Kenya kicks off biggest ever security operation for Barack Obama welcome
The biggest security operation in Kenya’s history is under way as the vulnerable east African nation prepares to welcome its “son”, Barack Obama, for the first time since he reached the White House.
The US president was due to touch down on Air Force One on Friday
evening for a weekend programme in the capital, Nairobi, that includes
an international business summit, dinner with his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, and a major public address.
Kenya is treating the visit as a chance to shine, akin to an Olympics or a football World Cup, and is all too aware how catastrophic another terrorist attack would be for its image. Three months ago Islamist militants murdered 148 people at a university in Garissa, while an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall left at least 67 people dead less than two years ago.
Hundreds of US security personnel have arrived in Kenya in recent weeks and three hotels have been examined by the secret service, according to local media.
Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, usually stationed at the US military base in Djibouti, flew over Nairobi this week alongside a White Hawk helicopter with presidential insignia, Agence France-Presse reported. Other military helicopters have been flown in reportedly from a US special forces facility at Kenya’s Manda Bay base, from which raids on al-Shabaab militants in Somalia are launched.
“Nairobi is seen as the second most important US embassy in the world after Moscow because of both Somalia and its proximity to the Middle East,” an American source said. “There are so many missions going on that we don’t even hear about.”
Kenya’s civil aviation authority announced that national airspace would be closed for 50 minutes on arrival and 40 minutes on departure, inadvertently revealing the schedule of the president, who will travel without his family.
Obama will then be chauffeured in his bomb-proof limousine, dubbed “the Beast”. The $1.5m (£970,000) car has 20cm-thick steel plates, 13cm-thick bulletproof glass, kevlar-reinforced tyres and a presidential blood bank in the boot.
Around 10,000 police officers – roughly a quarter of the national force – were being deployed in the capital and several major roads would be closed to all but emergency and security vehicles. The move prompted many people to stay at home and numerous banks and schools to shut early on Friday.
Evans Kidero, the governor of Nairobi county, said: “Security is both visible and invisible. It’s something we’ve been working on even before Obama is coming.”
Kidero’s belated attempt to beautify the city by planting grass has been mocked on social media, with Twitter users adopting the hashtag #KideroGrass. “In African culture when you’re receiving an important visitor, when your in-laws are coming, the house must be spruced,” he explained. “Actually we plant grass every year but our people are so indisciplined they walk on them, they kill them. I’m just appealing that they should keep off my grass.”
But security concerns are thought to have played a part in the decision for Obama not to travel to his father’s grave and meet family members in the village of Kogelo. One relative, Said Obama, said: “I would have wished that he visit here but to me the most important fact is he’s coming to Kenya. He’s wearing several hats: he’s a family member and he’s the president of the United States. I know if he doesn’t come to Kogelo, his spirit will be there with us.”
The 49-year-old half-brother of the president’s father, said Barack Obama senior and junior shared a similar intelligence and deep baritone voice. “I’m feeling proud of Barack,” he said. “He has never failed us. He has put our name on the map.”
Obama himself talked recently about the heavy security restrictions compared with previous trips to his ancestral home, most recently as a senator in 2006. “I will be honest with you, visiting Kenya as a private citizen is probably more meaningful to me than visiting as president, because I can actually get outside of the hotel room or a conference centre,” he said.
The 53-year-old president, who once shot down conspiracy theories that he had actually been born in Kenya by publicly producing his birth certificate from Hawaii, is expected to spend time with family members who will travel to Nairobi, according to White House officials.
Securing the tour is unchartered territory since no sitting US president has previously visited Kenya or Ethiopia, to which Obama flies on Sunday. Both countries are seen as vital allies in the African theatre of the “war on terror”.
At a press conference at Nairobi’s state house, where the Kenyan and US flags currently fly alongside bunting, Kenyatta highlighted the threat. “Our country has endured the attacks of depraved, ideological criminals,” he said. “We have fought them unrelentingly, and they know, as well as we do, that they will lose.”
Kenya is treating the visit as a chance to shine, akin to an Olympics or a football World Cup, and is all too aware how catastrophic another terrorist attack would be for its image. Three months ago Islamist militants murdered 148 people at a university in Garissa, while an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall left at least 67 people dead less than two years ago.
