Kenya and Sudan - The mystery tanks (The Economist)

Oct 9 2008 NAIROBI
From The Economist print edition
Who are the real owners of the tanks nabbed by Somali pirates?

THE publication of the manifest of a Ukrainian ship recently captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia is embarrassing Kenya’s government. It apparently shows that MV Faina’s cargo of 33 T-72 Soviet-era tanks and other weapons was consigned to Kenya’s defence ministry on behalf of the government of south Sudan.

Much will turn on the real meaning of the acronym GOSS, evident as the buyer on the manifest. Most people take this to mean the Government of South Sudan, meaning that the tanks were destined for that region. The Kenyans say it means the Kenyan army’s own General Ordinance Supplies and Security, proving that the tanks were going to Kenya. But that does not necessarily mean they were not going on to south Sudan. Kenya has no history of using Soviet equipment. A Russian source said that the only Russian arms Kenya has bought in recent years have been Kalashnikov rifles for game rangers.

The head of the Kenyan parliament’s defence and foreign relations committee, Adan Keynan, is troubled. He plans to haul Kenya’s defence minister, Yusuf Haji, before his committee, along with the previous one, Njenga Karume, who may have signed off on the shipment. Mr Keynan demands a thorough investigation, including a trip to Ukraine, to save Kenya’s name.

According to reports in Jane’s Defence Weekly and others, another 100 T-72 and T-55 tanks may have been shipped to south Sudan through the Kenyan port of Mombasa in the past year. That raises further questions. Have all suspicious arms shipments reached south Sudan or have some been stockpiled in Kenya? Who paid for them? Kenya’s vice-president, Kalonzo Musyoka, has said the tanks on the Faina are Kenya’s property, since the Kenyan taxpayer paid for them. If true, and the tanks still go through to south Sudan, that would turn Kenya from being the midwife of the peace agreement in Sudan in 2005 into the would-be midwife of an independent and heavily-armed south Sudan, ready to go back to war with Sudan’s Islamist government in Khartoum, should it try to stop the south’s secession after a promised referendum in 2011. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which monitors arms sales in the region, says the shipment undermines Kenya’s position as a sponsor of an arms-trade treaty for Sudan.

What is clear is that if the Faina ever reaches Mombasa, Kenya will have to take delivery, very publicly, of the T-72s. By mid-week, the ship was still surrounded by American warships and the pirates were still holding out for $20m.

The Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir has so far said very little about the tanks. He may be loth to discuss other equally dodgy shipments of higher-quality arms to his own side. Southern politicians have been quite open in their desire to build up a strong army, despite the provisions against rearming contained in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, in case they have to return to war with the north. The two sides fought in the oil-rich border region of Abyei earlier this year. And southern leaders have been criticised for spending so much of their relatively small direct income, mostly from oil, on arms rather than schools or clinics.