A conversation with Kenya Army Lt. Gen. Njuki Mwaniki on human security
ADF STAFF
Retired Lt. Gen. Njuki Mwaniki is a former commander of the Kenya Army. During nearly 40 years in the Kenya Defence Forces, he held posts including general officer commanding of the Kenya Army’s Eastern Command, chief of Army staff and commandant of the National Defence College. From 2001 to 2003, he was chairman of the Joint Military Commission for the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, which helped broker an end to the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is a native of Kenya’s Central Region near Mount Kenya and is married with three children. This interview has been edited to fit this format.
ADF: How do you define human security?
MWANIKI: Essentially, security is about creating the conditions that allow human beings individually or as a group to pursue their cherished goals without unjustified constraints. It is these individuals and groups who surrender their sovereignty to the state, and you can say this social contract is a constitution.
They expect the state to secure them from political, social, economic, environmental and military threats. I would agree with [London School of Economics Professor] Barry Buzan, who said that security requires the absence of threats to these five areas. This allows human beings to pursue their goals. But I think you need to consider that human beings created the state about 3 1/2 centuries ago with the Peace of Westphalia [the treaties that ended Europe’s Thirty Years War in 1648]. This is the core of the idea of the state, and it was created to bring peace in Europe. The African state is hardly half a century old and unlike the Westphalian state, the African state was created to subjugate African colonies. Unfortunately, that structure has changed very little.
But the human being takes precedent, and, therefore, human security is older than the state. It is as old as the creation of man himself. So this is security from a very broad perspective — a perspective that looks at the freedoms of the human being.
ADF: You spent time as commandant of the National Defence College in Kenya. Do you believe military education institutions need to place a greater emphasis on training officers about human security?
MWANIKI: Ideally, the main effort of military training should be focused on securing the state from external military threats. But the threats in almost all the African countries are threats related to social, political and economic issues. You’re looking at bad governance. You’re looking at poor infrastructure. You’re looking at a porous border. You’re looking at weak institutions, rampant corruption, poverty. You’re looking at negative ethnicity, lack of social cohesion, youth unemployment, natural disasters.
The African state is weak. The fundamental weakness is in the construction of the African state. The foundation is fragile; its building blocks are from colonialism and from an imperial legacy. It consisted of control of the state and the system by the colonizer. Now, the problem is that once our forefathers took over, they inherited this foundation and perfected it. Look at Robert Mugabe and all these guys. They have perfected subjugation. They lord over their nations more than the colonizers. Therefore, Africa has many weak states from both a structural and institutional perspective.
So the actual fundamental threat comes from state weakness, the need for state building, a crisis of citizenship. Therefore, the threat to the African state is not from an external source. Uganda and Kenya are not going to go to war. There’s not going to be war between Zimbabwe and South Africa. The problem of repression and state collapse are internal.
ADF: Where does the military come in?
MWANIKI: These threats have got nothing to do with the military. If a problem is socio-political, the main instrument to address that question must be political. If the conflict is arising out of poor governance, the only way you can correct that is through the political process. If it is a social issue, the main efforts should be social. If it is economic, the main effort should be economic. The military just supports.
Now, because of the violence, in order to bring the violence down you must bring in a security force. But that force is not military; it is paramilitary. The military has no jurisdiction to deal with internal problems. The people with that jurisdiction and that mandate are the police. When you talk of the issues of terrorism, the issues of porous borders, the issues of crime — these are issues that can be dealt with by forces which are paramilitary. Actually, in the French system they have a paramilitary force known as the gendarmerie. A gendarme is a Soldier who is employed in police duty. A couple of years ago I asked a French Soldier about the gendarmes, and he told me, more or less, they are like the police who have been equipped to the level of a paramilitary force. Normally, for internal security issues, you need a force structure that is based on the threat. In Africa, you need a bigger police force that will tackle internal security problems and a very small Army that will tackle the military problems.
Let’s remember, a military force is very expensive to build and sustain. To create a Soldier is 12 times more expensive than to create a policeman. Because, once you have a Soldier, first of all you must give him a spiritual leader, a chaplain to take care of his morals. You must give him a chef for food security. You must give a tailor, a cobbler, a doctor, a weapon, a tank, artillery — you must give him other Soldiers. You must give him a pension, retirement benefits and all that. But a policeman doesn’t even have barracks.