Hundreds of US security personnel have arrived in Kenya in recent weeks and three hotels have been examined by the secret service, according to local media.
Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, usually stationed at the US military base in Djibouti, flew over Nairobi this week alongside a White Hawk helicopter with presidential insignia, Agence France-Presse reported. Other military helicopters have been flown in reportedly from a US special forces facility at Kenya’s Manda Bay base, from which raids on al-Shabaab militants in Somalia are launched.
“Nairobi is seen as the second most important US embassy in the world after Moscow because of both Somalia and its proximity to the Middle East,” an American source said. “There are so many missions going on that we don’t even hear about.”
Kenya’s civil aviation authority announced that national airspace would be closed for 50 minutes on arrival and 40 minutes on departure, inadvertently revealing the schedule of the president, who will travel without his family.
Obama will then be chauffeured in his bomb-proof limousine, dubbed “the Beast”. The $1.5m (£970,000) car has 20cm-thick steel plates, 13cm-thick bulletproof glass, kevlar-reinforced tyres and a presidential blood bank in the boot.
Around 10,000 police officers – roughly a quarter of the national force – were being deployed in the capital and several major roads would be closed to all but emergency and security vehicles. The move prompted many people to stay at home and numerous banks and schools to shut early on Friday.
Evans Kidero, the governor of Nairobi county, said: “Security is both visible and invisible. It’s something we’ve been working on even before Obama is coming.”
Kidero’s belated attempt to beautify the city by planting grass has been mocked on social media, with Twitter users adopting the hashtag #KideroGrass. “In African culture when you’re receiving an important visitor, when your in-laws are coming, the house must be spruced,” he explained. “Actually we plant grass every year but our people are so indisciplined they walk on them, they kill them. I’m just appealing that they should keep off my grass.”
But security concerns are thought to have played a part in the decision for Obama not to travel to his father’s grave and meet family members in the village of Kogelo. One relative, Said Obama, said: “I would have wished that he visit here but to me the most important fact is he’s coming to Kenya. He’s wearing several hats: he’s a family member and he’s the president of the United States. I know if he doesn’t come to Kogelo, his spirit will be there with us.”
The 49-year-old half-brother of the president’s father, said Barack Obama senior and junior shared a similar intelligence and deep baritone voice. “I’m feeling proud of Barack,” he said. “He has never failed us. He has put our name on the map.”
Obama himself talked recently about the heavy security restrictions compared with previous trips to his ancestral home, most recently as a senator in 2006. “I will be honest with you, visiting Kenya as a private citizen is probably more meaningful to me than visiting as president, because I can actually get outside of the hotel room or a conference centre,” he said.
The 53-year-old president, who once shot down conspiracy theories that he had actually been born in Kenya by publicly producing his birth certificate from Hawaii, is expected to spend time with family members who will travel to Nairobi, according to White House officials.
Securing the tour is unchartered territory since no sitting US president has previously visited Kenya or Ethiopia, to which Obama flies on Sunday. Both countries are seen as vital allies in the African theatre of the “war on terror”.
At a press conference at Nairobi’s state house, where the Kenyan and US flags currently fly alongside bunting, Kenyatta highlighted the threat. “Our country has endured the attacks of depraved, ideological criminals,” he said. “We have fought them unrelentingly, and they know, as well as we do, that they will lose.”
Barack Obama
will touch down in his father’s ancestral home this week for the first
time since becoming US president, where he is expected to be greeted by
his counterpart Uhuru Kenyatta and thousands of expectant Kenyans.
The main purpose of the visit is a global entrepreneurship summit, but there have been calls
for him to address everything from al-Shabaab to gay rights by those
who are frustrated by the vagueness of his African policy so far.Adekeye Adebajo wrote in a recent article that the president’s track record on Africa is more style than substance, arguing that although Obama “clearly identifies with the continent” he has failed to translate this into meaningful action.
In Nairobi, there were accusations that the capital was being whitewashed in a last-minute attempt to clean-up the streets for his trip. Last week, Robert Alai, a influential blogger based in the city, tweeted a picture that appeared to show street kids being rounded up, whilst AFP reported that children were being kept out of the city centre.