This article analyses the merging of development and security in Western policies vis-à-vis "deficient" states in the global south, looking at the social life of anti-terror policies in Kenya. The attacks on September 11, 2001 renewed the interest in strong and stable states, leading many donors to focus on capacity building and security sector reform. In Kenya, the repressive use of these new powers by the Kibaki government has created significant resistance and the main external actors have taken the local opposition into account and have adapted their anti-terror agendas by complementing hard security assistance with soft interventions aiming at addressing local issues such as conflict prevention and development in communities perceived as being 'at risk' of harbouring terrorists. Representing a more general shift in security interventions in Africa, countering terrorism is now presented as part of a broader 'peace and security' agenda, but despite using new methods to engage with so-called crucial parts of the population, this is not a paradigm shift. Despite the different approaches and objectives, the various projects have ambiguous effects and donors have not abandoned the traditional rationality which privileges homeland protection over civil rights in the recipient country.
Current Western security doctrines assert that state fragility, radicalization and humanitarian disasters in the global South feed into ‘persistent conflict’. Such a scenario consequently requires a closely coordinated and integrated response from political and military actors. In this context, Western governments have introduced the concept of stabilization in their approaches to ‘fragile’ states. This article aims to understand the expanding activities of the US military in sub-Saharan Africa, which are conducted under the label of stability operations. It will be argued that the vast spectrum of activities under this label – from health projects to drone attacks – can be made comprehensible through the concept of policing, understood as processes of regulating communities with the aim of establishing ‘good order’. Key pillars of the US military’s stability operations operations doctrine – namely, a focus on the welfare of the population (on a par with the minimum use of force) as well as an extended preventative engagement – overlap with concerns of police power. Presented by security strategists as vulnerable to instability, sub-Saharan Africa has become an experimental ground for the US military, where ideas on stability operations are tested. Empirically, the article discusses two manifestations of stability operations that warrant an analysis through the concept of policing: US Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) civil affairs projects and the US military’s active involvement in ongoing conflicts.
On the international stage Kenya promotes itself as a regional peacemaker. The country is an important contributor to UN missions, has had an important role in mediating regional conflicts, and is a driving force in the implementation of Africa's peace and security architecture. However, there is another picture of Kenya's engagement in regional conflicts which, at first glance, seems to contradict international perception of the country. By discussing Kenya's historical and current practices in regional security, this article analyses how the Kenyan government balances what seem to be multiple security agendas, ranging from following a responsibility to protect, to pursuing economic self-interest, to executing international counterterrorism agendas. Rather than being a shift in the country's foreign policy, it will be argued that Kenya's involvement in rights and norm-violating practicesmore specifically in arms deliveries to Southern Sudan and the illegal military training of youths in defence of the Somali transitional government, as well as repressive 'counterterrorism' practices against its own population-illustrates how the conditions of globalisation not only limit but also enable new opportunities for the positioning of postcolonial states in the international arena. It confirms patterns in Kenya's political history in which the politics of attracting, sustaining, and diversifying international partners and external revenue is part of the regime's continuing efforts at consolidating 'stateness'. Actively engaging with international norms to make them comply with one's own perceptions of security demonstrates how actors in the South shape the terms of reference in regional security.
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