Mystic Man

as long as there is life there is hope

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@VictorNyakund10 Kuna those apk files hutumwa whatsapp groups, ukidownload inaanza kutuma sms kwa your contacts. But ikipata kama huna airtime uko safe

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@KenyaPower_Care Kariobangi South near hariet academy mlikujia transformer two weeks ago hadi leo ni giza

[John Mutongoi @johnmtongoi]

A Raymond Reddington line that lives rent free in your head?

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@_iam_Dantee @Gesonso1 FB

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@_Sinei1 @dcijuja FB

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@dcijuja @Briansumbam

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@alexis_cyn @This_Man_Anto DM nikutumie key

[Omwamba 🇰🇪 @omwambaKE]

I don't know this young girl but kindly Repost widely until it reaches Karatina Girls!
Her well wishers might be here!
Her Dad's Number - 0719818680

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@AIRTEL_KE

[MethoDman @polo_kimanii]

They're making counterfeit chewing gums this days,utafuna 3 hours inakua unga,Back in the days chewing gums used to last for 8 days,kila siku unaitafuna 5 hours alafu unaifinyilia chini ya desk,kesho unaichukua tena,kabla ikue unga imetafunwa hadi ikakua black buana from pink

[MethoDman @polo_kimanii]

There were days i was swimming in poverty,kila kitu kwa nyumba ilikua ya promotion,Curtain ya mlango imeandikwa TNA ya uhuru,Naangalia chini naona duster ni shati ya Royco,vikombe zimeandikwa Milo,Simu niya mkopa,warembo walikua wanaingia kwa nyumba wanadhani wako naivas buana

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@renaissancecave @polo_kimanii Ati picha ya ndugu zake😅

[Kwîbita @kwibita]

Plumbing services.If this appears on your timeline kindly retweet for me 🙏

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@Eugeen59KE @sean_davis95 @omwambaKE basi pia aonyeshwe in a spiritual way

[Mystic Man @Briansumbam]

@Safaricom_Care leo ni my birthday si mnikumbuke na zile 1GB😁

[AfrikaOSINT @AssegaiConsult]

BATTLE OF JANAALE: HOW UPDF DETACHMENT BATTLED AGAINST ALL ODDS TO SURVIVE AL SHABAAB MASSACRE

The East African

INTERNAL STRIFE

Trouble had been brewing in the 13th Battalion for many months. It had started during pre-mission training in Singo, central Uganda, where there had been a falling out between Maj Mwesigye and his then-second-in-command, Maj Jimmy Lutalo, who asked to be reassigned to another unit.

It had followed the unit to the mission area in Janaale, Somalia. First, Maj Mwesigye replaced the Janaale detachment commander, Capt Justine Eilor within two weeks of their arrival after he reported intelligence of a looming attack on the position by al-Shabaab, and labelled him “alarmist and a coward”. Then Maj Mwesigye fired the company intelligence officer at the end of the first month of deployment in unclear circumstances.

Military intelligence reports show a litany of fights between officers in the battalion that by August 2015 was reported to be “disorganised and divided”.

Relations with locals had also been frayed after soldiers from the battalion got dragged into one side of a local dispute between two rival Somali clans. The animosity grew after the troops uprooted a large marijuana garden outside the Janaale detachment that was a source of revenue for local farmers, and whose produce some of the Ugandan soldiers had enjoyed.

Although of junior rank to the BGXVI commander, Maj Mwesigye was believed to enjoy the ears and confidence of higher ups in the UPDF echelons, which made it difficult to deal with the litany of complaints that continued to pour forth from his charges.

TROJAN HORSES

September 1, 2015 was the first anniversary of the death of al-Shabaab leader Godane. It was highly likely that the militant group would try to mark the day with a show of might and intent. After successful attacks on military detachments and convoys belonging to the Burundi and Ethiopian soldiers, the Ugandan contingent was a likely next candidate.

The previous day, three Somali locals visited the detachment at Janaale. One of them, Abdulai, had previously worked as an interpreter and also sold food to the Ugandan soldiers. He had disappeared on June 15 when the previous battalion rotated out but had turned up with his father and uncle.

