Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and death

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Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and death

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Dec 01, 2015 5:40 pm

Not sure exactly where to put this, so new thread:

Kenyan university fails to warn of realistic terrorism drill, causing panic and death

By Yanan Wang December 1 at 6:32 AM

When gunshots rang out through Strathmore University in Nairobi Monday, students believed they were under siege. They thought immediately of Garissa, another Kenyan university, where a terrorist attack left 148 dead in April.

No voice appeared over the intercom to say, “This is a drill” — even though that’s exactly what it was.

Instead, students and staff at the school frantically tried to escape. They waded through the neighboring Mbagathi River, climbed out of windows and hovered over perches on the side of the university building, looking for a way out. Esther Kindambi, a 33-year-old employee, jumped from the third floor and died.

Some 30 additional people were injured
, police officials said during a press conference Tuesday morning.

[...]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... and-death/
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby elfismiles » Tue Dec 01, 2015 5:52 pm

That's really terrible.

Could've gone in this thread...

School Shooting PsyOp Drills Thread
Post by elfismiles » 04 Aug 2009 17:24
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24732
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Dec 01, 2015 5:58 pm

Thanks, miles. I'm not convinced that "PsyOp" is right in this case -- though what on earth where they thinking of, just a few months after a real & very deadly terrorist attack on another Kenyan campus??

But I'll file the story in that thread and let this one expire.

ON EDIT: Though people who know Kenya/Africa better than I do may feel like commenting here on this particular case, and on the wave of terror attacks throughout Africa that are barely reported in the West. They're coinciding with a wave of heavily-militarised neo-colonialism by the USA, France and others.
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby elfismiles » Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:34 pm

Thanks MacC.

Yeah, I agree - my choice of using the PsyOp moniker was premature... more likely the usual example of Hanlon's razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I just don't get how humans continue to be so stupid as to not realize that such unannounced drills ARE TERRORISM.

MacCruiskeen » 01 Dec 2015 21:58 wrote:Thanks, miles. I'm not convinced that "PsyOp" is right in this case -- though what on earth where they thinking of, just a few months after a real & very deadly terrorist attack on another Kenyan campus??

But I'll file the story in that thread and let this one expire.

ON EDIT: Though people who know Kenya/Africa better than I do may feel like commenting here on this particular case, and on the wave of terror attacks throughout Africa that are barely reported in the West. They're coinciding with a wave of heavily-militarised neo-colonialism by the USA, France and others.
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby stefano » Wed Dec 02, 2015 10:14 am

MacCruiskeen » Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:58 pm wrote:ON EDIT: Though people who know Kenya/Africa better than I do may feel like commenting here on this particular case, and on the wave of terror attacks throughout Africa that are barely reported in the West. They're coinciding with a wave of heavily-militarised neo-colonialism by the USA, France and others.

Kenya really has two terrorisms - a Somali one and a Swahili one. A report that came out this month gives a lot of interesting background on the deep politics of the Somali one (Al-Shabaab):

The KDF is involved in a $400 million (Sh41 billion) sugar and charcoal smuggling business that funds al Shabaab militants in Somalia, a report has found.

Referring to loaders, traders and intelligence, the report released on Thursday stated about 150,000 tonnes of illicit sugar are ferried into Kenya through Kismayo every year. [Note: sugar prices in Kenya are artificially high for reasons of patronage]

"Workers at the Port in Kismayo said around 230 trucks of 14 tonnes each leave Kismayo for Kenya, around 3,000 tonnes a week," the report read.

Key military officials involved earn Sh5 billion annually from the trade, said the report that further implicated unnamed key figures in the Defense ministry, the Immigration department and State House.

"The network enjoys the protection and tacit cooperation of leaders at the highest echelons of the Executive and the National Assembly," it stated.

"Parliament and foreign embassies all described a situation in which a high ranking military official is at the head of a smuggling network which includes commanders of KDF forces within Amisom."

