ANTI TERROR WAR CALLS FOR MORE BRAINS THAN BRAWN

We are still reeling from the attack on a Nairobi mall last weekend.

Members of Al Shabaab, a terrorist organization based in Somalia, attacked the Kenyan capital’s Westgate Mall with guns and grenades, killing more than 70 and injuring dozens more in an attack that started on Saturday and stretched out into a three-day siege of the complex.

Kenya, a historically strong US ally and now currently involved in the a regional peace force inside Somali was always a logical target.

The twin attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 leap to mind,  but subsequent attacks on the coast in 2002, the kidnapping of tourists last year and an attack on two churches in Garissa, where 17 were killed and injured another 50 people leave no doubt that Kenya has always been a target.

What’s the point?

"The diabolic logic behind acts of terror is that by attacking innocent civilians, discontent against the targeted government will grow, even erupt, making whole countries ungovernable....

To what end?

Terrorists are mad men (and women, it turns out) in as far as they do not operate within the norms of society, but to let our understanding of them stop at that is a mistake. However unpalatable it may sound terrorists actually have political agendas.

Analysis following  the Nairobi attack suggest that Al Shabaab, largely on the run in Somalia having been flushed out of the key urban areas, are using this as a last ditch attempt to raise morale among their number  and to recruit more into their ranks.

This last reason is the scariest one.

The idea here is to provoke a knee jerk reaction by the Kenyan security apparatus, to go out and hound and harass the country’s large Somali population and business community. Their youth angry and frustrated at the police would then be fertile ground for recruitment into the ranks of Al Shabaab and their businessmen will be more likely to contribute to the cause.

On the hierarchy of power, violence is on the lowest rung. Violence allows you to coerce people to do your bidding but more likely they will not do it willingly. The next level of power comes with money. With money you can have people do your bidding without coercion, even do it with zeal. And the final level of power is information or knowledge, he who knows has power. The scandal they say, is not the disparity in wealth between the “north” and the “south” but the disparity not only in volume of knowledge but with the speed and ease with which this knowledge can be transmitted in the north.

Going by this

"it is the weak who resort to power as a first resort...

With the terrorist the attacks on unarmed civilians then, has to be at the bottom of the ladder of how low you can stoop in meting out violence.

That maybe as it may but with the increased access to small arms and munitions the modern day terrorist assumes a disproportionate threat to our well being.

The challenge for our governments is how to deal with terrorism.

Seeing as terrorists assume no form, until they strike, the answer is not to beef up armour but to improve and strengthen intelligence, information gathering capabilities.

 

This will give the ability to preempt attacks rather than wait for them to occur and contain.

Easier said than done but governments have no choice.

Running rough shod over suspects or suspected communities will only be playing into the terrorists’ hands. The war against terror will take more brain than brawn.

DON’T LEAVE RETIREMENT PLANNING TO THE END

Recently a retired Bank of Uganda official was reported as saying that as an employee it is impossible to plan for your retirement. According to him the salaries are low and the cost of living is ever rising, making it impossible to save for the future.

He has managed because he got a hefty gratuity package on retirement and with that he has put up some rental properties, whose income he is now living off.

Thankfully this article was buried deep in the paper and probably got little attention.

As an employee earning a regular salary and wanting to retire in some comfort, here are my seven recommendations to make this happen – without stealing.

#7. Change your mind

It all starts between your ears. You need to understand money and how it works. You can learn this by raw experience or making it a decision to deliberately go out there and learn how money works. Money has its own laws and you flout them to your own detriment. Learning how to handle money is not a God given talent (that’s an excuse not to even try, to roll over and wallow in your poverty stricken misery).

Earning money is done through selling your labour, while making money is when you make money work for you.

#6. Think of your life as a balance sheet not as an income statement

The income statement shows income and expenditures, while the balance sheet shows assets and liabilities. The income statement decides your current standard of living the balance sheet determines the sustainability of that lifestyle.

It’s all very nice to be make more and more money as your career progresses but to ensure a comfortable retirement it’s not how much you earn but how much you keep that counts.

The trick is to grow your asset (where your money sweats for you) column using your income and liabilities, to the point where the income from your assets overtakes the income from your job.

#5. Saving is good, investing is better

Savings are an addition to your asset column but whereas the zeros can increase from month to month and year to year, the value of your money can be eaten up by inflation. Investing is committing money to an asset class with the hope of getting your money back and with something extra on top. It takes discipline to save, it takes greater discipline and study to invest. Google investing.