After initially being denied entry, the three men were let in and allowed to spend the night but reportedly spent a lot of time on their mobile telephones. An inquiry would later note “a high likelihood” that the trio co-ordinated the attack that started later that night, by giving al Shabaab invaluable information.

DAYBREAK BROUGHT DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

The explosion went off at around 5:25am. Daylight was breaking in Janaale, a sleepy town in the southeastern Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, about 90 kilometres from the capital Mogadishu.

Through the fast-clearing early morning darkness, two soldiers on guard duty at the Quarter Guard were the first to spot the suicide bomber as he raced an explosive-laden vehicle into the tree log contraption that served as a gate to the detachment.

The two soldiers fired at the old truck, which veered off sharply, away from the Quarter Guard, towards a building that housed the second-in-command of the detachment, before exploding in an orange fireball of deadly shrapnel.

Almost immediately, the skies above opened with the angry roar of death, the tracer bullets whizzing like angry fireflies in the dim light, stinging like bees when they met flesh.

Fighters from Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin—commonly known as al Shabaab— had launched an attack on a detachment of Ugandan soldiers serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom).

Captain Swaibu Ayasiga, the highest-ranking officer at the detachment that day, was awoken by the explosion and the acrid stench of burning chemicals from the bomb. He quickly took command of the troops now scrambling to defend their positions.

Outside, al Shabaab had mobilised a formidable force of between 300 and 500 fighters. They came in three waves.

At the front, crawling through the long grass, were fresh recruits whose job was to sneak as close as possible to the razor-wire-and-sandbag perimeter of the detachment then lob hand grenades inside.

Providing covering fire behind them was a formation of more experienced fighters armed with PK assault rifles — a Soviet-made general-purpose machine gun — as well as AK-47 and G3 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and 82mm B10 recoilless rifles, which pack enough punch to knock out a tank.

Bringing up the rear were snipers.

To support the infantry were three Toyota Land Cruisers and a Mitsubishi Fuso lorry mounted with 12.7mm and 14.5mm single-barrel anti-aircraft guns and converted into “technicals”, the Somali version of 4x4s modified into improvised fighting vehicles.

Stirred into action, the Ugandan soldiers started firing back. To support the infantry, the detachment had one 14.5mm and one 12.7mm anti-aircraft gun, as well as 82mm and 60mm mortars, general-purpose machine guns and assault rifles.

CRUMBLING DEFENCE

A fierce gun battle ensued and after 35 minutes, there was a pause in the fighting. For a brief moment, it looked like the attack had been beaten off but inside the detachment, the Ugandan defence was quickly crumbling.

A soldier was reloading the 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun when a sniper’s bullet struck his head. He was saved by his Kevlar helmet.

Next to him, a sniper’s bullet struck another soldier in the right cheek, through his tongue, and exited through his left cheek – but he survived.

The crew manning the 12.7mm gun weren’t as lucky. They had been shot dead as they tried to reload. Like soldiers in other positions, they had not received second-line ammo. Five boxes of ammo for the 12.7mm gun, part of a consignment that had been supplied three weeks earlier, remained in the armoury, out of reach.

The 82mm mortar had jammed after firing only one bomb and although the 60mm mortar fired all its 62 bombs, it did not take long for the attackers to notice that one by one, the heavy support weapons were falling quiet.

Inherently opportunistic and smelling victory in the acrid stench of death and gunpowder, the attackers poured forth again.

One after another, the Ugandan soldiers started running out of ammo. Whoever rose to change defensive position or reload was almost immediately picked off by the snipers.

REINFORCEMENT

20 minutes after the attack started at 5:45am Capt Ayasiga telephoned the commander of the 13th Battalion, Maj Noel Mwesigye and Col Bosco Mutambi, the commander of Uganda’s Battle Group (BG) XVI, to inform them that his detachment and the C company in charge of it were under attack and to request for reinforcements.

It was a call they were expecting but one they’d hoped would never come.

As soon as the dreaded call came in from Capt Ayesiga, Col Mutambi scrambled troops under the command of Lt-Col Moses Kibirango, the battle group’s second-in-command, to reinforce those under attack at Janaale.

The reinforcements set off within 30 minutes of the distress call but were struck by an IED in Gondwe. Two tanks were scrambled with the faster APCs in the lead but the personnel carriers got stuck in mud.

