Post by jakaswanga on Mar 6, 2016 16:49:26 GMT 3
Man Overboard: Abandoning Major Geoffrey Obwoge, WILL MAJ. GEN. NG'ONDI STAND UP AND BE COUNTED?
1. WHERE IS MAJOR OBWOGE?
If in the meantime the issue is settled, then do i delete, sorry citizens! Otherwise ...
www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/01/23/kisii-family-in-agony-as-kdf-major-goes-missing_c1281508
since this report in the wake of the El-Adde military disaster, and the subsequent enforced sealing of lips by the renegade minister for internal affairs and former army limb-crusher, General Nkaissery, I have not caught up on any further developments, wherefore meseems its only fair to raise the question aloud.
Let me not beat about the bush. This is for the man whose reputation precedes him, the man whose shadow is like the second expanded name of Mobutu. He is the army commander and former field commander of the KDF in Somalia, Leornard Muriuki Ng'ondi.
So: Has Maj. Gen. Leornard Ng'ondi Abandoned Major Geoffrey Obwoge?
MAN OVERBOARD.
Let us be tough and square here. In battle as in sailing ships, tough decisions abound. Seriously injured combatants can be executed by friendly fire to prevent them falling into the hands of a beastly enemy, hot in pursuit, a worse fate than euthanasia. Man overboard in the eye of a storm, the captain can decide to sail on, calculating the odds against a search and a detour. A military unit in the battlefield can be sacrificed by an iron commander to gain some other strategic battlefield commanding height. War is a ruthless business and it takes combatants to decisions which keep them awake to the end of their days, if they live that long. An old soldier dies, already buried in a coffin of his mistakes at battle.
The theatre of death is no place for faint hearts. There shall men excel in cruelty and brutality, and be damned.
Therefore I say, if the national toughie Leornard Muriuki Ng'ondi has decided to abandon Major Geoffrey Obwoge, that would not in itself be news. Men do go missing in action every other war. What will be interrogated, and what I will highlight with unrestrained fierce thrust, is whether the decision is warranted and historically sane. Can the KDF abandon a captured Major to his fate, and still be in mission?
I don't think so.
The treachery and unmitigated cowardice would eat the army from within, gnaw its purpose away like a weavil in a cotyledon does. The resolve of the ordinary rank and file would be grounded to dust, and what would remain would be sickened hearts fill with contempt for the high command.
Perhaps a lesson;
WHO IS GILAD SHALIT?
Commander in Chief Muigai wa Kamau was in Israel the other day, but somehow methinks he did not have the presence of mind to tab Bibi Netanyahu on how that went, over there about that Hamas captive of a boy soldier. Israel of course does not negotiate with terrorists! But what a hefty prisoner's exchange! And come to think of it, these prisoner exchanges can be very routine for the toughest armies on earth which do not negotiate with terrorists, officially. Think of the day Jordan caught two Israeli assassins in a botched attempt to assassinate Khaled Meshal, a Hamas founder and notable.
Nail-eating, bearing-balls-pissing Nkaissery was along in Israel too, talking security cooperation no doubt. But again I don't think delicate scenarios or templates for Major Obwoge's case surfaced for discussion. (And joint commando raids into enemy territory to fish out the captive wouldn't be thought of, since the last time an IDF elite unit arrived in Nairobi to help out at Westgate, we know how ill-tempered the affair ended!)
One look at Mwathethe's sagging belly ever shuffling around airport tarmacs to receive and send off young Muigai to the next foreign destination, and I am not going to discuss Kenyan MIA's with him, nor delta-force Rambo like exploits. Soldiers the rank of major missing in action is too much of a serious topic to discuss with naval commanders much more tuned to protocol sessions. I prefer eyeball to eyeball with death commanders like Ng'ondi. Or so his battlefront reputation claims. ---I will be damned if it is all Mutahi Ngunyi consultancy!
In public relations, armies are invincible. The army is never defeated. Major Obonyo, colonel Oguna, major Kipchirchir the twitter marshall will educate you. Reality is different. Armies can be beaten into surrender, scattered like a demonstration against Museveni in Kampala. A commander can be forced to issue a terrible order, abandon post and leave the dead and the dying where they are, fellas, we running for our lives from the devil. But in Nairobi politicians will bluff, and not in Nairobi only since bluffing is what politicians do everywhere. But I have no time for such Nairobi antics when a terrorist organisation is holding hostage a Kenyan soldier the rank of Major. I go straight for a man I understand ---unless I am a victim of PR pyrotechnics--- has the presence of mind to read a crisis right.
