Emergency In Kenya May Soon Be At End

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27637, 19 April 1955, Page 6

Emergency In Kenya May Soon Be At End

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

NAIROBI. By the time Britain’s newlyappointed army commander for East Africa, Major-General lathbury, arrives in May, the 28 month-old Mau Mau emergency may be, to all intents and purposes, ended in the greater part of the Kikuyu reserves. That is the hope anti aim of the colony’s first multi-racial government, which took office less than a year ago with a streamlined war council of four men—the Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, a Deputy Governor, Sir Frederick Crawford, the East Africa Commander-in-Chief, General Sir George Erskine, and the European Minister without portfolio, Mr Michael Blundell—to direct the day-to-day operational planning of the battle against terrorism. Mr Blundell, former leader of the European elected members on the colony’s Legislative Council, has himself publicly declared that the Government hopes, if the present amnesty terms offered to terrorists in January are successful, to have so eliminated the emergency by April or May that it will then be largely a matter of policing certain areas. He also said at the end of last year, in an emergency review, that the Government’s aim in 1955 was to “hand over responsibility for maintaining law and order to those to whom it belongs—the administration and the police.” The army would be maintained only as an aid to the civil power when needed, except along the edge of the forests or the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, he added.

These pointers to the gradual elimination of the army from the reserves have not hardened, to the extent that 90 per cent, of all troops—there are 10 battalions, five British and five African, in the field—are deployed in the forests hunting hardcore terrorists and their leaders. For the most part, Mr Blundell’s statement of last December has now been fulfilled. The Kikuyu reserves are under control of the civil power. The need to end the emergency quickly and reduce the military commitment is vital, for this young colony is being reduced to impotence and penury by the Mau Mau. Many financial experts here say that Kenya simply cannot afford to continue for much longer the monetary burden of this emergency, running at £1,300,000 a month. No great reduction in the colony’s

expenditure would result immediately from the end of the emergency. But at least most of the money now being spent on destruction of gangsterism would be diverted to constructive channels, such as improving the land, education and living conditions of the Kikuyu anl their associated tribes. Many established settlers have packed their bags, sold their farms—some at give-away prices—and left the colony for good in the last 12 months. And this tendency increases with every month the emergency continues. Business firms, too, have begun to show signs of reluctance to. invest further capital in a country where the future is so uncertain. The greatest military effort of the emergency, employing more than 10,000 security forces, is now being exerted by General Sir George Erskine, East Africa’s Military Commander, in the forests of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, as his tenure draws to a close. Continuing Problem Major-General lathbury, a paratroop commander in the last war and an expert tactician, may still find a continuing problem for years in the hunting down and killing Of gangster bands in the depths of some of the thickest, most inaccessible and inhospitable forests in the world. But, if all goes well and the recent improvement in the Kikuyu reserves continue, he will have the advantage, for the first time in the emergency, of being able to concentrate solely on the one objective—the forest gangs. The military aim of containing and eliminating forest gangs can never be achieved quickly, for the terrain, its enormous area and the scarcity of manpower will make the task a slow business. The authorities are more concerned, at the present time, with detecting and stifling any signs of the spread of the Mau Mau, possibly in another form and with different leaders, to other tribes.

It is generally admitted that the danger of the spread of the anti-white, nationalist movement of terror becomes fundamentally more acute as other tribes see the Kikuyu defying the might of a modern, Western power month after month and year after year.

Some police and army intelligence officers are now confessing that they are more concerned with signs that Mau Mau has begun to go underground to reform, regroup and realign its forces ready for another attack against the whites.