UN­TIL the night of June 15, Mpeke­toni was not a house­hold name in Kenya. It ap­pears only on some maps as an ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­tion of Lamu County, but in the past week it has been de­scribed as a town com­plete with po­lice sta­tion and branches of the coun­try’s two largest banks.

Though it is about 10km from the In­dian Ocean, it has lit­tle to do with the fa­bled tourist spots like the nearby is­land of Lamu.

In fact, Mpeke­toni is a place of “up­coun­try” peo­ple that was set­tled 40 years ago by the Kikuyu, mem­bers of Kenya’s largest tribe, which took on the British colo­nial gov­ern­ment in the Mau Mau up­ris­ing.

Those who ar­rived in the scrub­land near the delta of the Tana River were sub­sis­tence farm­ers and “losers” in the war for land and free­dom.

Kenya did gain in­de­pen­dence from Britain in 1963, but many Kikuyus were un­able to re­claim their an­ces­tral land.

Dis­re­gard­ing any in­dige­nous pres­ence, found­ing pres­i­dent Jomo Keny­atta sent them down to the area where on ar­rival they re­ceived a car­ton of ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties, hence mpe ka­toni — Kiswahili for “take this car­ton”. Sev­eral other set­tle­ment schemes in the area foundered for lack of proper man­age­ment.

Was Mpeke­toni a likely tar­get for at least two dozen black-clad and masked as­sailants car­ry­ing the ji­hadist flag of So­mali mil­i­tant group al-Shabaab, who de­scended on the trad­ing cen­tre around 8pm that Sun­day night to kill, burn and loot un­til morn­ing, when more than 60 men and boys lay dead on its sandy streets?

From its bas­tion in nearby So­ma­lia, al-Shabaab quickly claimed re­spon­si­bil­ity for the at­tack, say­ing it was in re­venge for Kenya’s mil­i­tary in­cur­sion into So­ma­lia in Oc­to­ber 2011 or to avenge the mur­ders of Mus­lim cler­ics in the Kenyan port city of Mom­basa.

But break­ing his si­lence in a tele­vised ad­dress 36 hours later, Pres­i­dent Uhuru Keny­atta — the son of the man who had orig­i­nally sent his Kikuyu kins­men to Mpeke­toni — said ab­solutely not, that the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices and po­lice had failed, that al-Shabaab had played no role in the at­tack, which he claimed amounted to “well-planned, or­ches­trated and po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated eth­nic vi­o­lence against a Kenyan com­mu­nity” — read the Kikuyu.

There was wide­spread puz­zle­ment over this state­ment be­cause there had been no of­fi­cial de­nial of al-Shabaab’s claim that it had car­ried out the mur­der­ous at­tack on Nairo­bi’s West­gate Mall last Sep­tem­ber in which at least 67 peo­ple were killed, nor any at­tempt to shift the blame else­where when Kenyans sub­se­quently lost their lives in at­tacks on buses, food stands and mar­kets.

The un­men­tioned but widely un­der­stood tar­get of Keny­at­ta’s charge was his po­lit­i­cal ri­val, Raila Odinga, and his op­po­si­tion Cord al­liance, still smart­ing from a nar­row elec­toral de­feat in March 2013 and anx­ious to score po­lit­i­cal points.

Cedric Barnes, the Horn of Africa pro­ject di­rec­tor for the In­ter­na­tional Cri­sis Group, says he finds no in­her­ent con­tra­dic­tion in ei­ther claim.

“Pres­i­dent Keny­atta made a rather frank ad­mis­sion about the depths of in­se­cu­rity in the coun­try, and al-Shabaab’s claim, apart from the rhetor­i­cal, is aimed at Kenyan sta­bil­ity,” he says. “Al-Shabaab is very adept at ex­ploit­ing these is­sues.”

Peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the long­stand­ing ten­sions over land and the fact that the “mi­grants” were more likely than the in­dige­nous in­hab­i­tants to ob­tain ti­tle deeds are not sur­prised.

Gabriel Dolan, a Catholic priest who knows the area well, calls the at­tack on Mpeke­toni “a wake-up call that shock­ingly re­minds us of the con­se­quences of politi­cis­ing in­stead of ad­dress­ing land re­form”.

So how pre­car­i­ous is Kenya’s sta­bil­ity, and how well can it de­fend it­self?

Those who have spent years analysing al-Shabaab as it has grown within the failed So­mali state say its prin­ci­pal aim ap­pears to be es­tab­lish­ing an Is­lamist caliphate at home and pun­ish­ing Kenya for pre­sent and past sins, be­gin­ning with the re­fusal of the first Keny­atta gov­ern­ment to ac­cede to the de­sire of eth­nic So­ma­lis in north­east­ern colo­nial Kenya to unite with the newly in­de­pen­dent So­ma­lia.

And they note that Kenya’s toxic eth­nop­o­lit­i­cal ri­valry and sham­bolic and cor­rupt do­mes­tic se­cu­rity sys­tem fit right into al-Shabaab’s play­book.

Re­porters who con­verged on Mpeke­toni the day af­ter the at­tack were struck by the lack of any se­ri­ous po­lice pres­ence. The po­lice post had been gut­ted and its few ve­hi­cles fire­bombed, but lo­cal re­in­force­ments were only trick­ling in.

And then there was no-one around to fend off a sec­ond at­tack early Mon­day on a ham­let a few miles away where an­other 10 peo­ple were re­ported killed.

Around the same time as Kenyans were di­gest­ing the at­tack on Mpeke­toni, Aus­tralian Pan­con­ti­nen­tal Oil & Gas NL an­nounced it had struck oil in the nearby Lamu basin, the first off­shore find in a re­cent string of oil strikes in north­ern Kenya.

And the gov­ern­men­t’s first sov­er­eign bond se­cured in­ter­na­tional bids worth US$8,8bn, four times the fi­nally ac­cepted $2bn.

Kenya is the eco­nomic pow­er­house of East Africa and the re­gional head­quar­ters for large firms and brands. But tourism, a tra­di­tional main­stay and a sig­nif­i­cant source of jobs, is reel­ing from a pre­cip­i­tous drop in tourist ar­rivals.

Mu­tuma Mathiu, a man­ag­ing ed­i­tor at Na­tion Me­dia Group, re­cently summed up Kenya’s four-part ter­ror­ism prob­lem as: the griev­ance with the So­mali Is­lamists; Kenya’s mil­i­tary pres­ence in So­ma­lia; the fact that it is a weak state with poor law en­force­ment; and that it is “riven by chasms and cen­trifu­gal­i­ties re­lated to elite com­pe­ti­tion and feel­ings of de­pri­va­tion”.

With his tongue in his cheek but a heavy heart, Mu­tuma wrote that with se­cu­rity of­fi­cers who “melt into the night when their courage is needed most, every­thing is for sale — pa­pers, pro­tec­tion, anonymity — and na­tional se­cu­rity is many times a pawn in po­lit­i­cal games”.

Mu­tuma con­cluded that Kenya was “prob­a­bly far from ide­ally suited for a long war of at­tri­tion with al-Shabaab”.

A week later calls were mount­ing for the res­ig­na­tion, or dis­missal, of se­nior se­cu­rity of­fi­cials, not just the lo­cal of­fi­cers who had been caught flat-footed, but from in­te­rior sec­re­tary Joseph ole Lenku on down. No-one budged.

[show_a­vatar email=11 align=left user_link=last_­post show_­name=true avatar_­size=68]