Which crisis?
The crisis of confidence which like a bolt of lightning runs through the foot soldiers when death commanders too, adopt lies in the face of uncheatable death. Soldiers at war who face death as a trade daily, can face the truth.
Civilians like CiC Uhuru Kenyatta, deputy CiC Ruto, defence sec Raychelle Omamo and her PS, are non military people who, tomorrow, can be gone from those positions. The army remains an institution, ever expecting that a call to pay the heaviest price is answered to without hesitation whenever it comes.
That is the crux of the Major Obwoge issue. The KDF must make sure calls to her personnel to pay the heaviest price continue to be answered without dodgy heart. I think every Kenyan knows the civilian leadership in Nairobi have no hope in hell of ever inspiring anybody to die for Kenya. To save the Kenyan army, we have to look elsewhere, far from the national filth polluting the highest political offices.
I have thought about it, and I am. looking elsewhere and weighing other options.
PS: THE TEARS OF RAYCHELLE OMAMO
Recho nyar Jobondo Yo, I spied you shed tears at the airport. The occasion was the arrival of yet another batch of flag-draped coffins. Inside those wooden hollows, the remains were not always whole. They were collections of body parts, some of them not homogeneous. Aah, So dispersing had been the blast at El Adde.
yet the Silly boy from Rarieda who wants to be governor of Siaya, Nicolas Gumbo I think, only saw you a weakling in a weak-moment fit. He said you a nun, you a useless, nuisance that must go. We need real men here, the challenged finance watchdog chair contended.
Who would such men be? the question be asked; would they be the ranked looters too busy stashing away the billions pilfered from the state, and which he, ODM Gumbo, as chairman of PAC, is busy spectating like an Ababu Namwamba corrupt incarnate?
Ya Jowa Joloka! koro, Recho nyar Omamo yo, dalau Sakwa e tie dhonam Utonga kacha, gi dala gi Gumbo e tie chiro Aram but Lwak kocha, nitieree gimoro ma ularo momiyo fuwo gi ran gi ura nyalo mako wuod Asembo, mi owach wach mar mijinga ma paro kata chiel pok nobedo e wiye nyaka nene kamano? -Ei yawa, pettiness man Bondo Thuru kono en nomon Agwambo bedo prezzo.
Rarieda Gumbo missed it there. He was holistically and completely offside. And how!
The tears of defence secretary Raychell Omamo, bethink thee, interpreted the feelings of the nation in her hour of true grief. The tears were a public reflection of the emotions of the loved ones and survivors of the dead of El Adde: grief, pain, loss, uncertainty. Some bodies would never return, even in parts, to be buried home. They were like those lost at sea forever.
This realisation hit Omamo.
I remember when MV Bukoba sank with a multitude of Luos within; only songs could we sing over the watery grave of the ill-fated ship. And when the great Kendu boat disaster happened, my father told me, it was left to George Ramogi and his singing ilk to poetically wail about how Maji ya Vikitoria hatuta kunyua, wala oga tena, for it had swallowed such heroes of our land.
Kenya being what it is, the majority of those in responsibility have reverted to going through PR-scripted and rehearsed performances, all aimed to apportion blame elsewhere and cover up the national military disaster at El Adde. No time have they had to ponder the harrowing uncertainty of the relatives who were reduced to getting their information from the enemy. Apparently Omamo's heart rebelled, touched into a show of honest emotion in a sea of fakes and plastic hearts at the top. It was actually reassuring to note a moment of emotional honesty showed by one of the elite, a depersonalised elite ever beside itself with chicanery.
It has been a terrifying lesson, that i have hunted around the flora of the hard-bitten, cynical Kenyan commentariat and not availed a single wry grin, winking that Raychell Omamo's tears were fake, and for the cameras! This is really something which has terrified me. The universal, instinctive national recognition Omamo was genuinely mourning. We still a healthy nation out there me-swears!
It has given me nightmares. To search for a top soldier who can be genuine in his concerns for Major Geoffrey Obwoge. I thought about it, and decided to call out Maj. Gen Muriuki Ng'ondi. Should he not be bothered genuine, we will pass to the next, and on and on, until we find the man or woman of grit such as Nicolas Gumbo may yearn for. They still do make them, soldiers whose hearts beat with the people!
