Diplomatic collisions that shaped foreign policy

By John Kama, Sunday, November 24, 2013

President Jomo Kenyatta with Uganda’s Milton Obote in 1968. Earlier in 1965, Obote had to come to Kenya to make a personal apology after an attempt by Uganda to move military weapons across Kenya illegally raised a storm. Photo/FILE 

In Summary

• As the US representative when Jomo Kenyatta was trying to broker peace during the Congo crisis and for the release of Western hostages, Attwood had presented himself as a reliable diplomat.
• He would sit under a tree for hours with Jomo in Gatundu, waiting for the Katanga rebels’ Foreign minister, Thomas Kanza, to arrive.
• But the US was not alone. China had earned the wrath of the government and its embassy in Nairobi was described by Kanu as “Agent No.1 of subversive activities.”

When he died of congestive heart failure in 1989, William Attwood was still the spill-the-beans US diplomat that Kenya did not want to see.

The man walked with a permanent limp after a polio scare in Guinea, where he was ambassador before he came to Nairobi.

Attwood caused a huge diplomatic row in 1966 between Kenya and the US after writing his memoirs, The Reds and the Blacks, a tell-it-all book about the political skullduggery between Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

Those who knew Attwood, including his good friend Tom Mboya, were not surprised.

Not only was he a journalist, having been European editor and later foreign editor of Look magazine, but his haters thought he was a churl too.

Attwood had abandoned journalism in 1960 to follow John F. Kennedy’s campaign trail, acting as his speechwriter. As a result, President Kennedy had sent him to Guinea in 1961 as the US envoy.

Guinea was an exciting station for Attwood because after the discovery of bauxite (a quarter of the world’s known deposits were there), the communists wanted to make it their number one station in Africa.

Attwood managed to have the Soviet ambassador, Daniel Solod, expelled, after which a US-organised consortium took over the bauxite concession.

After JF Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, the new US President, Lyndon Johnson, sent Attwood to Kenya in 1964 just as the country became a republic.

Attwood was to watch over the new nation where politicians were deeply divided by the Cold War politics.

Kenya was an important destination and did not disappoint. Attwood was to lay the framework.

KANU POLITICIANS WERE FURIOUS

As the US representative when Jomo Kenyatta was trying to broker peace during the Congo crisis and for the release of Western hostages, Attwood had presented himself as a reliable diplomat.

He would sit under a tree for hours with Jomo in Gatundu, waiting for the Katanga rebels’ Foreign minister, Thomas Kanza, to arrive. Kenyatta felt betrayed when a US plane dropped Belgian troops to rescue the hostages.

The rebels killed the hostages. Back in Kenya, Attwood watched as mobs stoned the US and Belgian embassies, protesting the intervention in Congo. From then, he started collecting intelligence on the wars between Kenyatta and his Vice-President Oginga Odinga.

He would occasionally feed the Kenyatta side with enough poison against Odinga.

Mboya fell prey to Attwood’s schemes. In 1967, a year after Odinga had been humiliated out of Kanu to form Kenya People’s Union (KPU), Attwood published his book and admitted that the US was behind what had happened.

Kanu politicians were furious. “It is nothing but cheap Cold War propaganda and an attempt to boost Mr Attwood’s own personal ego,” said a statement from Kanu.

“It is unthinkable that some of the most serious international negotiations should have been regarded by Mr Attwood as ready copy for a journalistic pen… Are we to assume that American representatives who come to Kenya... are here to collect material for future bestsellers?

As a start, Vice-President and Home Affairs minister Daniel arap Moi banned the book and later assured Parliament that Mr Attwood, who had also purchased land in Kenya, would not be allowed to return to Kenya “to collect material for more books”, but he could keep his land.

Kanu referred to Attwood’s book as a “betrayal of confidence” and demanded that the new US ambassador, Mr Glen Ferguson, make an apology. Ferguson, aware of Kenya’s importance as a CIA station, pledged silence “for at least five years after leaving Kenya.”

Ferguson told the New York Times that he had been put in a “difficult position” and accused his predecessor of having violated ethical standards of diplomacy by rushing into print with information given to him in confidence. “Kenyans won’t trust an American ambassador,” he lamented.

US WAS NOT ALONE

But the US was not alone. China had earned the wrath of the government and its embassy in Nairobi was described by Kanu as “Agent No.1 of subversive activities.”

