günther, Abdullahi A Shongolo. 2012. Islam and Ethnicity in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Scott, James. 1990. Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.
—. 1998. Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
—. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sentilles, Renée. 2005. “Toiling in the Archives of Cyberspace.” Burton, Antoinette. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 136-156.
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2002. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance.” Archival Science 2.1-2: 87-109.
Stritzel, Holger. 2007. “Towards a Theory of Securitizaton: Copenhagen and Beyond.” Journal of International Relations 13.3: 357-383.
Taureck, Rita. 2006. “Securitization Theory and Securitization Studies.” Journal of International Relations and Development 9: 53-61.
Turner, Graeme. 2010. Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn. London: SAGE Publishers.
Warah, Rasna. 2014. War Crimes: How Warlords, Politicians, Foreign Governments and Aid Agencies Conspired to Create a Failed State in Somalia. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.
Weber, Cynthia. 1998. “Performative States.” Journal of International Studies 27.1: 77-95.
Whittaker, Hannah. 2015. “A New Model Village: Nairobi Development and the Somali Question in Kenya 1915-1917.” Northeast African Studies 15.2: 117-140.
—. 2014. Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Kenya: A Social History of the Shifta Conflict, c. 1963-1968. Leiden: Brill.
Wilkinson, Claire. 2007. “Europe, The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Usable Outside.” Security Dialogue 38.1: 5-25.
Williams, Michael. 2003. “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitzation and International Politics.” International Studies Quaterlly 47: 511-531.
Social Media: Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr
Cawsgurow. Nduli: A Swahili Song on the Plight of the Kenyan Somalis by Ina Cawsgurow. 15 September 2014. 6 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IahwJ5aP5u0>.
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InteriorCNG Ministry (InteriorKE). "CS @joelenku: For the last few months we've had heightened insecurity. time has come for a mop up to restore order. #UsalamaWatch". 07 Apr 2014a, 18:11 UTC. Tweet.
—. "CS @joelenku: State of lawlessness has existed in Eastleigh for more than 20 years. #UsalamaWatch". 10 Apr 2014b, 04:10 UTC. Tweet
itooamharvard. I, Too, Am Harvard. 1 March 2014. 12 May 2016. <http://itooamharvard.tumblr.com/>.
kenyaimnotaterrorist. Kenya I'm Not A Terrorist. 2014. 12 May 2016. <http://kenyaimnotaterrorist.tumblr.com/>.
Milton (Mwangala_). "Everyone being forced to produce an ID card or else end up at #Kasaraniconcentrationcamp. I wonder if the Kipande system has been re-enacted". 05 Apr 2014, 21:09 UTC. Tweet.
Mwangi, Boniface (bonifacemwangi). "A terror attack happens in Eastleigh and cops do a swoop,arresting hundreds. They should have done the same in Westlands after Westgate.". 01 Apr 2014, 11:01 UTC. Tweet.
NTV Kenya. Interview: Billow Kerrow Condemns Eastleigh Arrests. 5 April 2014a. 6 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Mstl5fGXA>.
—. Interview: CS Joseph Ole Lenku Speaks on Operation Usalama Watch. 7 April 2014b. NTV Kenya. 6 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFublr9aOoQ>.
Sam, Rapando (samy_raps). "@AntiBigwig So I have to walk with a kipande? I think I am living in the 1950s.". 06 Apr 2014, 03:57 UTC. Tweet.
Uhuru Kenyatta TV. Ulinzi Unaanza na Mimi, Ulinzi Unaanza na Wewe. 3 June 2014. 10 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X6xFNwjaSk>.
Websites and Newspaper Articles
Agutu, Nancy. Kenyans 4th most active Twitter users in Africa, politics among hot topics. 6 April 2016a. 29 May 2016. <http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/04/06/kenyans-4th-most-active-twitter-users-in-africa-politics-among-hot_c1326926>.
—. Refugees must go, Kenya says. 6 May 2016b. 10 May 2016. <http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/05/06/refugees-must-go-kenya-says_c1345961>.
Cherono, Stella, Angira Zadock. MP’s shooting: Detectives pin hopes on CCTV. 7 Febrary 2015. 10 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/news/George-Muchai-Murder-Police-Investigation-CCTV-Footage/-/1056/2616750/-/ndrm36/-/index.html>.
Daily Nation. President Uhuru Kenyatta in military uniform. 4 September 2014. 10 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/news/President-Uhuru-Kenyatta-in-military-uniform-PHOTOS/-/1056/2442100/-/phwne0/-/index.html>.