[
I don't like soldier dreams no more. I have dreamt of Recce Munene in Hades wondering how goes his survivors. The phantom asks of the living: 'do they receive honour in proportion right with my sad tomb? or are they litter by the wayside now that the breadwinner is gone?'
These past days major Obwoge too kicks the inside of my skull: 'does my land hold vigil for my return and take steps, or am I water under the bridge long forgotten?'
O yeah some of us do!
I thought I had left this vocation behind. Writing odes to dead soldiers and singing anthems at wakes of the missing. It used to be a weakly pastime in a far away decade in my youth. Yet this past month that ugly past has caught up with me. The demons of Africa are back, banging a big drum called El Adde. --like some roguish parody of some Okot P'Bitek machinegun chant ...
Tell me son of our land, we are the dead of El Adde. Did we die for nothing, that mighty Jukwaa makes not even a mention, let alone hold a vigil. (and ruthless I man do not shy in answer. Bethink thee: Lootenants and charcoal pirates who died serving corruption abroad pretending to serve the national flag, may just be just be blood too cheap for me to bother with! So don't try me soldier. --But then, just like at Kapedo where newlings walked into an ambush, some of these boys at El Adde were krutus under abuse, and I relent on fierce retort).
Dr. Sally Kosgey once said the flag is but a piece of cloth. But here are our hands on our hearts as we salute that strip of cloth. Unto it we wrap your caskets, O heroes, and in its name shall the blood of our offspring continue to soak sands, polished woods and soils, called to make the ultimate sacrifice to defend our all. And if one shall fall prisoner to the enemy, every flag day shall some of us stare aloft as the winds curve the colours, and with our hands on our hearts shall we repeat the name of the prisoner soldiers.
Some of us do this for you, Major Geoffrey Obwoge. Man overboard. Lost at sea, but not at our hearts.
And I am not speaking for the elite in Nairobi. For all I know they never heard of major who!? And where would they find the time to anyway, busy as they are with looting and stripping the country to the bones?
1. WHERE IS MAJOR OBWOGE?
If in the meantime the issue is settled, then do i delete, sorry citizens! Otherwise ...
www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/01/23/kisii-family-in-agony-as-kdf-major-goes-missing_c1281508
Kisii family in agony as KDF major goes missing
By BENSON NYAGESIBA. Jan. 23, 2016,
WHERE IS HE? Major Geoffrey Obwoge.
The family of a KDF major who has been missing since al Shabaab attacked his camp in El Adde, Somalia, say they are optimistic he is alive.
The camp was attacked on Friday last week.
Major Geoffrey Obwoges family has been waiting for communication from the government in vain.
By BENSON NYAGESIBA. Jan. 23, 2016,
WHERE IS HE? Major Geoffrey Obwoge.
The family of a KDF major who has been missing since al Shabaab attacked his camp in El Adde, Somalia, say they are optimistic he is alive.
The camp was attacked on Friday last week.
Major Geoffrey Obwoges family has been waiting for communication from the government in vain.
Let me not beat about the bush. This is for the man whose reputation precedes him, the man whose shadow is like the second expanded name of Mobutu. He is the army commander and former field commander of the KDF in Somalia, Leornard Muriuki Ng'ondi.
So: Has Maj. Gen. Leornard Ng'ondi Abandoned Major Geoffrey Obwoge?
MAN OVERBOARD.
Let us be tough and square here. In battle as in sailing ships, tough decisions abound. Seriously injured combatants can be executed by friendly fire to prevent them falling into the hands of a beastly enemy, hot in pursuit, a worse fate than euthanasia. Man overboard in the eye of a storm, the captain can decide to sail on, calculating the odds against a search and a detour. A military unit in the battlefield can be sacrificed by an iron commander to gain some other strategic battlefield commanding height. War is a ruthless business and it takes combatants to decisions which keep them awake to the end of their days, if they live that long. An old soldier dies, already buried in a coffin of his mistakes at battle.
The theatre of death is no place for faint hearts. There shall men excel in cruelty and brutality, and be damned.
Therefore I say, if the national toughie Leornard Muriuki Ng'ondi has decided to abandon Major Geoffrey Obwoge, that would not in itself be news. Men do go missing in action every other war. What will be interrogated, and what I will highlight with unrestrained fierce thrust, is whether the decision is warranted and historically sane. Can the KDF abandon a captured Major to his fate, and still be in mission?