Again, it had all started with Attwood, who had told Mboya about the secret aims of the communist-funded Lumumba Institute, which had ostensibly been training Kanu cadres in party management and recruitment.

Kenya had started by deporting two communists — Mr Wang Te-Ming, a spy who posed as a journalist, and South African-born “teacher”, Hosea Jaffe.

“Foreigners of the Chinese type should not be allowed to stay in Kenya and engage in subversion likely to cause chaos and division among leaders,” said Kanu in a statement by its assistant executive officer, John O’Washika.

On the day that Kanu was releasing the statement (July 28, 1965), Kenyatta was in Kisumu with the Soviet ambassador, Mr V.S Lavrov, laying the foundation of the Russian-funded New Nyanza Hospital.

The opening of the hospital, months after the assassination of Tom Mboya, would turn chaotic. Kenyatta detained his former Vice-President, Oginda Odinga, and most of his political allies in KPU after a bitter exchange and riots in Kisumu.

The 1960s were a diplomatic nightmare. By lacking a clear-cut foreign policy, the diplomats from both East and West tried to endear themselves to a nation that publicly stated that it was non-aligned.

During that period, Russia decided to donate massive tanks to the Kenya army. While James Nyamweya, then minister of State, told Parliament that the government rejected the offer because the tanks were old, former Attorney-General Charles Njonjo recently told this writer that the World War II tanks “could not pass on any Kenyan bridge”. “We went to see them in Mombasa and we could not allow them in,” he said.

During that period, Odinga, who had asked for the donation, was accused by Nyamweya of “pulling the country to the East, while the government was pulling to the centre.”

But another convoy with arms destined for Uganda was intercepted in Nyanza in 1965, causing a diplomatic ruckus between the two countries.

Ugandan Premier Milton Obote was forced to fly to Nairobi. He made a full apology for the incident and promised to deal with whoever was responsible for the reckless and illegal drive across Kenya.

The 11-truck convoy with Chinese weapons was intercepted at Kamagambo. Uganda’s minister for Internal Affairs, Felix Onama, said the next day that the weapons were travelling from Tanzania when “our chaps decided to take a short-cut” through Kenya.
President Kenyatta described the movement through Kenya as “an act of criminal folly and a serious violation of Kenya’s territorial integrity”.

With the taming of Oginga Odinga and the death of Tom Mboya, the Cold War politics in Kenya appeared to wane in the 1970s. But the country still found itself caught up in diplomatic rows with other nations. The Ogaden War complicated matters as Somalia continued with its expansionist agenda.

While the Russians openly supported Somalia, the Americans were eager to support Ethiopia.

As Kenya’s Foreign minister, Dr Munyua Waiyaki, later recalled, “the Americans were naturally concerned that the Soviets and Cubans were in the Horn… We asked them to distinguish between their usual East/West confrontation and African problems...”

The rise of Idi Amin in Uganda in 1971 kept diplomats busy. When five Palestinians and two Germans hijacked an Air France Airbus and flew it to Entebbe with over 100 hostages in August 1976, Amin sided with the hijackers, forcing Israeli commandos to raid Entebbe where they freed the hostages, killing the hijackers and 20 Ugandan soldiers.

After the commandos destroyed a third of the Ugandan air force, Amin turned his rage on Kenya, which had allowed the returning Israeli planes to refuel in Nairobi.

At a rally in Uhuru Park, President Kenyatta warned Amin, who was then chairman of the Organisation of African Unity: “We Kenyans shall defend our country with all our blood and we shall teach a lesson never to be forgotten to anyone who tries to play with our country and government.” Amin gave in after an economic blockade — and as the US silently stepped in to help.

'ANOTHER WAR AGAINST KENYA'

The big news of 1978 was the defection of Somalia ambassador to Kenya, Hussein Haji Dualeh. “I have always tried to convince Siad Barre that Somalia and Kenya can co-exist… I believe that Barre’s ego is such that after the Ogaden, he will certainly wage another war against Kenya,” said Dualleh after escaping from Somalia.

After Seychelles President James Mancham was deposed in 1977, an attempt to return him to power in 1981 saw the captured mercenary, Martin Dolichek, implicate Kenyan leaders in the attempt to overthrow President France-Albert René.

