Just like the 11th September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the 2005 London bombings, the Shakahola cult deaths have given the workings of the National Intelligence Service of Kenya (NIS) tremendous prominence in the news, social media, and political spheres. Public consciousness of intelligence services efficiency, or the lack of thereof, and its influence on Government and security service decision making, regarding public safety, is on a very high level after the events related to the horrid incident unfolded. The interest is largely skewed thus there is mass skepticism, ‘largely on efficiency of the intelligence service’ and that brings into perspective the subject of intelligence failure.
Intelligence, just like warfare is an art not a science. Tradecrafts are intellectual endeavors and communicating to the customer/end user of an intelligence report is a critical aspect of this art. The dissemination and use of the produced intelligence are part of the intelligence process, yet least understood. In the Shakahola cult incident, all information was available (actionable intelligence) to relevant security and local administration. The National Intelligence was further forced to conduct covert operations to influence the current political and legal processes after noting the multiplication of the threat.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS), Kenya’s intelligence agency effort to safeguard Kenya’s National Security is massive by any standards. It has had numerous untold successes including recent preempting of a large-scale terror attack in the capital Nairobi and in North Eastern Kenya and Lamu. However, the successes will not draw the media, bloggers, & politicians’ attention like intelligence failure would do.
Intelligence Failure
Intelligence failure is fundamentally a misrepresentation of a situation due to lack of information or inaccurate information. Unavailability of information at a point where analysis is required is a bureaucracy problem. Different officers may work on different parts of a key problem thus key pieces of information maybe ignored because their significance could only be apparent if all the available data was analyzed. Lack of awareness of other agencies information needs partly factors intelligence failure. However, the main causes of intelligence failure are herding (intelligence analysts confront a consensus judgment based on many sources) and mistakes during analysis and production of intelligence reports.
In the Shakahola incident, the customer had all the required information/intelligence to act on but underestimated the threat and also the intentions of the cult. Embedded opinions and poor communication between the end user/local administration and the security services in the area where the threat manifested also factored poor interventions to stymie the threat thus this was operational lackluster and not an intelligence problem.