I don't think so.
The treachery and unmitigated cowardice would eat the army from within, gnaw its purpose away like a weavil in a cotyledon does. The resolve of the ordinary rank and file would be grounded to dust, and what would remain would be sickened hearts fill with contempt for the high command.
Perhaps a lesson;
WHO IS GILAD SHALIT?
Commander in Chief Muigai wa Kamau was in Israel the other day, but somehow methinks he did not have the presence of mind to tab Bibi Netanyahu on how that went, over there about that Hamas captive of a boy soldier. Israel of course does not negotiate with terrorists! But what a hefty prisoner's exchange! And come to think of it, these prisoner exchanges can be very routine for the toughest armies on earth which do not negotiate with terrorists, officially. Think of the day Jordan caught two Israeli assassins in a botched attempt to assassinate Khaled Meshal, a Hamas founder and notable.
Nail-eating, bearing-balls-pissing Nkaissery was along in Israel too, talking security cooperation no doubt. But again I don't think delicate scenarios or templates for Major Obwoge's case surfaced for discussion. (And joint commando raids into enemy territory to fish out the captive wouldn't be thought of, since the last time an IDF elite unit arrived in Nairobi to help out at Westgate, we know how ill-tempered the affair ended!)
One look at Mwathethe's sagging belly ever shuffling around airport tarmacs to receive and send off young Muigai to the next foreign destination, and I am not going to discuss Kenyan MIA's with him, nor delta-force Rambo like exploits. Soldiers the rank of major missing in action is too much of a serious topic to discuss with naval commanders much more tuned to protocol sessions. I prefer eyeball to eyeball with death commanders like Ng'ondi. Or so his battlefront reputation claims. ---I will be damned if it is all Mutahi Ngunyi consultancy!
In public relations, armies are invincible. The army is never defeated. Major Obonyo, colonel Oguna, major Kipchirchir the twitter marshall will educate you. Reality is different. Armies can be beaten into surrender, scattered like a demonstration against Museveni in Kampala. A commander can be forced to issue a terrible order, abandon post and leave the dead and the dying where they are, fellas, we running for our lives from the devil. But in Nairobi politicians will bluff, and not in Nairobi only since bluffing is what politicians do everywhere. But I have no time for such Nairobi antics when a terrorist organisation is holding hostage a Kenyan soldier the rank of Major. I go straight for a man I understand ---unless I am a victim of PR pyrotechnics--- has the presence of mind to read a crisis right.
Which crisis?
The crisis of confidence which like a bolt of lightning runs through the foot soldiers when death commanders too, adopt lies in the face of uncheatable death. Soldiers at war who face death as a trade daily, can face the truth.
Civilians like CiC Uhuru Kenyatta, deputy CiC Ruto, defence sec Raychelle Omamo and her PS, are non military people who, tomorrow, can be gone from those positions. The army remains an institution, ever expecting that a call to pay the heaviest price is answered to without hesitation whenever it comes.
That is the crux of the Major Obwoge issue. The KDF must make sure calls to her personnel to pay the heaviest price continue to be answered without dodgy heart. I think every Kenyan knows the civilian leadership in Nairobi have no hope in hell of ever inspiring anybody to die for Kenya. To save the Kenyan army, we have to look elsewhere, far from the national filth polluting the highest political offices.
I have thought about it, and I am. looking elsewhere and weighing other options.
PS: THE TEARS OF RAYCHELLE OMAMO
Recho nyar Jobondo Yo, I spied you shed tears at the airport. The occasion was the arrival of yet another batch of flag-draped coffins. Inside those wooden hollows, the remains were not always whole. They were collections of body parts, some of them not homogeneous. Aah, So dispersing had been the blast at El Adde.
yet the Silly boy from Rarieda who wants to be governor of Siaya, Nicolas Gumbo I think, only saw you a weakling in a weak-moment fit. He said you a nun, you a useless, nuisance that must go. We need real men here, the challenged finance watchdog chair contended.
Who would such men be? the question be asked; would they be the ranked looters too busy stashing away the billions pilfered from the state, and which he, ODM Gumbo, as chairman of PAC, is busy spectating like an Ababu Namwamba corrupt incarnate?
