Assessing the impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism on public perceptions among ethnic minorities in Kenya

ABSTRACT

Since the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) launched their military offensive against al-Shabaab in 2011, the country has experienced an unprecedented number of retaliatory attacks mounted by the jihadist-insurgent group. These attacks prompted a robust domestic counter-terrorism response that disproportionately targeted ethnic Somalis within Kenya. Using 2008 and 2014 data from the Afrobarometer and exploiting of the temporal variation in terrorist attacks, this study evaluates whether this period of terrorist attacks and intense counter-terrorism measures affected ethnic Somali minorities’ public perceptions towards the police and the government differently from other ethnic groups in Kenya. We find that the period following the 2011 intervention had significant varying impact on public perceptions between ethnic Somalis and other ethnic groups.

KEYWORDS:

• counter terrorism
• policing
• ethnicity
• public perceptions

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference session on political violence from an international and comparative perspectives at the American Society of Criminology annual meeting in 2019.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On October 1st, a French woman was kidnapped from her beachfront bungalow in Manda island of the coast of Kenya by reported Somali gunmen. Later that same month, two Spanish aid workers were kidnapped by gunmen from the Dadaab refugee camp close to the Somali border.