The tanks then took the lead but one was then also struck by an IED.

The first breakdown took three hours to fix, the second two hours. Eventually the damaged tank was removed from the road and the reinforcements proceeded but as they approached Janaale, the tank in the lead fell into the River Shabelle, only two kilometres from the base under attack.

It was not raining but for the Ugandan soldiers fate was pouring misfortunes.

WITHDRAWAL

Over in the detachment, the soldiers had been hamstrung by the lack of second-line ammunition and had fought with their backs to the wall while effecting a tactical withdrawal. The Ugandans held off the attackers but at around 8am the al-Shabaab militants took out the 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun and the battle was effectively over.

Pinned back by the IEDs, the ambush, the poor state of the roads, the poor mechanical state of the IFVs, and the loss of a tank in the river, it took the reinforcements nearly nine hours to cover a distance of 25 kilometres.

The Ugandan soldiers at the besieged camp fought bravely. Many of them were highly experienced fighters who had seen combat in Somalia and in the Central African Republic, but many variables were not in their favour.

The detachment at Janaale had previously been occupied by battalion-sized troops, somewhere in the range of 500-800. When BGXVI arrived there were only 61 soldiers at Janaale. Col Mutambi had deployed an extra 59 to raise the force level to 120 but the position was still too big for them to defend.

In addition, the detachment was less than 100 metres away from a major road next to which was an old disused canal that gave the attackers cover.

The 50 metres area surrounding the camp had also not been cleared as directed and to the east of the detachment was a grove of mango trees that allowed the attackers to spy on the position and gave cover to the snipers.

To the south lay a swamp that trailed off to River Shabelle, whose three major bridges were neither protected nor secured.

Al Shabaab had started their attack by targeting two major bridges and blowing them up with donkeys laden with explosives.

This hemmed in the Ugandan soldiers in a detachment that was already isolated and made it even harder to reinforce. As the attack on the base raged on and as daylight appeared rapidly, it became clear that the rising sun was setting on the lives of many fighting men.

CASUALTIES

By the time the reinforcement arrived at Janaale in the afternoon, al Shabaab had looted heavy weaponry, guns, ammo and assorted materiel and withdrawn.

Nineteen Ugandan soldiers lay dead, according to an official inquiry later by the UPDF. It was the highest number of soldiers killed in a single battle in the war. Another 19 had been wounded (a separate report from Amisom put the dead at 21 and the injured at 27) and one was missing in action.

Details of al Shabaab casualties weren’t clear but Amisom intelligence sources put them at 45 killed in action and over 60 wounded. The official UPDF inquiry put it higher at around 100, citing its own intelligence sources.

[AfrikaOSINT @AssegaiConsult]

THE HISTORY OF SPECIAL POLICE UNITS IN KENYA

Nation Media Group

For the past 70 years, since the formation of the Special Branch, police have continuously operated ad hoc units with mixed success. While they have been credited for making the streets safer, they have also been condemned for engaging in extra-judicial killings. Kenyan police have operated such units for several decades.

In 1952, two special units were formed to deal with the Mau. These were the Special Branch and the Special Tribal Police, commonly known as “home guards”.

While the home guard project sought to devolve police power to civilians, the Special Branch’s mandate was to form its own militia to hunt for Mau while disguised as a “pseudo-gang”.

The operation was led by the Nyeri-born Ian Henderson, who was under the direction of Special Branch Director John Prendergast.

Prendergast had at first formed the Joint Army Operations Teams, but as Mau violence increased, he changed the mandate of the Special Branch to collecting operational intelligence.

It was the use of Prendergast and Henderson’s “pseudo-gang” that saw Mau infiltrated, and it led to the killing and arrest of its senior leaders. By 1956, Special Branch had 423 trained officers, and it is estimated that in total, more than 11,000 Mau fighters were killed.

More so, it was the Special Branch that reported to the new governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, that Kenyatta had known that Chief Waruhiu wa Kung’u was going to be murdered by Mau Mau but had argued against it with ex-senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu.

At Independence in 1963, the police structure was retained together with the Special Branch unit – in order to deal with the emerging threats of secession by Somali residents of the Northern Frontier District. With support from Somalia, the secessionists waged the Shifta war, and that is why Kenyatta retained Police Commissioner Richard Catling until December 1964, when Hinga took over.

