A 79-year-old American missionary and her daughter, the wife of a United States diplomat, are cut down by automatic gunfire on the edge of town.
A top Kenyan HIV scientist and two other people, one on crutches, are killed when teenage gunmen indiscriminately spray vehicles on a highway with AK-47 fire.
A security firm, under the slogan ”Time to Fight Back”, advertises fully armoured four-wheel drive vehicles that can withstand anything from sub-machine gunfire to landmines.
Baghdad? Mogadishu?
No, Nairobi, capital of East Africa’s richest economy.
The city has been known as ”Nairobbery” for decades and carjackings, armed robberies and burglaries have long been a fact of life. Even now, Kenya has far fewer murders than South Africa, one of the most violent countries on earth.
But a wave of cold-blooded killings, many in daylight, over the last three months have rung new alarm bells.
”It is scary crime now. Carjackers used to take the car and leave you, now they are taking the car and shooting you,” said Maina Kiai, head of the government’s human rights commission.
”It is a failure of the state. The government cannot provide security,” he told Reuters.
Local newspapers, leading the charge against allegedly complacent government leaders and incompetent police, have run days of headlines like: ”Gangland Kenya” and ”Under Siege”.
The US State Department, stunned by the killings of missionary Lois Anderson and her daughter Zelda White (51), warned Americans about the dangers of visiting Kenya and did not mince its words about the Nairobi government.
Violent crimes ”can occur at any time and in any location, and are becoming increasingly frequent, brazen, vicious and often fatal … Kenyan authorities have limited capacity to deter and investigate such acts,” it said in a travel warning.
Vigilante killings
The high-profile deaths of foreigners and prominent Kenyans have attracted the greatest attention but it is ordinary, often poor locals who suffer the most from violent crime.
Most of the more than 50 people killed over the last three months were Kenyans and more than a dozen were police, including some killed during a cash-van heist last month.
The anger of Kenyans about crime and their lack of faith in the police is brutally illustrated by the lethal vigilante justice often meted out to criminals.
With an election due at the end of the year, the wave of crime is starting to hurt President Mwai Kibaki’s government.
”I am fed up of the say-nothing, do-nothing style of President Kibaki, even when the country is burning,” said opposition firebrand Raila Odinga, calling with other politicians for the army to be mobilised.
With headlines on crime dominating the papers for days, the government is clearly feeling the heat.
”The [US] advisory was issued with a sense of panic … issuing a travel advisory in terms of a few acts of thuggery in our country is totally unfair,” government spokesperson Alfred Mutua told reporters.
Karanja Gatiba, head of Kenya’s CID detective agency, said: ”I wish to assure the public that we are in charge of crime and that the criminals will be caught.”
But it seems a lot of people are not reassured.
”The current security situation has got out of hand … the government is not able to handle the sophistication of the criminals. The only thing that is lacking is the police force,” said Nairobi student Samuel Njoroge, reflecting a common view.
George Akoto, managing director of a firm that advertised armoured vehicles last week, said: ”We are getting a lot of inquiries.”
Those expressing interest in the 19-million shilling ($275 000) cars included MPs, diplomats and businessmen, he said.
Weapons from Somalia
The government blames Kenya’s violent crime on a flood of military grade weapons from conflicts in neighbouring Sudan and Somalia. Where criminals once carried pistols, they now habitually use assault rifles that usually kill.
Police have posted big rewards for AK-47s and pistols.
Kenya’s grinding poverty is obviously also a factor, with 60% of Nairobi’s population living in slums ruled by gangs.
But many Kenyans and government critics put deep police corruption, incompetence and inadequate equipment, combined with a weak judicial system, at the heart of the problem.
It is widely believed that police are themselves involved in many crimes and that they rent out their weapons to gangsters.
”Most of us fear the police more than working with them. The police do not attract good people,” Kiai said.
Internal Security Minister John Michuki, known for his fiery rhetoric, issued a shoot-to-kill order to police last year, which they have not hesitated to implement.
”If you do not shoot to kill someone with a gun, do you want him to shoot you first — then when you are dead you arrest him?” Michuki said.
But Kiai and other critics say the policy makes criminals trigger-happy, causes vendettas against police, and above all reduces intelligence.
”If they apprehended the criminals instead of killing them, and then interrogated them, they could get to the root of some of the crime,” Kiai said.
Some reports suggest the rise in crime is the result of the disbanding of elite investigation squads after a dispute between police Commissioner Mohammed Ali and the former head of the CID, Joseph Kamau, which extended to the top of Kenya’s government.
That dispute ended with Kamau’s removal.
Now Ali himself is facing faces widespread calls for his dismissal. — Reuters