Ya Jowa Joloka! koro, Recho nyar Omamo yo, dalau Sakwa e tie dhonam Utonga kacha, gi dala gi Gumbo e tie chiro Aram but Lwak kocha, nitieree gimoro ma ularo momiyo fuwo gi ran gi ura nyalo mako wuod Asembo, mi owach wach mar mijinga ma paro kata chiel pok nobedo e wiye nyaka nene kamano? -Ei yawa, pettiness man Bondo Thuru kono en nomon Agwambo bedo prezzo.
Rarieda Gumbo missed it there. He was holistically and completely offside. And how!
The tears of defence secretary Raychell Omamo, bethink thee, interpreted the feelings of the nation in her hour of true grief. The tears were a public reflection of the emotions of the loved ones and survivors of the dead of El Adde: grief, pain, loss, uncertainty. Some bodies would never return, even in parts, to be buried home. They were like those lost at sea forever.
This realisation hit Omamo.
I remember when MV Bukoba sank with a multitude of Luos within; only songs could we sing over the watery grave of the ill-fated ship. And when the great Kendu boat disaster happened, my father told me, it was left to George Ramogi and his singing ilk to poetically wail about how Maji ya Vikitoria hatuta kunyua, wala oga tena, for it had swallowed such heroes of our land.
Kenya being what it is, the majority of those in responsibility have reverted to going through PR-scripted and rehearsed performances, all aimed to apportion blame elsewhere and cover up the national military disaster at El Adde. No time have they had to ponder the harrowing uncertainty of the relatives who were reduced to getting their information from the enemy. Apparently Omamo's heart rebelled, touched into a show of honest emotion in a sea of fakes and plastic hearts at the top. It was actually reassuring to note a moment of emotional honesty showed by one of the elite, a depersonalised elite ever beside itself with chicanery.
It has been a terrifying lesson, that i have hunted around the flora of the hard-bitten, cynical Kenyan commentariat and not availed a single wry grin, winking that Raychell Omamo's tears were fake, and for the cameras! This is really something which has terrified me. The universal, instinctive national recognition Omamo was genuinely mourning. We still a healthy nation out there me-swears!
It has given me nightmares. To search for a top soldier who can be genuine in his concerns for Major Geoffrey Obwoge. I thought about it, and decided to call out Maj. Gen Muriuki Ng'ondi. Should he not be bothered genuine, we will pass to the next, and on and on, until we find the man or woman of grit such as Nicolas Gumbo may yearn for. They still do make them, soldiers whose hearts beat with the people!
[
I don't like soldier dreams no more. I have dreamt of Recce Munene in Hades wondering how goes his survivors. The phantom asks of the living: 'do they receive honour in proportion right with my sad tomb? or are they litter by the wayside now that the breadwinner is gone?'
These past days major Obwoge too kicks the inside of my skull: 'does my land hold vigil for my return and take steps, or am I water under the bridge long forgotten?'
O yeah some of us do!
I thought I had left this vocation behind. Writing odes to dead soldiers and singing anthems at wakes of the missing. It used to be a weakly pastime in a far away decade in my youth. Yet this past month that ugly past has caught up with me. The demons of Africa are back, banging a big drum called El Adde. --like some roguish parody of some Okot P'Bitek machinegun chant ...
Tell me son of our land, we are the dead of El Adde. Did we die for nothing, that mighty Jukwaa makes not even a mention, let alone hold a vigil. (and ruthless I man do not shy in answer. Bethink thee: Lootenants and charcoal pirates who died serving corruption abroad pretending to serve the national flag, may just be just be blood too cheap for me to bother with! So don't try me soldier. --But then, just like at Kapedo where newlings walked into an ambush, some of these boys at El Adde were krutus under abuse, and I relent on fierce retort).
Dr. Sally Kosgey once said the flag is but a piece of cloth. But here are our hands on our hearts as we salute that strip of cloth. Unto it we wrap your caskets, O heroes, and in its name shall the blood of our offspring continue to soak sands, polished woods and soils, called to make the ultimate sacrifice to defend our all. And if one shall fall prisoner to the enemy, every flag day shall some of us stare aloft as the winds curve the colours, and with our hands on our hearts shall we repeat the name of the prisoner soldiers.
Some of us do this for you, Major Geoffrey Obwoge. Man overboard. Lost at sea, but not at our hearts.
And I am not speaking for the elite in Nairobi. For all I know they never heard of major who!? And where would they find the time to anyway, busy as they are with looting and stripping the country to the bones?