The report dubbed 'Black and white: Kenya's criminal racket in Somalia' also revealed the charcoal is exported in a business that though "somewhat disrupted and diminished, is still a mainstay of revenue for al Shabaab, Jubaland and KDF."

It noted that the port tax for exported charcoal, split among the Jubaland administration of Ahmed Madobe, KDF and al Shabaab is about $3 (Sh306) a bag.

The report by the Journalists for Justice rights group in Nairobi further accused Kenyan troops of "widespread human rights abuses", including wrongly targeted air strikes, torture, abduction and rape.

"The consistent pattern that emerged was of airstrikes targeting crowds of people and animals. The majority of victims seem to be herders and their livestock. Many complained of water points being destroyed," it read.

[...]

More at the link. And a lot of Somali Kenyans never wanted to be part of Kenya in the first place, so KDF abuses in Somalia were always going to draw a reaction.

By the way, the Recce Company (police special forces) response on the day of the Garissa massacre was absolutely dismal - I don't think it was on purpose, but maybe it was. They had to wait seven hours for their special plane, which was on a run to Mombasa with the daughter-in-law of the Police Airwing boss Rogers Mbithi on board. The interior minister and inspector-general of police actually got to Garissa long before the recces, and reportedly made all different police and army units co-ordinate their actions through them.

The other, Swahili terrorism (on the coast, mainly in Mombasa county) gives more reason to suspect foreign (especially British) involvement. It's died down drastically in the past year - partly thanks to some welcome and overdue concessions on land made by Uhuru Kenyatta (whose father Jomo gave lots of Swahili land on the coast to Kikuyus after independence), but partly for no apparent reason at all. In 2014 Kenya's beach tourism took a big hit when, after attacks in Mombasa, the FCO advised against travel there. When the FCO does that then Thomas Cook etc. can't issue travel insurance and package holidays suffer. The FCO issued a warning on the coast in April, the week before the Garissa massacre. So the new calm there, and the improved relations between Kenyatta and the UK and US (which very clearly wanted Raila Odinga to win the presidency in 2013), look related to openings for Western business in Kenya. The most obviously dodgy recent news on that front I've seen was a good bit yesterday on the City of London's efforts to set up a sort of money-laundering hub in Nairobi, and the April visit of Bill Clinton and about 20 big donors to his foundation (i.e. investors in the Hillary C presidency) to Kenya... less than a month after Garissa. John Kerry popped in the following week, and then Obama was there in July.

And I'm sure you'll be astonished to learn, Mac, that four of the five attackers in Garissa left the building feet first. The one who survived was a Tanzanian, who does not seem to have been involved in the planning of the thing.
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:44 pm

Thanks very much, stefano. Very informative. You know a lot about places, events and backgrounds I know next to nothing about. Poor bloody Africa.

By the way, the Recce Company (police special forces) response on the day of the Garissa massacre was absolutely dismal - I don't think it was on purpose, but maybe it was. They had to wait seven hours for their special plane ...


Racists will put that down to some kind of innate African incompetence, but inexplicably delayed police responses would appear to be a regular feature of this kind of attack, even in wonderfully advanced Old Europe. The delayed response was very noticeable in Paris on Friday 13th, and even more so in Norway, where an enterprising TV company filmed the massacre from the air while the police could not access a seaplane or a helicopter anywhere in the nation for love or money. This obliged them to drive to the port opposite Utoya, where they then endeavoured to reach the island in a rowing boat, which nearly sank.
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed Dec 02, 2015 5:02 pm

students and staff at the school frantically tried to escape. They waded through the neighboring Mbagathi River, climbed out of windows and hovered over perches on the side of the university building, looking for a way out. Esther Kindambi, a 33-year-old employee, jumped from the third floor and died.


How terrified would you have to be to jump from a third floor window? That is one very convincing terror drill.