By the way you save first and spend after, not spend and save what is left over – there is never anything left  over.

#4. Respect the law of compounding

Compounding is when more is built on more. The more you have the more you can build on it. This does not only apply to money, it applies to knowledge, friends,  business partners. If you have a thousand shillings earning 10% or sh100 in the bank, next year you will earn 10% on sh1100 or sh110 and the next year you will earn 10% on sh1210 or sh121 and on and on and on. In school you learn how to count, then add and subtract, then multiply and divide, the integrate and differentiate and on and on. Things build on other things,  Albert Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world. And even Jesus said to those who have more will be added into them.

#3. Business is not opening a shop, only

As you grow you asset base, commit to continuous study – read, talk to mentors, learn from your own experience, to improve your capacity to spot and take advantage of opportunities around you. Learn how to build a structure around what you know to make money. It need not be selling second hand clothes.

#2. Have a long, long term vision

The most financially secure people, those who have learnt how to make their coins work like slaves, know that money is not for spending but for making more money. They also plan that their money will be passed down the generations. No one in their line will lack for shelter, clothing, food and university fees. When you think beyond your own stomach – finishing your money before you die,  it changes the kind of business you are in, your ethical standards and your ability to make more and more money.

#1. Think Kiprotich, not Bolt

The best time to start investing is 20 years ago, the next best time is now. Assuming an investment that shows a return of 10% a year, it means you will double your money every eight years. The sooner you get on your journey the better. Don’t be, seduced by the super quick returns, enthralled by the yesterday-he-was-broke-today-he-is-a-billionaire tales of tycoons – yesterday may have been 20 years ago. Focus on what they did to get  where they are  -- the process, overcoming disappointment, practicing delayed gratification rather than what they are doing now – own big mansions, ride in new limos and having little brown things hanging from every arm, when they have arrived.

Retirement planning is a marathon not a sprint.

OBAMA IN A TIGHT SPOT OR IS HE?

By the time this article is published US cruise missiles may very well be weaving, ducking and dodging their way to the Syrian capital Damascus.

Last week US President Barack Obama delayed action on Syria pending permission from Congress, their house of representatives.

Bashar Al Assad’s regimes has come out hammer and tongs to quell a rebellion, triggered about two years ago by a wave of unrest sweeping across north Africa and the Middle East.

The Arab spring has so far accounted for the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and has caused instability in Yemen and Bahrain.

Syria, while not an oil producing nation is a critical player in the region as it neighbours Israel and served as Russia – and previously the USSR’s, key ally in the region.

"Damascus has been particularly brutal at attempting to put down the civil unrest for the last two years and while the fighting has seen the depopulation of whole cities, horrendous atrocities by both sides and the creation of millions of refugees, the west has held off from meting out its favoured prescription, until now...

A consensus has developed that Assad and his cronies can kill as many Syrians as they want using conventional weapons – bullets and bombs, but once they unleashed chemical weapons they would have crossed the line and would force an international intervention.

Last month that line was crossed and it was expected that western armies would be strapping up their boots and straining at their leashes to get at the bad guys in Syria.

However the British parliament have thrown out proposals to go to war and NATO – the umbrella US and European Union defence organization, has said it would not participate in airstrikes. There is decidedly no appetite for this fight by the usual suspects.

The dilemma for Obama and company is that while Assad is not a preferred dinner guest, the rebels who oppose him are reported to have among their number Al Qaeda elements or sympathisers. So to weaken Assad, it is feared, is to allow Al Qaeda a foothold in Syria.

In addition going by recent experience – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it is clear foreign intervention and regime change seem to create more problems than they solve.

Complicating matters further is Russia, which has refused to hang Assad out to dry, complicating the delicate process of cobbling a credible coalition of the willing.

"A move to eject Assad would be an easy sell were it not for the US preferred mode of engagement of bombing countries back to the Stone Age before marching in to mop up the surviving pockets of dissent and reconstruction contracts...

This modus operandi is a hangover from a failed raid on Mogadishu by US troops in 1993 to capture then rebel leader Mohammed Farrah Aidid. The US forces lost 18 troops – some of whose corpses were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by angry militants, forcing them to pull out.

