Tyb
Kenya
Precipice
o7
Kenya in NYT
‘Inadequate’ Security Led to Deaths of 3 Americans in Kenya Attack, Report Finds
The inquiry also found shortcomings in the sharing of intelligence before the deadly assault by the Shabab in 2020.
March 10, 2022
WASHINGTON — A series of security lapses and an “inadequate focus” on threats on the ground helped lead to a deadly assault on a sprawling military base in Kenya in 2020 that killed three Americans, a Pentagon investigation has concluded.
The inquiry, led by the United States Africa Command, also found what the head of the command described as “shortcomings” in the sharing of intelligence and deficiencies in the preparation of security forces charged with guarding the base.
“We were not as prepared at Manda Bay as we needed to be,” Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the commander of Africa Command, said in a video presentation of the findings at the Pentagon on Thursday.
The report found that “certain senior officers contributed to the inadequate force protection posture at Manda Bay, and allowed a climate of complacency and poor understanding of the threat.” Eight officers and enlisted personnel were disciplined for their actions or their failure to act, the Air Force said. But a spokeswoman for the service declined to describe the punishments or the fate of those personnel.
The brazen assault by 30 to 40 Shabab fighters at Manda Bay, a sleepy seaside base near the Somali border, resulted in the largest number of U.S. military-related fatalities in Africa since October 2017, when four soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger.
The attack by the Shabab, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in East Africa, revealed several glaring security shortfalls, a New York Times investigation found soon after the assault. It also highlighted the U.S. military’s limits in Africa, where a lack of intelligence — along with Manda Bay’s reputation as a quiet and unchallenged tourist locale — allowed a lethal strike.
The Times investigation found that American commandos took about an hour to respond. Many of the local Kenyan forces assigned to defend the base hid in the grass while U.S. troops and support staff members were corralled into tents with little protection to wait out the battle. Evacuating one of the wounded to a military hospital in Djibouti, about 1,000 miles north, took hours.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/us/politics/shabab-manda-bay-kenya-attack.html