Ega, Abdi Latif. What's it like to be Somalia in Kenya. 9 April 2014. 6 May 2016. <http://africasacountry.com/2014/04/whats-it-like-to-be-somali-in-kenya/>.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Foreign Travel Advice: Kenya. 7 April 2016. Picture. 25 May 2016. <https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/kenya>.
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Gaitho, Macharia. If the head of the snake is right here in Eastleigh, why did we go to Somalia? 24 October 2011. 5 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/blogs/-/446672/1261118/-/a3i326z/-/index.html>.
Google Maps. Eastleigh. 25 May 2016. 25 May 2016. <https://www.google.ch/maps/place/Eastleigh,+Nairobi,+Kenya/@-1.272998,36.8393035,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x182f16b02d007251:0xb8beb2dbf14a0af4!8m2!3d-1.2731795!4d36.8600088>.
Human Rights Watch (HRW). Joint Letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay Regarding Violations in the Context of Kenyan Counterterrorism Operations. 29 May 2014a. 6 May 2016. <https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/29/joint-letter-un-high-commissioner-human-rights-navanethem-pillay-regarding>.
—. Kenya: Halt Crackdown on Somalis. 11 April 2014b. 5 May 2016. <https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/11/kenya-halt-crackdown-somalis>.
—. Kenya: Mass Deportation of Somalis. 23 May 2014c. 6 May 2016. <https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/23/kenya-mass-deportation-somalis>.
Kamau, Richard. State House Caught Pants Down Trying To Fool Kenyans with Multiple Fake Twitter Accounts. 3 December 2014. 16 May 2016. <State House Caught Pants Down Trying To Fool Kenyans with Multiple Fake Twitter Accounts - See more at: http://nairobiwire.com/2014/12/state-house-caught-pants-down-trying-to-fool-kenyans-with-multiple-fake-twitter-accounts.html#sthash.ug3JjGut.dpuf>.
Kerrow, Billow. Is Operation Usalama Watch a Somali Gulag? 13 April 2014. 2 May 2016. <http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000109277/is-operation-usalama-watch-a-somali-gulag>.
Kibicho, Karanja. PS Karanga Kibicho Explains why the Government is Shutting down Refugee Camps. 10 May 2016. 17 May 2016. <http://www.interior.go.ke/?p=3107>.
Kimaiyo, David. Detractors should stop sowing hatred between police service and communities. 20 April 2014a. 30 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/David-Kimaiyo-Security-Crime-Police-Kenya-Al-Shabaab/-/440808/2286648/-/66vkk7z/-/index.html>.
—. No ethnic or religious profiling in crackdown. 19 April 2014b. 6 May 2015. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/No-ethnic-or-religious-profiling-in-crackdown/-/440808/2286060/-/view/printVersion/-/ykptdjz/-/index.html>.
Lynch, Gabriel. Why the Kenya-Somalia Border Wall is a Bad Idea. 1 May 2015. 6 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Why-the-Kenya-Somalia-border-wall-is-a-bad-idea/-/440808/2703636/-/fpr9ihz/-/index.html>.
Macharia, Keguro. Anti-Terror Swoops Dehumanise Somalis. 9 May 2014. 6 May 2016. <http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2014/05/09/anti-terror-swoops-dehumanise-somalis_c937155>.
Mathiu, Mutuma. Are we just going to sit around and wait to be blown to bits by terrorists? . 20 March 2014. 9 May 2016. <http://mobile.nation.co.ke/blogs/Are-we-just-going-to-sit-around-and-wait-to-be-blown-to-bits/-/1949942/2252048/-/format/xhtml/-/uw6jti/-/index.html>.
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Ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Développement international. Kenya. 16 December 2015. 29 May 2016. <http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/conseils-aux-voyageurs/conseils-par-pays/kenya/>.
Mzalendo. National Assembly: Official Report. 19 October 2011. 5 May 2016. <http://info.mzalendo.com/hansard/sitting/national_assembly/2011-10-19-09-00-00>.
Naimasiah, Noosim. The Long History of the Garissa Attacks. 4 May 2015. 6 May 2016. <http://africasacountry.com/2015/05/the-long-history-of-the-garissa-attacks/>.
Roy, Arundhati. Roy's full speech. 4 November 2004. 29 April 2016. <http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/Roys-full-speech/2004/11/04/1099362264349.html>.