What the hell was going on there, exactly?
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby DrEvil » Wed Dec 02, 2015 7:49 pm

MacCruiskeen » Wed Dec 02, 2015 9:44 pm wrote:Thanks very much, stefano. Very informative. You know a lot about places, events and backgrounds I know next to nothing about. Poor bloody Africa.

By the way, the Recce Company (police special forces) response on the day of the Garissa massacre was absolutely dismal - I don't think it was on purpose, but maybe it was. They had to wait seven hours for their special plane ...


Racists will put that down to some kind of innate African incompetence, but inexplicably delayed police responses would appear to be a regular feature of this kind of attack, even in wonderfully advanced Old Europe. The delayed response was very noticeable in Paris on Friday 13th, and even more so in Norway, where an enterprising TV company filmed the massacre from the air while the police could not access a seaplane or a helicopter anywhere in the nation for love or money. This obliged them to drive to the port opposite Utoya, where they then endeavoured to reach the island in a rowing boat, which nearly sank.


A motorized police RHIB actually, but the engine gave out on them. They didn't have a chopper immediately available (crew on holiday), and they made the decision to drive rather than wait for another chopper.

If you want to blame anyone blame the leader of AUF who "ordered" (yelled at the captain until he complied) the only boat on the island to leave with him and eight others. He thought it was a right-wing coup and had a high opinion of his own importance in such a scenario (but don't say that out loud. He's traumatized, the poor thing).
Fair enough - the guy was probably terrified, but he was the adult in charge of all the children on the island, and he ran away with their only means of escape (an old armor-plated military boat btw).

Also blame the first police officer on the scene who decided to not cross over, but instead stayed on the mainland ordering civilians to go into the line of fire to pick up survivors. He was literally standing there in body armor watching kids get executed across the water.

Cowardice and bad decision-making were the real culprits in the effed up response.
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Dec 03, 2015 12:25 pm

DrEvil wrote:A motorized police RHIB actually, but the engine gave out on them.


OK, thanks for clearing that up, Dr. Evil. I was quoting from memory, sloppily, and these small details do matter. But they don't alter the main point: the delayed response.

They didn't have a chopper immediately available (crew on holiday), and they made the decision to drive rather than wait for another chopper.


This is where it becomes just simply implausible for me. I can't believe that Norway is less well-equipped with helicopters than, say, my native Scotland, where several different regional police forces have several different helicopters available for everything from observing demonstrations and traffic jams to carrying seriously injured people to hospital quickly. Norway, too, has oil rigs, and surely there are many helicopters on standby for emergency rescue operations or just for transporting workers routinely to and from the mainland. Then there's mountain search-and-rescue teams, coastguards, etc. Also radio and TV stations (like the one that filmed the massacre from the air, live), and commercial companies offering expensive aerial sightseeing tours, and god knows what else. Last not least, the Norwegian Army, Navy and Air Force surely have their own choppers too -- including big armoured helicopters specially designed to take off and land safely even in battle zones.

And all of these helicopters will have had their own highly-trained crews, not all of whom will have been "on holiday" that day.

The government quarter of Oslo had just been attacked that morning! A huge explosion, and eight people killed. Surely the entire nation was on high alert, especially the cops? A national State of Emergency was declared after that explosion, right? The police could have requisitioned any helicopter in the country, immediately. Nor would any of the owners have objected in the slightest. Kids were being massacred in their dozens, for a long time, while trapped on a tiny island.

Cowardice and bad decision-making were the real culprits in the effed up response.


This is always the kind of explanation given, in every country. "Whoops, gosh darn, I'm such a butterfingers, oops, keep tripping over my own feet, oops again!, didn't see that coming!", etc., etc. The Incompetence Excuse. The Keystone Cops yarn. "The CIA failed to communicate properly with the FBI, and therefore 9/11 happened. We're a bit crap, sorry, but please be gentle with us." I don't buy it.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, Dr Evil, but I have no idea what it could be. I simply do not believe that the Norwegian police could not get hold of a single helicopter, or a single trained crew, literally immediately. All it took was a phone call.

