SPEECH BY GENERAL (Dr) J W KARANGI EGH CBS DCO
CHIEF OF THE DEFENCE FORCES OF THE REPUBLIC OF
KENYA DURING KDF DAY ON MONDAY 14 OCTOBER
2013
Your Excellency the President and Commander in Chief of the
Defence Forces of the Republic of Kenya,
Cabinet Secretary Amb Omamo, PS Defence, VCDF, Service
Commanders, General Officers serving and retired, Officers,
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Service Members, Representatives of the Regional CDFs,
invited guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Your Excellency, first and foremost, let me reiterate that this is
a singular important day for the Kenya Defence Forces
fraternity not only as a day that we dedicate to remember our
colleagues who have paid the ultimate price towards the
defence of our motherland.
It is a day we commit to
remember all military personnel who have served this nation
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with dedication and those who continue to serve in defence of
our country and our people.
Your Excellency, your presence with us today is a great
privilege and honour and let me assure you Sir that there is
nothing as inspiring to soldiers and their families as having
their C-in-C in their midst. We are proud to be the KDF whose
C-in-C is you. Allow me your Excellency to thank you on behalf
of Officers, men and women of the KDF together with our
families.
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Fellow soldiers and our families here and wherever you are, we
chose this day to be a very special day; a day that we give
thanks to God for having chosen us to be the ultimate defender
of our land and the Kenyan people.
He gave us that responsibility, conscious commitment that
wells up in man, not because the law or authority requires of
us, but because it is natural to have life and we die defending
it. Men and women of honour like us have done so since the
dawn of time.
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Your Excellency, we are here and elsewhere in our Barracks in
solidarity with our departed colleagues. We live contented that
we are alive today because of them and will not be cowed by
the adversary for we shall remain true to the ideals for which
they died for; the fact that we may live in peace and our
children prosper and achieve their full potentials. We assure
them and their families that we shall remember them not just
on KDF Days but also in our silent prayers.
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The threat today comes from an enemy that aims to squander
the peace and cohesion that we have enjoyed all along. To
come out victorious from this threat cannot be easily done in a
disjointed approach, or through finger pointing, or shrugging
off the responsibility or saying this is a duty that belongs
somewhere else.
We have a collective responsibility for the
security of the state and the individual. It is in this spirit for
example that we joined our brothers and sisters in combating
terrorists in the recent Westgate Mall attack. We aggregated
our efforts to bring the terrorists siege to an end.
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We recognize that the military has a constitutional mandate to
guarantee peace. We as KDF members are part of that larger
community of Kenyans, who understand that we are facing a
non-conventional
enemy
whose
intentions
and
possible
locations cannot be easily determined, but he is one who has
chosen to be an enemy from within.
He eats, sleeps and
associates with us the whole the time. It is a complex type of
warfare and there is alot for us to learn from those who have
dealt with such realities elsewhere in the world. I appeal to all
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of us in the security sector and under Kenya population not to
assume a simplistic approach to it.
A person worth his salt would not choose soft targets but
would rather seek his opponent in a fair contest. For we as
KDF members and as individuals within the bigger Kenyan
society, this is the time we must provide the necessary
guidance to the general public wherever we are coming from.
There is need for the public to appreciate that security is a
collective responsibility and as patriotic Kenyans we have a
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duty to selflessly undertake this responsibility.
This is the
future that we must aim for in order to stem these beastly and
ungodly acts.
We fought and continue to fight Al Shabaab because we
wanted peace on either side of our common boundary with
Somalia. In that war, Children lost their fathers, mothers lost
their husbands and parents lost their sons, we have lost
cherished colleagues and hearts are aching.
We do that
because this is our time. We made a choice to give our lives
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for peace for the rest our people. It is our time now and we
should be adjudged well for achieving that goal; ensuring that
together we have peace with our neighbour, when history will
be written about us.
Kenyans would wish to go to sleep in peace in the knowledge
that their security is guaranteed.
We desired peace in our
neighbouring state too because instability in Somalia had
become a serious source of insecurity along our common
border.
Today we are fighting Al Shabaab terrorists not
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because there is anything fundamental that was taken away
from them, but because they had established a network of
militia that threatened our own security and which we
dismantled.
Your Excellency, after the Westgate attack you re-affirmed our
collective resolve to continue fighting in defence of our
country, our value system, our way of life, and our collective
will as Kenyans. As our C-in-C the KDF is solidly behind you in
delivering your constitutional mandate to the Kenyan people.
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It is for this reason that today the KDF men and women are
deployed within and outside our borders.
Your Excellency,
allow me as the CDF to send greeting to them as we celebrate
this day.
On a special way, Your Excellency, allow me to
recognize their sterling performance in Somalia, South Sudan,
Darfur, Eastern Congo, Liberia, and during Kenyans smooth
electoral process this year and their professional termination
terrorist siege at Westgate Mall.
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To our families, patience and understanding should be our
compass that leads us to acknowledge that together, we are
on a common endeavour; to secure peace for the prosperity of
all. Long durations of absence of our spouses is because they
are out there against an adversary that will not distinguish
whether you are armed or not when he attacks.
Your Excellency, thank you again for accepting to spend the
KDF Day with your warriors here at LAB and the neighbouring
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KA Units. Kindly allow me Sir to invite you to address us. Your
Excellency!
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