Kenya should in­vest more in com­mu­nity en­gage­ments to win war on ex­trem­ism, British High Com­mis­sioner to Nairobi Chris­t­ian Turner has said.

Dr Turner be­lieves in­volv­ing com­mu­ni­ties will be “crit­i­cal part” in the war against ter­ror­ism.

“This war will not be won mil­i­tar­ily. An ef­fec­tive re­sponse to ter­ror­ism can’t just fo­cus on hard­ware. It also needs to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing causes of what leads some in­di­vid­u­als to be­come rad­i­calised and turn to vi­o­lence,” Dr Turner told a counter-ter­ror­ism meet­ing in Nairobi on Thurs­day.

BOR­ROW A LEAF

“Mil­i­tary pres­sure, in­tel­li­gence co-op­er­a­tion, a more ef­fec­tive bor­der con­trol and re­gional col­lab­o­ra­tion on refugees mat­ters (are fine). But for suc­cess, a com­mu­nity-based ap­proach to pre­vent­ing ter­ror­ism will be vi­tal.”

He urged Kenya to bor­row a leaf from the way the UK dealt with the Irish Re­pub­li­can Army’s bomb­ings, where au­thor­i­ties in­vested in com­mu­ni­ties for cru­cial in­for­ma­tion on ter­ror­ists.

“The UK ex­pe­ri­ence, from the IRA (Irish Re­pub­li­can Army) bomb­ings dur­ing the North­ern Ire­land Trou­bles to the Lon­don tube bomb­ings of 2005, is that win­ning the trust of com­mu­ni­ties is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the fight against ter­ror,” he said.

FOL­LOW THE LAW

He urged Kenyan au­thor­i­ties to stick to the Con­sti­tu­tion in their counter-ter­ror­ism bat­tle.

“Trust lies at the heart of any ef­fec­tive com­mu­nity-based strat­egy to pre­vent ter­ror­ism. Build­ing pub­lic trust in the po­lice and se­cu­rity ser­vices is vi­tal, and tac­tics which vi­o­late the rights of those com­mu­ni­ties risk fu­elling alien­ation, re­sent­ment, and fur­ther­ing the ex­trem­ists’ cause,” he said.

The event hosted by the British High Com­mis­sion was meant to en­gage gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, counter-ter­ror­ism ex­perts, com­mu­ni­ca­tion ex­perts and diplo­mats on how to jointly fight ter­ror­ism.

The meet­ing was sup­posed to be a cur­tain-raiser for a counter-ter­ror­ism con­fer­ence to be hosted by Kenya in June this year.

SE­RIES OF AT­TACKS

The de­ci­sion to or­gan­ise the con­fer­ence was reached fol­low­ing a se­ries of ter­ror at­tacks on Kenya by So­mali mil­i­tant group Al-Shabaab.

On April 2, the ter­ror­ists at­tacked Garissa Uni­ver­sity Col­lege, killing 148 peo­ple.

Al­though the Kenya De­fence Forces have been in So­ma­lia since Oc­to­ber 2011 pur­su­ing Al-Shabaab, the group has car­ried out over 130 at­tacks on Kenyan soil.

Counter-ter­ror­ism ex­perts say the group may be re­cruit­ing more Kenyans by ap­peal­ing to their mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and of­fer­ing big money to poor youth.

COM­MU­NI­CA­TION

Last week, In­te­rior Prin­ci­pal Sec­re­tary Mon­icah Juma chal­lenged the “fal­lacy” of mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, but con­ceded there needs to be a bet­ter way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing anti-ter­ror mes­sages.

“This con­fla­tion be­tween mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion needs to be delinked,” she ar­gued at a counter-ter­ror­ism con­fer­ence or­gan­ised by the Uni­ver­sity of Nairobi.

“We need to im­prove on way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing anti-ter­ror mes­sages. If any­thing, the ter­ror­ists are way ahead of us in com­mu­ni­ca­tions”.