However, Hinga did not transform the police. He retained the colonial structures and management style. Peter Okola, who was in the initial group that established the Special Branch during the Emergency, was appointed the CID director, while James Kanyotu, then 28, was appointed Special Branch director.

So special was the Special Branch that during the colonial days, its director Mervyn Manby provided intelligence directly to the governor. It was the same with Kanyotu when he took over, and he had a direct line to Kenyatta – and later to Moi.

The independent Kenya Constitution structure had retained both the Special Branch and the CID at the federal level, leaving their operations within the central government.
During the Kenyatta days, both of these units would be accused of carrying out assassinations and eliminating government critics.

The most famous of these was JM Kariuki, the flamboyant member of Parliament for Nyandarua North, whose death in 1975 was blamed on senior police officers and members of the Special Branch. It is now claimed that JM was whisked to the Special Branch headquarters at Kingsway House, where he was interrogated by, among others, the CID director Ignatius Nderi.

With the Special Branch, police reservists, and CID, the Kenyatta regime seemed to have enough squads.

MOI ERA

After taking over power, it seemed that Moi’s intention after Kenyatta’s death was to run a clean police service. President Moi looked set to overhaul the system, and several senior officers were retired.

But unable to face critics, and after the 1982 coup attempt, Moi had transformed the Special Branch into a terror squad.

In the basement of Nyayo House and on the 25th floor, the team under James Opiyo was tasked to extract information from Mwakenya suspects. Anyone who was deemed to be an enemy of the Kanu regime in the 1980s and 1990s was hauled in for interrogation.

Those arrested included politicians, scholars, university students, lawyers, journalists, civil servants, workers, and peasants. Those who did not die from their ordeal in the Nyayo House torture chambers were maimed – and told harrowing stories of their time there.

The Opiyo group, working with the Judiciary, would send brutalised victims before a magistrate in a court filled with Special Branch officers, long after official working hours. Many chose to go to jail than die in Nyayo House. Those who passed through Opiyo’s group include former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

More so, the Moi regime engaged in various extra-judicial killings, the most notable being the Wagalla massacre, which saw thousands of members of the Degodia clan of the Somali ethnic group killed in Wajir County.

The other challenge that faced President Moi was the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Ad hoc police units that included the Alpa Romeo Squad were, thus, formed to combat carjackers and robbers. It was this group that killed Wanugu and Wacucu – two of the most notorious criminals in Kenya and who are believed to have killed more than 300 people.

In 1992, a rapid reaction unit, known as Flying Squad, was formed after the Anti-Robbery Unit and Anti-Motor Vehicle Theft Unit merger. While its mandate was to prevent crime, and hunt armed and seasoned criminals, including bank robbers and carjackers – some human rights activists accused it of engaging in extra-judicial killings. The Flying Squad, based in Makuyu and Pangani, however, managed to tame the rise in carjackings in Nairobi and its environs – despite its known excesses.

KIBAKI ERA

With the exit of President Moi, the reign of President Kibaki saw police face the twin challenges of the Al-Shabaab terror group and Mungiki.

It was during this period that the Kwekwe Squad was formed after it emerged that the regular police were unable to deal with the Mungiki menace. President Kibaki had declared a war on Mungiki after the gang started killing police officers on patrol. More so, they had raided the Kangema home of the minister for Interior, John Michuki, who publicly said there would be no more arrests. “Mtakua mnasikia tu mazishi (you’ll only hear of funerals)”, he said.

UHURU ERA

The formation of the Special Service Unit, which was to deal with the Al-Shabaab terror threats, highway robbers, and human and drug traffickers, was set to replace the Flying Squad.

With its special training, the squad is said to have silenced terror gangs by either killing them or forcing them into exile. However, the unexplained dumping of bodies in River Yala seems to have ended its run – like its predecessors.

But for the past 70 years, the history of police appears peppered with special squads that have left a trail of successes and pain and stories on rights and wrongs.

[Junkyard diver @Anto_mbuguaa]

Shot on neon kicka

[Don Bull @mainandegwa232]

The Murakaru Brothers

University Graduates who dug a tunnel into KCB Bank & stole Ksh 52M.

THREAD.