Torfinn, Sven. Kenya’s Future Clouds as Tensions Rise and Tourists Flee. 27 June 2014. Picture. 24 May 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/world/africa/kenyas-bright-financial-future-clashes-with-a-grim-present.html?_r=0>.
Wanyeki, Muthoni. Brutalising Somalis Over Sugar Smuggling Sweet! 31 May 2014a. 6 May 2016. <http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Brutalising-Somalis-over-sugar-smuggling--Sweet--/-/434750/2332784/-/10g28o6/-/index.html>.
Human Rights Reports
Amnesty International. 2014. Somalis are Scapegoats in Kenya's Counte-Terror Crackdown. London: Amnesty International Publications.
Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2013. "You Are All Terrorists": Kenyan Police Abuse of Refugees in Nairobi. New York: Human Rights Watch. <https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/05/29/you-are-all-terrorists/kenyan-police-abuse-refugees-nairobi>.
Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA). 2014. Monitoring Report on Operation Sanitization Eastleigh Publically Known as 'Usalama Watch'. Monitoring Report. Nairobi: Independent Police Oversight Authority.
Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). 2015. "The Error of Fighting Terror With Terror": Preliminary Report of KNCHR Investigations on Human Rights Abuses in the Ongoing Crackdown against Terrorism. Preliminary Report. Nairobi: Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).
Unpublished Sources
Glomnes, Helene. 2013. “'Fighting Talk on the Frontier': Shaping Kenyan and Somali Identities through Propaganda during the Shifta Conflict.” Unpublished Dissertation. University of Oxford.
Secondary Sources
Abdullahi, Ahmednasir. Kenyan Somalis are treated like second-class citizens. 12 April 2014a. 30 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Kenyan-Somalis-treated-like-second-class-citizens-/-/440808/2277348/-/p72vxgz/-/index.html>.
— . Usalama Watch a Mask for Forcible Displacement. 3 May 2014b. 6 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Usalama-Watch-a-mask-for-forcible-displacement/-/440808/2302976/-/nupeacz/-/index.html>.
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Allison, Simon. The Great Wall of Kenya. 27 February 2015. 6 May 2016. <http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-27-the-great-wall-of-kenya/#.VyzW9ORKbVs>.
Anderson, David, James McKnight. 2015b. “Understanding Al-Shabaab: Clan, Islam and Insurgency in Kenya.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 9.3: 536-557.
Daily Nation. Targeting of Non Muslims by Al-Shabaab in Kenya is a Strategy says Human Rights Watch Boss . 15 July 2015. 6 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh4eZJPgINA>.
Gathara, Patrick. Kenya: The Perils of Racial Profiling. 14 April 2014. 6 May 2016. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/kenya-perils-racial-profiling-2014413151031267839.html>.
Ghai, Yash Pal. Do Not Fight Terrorism With Terrorist Means. 9 July 2015. 6 May 2016. <http://www.pambazuka.org/governance/do-not-fight-terrorism-terrorist-means>.
Kaia, Maina. Colonial-Era Tactics to Silence Critics Didn’t Work Then, and Won’t Work Now. 24 April 2015. 6 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Colonial-era-tactics-to-silence-critics-didnt-work-then/-/440808/2696338/-/12nj6fez/-/index.html>.
Odhiambo, Tom. In pursuit of Al Shabaab, Kenya is back to 1984. 21 April 2014. 6 May 2016. <http://thisisafrica.me/kenya-back-1984/>.
Scott, James. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Wadongo, Evans. Investing In, Not Arresting Kenyan Youth. 19 May 2014. 6 May 2016. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/investing-not-arresting-kenyan-2014519155324276586.html>.
Wanyeki, Muthoni. Families Torn Apart in the Name of Security. 19 June 2014b. 6 May 2016. <http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Families-torn-apart-in-the-name-of-security-/-/440808/2354708/-/lqh9vf/-/index.html>.
—. No Wonder We’re All Afraid, We Should Be! 26 July 2014c. 6 May 2016. <http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/No-wonder-we-re-all-afraid--we-should-be-/-/434750/2398324/-/11vvps8/-/index.html>.
Wasamu, Moses. The Error of Fighting Terror with Terror. 22 September 2015. 6 May 2016. <http://newint.org/blog/majority/2015/09/22/kenya-human-rights-violations/>.
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Annex 1 - #KenyaImNotATerrorist Pictures
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