By PATRICK MAYOYO pmayoyo@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Sunday, December 5 2010 at 22:06
Britain feared that the election of Mr Barrack Obama as US president could hurt London’s relations with America because of the way Mr Obama’s grandfather was treated by the British, according to leaked secret diplomatic documents.
Britain feared that its so-called “special relationship” with the US would come under strain because of Mr Obama’s history, his relative youth, which gave him no historical experience with World War II or the US cold war alliance with London.
Britain was also worried about its colonial forces’ treatment of Mr Obama’s grandfather, Mr Hussein Obama who was actually jailed before Kenya gained independence.
Britain’s worries were contained in a cable dated February 9, 2009, which was among more than a quarter of a million secret diplomatic documents leaked by the whistleblower website, Wikileaks.
“The atmospherics surrounding the relationship with the United States are always under intense scrutiny in Britain, but UK media, pundits, and parliamentarians have openly worried over the last several months that the Obama administration might downplay relations with the (Gordon) Brown Government because of a “perfect storm” of factors,” the cable said.
Among them was the Brown Government’s support for Bush administration’s foreign policies and growing US frustration with UK military failings in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The cable notes that although this period of excessive UK speculation about the relationship is more paranoid than usual, “we agree with a senior MP who told us that ultimately, the people who really matter in all this, those who do the serious business, know that where it matters — over defence, security issues, intelligence-sharing — the relationship is deep, ongoing and abiding.
“For many UK pundits, a break in the special relationship will come because of the new US President’s personal history. Several commentators have explored President Obama’s life story to see what it might mean for his approach to the UK.
“His relative youth (which gives him no historical experience of the WW II and Cold War alliance with London), his formative years in the Pacific rather than in Europe, and his Kenyan grandfather’s treatment at the hands of British colonial forces in Kenya (where he was imprisoned) have led many UK commentators to conclude the new President has no “natural” link to the UK, perhaps even an antipathy to the UK, and this will weaken US-UK ties,” the cable indicates.
“The Times correspondent in Washington, summed up this view: “Mr Obama ... has no personal experience of our shared World War II experiences and little of our Cold War alliance.
In his memoir, ‘Dreams from My Father,’ he described his trips to drink ‘tea on the Thames’ before flying away from a Europe that ‘just wasn’t mine’ to discuss his Kenya roots with British passengers who displayed arrogant attitudes to the ‘Godforsaken countries of Africa’.”
Other revelations include what they US thought was the source of missiles used by terrorists against an Israeli airliner in Mombasa in 2002. The attempt to shoot down the plane failed. According to another cable, the missile could have been smuggled into Kenya from Yemen.
The bid to bring down the Arkia jet as it left Moi International Airport with 100 Israeli passengers occurred simultaneously with a bomb attack on Paradise Hotel in Kikambala which killed 15 people, 12 of them Kenyans.
A diplomatic cable dated August 4, 2009, from Mr Stephen Seche, the US ambassador in Yemen, says the chaos of the 1994 civil war resulted in illicit weapons finding their way into Kenya and other countries between 2001 and 2002.
Among these weapons were man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS) and shoulder-launched surface-to-air-missiles (SAMs).
And another cable, dated February 11, 2010, reveals how Kenya’s ambassador to China, Mr Julius Sunkuli, told US officials that African countries were suspicious of US-China development cooperation.
There are 1,821 cables from the US embassy in Nairobi covering the period 1996 to February this year and whose contents has been described as “unpleasant” and explosive. None of the Nairobi cables has been released so far.
The cables contain the analyses of US embassy officials on the issues and personalities in countries to which they are accredited.
Those who have seen the cables have reported that every page is “dripping with disdain” for the coalition government and quotes an embassy official describing Kenya as a “flourishing swamp of corruption”.
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