I was utterly disgusted beyond words when footage of policemen frogmarching KDF soldiers emerged mid-last month, apparently from Lodwar, Turkana county. The public narrative was that a small detachment had stormed a police station in the town, ostensibly to rescue some of their colleagues, who had been detained there after disarming and assaulting police officers.
The KDF later denied this account in a terse statement said that the actions of the police, as well as the recording and circulation of the offending video, had been engineered to humiliate and degrade the army. The police are obviously not big on understanding symbolism. The uniform of any country’s military, at first glance, is meant to instil confidence in the protection of their sovereignty, and fear among enemies.
Effectively therefore, the action of policemen frogmarching soldiers in full combat gear, in a remote part of the country where insecurity is a big issue, while also recording avideo, sends a disturbing message about national security. Do the police understand the symbolism of the country’s adversaries looking at “battle hardened Kenyan troops being disarmed by station policemen on the frontline?” Indeed, in the words of the KDF, it was all staged to humiliate and embarrass.
Because CDF Gen Francis Ogola died so soon after this incident, it never managed to trend in national conversation, obviously dwarfed by the shocking and tragic demise of the general. However, last week, more footage cropped up, this time of what appeared to be Army Special Operations troops, assaulting uniformed policemen near the Likoni Ferry Crossing. At casual glance, the soldiers appeared to be troops from the 40th Battalion Ranger Strike Force, Gilgil.
The Rangers are the best of the elite among Kenyan forces. The taxpayer invests heavily in their training, and their green berets are a symbol of pride of place and capability. They operate behind enemy lines and are trained for endurance. Among the armed forces, the most elite are also the most disciplined, so the image of them losing their heads on the streets, in an urban setup, in broad daylight, makes absolutely no sense. According to reports, these incidents involving the soldiers and policemen didn’t just end there, but may have taken place round the same time, in Kilifi and Garissa counties, too.
It is easy to dismiss all these cases as merely “soldiers and policemen having a go at each other”. But once you understand how tight the military structure and chain of command is, you will understand that the laxity that allows policemen to get away with so much, doesn’t exist in the military. Even the movement from one point to the next, of a small platoon of soldiers, is a highly controlled process with strict reporting structures.
The nature of police work makes the service more prone to petty altercations with civilians and therefore easily amenable to political whims. In contrast, soldiers are basically trained to combat external threats, and do not have what one would describe as “internal competition”. There is therefore, in my view, no operational or structural crossover of roles to create rivalries or schisms between the military and the police service. In fact, their roles should be complementary. I submit, rather, there are underlying issues in this explosion of indiscipline.
Forget the streets of Likoni and Lodwar Police Station for a moment and consider that units of the police service and the KDF are tasked with fighting crime and banditry in the Kerio Valley and terrorism in the Boni Forest, called Operation Maliza Uhalifu and Operation Amani Boni, respectively. If what we see in the recent disagreements are the tip of the iceberg, what may happen on the frontlines, away from media scrutiny or public phone recordings?
I am persuaded that the new trend of evident lack of discipline points to a larger morale and welfare problem within the larger security apparatus. It brings to the mainstream certain issues that hardly ever get to the public domain. How well are the soldiers treated and equipped? Do they feel well catered for, well armed and well kitted? More importantly, if two ugly incidents involving KDF soldiers can happen publicly in such quick succession, how deep is the rot inside the barracks, away from public view?
The nature of General Ogolla’s death in a helicopter crash, brought to the fore an uncomfortable conversation. Questions now abound over the state of the aircraft used by the CDF on his last journey, and by extension, that of the troops. Relevant to this is the stark reality that if it turns out that the CDF’s chopper was in a poor mechanical state, then the state of the equipment available to the troops down the ranks may be worse.
We are not a banana republic, so of course we don’t expect that our soldiers will storm out of the barracks and start shooting people for sport. But since they operate in an environment where acts of indiscipline are punished severely, such blatant actions could only mean they are not in the ideal state mentally. This, in essence, means that even as we go to sleep presuming that we are protected by a competent force, a silent internal protest over welfare may be going on.
Beyond all this is the question of mental wellness. War is generally fought by young, agile infantrymen, only recently out of recruits’ school. The war in Somalia, and the role of KDF in it, has taken a huge toll on the defence forces. Until the Uhuru regime conceived the idea of the Defence Wellness and Trauma Centre at Lang’ata Barracks, as well as its smaller sister facilities in Lamu and Wajir, there were hardly any functional measures to address post traumatic stress disorder, psychological and physical trauma among the mostly young troops.
The presence of Special Operations soldiers in Likoni could only mean they were in the neighborhood as part of an anti-terror operation or were part of troops engaged in the Operation Amani Boni, in Lamu county. Understanding this helps one grasp the physical and mental stress of these soldiers, especially if they have to encounter policemen attempting to slow their movement down in traffic.
This is by far the easier justification for the disturbing footage from the altercation. The more complex one, however, involves seeking answers to what the underlying issues may exist that can make elite soldiers throw caution to the winds and behave in a manner suggesting the chain of command is experiencing challenges reigning in on service members.
There is also the simple explanation that many KDF soldiers are angry over the inaction following the Lodwar incident. And you wouldn’t begrudge them this feeling. But even they would know that there are mechanisms for resolving such disputes within the security services. The greater concern is that whereas the KDF will most likely discipline and discharge the soldiers involved, the police service will transfer its rogue variety of the same without much in terms of punishment. When you look at it this way. the “protest” by KDF service personnel is quite easy to understand. At least this helps push away any wild thoughts that there is a general breakdown of morale and discipline within the ranks which may morph into something much more dangerous.
Political commentator