Trafficking deepens fears of insecurity'

April 01 2007 at 11:15AM

By Lucie Peyterman

Nairobi - A rise in illegal arms trafficking has deepened insecurity fears in Kenya, already struggling to overcome its image as a crime-ridden country plagued by terrorism threats.

Once considered a relative island of stability amid regional conflicts in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa, Kenya has suffered deadly terrorist attacks, in 1998 and 2002, ongoing tribal conflicts and a crime wave that claimed 50 lives in January alone.

Estimates of the number of illegal weapons in circulation - easily procured in the city's open air markets - range well above the 100 000 mark, despite a government initiative launched last year to curb the availability of arms.

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"There are around 140 000 illegal arms in circulation in Kenya and they are found among the most vulnerable and marginalised groups," Daniel Kiptugen of Oxfam said.

In a step to fight the spread of firearms, Kenya's security minister, John Michuki, recently took part in a ceremony to destroy about 8 000 illegal arms seized over the past year.

Standing in front of a pile of burning guns, Michuki said the weapons were "fuelling the illegal exploitation of natural resources and abetting terrorism and other crimes.

"The very easy availability, affordability and accessibility of arms reduces the incentives to find non-violent solutions to conflicts and breeds a spiral of insecurity," Michuki said.

Police say conflicts along the east African country's borders, including a two-decade insurgency in Uganda, chaotic anarchy in Somalia since 1991 and the former civil war in Sudan - have led to an increased number of weapons in the area.

"There's always been serious arms trafficking in Kenya but we also have a problem because of Somalia" where arms are sold freely, police spokesperson Gideon Kibunjah said.

Weapons smuggling has increased since Ethiopian-Somali troops drove out an Islamist movement from south and central Somalia three months ago, plunging Mogadishu into chaos and making arms control at the border with Kenya an issue of little priority, Kibunjah has said.

Kenya, party since 2000 to a regional treaty to control and reduce the number of illegal arms in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa, has achieved little success with its disarmament programmes, despite much-publicised weapon destructions.

"The forced disarmament process has never worked because we must address what drives the demand in the first place: competition for natural resources and a lack of government security forces," Oxfam's Kiptugen said.

Tribal conflicts over access to water and land among pastoral communities in Kenya's north are often resolved by gun battles, in which communities see gun use "as a way to protect themselves and their livelihoods," he explained.

A deepening divide between the rich and the poor in Kenya, where two-thirds of the population lives on less than one dollar a day, also exacerbates the problem, gun control activist Walter Odhiambo said.

"This inequity is a catalyst for violence," he said.

A gun-fed crime wave in Kenya earlier this year led the United States to issue a travel advisory to its citizens, warning of "increasing incidents of violent crime" after two Americans were shot dead in January.

While the government increases its promises to step up security measures as President Mwai Kibaki comes up for re-election in December, much remains to be done to alleviate fears.

"The impact (of these programmes) is yet to be felt," Kiptugen said. - Sapa-AFP

...already struggling to overcome its image as a crime-ridden country plagued by terrorism threats.

What a load of rubbish!! I would like to compare these numbers with the US.
How many terrorist threats exist in the US? How many people walk around with guns in the US? 50 people lost their lives in January, but how many people die in conflicts in the US?

America is just producing a fake threat of terrorism so that they have an excuse to continue their rediculous war.

very little regulations in view to gun possessions. and based on that 75% of all murder happen within families because every idiot is entitled to have a gun at home! conflicts are sttled pretty often by using the gun.

drive by shootings are quite common......

the terrorism thread i guess is still "orange" means second highest alarm...........

as a result: the united states are quite dangerous not to mention the risk that you get straight to guantanamo because your profile shows you don't eat pork and you have moslom friends - no lawyer, no information for your relatives and if you are german even the german government might turn you down

OK folks, I am going to step in here to defend the U.S. I don't know where you are getting your statistics! Yes, there is crime in the U.S., mainly in the inner cities. However, as a female I can get in my car alone on the East Coast and drive five full days to California on the West Coast and NO ONE bothers me. No bandits, no highway shootings, etc. , no attempted robberies or rapes. I could not do that in Kenya. In fact due to the tourist shootings in January I was a nervous wreck just driving from JKIA to the hotel.

