Experiencing a coup or two (or three)

 How Many Coups Can One Person Witness in a Lifetime? First, what really is a coup d’état?

The Term "Coup d’État"

The phrase is French—literally translated, it means "blow of state" or "stroke of state." Basic French vocabulary, perhaps, but its implications are anything but simple.

The term originated in 17th-century France, where it described sudden, decisive actions taken by those in power—actions that often sidestepped legal or constitutional limits. Over time, its meaning evolved to describe the abrupt and frequently violent overthrow of a government, typically carried out by a small group seeking to seize control. These groups often come from within the state itself—military officers, political elites, or insiders with enough leverage to challenge the existing leadership.

An attempted coup is a failed seizure of power. The perpetrators don’t succeed in taking control—or can’t hold onto it if they do. What usually follows is a swift crackdown, a wave of arrests, and often brutal retribution.

That was my first experience: an attempted coup.

Image: DALL·E, 2025

1982, Nairobi, Kenya

It was Sunday, August 1, 1982. I was just nine years old.

Most Sunday mornings in our house were full of light and sound—sun streaming through the drawn curtains, windows open to the best urban weather in the world, birds singing, and the house coming to life. But that morning was different. The curtains stayed tightly drawn. The house was eerily quiet.

My mother told me what was happening as I sauntered out of the bedroom: the military had tried to overthrow the government.

Kenya’s only broadcaster at the time, Voice of Kenya, had been taken over. The radio airwaves had gone silent (there was no TV anyway because Voice Of Kenya normally began at 5pm). There was, of course, no internet or cell phones. Fortunately, our shortwave radio still picked up the BBC and Voice of America. That’s how we learned about the coup and later that it had failed. The government had regained control, and the dissident soldiers—largely from the Air Force—had been arrested.

It’s hard to explain a coup to a child. I didn't fully grasp the significance. But I noticed a few changes. I wasn’t allowed to walk to my language tutor alone anymore. People became more guarded in public—no one spoke openly about the government. And then there were the physical reminders: the bullet holes in a building a block away, and the shattered mirror beneath the Hilton Hotel’s reception desk. They weren’t repaired for months. Those scars lingered long after the soldiers were gone.

Years later, I would learn more about what really happened—that a group of disgruntled junior Air Force officers led the coup, and that President Moi used the failed uprising as justification for a sweeping crackdown on all forms of political opposition. That experience shaped my earliest understanding of power, fear, and governance. It stayed with me throughout my career, even working for a government.

And by some strange twist of fate—or perhaps destiny—exactly seven years later, on August 1, 1989, I left Kenya and began my new life in the United States.

Stay tuned for more stories in my upcoming book Peace and Security in Kenya, launching this fall.

1999, Islamabad, Pakistan

My second experience with a coup was far more successful—for the person leading it, that is.

After work, I headed to the gym at the Marriott Hotel, grabbed some cash from the Citibank ATM for my early morning flight, and picked up dinner from my favorite Afghan restaurant. Back at my rented apartment, I was climbing the stairs, overlooking the small market and the nearby mosque, when my phone rang. One of my employees was on the line, urgently telling me to turn on CNN.

Still juggling my takeout and gym bag, I flipped through the channels until I landed on the news. There it was: a coup in progress, right in Islamabad. The screen showed military trucks rumbling down Jinnah Avenue—the very road I had just taken. I’d seen the convoy earlier near Citibank and thought nothing of it.

Over the next few hours, the pieces came together. As ChatGPT summarized: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had tried to sack the Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf, by denying landing rights to his plane returning from Sri Lanka—essentially endangering his life. The military, loyal to Musharraf, responded immediately. They took control of the airport, key government buildings, and state-run media. Musharraf declared himself Chief Executive and later became President, holding power until 2008.

For those of us living in Islamabad, it was oddly uneventful. Life went on. My flight to Gilgit departed the next morning—though a few hours late, as the airport was technically still closed.

During my two years in Pakistan, I crossed paths with President Musharraf twice. Once at the famous Shandur Polo Festival, played 12,139 feet above sea level between Gilgit and Chitral. The second time was at a Chinese restaurant in Rawalpindi, where he entered with minimal fanfare, strolled around the dining room greeting patrons, and then quietly took his seat with his own party.

It was surreal, yet somehow normal—just another chapter in Pakistan’s complex political history and numerous coups, seen up close.

2021, Washington D.C.

My third experience with an attempted coup came in January 2021—January 6th, to be exact. I wasn’t in Washington, D.C. at the time, but I knew the city well, having lived there for six years. I was in the same country, though—just across the continent in Washington State.

While the history books now refer to January 6th as "Insurrection Day," drawing from the 14th Amendment’s language, I tend to view it through the lens of my earlier experiences in Kenya and Pakistan—and through the definition of a coup d’état. It was a sudden act of power, attempting to bypass legal norms, with the clear intent to overturn the outcome of a democratic election. It was an attempt—albeit a clumsy and chaotic one—to forcibly prevent a peaceful transfer of power.

Historians can debate whether to call it a coup, an insurrection, or a rebellion. I lean toward the first. Not because it was successful (it wasn’t), but because it completes what now feels like my personal trifecta of coups—each different in form and outcome, but all bearing the same undercurrent: a desperate grab for power, carried out in defiance of democratic order.