Intelligence Squad Best Bet for Mungiki Problem

By Sylvester Oluoch
COLUMBUS, Mo

Mungiki is an amorphous group that draws its name from kikuyu dialect, meaning multitudes. Its heinous activities have reached epic levels.

The latest atrocity by Mungiki began late Monday when residents of Karatina, Nyeri stood on the way of mungiki as the quasi sect, cult, if you may, attempted to uproot members of Kirinyaga region from Nyeri. The blood bath that ensued left at least 37 people dead and scores injured. The sect members accused their target’s community of forcefully evicting and, in isolated circumstances, killing their sect members in Kirinyaga.

It will be naïve to treat Mungiki as a sect. The group’s activities bear all the trappings of a terror gang. Mungiki has not only limited its activities to ritual killings, but has also engaged in massive extortion earning it the reputation of the Kenyan mafia. Mungiki has also played the role of “guns for hire.”

The sect claimed responsibility for the murder of young Embakasi Member of Parliament, Mugabe Were. No tangible action came from the government in response to the same. Further, Mungiki was blamed for the reprisal killings in Naivasha that left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless during post-election violence in early 2008.

Today Mungiki rules supreme through intimidation and scare tactics. Its operations are making neighborhoods unsafe and business investments unattractive. The most chilling claim and one that warranted massive investigation in the armed forces was that by 2007, more than 16,000 police and army officers were part of the 2 million strong followers. This too, was swept under the rags for political expediency.

Mungiki dismembers bodies of its victims, which reflect ritual killings. It also uses arm twisting to collect huge sums of money as business and neighborhood protection fee. The mixture of these two serve as a way to sustain Mingiki’s lucrative extortion business.

Having spread enough fear, quite a few people are quacking in their boots and would rather have nothing to do with it. This helps Mingiki deal with community policing because the public is reluctant to play an active role.

Another complication in dealing with Mungiki is the fear that nobody knows who among the police officers receiving the reports could be sect member, going by Mungiki’s own claims.

Whichever way, it is in the interest of all, including Mungiki sect members to end these untoward acts. The members do not benefit much from the returns of their actions. Their leaders do. All the suffering and anguish they go through and the possibility of trauma is not because of their own enrichment but brainwashing.

Mungiki was initially a problem in Central Kenya. It has now spread to Central Kenya environs as well. The lesson we need to learn from this is that once fully emboldened, Mungiki will be a national problem with sophisticated networks and will be very hard to break.

The right time to deal with Mungiki is now.
Shoot-to-kill, even when police have complete advantage and could arrest without endangering themselves is myopic. With every dead Mungiki, we lose an opportunity to gather intelligence. The best crack squad for Mungiki will be intelligence squad, not firing squad.

This sect is like a strange octopus that has thousands of tentacles, which sprout every time they are cut. To solve the problem, we have to focus on the heart or the core. This can only be done by identifying its leadership and dealing with it firmly.

We have failed to reinforce the proscription of Mungiki before, but for successful outcome, we must reinvent the rules. If members of a proscribed criminal gang gather to protest, such protest is illegal ab initio, by virtue of the illegality of the very group.

Our police force failed to reinforce the law in two occasions: once in Nakuru when the political arm of Mungiki held a meeting there and in Ngara when the group called a protest following mayhem that ensued on the heels of the bungled 2007 general elections.

We are stuck with a bad situation in Kenya, and we must remember that insecurity anywhere is insecurity everywhere. Therefore, it does not matter that the killings occur in Central Kenya and its environs, it matters that insecurity glares a sovereign nation in the face. What a lawless state!

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