The
government has so far paid only lip service to the urgent and needed reforms to
the security services. By security services, I mean the full spectrum of
security services in the country, including the army, police and SIS. When a
reform is taken seriously, specific objectives must be targeted and certain
action plans must be implemented. There seems to be little evidence of any of
these in The Gambia after more than 12 months since the inauguration of the new
government.
Recent
security snafus that we have witnessed in the country are direct consequences
from the lack of reforms. In January
2018, two prominent generals under Jammeh (Tamba and Mendy) were able to march
back to the country without our security services being aware. Apparently, neither
the SIS or the police had assembled a list of major suspects that were
monitored. In retrospect, this failure in intelligence and basic police work is
not difficult to see.
First
of all, let’s start with SIS, formerly the NIA. Apart from a name change and a
new head, there has been a very little substantive restructuring in that
institution. The overall size of the service still remains roughly the same
size as it was during the Jammeh regime. A large number of unqualified
individuals recruited in the organization who should have no business being
associated with any entity with the word “intelligence” in its name continue to
be employed there. The reason the NIA got to reach the size that it did under
Jammeh is that it was involved in all sorts of activities that a
professionally-run intelligence agency should not have been doing. This means
that, at the very least, there should have been a rationalization of its size
if a true reform had indeed taken place or is being considered.
Some
fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of SIS have never really
been part of any national conversation. The SIS may not have everything under
the sun as part of its mandateas it used to do under Jammehbut it still has
many of the hallmarks of an organization that has its genesis in an autocracy.
Take
the practice of embedding SIS staff members in government departments or
parastatals. This is a practice that has been carried over from the NIA days.
What useful function is served by putting SIS officials in a parastatal or
government agency where specialized technical skills are required? If the
concern is that they would be able to provide intelligence on misdeeds by civil
servants and employees of state-owned enterprises, wouldn’t the most efficient
measure involve restructuring those organizations? The thinking that embedding
intelligence officials in other departments could be in any way useful only
makes sense to an organization that is still too connected with its autocratic
roots, and yet to undergo a real reform. This has the echoes of a Stasi-like
institution that is more preoccupied with spying on the population than
strengthening security.
Apart
from these larger institutional issues, more glaring day-to-day operational
issue abound that remind us about the lack of reform at SIS. Given the leading
role that the NIA played in enforcing Jammeh’s autocratic rule, a significant
number of individuals who served in senior positions under NIA continue to work
in this SIS. Whether or not these individuals’ hands were dirty in the illegal
acts does not really matter. What matters is that their continued presence in
SIS would only ensure that it continues to operate in the same manner that it
did before. Organizations, by nature, are highly conservative with a high
degree of inertia in their operations and worldview. Absent deliberate,
disruptive and sustained efforts at reforms, past behaviors and patterns are
simply perpetuated.
Another
example of the lack of real reforms is the recent arrest of a university
lecturer (Ismaela Ceesay) for simply voicing an opinion. The security service
at fault this time is the police. The fact that the first instinct of the
police was to arrest him shows that they still have the mindset they had under
the autocratic Jammehregime. A substantive reform of the security branch would
have by now made it clear that the expression of opinions by citizens, even
against the government, is a right rather than a security threat to be
confronted and silenced. Unfortunately, what change can be expected from police
tactics or operating principles when resources are not properly allocated to
them?
One
factor that would delay any meaningful reforms of the police is the lopsided
way in which funds for the security services are decided. We continue to have
an unnecessary military, which is consuming a significant amount of resources
in a country when basic services are still not fully provided. While the budget
allocated to the military this year is lower than the last year under Jammeh,
the546 million dalasi allocated for their recurrent expenditures is a
significant misallocation of resources. The military is an institution that the
country does not need and the case for why we do not need it has been
adequately in other articles. There are constant reminders of how the country
wastes resources with regards to this branch of the security services. None is
more galling than the ostentatious display foisted upon us by the four-car
envoy that always accompanies the Chief of Defense Staff (CDS)MassannehKinteh
on his daily commute to work. Even the ministers do not get that kind of escort
to and from work. Why does the CDS need that? This sort of display looked
natural under the Jammeh regime. After all, Jammeh was a military dictator
throughout in reality even when he shed his uniform, and the military remained
the major source of his power. But should the spectacle of CDS in a military
convoy be normal in the dawn of a new democratic regime?
It
is going to be hard to start on the path of development and internal security
when only lip service is paid to real reforms. We are already seeing signs of
lack of reforms and they are not good. The return of Generals Tamba and Mendy
was erroneously referred to as “lapses”. That event would have been a lapse if
it were a momentary failure of operations caused by deviation from protocols.
But this wasn’t the case. There wasn’t even a list of wanted individuals at the
country’s ports of entry. Rather than a lapse, this event demonstrated major
systemic failure both in intelligence and law enforcement. And there should
have been consequences that go beyond the junior officers.
Dr.
Ousman Gajigo