Surely some very serious questions were being asked in Norway, in the aftermath? Or did everyone just accept this "No helicopter, 'cos the crew were on holiday" yarn?

PS Some context: I'm writing this in Germany, where the media have been tying themselves in knots for years now, trying very hard not to ask the ever-more-unavoidable question: Was there high-level complicity, in German police and intelligence circles, with the serial murder of ten immigrants between 2000 and 2007?

- Wiki for convenience (there's very little about it in English): Bosphorus serial murders - often repulsively referred to as "the kebab murders" ("Dönermorde").
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby DrEvil » Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:42 pm

MacCruiskeen » Thu Dec 03, 2015 6:25 pm wrote:
DrEvil wrote:A motorized police RHIB actually, but the engine gave out on them.


OK, thanks for clearing that up, Dr. Evil. I was quoting from memory, sloppily, and these small details do matter. But they don't alter the main point: the delayed response.

They didn't have a chopper immediately available (crew on holiday), and they made the decision to drive rather than wait for another chopper.


This is where it becomes just simply implausible for me. I can't believe that Norway is less well-equipped with helicopters than, say, my native Scotland, where several different regional police forces have several different helicopters available for everything from observing demonstrations and traffic jams to carrying seriously injured people to hospital quickly. Norway, too, has oil rigs, and surely there are many helicopters on standby for emergency rescue operations or just for transporting workers routinely to and from the mainland. Then there's mountain search-and-rescue teams, coastguards, etc. Also radio and TV stations (like the one that filmed the massacre from the air, live), and commercial companies offering expensive aerial sightseeing tours, and god knows what else. Last not least, the Norwegian Army, Navy and Air Force surely have their own choppers too -- including big armoured helicopters specially designed to take off and land safely even in battle zones.

And all of these helicopters will have had their own highly-trained crews, not all of whom will have been "on holiday" that day.

The government quarter of Oslo had just been attacked that morning! A huge explosion, and eight people killed. Surely the entire nation was on high alert, especially the cops? A national State of Emergency was declared after that explosion, right? The police could have requisitioned any helicopter in the country, immediately. Nor would any of the owners have objected in the slightest. Kids were being massacred in their dozens, for a long time, while trapped on a tiny island.

Cowardice and bad decision-making were the real culprits in the effed up response.


This is always the kind of explanation given, in every country. "Whoops, gosh darn, I'm such a butterfingers, oops, keep tripping over my own feet, oops again!, didn't see that coming!", etc., etc. The Incompetence Excuse. The Keystone Cops yarn. "The CIA failed to communicate properly with the FBI, and therefore 9/11 happened. We're a bit crap, sorry, but please be gentle with us." I don't buy it.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, Dr Evil, but I have no idea what it could be. I simply do not believe that the Norwegian police could not get hold of a single helicopter, or a single trained crew, literally immediately. All it took was a phone call.

Surely some very serious questions were being asked in Norway, in the aftermath? Or did everyone just accept this "No helicopter, 'cos the crew were on holiday" yarn?

PS Some context: I'm writing this in Germany, where the media have been tying themselves in knots for years now, trying very hard not to ask the ever-more-unavoidable question: Was there high-level complicity, in German police and intelligence circles, with the serial murder of ten immigrants between 2000 and 2007?

- Wiki for convenience (there's very little about it in English): Bosphorus serial murders - often repulsively referred to as "the kebab murders" ("Dönermorde").


As far as I know the Oslo police are the only ones with their own helicopter. Pretty much all the North sea transport / emergency rescue choppers are stationed at the coast, far away from Oslo (Bergen and Stavanger). The closest one they could find was at Rygge airport, about 40 miles outside Oslo, so they decided to not wait for them to fuel and pre-flight and round up the crew. They were in a car heading to Utøya eight minutes after they got the first call. Could they have gotten there faster with the chopper? Probably. That's what I meant by bad decision-making.

