‘The first dragon to slay’: unpacking Kenya’s war on drugs

Abstract

Kenya faces the challenge of policing not only drug smuggling through its territory, but a sprawling local market dominated by heroin. The government is enthusiastically embracing the global ‘war on drugs’ discourse, propped by external actors’ assistance and insistence. Guided by these developments, this article analyses Kenya’s local war on drugs using ethnographic material from immersive fieldwork in Nairobi and Mombasa. The aim is to decode local political actors’ engagement in the international drug control regime and its impact on everyday perceptions of Kenyan state authority. As such, this article provides an alternative explanation of the mechanics of Kenyan drug markets and the role some government officials play in (controlling) them.

[“Le premier dragon à tuer” : expliquer la lutte contre le trafic de drogues au Kenya.] Le Kenya est face au défi de surveiller non seulement le trafic de drogue à travers son territoire, mais aussi un marché local tentaculaire dominé par l’héroïne. Le gouvernement adopte avec enthousiasme le discours mondial de la « lutte contre le trafic de drogues », soutenu par l’aide et l’insistance des intervenants extérieurs. Guidé par ces développements, cet article analyse la lutte locale du Kenya contre le trafic de drogues en utilisant du matériel ethnographique provenant d’un travail de terrain en immersion à Nairobi et à Mombasa. L’objectif est de décoder l’engagement des acteurs politiques locaux dans le régime international du contrôle des drogues et son impact sur les perceptions quotidiennes de l’autorité de l’État Kenyan. En tant que tel, cet article fournit une explication alternative des mécaniques des marchés kényans de la drogue et du rôle que certains fonctionnaires jouent dans le contrôle de ces mécaniques.

Keywords:

• war on drugs
• Kenya
• heroin
• crime
• state
• policing

Mots-clés:

• lutte contre le trafic de drogues 
• Kenya 
• héroïne 
• surveillance policière

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Phil Clark, Prof. Laleh Khalili, Dr Igor Rogelja, Gareth Lloyd, and my co-editors for this special issue, as well as the peer reviewers for their comments. This work was supported by a SOAS fieldwork grant.

Note on contributor

Dr Margarita Dimova obtained her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, where she was a senior teaching fellow and a graduate teaching assistant between 2013 and 2015. Dr Dimova is now an associate at Risk Advisory Group, specialising in political and integrity risk in sub-Saharan Africa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although the soft/hard drug dichotomy can be inaccurate and misleading, the term ‘hard’ in this context is used to exclude drugs more popular than heroin, such as cannabis and khat.

2. A previously commissioned ethnographic study on crime and vigilantism patterns in one of Nairobi’s slums – Mathare, also known as a heroin distribution hub – inspired my 2012–2013 fieldwork. To secure initial access I relied on my pre-existing contacts in Mathare. Two of them were retired heroin dealers and agreed to vouchsafe for me, so that I could build rapport with their former colleagues. Crucial for my subsequent independent sampling decisions was the fact that I had gained confidence in my conversational skills in Kiswahili. I relied on daily immersive presence in research sites in order to engage the dealers operating in these locations.

In Mombasa, I had no such initial points of contact and relied on introductions snowballing from arrangements made during my relocation to the city. As the local market is bigger, and selling and consumption locations are much less concealed, I was able to enter my first research site within two weeks of moving to the city.

For arranging interviews with law enforcers I pursued a bureaucratic channel. A senior official at the Kenyan Anti-Narcotics Unit (ANU) assisted me in organising a series of interviews and site visits throughout the country. I also interviewed stakeholders from other populations including: leaders of local anti-drugs vigilante groups; representatives of private rehabilitation centres; officials from government agencies such as the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund; and informal economy entrepreneurs serving my main research sites. Apart from detailed interview transcripts, the resulting data contained over two hundred pages of field notes and logs of informal discussions.

3. The dynamics of heroin smuggling for local and international consumption exhibit certain differences. Although tentative causal links can be made between the two, since the drug’s introduction to the region, smuggling through Kenya as a transit zone and local distribution networks have had divergent paths of development. The introduction of small quantities of heroin to the local market by stowaways was roughly concurrent to the establishment of a large consignment corridor through East Africa. Nevertheless, there is no evidence to suggest that the two processes have much causal linkage.

4. A call is usually made by an officer who regularly receives bribes from various dealers in order to provide them with protection and information on upcoming raids.

5. Kiswahili for ‘government’, also meaning ‘state’, but also used to refer to individual government officials and on-the-ground police officers.

6. Consider, for example, the sweeping success of the Jicho Pevu investigative series whose popularity rose dramatically after an episode on the big 2004 cocaine seizure.