The embarrassment of that engagement has made the US reluctant to commit soldiers to foreign adventures hence the use of air attacks to soften potential targets. The problem is that these bombs don’t only get the bad guys but account for thousands of more lives in what is euphemistically referred to as “collateral damage”

We would like to believe that, especially this last point is weighing heavily on Obama’s mind and lending to his apparent indecisiveness in smoking Assad and his gang out.

The critics of all things America, think it’s really out of his hands.

There is an impetus for action that has little or nothing to do with ridding the middle east of one of its most nefarious dynasties or bringing democracy to the middle east but more to do with stabilizing the region, which holds huge oil reserves that the US is not keen to lose control of or at least ensure uninterrupted flow to world markets.

"And it’s not that the US needs the oil for its own consumption. Earlier this year it was announced that because of larger than expected shale oil reserves the US in five years will be a net exporter of oil...

Oil is important because it underpins the US dollar. If some unfriendly nations take control of middle eastern oil and decoupled oil from the dollar, the US economy would be in trouble, a situation that cannot be allowed to happen at all costs.

The cynics would have it that US military industrial complex needs to dispose of its stocks -- guns, ammunition  and other military hardware to remain alive,  what better way than to go to war and get paid for it? War is good business when you are not the one being bombed to smithereens.

And what are the chances of the US and its allies raining hail and brimstone on Syria for the sins of Assad and his cronies?

There are those who see Syria as the perfect US target – small country, that can’t hit back with any effectiveness if they tried and which campaign will be wrapped up in a matter of weeks or months. Grenada and  Panama come to mind.

It is likely that there will be intervention in Syrian sooner than later, but the previous interventions have left a sore taste in our mouths and the cheering will be mooted at best.

EAST AFRICA DOES NOT NEED THESE SQUABBLES

The leaders of the eleven east and central african countries converged on Kampala this week in the wake of flare up of military activity in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While that was of major concern the apparent fallout between Tanzania and Rwanda over events in the central African nation is what will guarantee higher government presence than a recurrence of the now perennial eastern Congo skirmishes.

At the time of writing Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame was in the country and his Tanzanian counterpart Jakaya Kikwete was expected.

The spurt between the two nations was sparked off by comments by Kikwete in the African Summit in May that Rwanda should negotiate with FDLR rebels holed up in eastern Congo. Speaking in the context of the Tanzania’s new leadership role in a peace mission in eastern Congo, Kikwete also said Uganda should tall to the ADF rebels.

The FDLR are the remnants of the government forces and supporters, accused of perpetrating the 1994 genocide in which more 800,000 Rwandans died. They retreated into the Congo from where Kigali claims they continue to plot a return by force of arms.

Both countries dismissed the suggestion – Rwanda more forcefully than Uganda, arguing that the rebels were criminals who should be brought to justice and not political actors with whom negotiations would be an option.

Since then a series of events have occurred whose timing suggest that Tanzania and Rwanda are not going to let it lie.

Last month Tanzania expelled immigrants, most of whom were of Rwandese origin, from its northern regions bordering Uganda and Rwanda. On Sunday last week Rwanda hiked fees on Tanzanian trucks entering the country three-fold a development that has caused congestion on the border.

Other subsequent incidents many minor, most unreported have served to accentuate the perception that all is not well between Dar es Salaam and Kigali.

The chattering classes went into overdrive when Kikwete did not appear at a regional infrastructure conference in the Mombasa last week and when it was eventually reported that Tanzania was looking to President Yoweri Museveni to intercede between Dar es Salaam and Kigali.

To dismiss the tension between the two East African Community (EAC) partners as a minor irritation is to ignore the key role each play in the region’s ambitions.

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

The people of our region want better lives than they currently experience – at least four in ten east African’s live in abject poverty, a situation that is unfathomable when viewed against the rich natural endowments of the region.

The attempts to build the EAC is testament to the fact that our leaders recognise the extent of this challenge but even more importantly, realize they cannot go it alone. We all need to be pulling in the same direction or we do not benefit to the full extent that we can.

For us mere mortals, we would rather have it that our politicians sort out their tiffs in private while driving the integration agenda publically and forcefully.

The Kampala meeting is a good start, better that than us poor civilians being caught in the cross fire of your egos.

And if it may not have occurred, not everyone wishes us the best. The progress the EAC has made in the last decade, its potential to unlock the region’s promise and the example it will serve for others on the continent and around the world is the envy of many and may not be welcome news for the envisaged collective strength of the region that would result.

It is also very possible that these spurts are being engineered by  or are playing into our detractors’ hands. We need to think about that.