Media choppers are also rare. I think there's maybe one or two doing traffic reports around Oslo. One of them obviously being the one at Utøya.

Aerial sightseeing by chopper is pretty much non-existent in Norway, you need a special dispensation which is almost never granted (noise pollution. Same goes for anything motorized in the mountains).

Also, summer holiday in Norway means that most people really are on holiday. The country is basically idling for two weeks.
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Re: Kenya: unannounced terrorism drill causes panic and deat

Postby stefano » Fri Dec 04, 2015 8:21 am

MacCruiskeen wrote:Racists will put that down to some kind of innate African incompetence, but inexplicably delayed police responses would appear to be a regular feature of this kind of attack, even in wonderfully advanced Old Europe.

Well, Kenya is a pretty corrupt place - more so, or certainly more overtly so, than Old Europe. My take on the plane thing is that Mbithi had been using the recce plane as his private transport service, and then just tragically happened to do so on the day of the massacre as well. The actions by Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery seem much more suspect - getting a chopper to take him to Garissa (this is now while the recces are waiting in Nairobi) and insisting on co-ordinating the assault, which resulted in local cops and soldiers waiting for orders outside the hostel while the kids were being murdered inside. Nkaissery is a hard man, known to be supportive of death squads in Mombasa that assassinate clerics who sound hostile to the State or supportive of Al-Shabaab. I'm fully willing to believe he keeps an insurgency alive on purpose and is willing to give it the odd bit of help.

On the OP - really sounds like an insane idea:
An armed security officer, dressed like an Al Shabaab militant, entered the university and fired blank shots as he shouted that he was member of the terror group during the drill.


But sadly common:
Several universities have carried out security drills after al Shabaab militants attacked Garissa University College on April 2 and killed 148 people.

The latest security drill was carried out at Kenyatta University Meru campus, where six students were injured and admitted at the Meru Level 5 Hospital.


This is what happened at Meru in July:

Six students sustained serious injuries and are admitted at the Meru Level Five Hospital during a security drill at the Kenya Methodist University yesterday, the Star reports, while seven others escaped with minor injuries in the incident.

During the drill, a member of the security personnel, armed with a gun and dressed like an al Shabaab militant entered the university where he fired shots, shouting that he was member of the terror group.

Kenya Red Cross coordinator Gitonga Mugambi confirmed the incident saying that the drill was executed unprofessionally. He said two students are still unaccounted for following the incident. Mugambi said it is believed that the students may have run into the neighbouring imenti forest in the ensuing panic.


Some more interesting background on British links with jihadist terror in Mombasa:

Briton accused of plotting attacks in Kenya jailed for nine years

A British man accused of helping plan attacks in Kenya was sentenced to nine years in jail on Wednesday [2 December] after being found guilty of trying to obtain a fake passport.

Jermaine Grant, from east London, still faces terrorism-related charges in a trial in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. Prosecutors say Grant has ties to Somali Islamist rebels al Shabaab, but he denies the charges.

Grant was arrested in 2011 at an apartment in Mombasa and was found with bomb-making material and instructions on bomb-making, prosecutors said. He and several co-conspirators were planning attacks in Mombasa and on Western interests in the region, they added.

Prosecutors say that, at the time, Grant was sharing the apartment with Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called "White Widow" who was married to one of the bombers who carried out the 2005 attacks on public transport in London.

The Mombasa court found Grant guilty of nine counts related to the fake Kenyan passport, including giving a false statement and making false documents, and sentenced him to a year in prison for each count.


On Utoya - I read a very good book on the massacre this year: One of us by Asne Seierstad. She did a really exhaustive job in speaking to officers and going through all the reports related to the day, and having read the book I don't believe there was any government complicity. I did get a sense that a conspiracy was played down though - that some of Breivik's internet friends knew more than came out in the trial. One dude skipped to Denmark or something and wasn't extradited (IIRC). But it is very clear that Breivik could do what he did - and that red flags before the attack were ignored - because he was white and blond.
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