long legacy of covert opps? RE: Kibaki / Mungiki Leaders Meeting

awebmech wrote:

Holy Molie, Annah!

I read the following passage, and the phrase came to my mind, "Palace Coup"!

"the old Kanu of Nicholas Biwott, Daniel arap Moi and company comes back into the limelight and political forefront and suddenly Mungiki re-emerges and we also see so-called land/tribal clashes coming back with a vengeance."

Articles about the Mungiki background, appeared in BBC Online. Several suggest the Mungiki appeared to be a group -- having religion & culture cover theme -- but with the apparent other purpose in past years being to carry out anti- Moi gov't activities.

A "palace coup" is a situation in which a faction within a governing regime plays at being so fed up with the regime's circumstances as to be ready to aid a rebellion movement to do regime overthrow. The call goes out to have people in tune with such a message to join in to help produce that end.

People join.

But that was the whole point. Lure out into the open those "political unreliables" having enough motivation and readiness to act so as to pose a threat to the regime if the opportunity arose. At the climax time, the now identified regime opponents are neutralized, and the regime continues, with its security folks snickering in private.

Also, second quote jumped right out.

"Later that year many strange things started happening that suggested that either the security organs in the country had been overwhelmed by Mungiki, or they were deliberately on a go-slow whenever it came to dealing with these murderers. To me after that, I did not need any more convincing that Mungiki was in fact a covert government operation."

National spy & covert action political work agencies certainly can secretly have militant groups among their collection of tools. USA CIA financed Ben Lauden’s group in Afganistan to wear down the Soviet Army, for example.  (Strangely, those showed up again years later as well.)

These quotes came from a reference which you forwarded: http://kumekucha.blogspot.com/2006/12/ex-mungiki-ndura-waruinge-what-you.html Special Edition: Report On Kibera Violence