Failed Intelligence

Kenya's National Intelligence Service had produced an internal report predating the September 21 Al-Shabab attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, warning that it was aware of Al-Shabab members being in Nairobi "and are planning to mount suicide attacks on undisclosed date, targeting Westgate Mall and Holy Family Basilica." It warned also of "Mumbai-style attacks", so Kenya's intelligence community was in possession of hard facts.

Kenya perhaps, isn't aware that it is incumbent on their intelligence services not only to know these things, but to plan their response should they, as suspected on the evidence at hand, actually occur. Yet they were obviously taken by complete surprise, and had the unmitigated gall to criticize their intelligence partners in the U.S. and Israel for not sufficiently alerting them to the imminence of the attack.

That outside intelligence agencies are expected to be alert to the potential of attack and to have information on their actual occurrence, while the home agency feels justified in letting down their guard and simply resting on the possibility that others will do their work for them, is rather mind-boggling. That, in their defence against charges of incompetence they point a finger of blame elsewhere says volumes.

Belatedly, Interpol was asked to issue an arrest notice for Samantha Lewthwaite, a woman of British origin, as one of the "key actors" in the Nairobi mall attack. Acknowledged in retrospect as the lead planner of the attack, giving orders instantly obeyed by her Al-Shabab cohorts, she was not apprehended. Although perhaps she could have been, pre-attack, if Kenyan intelligence had been sufficiently alert.

The U.S., whom they excoriated for its lack of intelligence and response to a purely Kenyan-Somalia episode of terrorism, made an effort to capture a Kenyan in Somalia, known to have plotted an attack on his country's parliament buildings and the UN Nairobi Headquarters. Kenyan intelligence knows all about him. Did they ever make an effort to collect this Kenyan, in full awareness of his intentions?

The U.S. Navy SEALs' attempt to capture Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir (Ikrima) through a pre-dawn raid in Somalia failed because, unlike Kenyan intelligence and its military, Al-Shabab was alert and conscious of the potential of such an attack which happened to have been carried out by the very unit that raided the bin Laden compound in Pakistan, successfully.

Kenya's National Intelligence Service identifies Mr. Abdulkadir as the lead planner of a plot to carry out multiple attacks in East Africa in late 2011 and early 2012, in collaboration with Al-Qaeda's top henchmen in Pakistan. They have the information but it would appear, sadly enough, not the intelligence in the sense of using the intelligence on hand to act appropriately.

The undisclosed date for the planned suicide attack on the Westgate Mall was just too nebulous for them to grasp, one supposes. Two of the suspects involved were thought to have been wearing suicide vests, making good use of grenades and AK-47 assault rifles. Perhaps the Al-Shabab terrorists grasp the idea that gives them the courage to act in the knowledge that the Kenyan military is incapable of so doing.

Finding looting the premises of the mall far more appealing than confronting the terrorists of Al-Shabab. One of whom may have been Mr. Abdulkadir, or may not have been. In any event, he's still on the loose, and doubtless chortling at the expeditious response of his own terror group in confronting the SEALs in a hail of fire, sufficient to put them off the target.

For fear, they said, that innocents might be injured in the resulting melee.