The Cabinet termed the allegations “malicious and unfounded”, although it later emerged during the Charles Njonjo inquiry in 1985 that the Attorney-General was privy to the coup.

After Moi decided to work with the West, and after Muammar Gadaffi was denied a chance to chair the OAU (forcing Moi into two terms), the two engaged in conflicts that led to the closure of the Libyan embassy in Nairobi.

In December 1987, the government gave the Libyan chargé d’affaires, Ahmed Arrajel, seven days to leave the country.

“After exhaustive investigations, it has been found that Kenya’s security has been persistently undermined by the envoy in total disregard of normal diplomatic relations,” said a statement.

The expulsion followed court disclosures that the Libyan embassy had financed the Student’s Organisation of the Nairobi University (SONU) election in November, where Wafula Buke had been elected chairman.

Buke was jailed for five years for espionage, while some of his colleagues, including Miguna Miguna, escaped to exile via Tanzania. The Libyan mission was also closed.

KENYA EXPELLED UGANDAN HIGH COMMISSIONER

In 1987, Kenya expelled Ugandan High Commissioner, Charles Katungi, and his deputy, S. Bigombe, after a week of border fighting between Kenyan police and Uganda’s National Resistance Army soldiers.

Kenya accused Uganda and Libya of attempting to distabilise the country. Katungi was accused by Foreign minister Zachary Onyonka of “insulting” President Moi.

The next salvo was a row triggered by former Nakuru North MP, Koigi wa Wamwere, after he went into exile in Norway, joining a small team of activists stationed in Oslo and other Scandinavian countries.

President Moi accused the group of being behind “subversive leaflets” that were being sent to Kenya. The Norwegian ambassador, Mr Niels Vahl, came under pressure to have the “dissidents” returned home.

In October and November 1990, Kenya finally severed diplomatic relations with Sweden and Norway for “harbouring a number of Kenyans hostile to the government”.

While the Scandinavian countries were the pioneer supporters of pro-second liberation movements for Kenya, the Americans entered the fray, albeit late, with the arrival of journalist Smith Hempstone as the US ambassador. At that time, Kenyans were agitating for political pluralism.

As Hempstone helped push the agenda, and as he would later lament, the British diplomats in Nairobi were getting uncomfortable with him. He said: “I was a little suspicious (of their conduct)…the three British High Commissioners who were during my time — Sir John Johnson, Sir Roger Tomskys, Sir Kieran Prendergast. I suspect they were always trying to undercut me a bit with Moi as to suggest my motives were not good. That was my feeling.”

Hempstone would report that he would meet the UK diplomats and they would throw the typical line: “‘Well, we believe in quiet diplomacy, not in megaphone diplomacy…’ It is as if I did nothing but shout.”

Britain was lucky that Moi retained his seat. That is how relations with UK remained steady (but rocky for US).

“Had the opposition come to power, Britain’s relations might not have been quite so warm and cosy in Kenya,” Hempstone said.

Some of the US ambassadors who followed him, such as Madeline Albright and Johnny Carson, took a similar pattern.

What worried Britain, and they quietly said as much, was that they had large investments in Kenya and their trade with Nairobi was much larger than that of the US.

“Finally, they did not want 40,000 Indians dumped on them if things went as they did in Uganda… I happen to believe now, as I did then and I told them so, that I could not understand their position,” said Hempstone after he left Kenya.

Germany’s Bernd Mützelburg came to Kenya (his first posting as ambassador) as the country prepared for its first multi-party election since 1966. For demanding transparency and prosecution of the corrupt, he too rubbed the Kanu mandarins the wrong way.

But it is not only Western diplomats who found themselves on the receiving end. In 1995, Kenya expelled Rwandan envoy, Major Jacques Nziza, and his replacement, acting chargé d’affaires, Igiraneza Theodomir, as Moi openly took sides in the Tutsi-Hutu wars.

Britain chose “megaphone diplomacy” later.

Moi called Sir Jeffery James a meddler when he went to bid him bye. And when Kanu lost the 2002 election to Narc and their economic interests came under check, Edward Clay, the new British High Commissioner, caused a major uproar as he pushed for the prosecution of those involved in the Anglo Leasing scandal.

The Kibaki government started looking East and ignored its traditional allies as China started to seek partners in Africa.

It is these diplomatic gaffes that shaped Kenya’s foreign policy, somehow.