So, if you do a strategic security review, you’ll find that actually you don’t need such a large military, you don’t need a brigade in any of the countries. We need to teach our young Soldiers to understand how to create systems that give our people the building blocks of survival, dignity and livelihood. The military should understand these issues, but they should always remember that they are supporting the civil effort.
ADF: Are you concerned about the prospect of climate change and conflict over limited resources? How does this impact human security?
MWANIKI: The issue of the environment is very critical. I was looking at the statistics in the whole of Africa. In the area of the Sahel and in the north of Africa, environmental degradation is causing migration. People are migrating in search of pastures for animals. In terms of drought, about 11 million people in the Sahel are facing malnutrition. In terms of food, we have a food deficit in many Sub-Saharan countries. You have got the issue of erratic rains, you have got the reduction in the production of cereals. So, yes, the issue of the environment is quite critical, and there is a great need for environmental sustainability, ensuring that sustainable environmental management is put in place.
Our military was involved in reforestation. The Kenyan Army has planted over 10 million trees; each regiment, each battalion, has got a forest. We have got a program that is called “the Environmental Soldier.” It’s part of civil-military relations. Most of our Soldiers have planted about 1,000 trees each. They count and they report. It’s something I always look forward to, going to the forest with the troops Friday afternoon or Saturday; there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re leaving something behind for posterity.
ADF: What role do you think the military should play in protecting natural resources, including drinking water? What role do you think they should have in food security?
MWANIKI: The key to overcoming food and water deficits lies in government intervention to promote the use of modern methods of farming and to increase resilience among farmers. Active engagement through support to off-season food and crop production, soil and water conservation, rehabilitation projects, locust control, and monitoring and mobilization of resources are some of the measures that are underway. While the population affected by drought and famine has reduced significantly, and this is a positive gain, the growing population has also led to massive deforestation to meet food and settlement demands. Deforestation also leads to human and animal conflict.
The military will support this intervention in water drilling, construction of dams and infrastructure, particularly in borderlands and insecurity-prone areas. In Kenya, when I was the commander of the Army, I spent more money in buying water drilling equipment, in buying bulldozers, than on heavy weapons. I think we did almost 100 dams, we did over 500 kilometers of infrastructure in security-poor areas, near our border with Sudan and our border with Uganda. But that emphasis is wrong; it is not correct. The Ministry of Water and Irrigation, the Ministry of Agriculture — those are the core ministries that should do that. That is not the work of the military. The military should be concentrated on doing military business, and where there is proper governance, the water needs will be taken care of.
ADF: When people look at the demographic trends in Africa, they point to what they call a youth bulge. Africa is the youngest continent in the world, with 200 million people ages 15 to 24. What is unknown is whether this will be a demographic dividend or a disaster. How do you view Africa’s demographics from a security perspective?
MWANIKI: From a social perspective, in Africa we call this the warrior age. Because at that age we used to protect our own societies. Actually, when you look at the demographic spread, if you look at the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, Southern Africa, the population from 0 to 13 years is about 42 to 44 percent, depending on how you look at it. From ages 14 to 24 is about 20 percent, almost 250 million in total. And it is increasing.
When 22 percent of the labor force is unemployed and, if you look at it along the education strata, an average of 67 percent of the unemployed have attained primary education while 12 percent have attained secondary education. From this you can say that mass unemployment is denying Africa the opportunity to put its growing population to a productive use. It also denies the economy the demographic dividend from the young population. So, it is a threat to national security and a driver of social unrest and implosion.
The key to overcoming it, in my opinion, is to provide a conducive business climate for the private companies to thrive and provide jobs. So you go back to good governance. Governance becomes critical. We must funnel more resources toward developing human capital to boost productivity. Human productivity is a long-term driver, and its key ingredient is quality education that is aligned to the markets.
When you look at human security, you have to remember something. The difference between a man and a lizard is that a man has got a brain that can generate an idea. He can generate an idea to create a telephone so that I can talk to you now. Every single human being is unique, and that’s why I said security is about creating the conditions that allow human beings to pursue their cherished goals.
A child in the Sahel and a child in Kenya must be given the opportunity to exploit that God-given right. The first right is to secure the freedom to express the idea. Having done that, the second is food security, because a hungry man cannot pursue his goals. Then, after food security, health security. Once you are finished with the human being, then you can go to the environment that provides the food, the health and everything else. That is why human security now takes precedent in our countries.
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