Guns are a problem anywhere. At least here there is some ATTEMPT to control it. If I wanted to buy a hand gun legally I would have to get permission from my local Chief of Police in order to carry, (and they don't give those out willy nilly), most people are turned down. Yes, there are people who have stolen guns and then resell them and, of course, the criminal element and the hoods in the cities have them. The Boston area had a gun buy-back a couple years ago with no questions asked and many guns were turned in. Has Kenya ever thought of that? In my 66 years I had never seen a machine-gun/AK-47 type gun until I went to Kenya and saw the police carrying them. I couldn't believe it.

My other pet peeve is when everyone, individual and press alike, criticizes the U.S. is for their travel advisories. The travel advisories/alerts are not put out to "hurt" any one country. They are put out for the benefit of U.S. citizens who may not be aware of problems in a country that they are considering traveling to. If I decide to travel to a country that has an advisory/alert posted and there is serious trouble, I may not be able to get assistance from the U.S. Embassy in that country in an emergency. Please stop being paranoid and thinking the U.S. is out do do everyone in monetarily or in any other way. It just isn't the case! People who travel to a country where they have never been before deserve to understand any dangers they might be encountering.

I must say I'm siding with Jan here. While I don't agree with all of US foreign policy, they do come for excessive criticism IMO. Kenya is beginning to become a dangerous destination for foreigners. The fact that as a tourist you stand out from the crowd doesn't help the situation. The authorities have no ways of controlling this "threat" and they better get their act together soon. And, they should start with an internal investigation into criminal individuals within their own police department!

OK folks, I am going to step in here to defend the U.S.

Thought you would

Of course you are right, too, Jan. I am sure you can travel as much as you wish in the US without getting shot but the same applies to Kenya. I had a look at the website of the German Federal Office which also has an evaluation of security factors for every country and they also mention the risk of terrorism and robberies. However, they specify where the dangerous areas are. For Nairobi they even point out specific roads that you should avoid at night. The government does well to inform its people about the dangers but when such information comes from the US it is often overdramatised. I am not sure if it is the government or the media that are to blame for that.

The one American woman killed in Nairobi was a family member of the US Embassy and she was driving around in a huge limo when she was shot. I can not recall who the other person was but I consider it wrong to project this onto any American travelling in Kenya. You can't say that Kenya is lifethreatening for American tourists because a member of the Embassy in a limo was shot.

If you drive around alone in an expensive car in the ghettos of a large American city you also risk being robbed or killed.

Kenya definately has a problem with guns and criminals coming in from surrounding countries like Somalia. People have absolutely nothing and on the other hand you have people that are so rich, they don't know what to do with all their money. This creates a conflict and someone who has a gun will be too temped to take a piece of the cake. Kenya needs to work on that.

An AK-47 is a Russian gun, no wonder you never saw one in the US

The thing that irritates me with American travel advices is that you have a president that seems to spread a general fear for countries that have many muslims. The message - although maybe true in it's core - always comes accross as if there are wild hords of terrorists that will kill everyone. We all know that Bush is trying to revenge for the damage of 9-11. But he is taking it too far and is starting wars all over the world for this. If it wasn't for the US messing around in Somalia, these Somalis would still be there and not in Kenya. He creates more mess than he clears up.

The last terrorist attack in Kenya was clearly addressed at Israelis. No need for anyone else to fear. However, with what Bush is doing these days, Americans will sooner or later need to fear leaving their country, too.

With his actions, Bush is creating this danger for Americans!!

So we have 2 problems. A political one due to the actions of America that create a danger of terrorist attacks for (contra)revenge and an economical problem that is caused by the Kenyan government by allowing such a great gap between poverty and wealth in the country resulting in robberies.

The risk of robberies you can reduce by driving around in a normal car, leaving your jewlery at home and staying on safe roads.

The political part you have to remember the next time you vote your parliament.

Again, nothing wrong with security advice for travellers, it is the way it is being expressed and the fact that it goes through all media that I dislike. It smells too much of subconscious political influence. But maybe I have become hypersensitive to everything that comes from Bush & Co.