Kenya sends Britain’s army back to the drawing board

The British army has run into a familiar inconvenience: a host country that no longer wishes to leave the fine print to London. A planned exercise in Kenya, due to begin in September and involving the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, has been cancelled after the Kenyan government refused to ratify a bilateral defence agreement. For a partnership often described in warm terms, the dispute has exposed how conditional such arrangements can be once questions of law and money become unavoidable.

At the centre of the row is jurisdiction. Kenyan lawmakers want local authorities to have greater powers over offences committed by British soldiers on Kenyan soil, particularly in serious cases. The other sticking point is the sum Britain pays Kenya to host the training camp. According to the Daily Nation, those issues have blocked renewal of the existing agreement. Governments tend to present this sort of dispute as administrative housekeeping. In practice, it is about who sets the rules when foreign troops are involved.

Nelson Koech, who chairs the Kenyan national assembly’s defence, intelligence and foreign relations committee, said the two governments were still working to settle the outstanding issues. The Ministry of Defence in London sounded characteristically calm, saying the UK values its relationship with Kenya and that the defence partnership remains one of the strongest parts of that relationship. It also said the necessary licences for training in Laikipia later this year had not been granted, and that the exercise would now be moved to a location outside Kenya.

That is the diplomatic version. The practical version is less flattering: the British army will train elsewhere because Nairobi is no longer prepared to approve business as usual. Kenya does benefit from the arrangement. Its own armed forces train at BATUK, the British army base near Nanyuki, and the British presence brings economic activity to the area. The ministry acknowledged that the cancellation would disappoint those who expected to benefit from the exercise. One can almost hear the sigh in Whitehall: even military cooperation has overheads.

The broader issue is that British troops have long been a source of friction in Kenya. Last year, a report to parliament alleged human rights violations, environmental destruction and sexual abuse by British soldiers. Those allegations have helped fuel pressure from Kenyans opposed to the army’s continued presence. A defence partnership can survive a great deal, but not indefinitely if the public comes to see it as a system that protects visitors more reliably than it protects locals.

The most prominent case remains the death of Agnes Wanjiru. A British soldier has been charged with murder, and Kenya has retained jurisdiction. An extradition hearing is due in November, while Robert Purkiss denies the single charge. The case had stalled for years after Wanjiru’s death in 2012, before advancing under John Healey’s time as defence secretary. As shadow defence secretary, he had already urged the previous government to do more.

Koech said the committee had called for stronger accountability measures, including jurisdiction over serious offences, better protection for local communities and implementation of the recommendations from the BATUK inquiry. That is not an extravagant list. It is the minimum expected when a foreign army operates on sovereign territory. The awkward part, of course, is that such basics now have to be negotiated as if they were optional extras.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com