Westgate mall attacks
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28 Sep 2013:
The Westgate mall siege follows years of attacks arising from
Somalia, and al-Shabaab miscalculates the Kenyan mood if it believes it
has driven a wedge between Muslims and Christians, writes Murithi Mutiga
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The Westgate mall siege follows years of attacks arising from Somalia, and al-Shabaab miscalculates the Kenyan mood if it believes it has driven a wedge between Muslims and ChristiansThe vibrant Gikomba market in Nairobi, where many cultures meet and trade. Photograph: Zuma Press, Inc/AlamyOn most mornings on the street adjoining the Westgate mall, the scene of the ghastly attack in Nairobi last week, one would encounter dozens of hawkers peddling wares to passing motorists.
Among the pet rabbits, exotic dogs and boutique furniture was a stall stocked full with the sky-blue jersey of the Somalia national football team, the red, yellow and green colours of Ethiopia and the white strip of the Kenyan national side. That collection says a lot about Kenya and why its capital Nairobi was such an easy target for the radical Islamists. For decades, Kenya has been the place where people fleeing from the strife in much of the Horn of Africa turned.
Ethiopians arrived in thousands following the civil war triggered by the shadow conflict between the Soviets and Americans from the mid-1970s.
Nairobi's lively nightclub scene today owes much of its vibrancy to the flamboyant Congolese musicians plying their trade in the city after being uprooted from their homes by the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Virtually all the leaders of the South Sudan government have second homes in Nairobi – shelters from the fighting in their homeland that claimed a million lives and ultimately led to the secession of the south from the repressive domination by Khartoum.
"Hakuna Matata" (no worries) is the phrase you see on the T-shirts adorning tourists on Nairobi's streets or the sandy beaches in Mombasa; it summarises Kenya's self-image as an easygoing, laid back "oasis of stability in a sea of chaos", to use a phrase coined by former president Daniel arap Moi.
Kenya has, of course, had its own share of violence. The 2007-08 post-election crisis – a product of the nation's ethnically driven politics and over which the Kenyan president and deputy president have been indicted at the International Criminal Court – left 1,100 dead. What Kenya has not known is the type of prolonged civil war and state failure that have racked its neighbours.
The Westgate attack has brought home in graphic terms the fact that Kenya's hopes of achieving middle-income status in the next two decades on the back of a tech-driven economy are illusory so long as it cannot protect itself from the problems spawned by neighbours such as Somalia.
The al-Shabaab propaganda team has been busy since the militants strode into the mall last Saturday and started their killing spree. Their line – that they staged their atrocity in response to Kenya's military activities in southern Somalia – was bought by a surprising number of commentators.
In fact, Kenya has suffered attacks perpetrated by militants operating out of Somalia for years. The terrorists who bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on 7 August 1998 smuggled their weapons in from Somalia. Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel resort shuttled between Somalia and Kenya for months before staging the attack.
All these atrocities occurred long before Kenya took any part in the conflict in Somalia. Kenya is simply an attractive target because its historic ties with the west mean that there are an overwhelming number of places that could be hit. Its open-door policy and welcome to allcomers in the region also left it more vulnerable to foreign-based militants.
One of the most insidious aspects of al-Shabaab's activities in Kenya in the past few months has been the militia's attempt to stir communal strife in the country. They have attacked churches and gospel concerts.
When they laid siege to the Westgate mall, the attackers ostentatiously demanded that Muslims identify themselves and leave the scene. But many Muslims were among the victims of the shooting spree – and members of the faith have been the heaviest casualties of al-Shabaab's regular suicide bombings in Somalia.
The terrorists' attempts to show they aimed to kill only non-Muslims had a perverse logic. The attackers were clearly aiming to sow discord between Muslims and Christians in Kenya.
That strategy was probably inspired by the attempts of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, whose al-Qaeda affiliates' determined assaults on the Shia community in a bid to trigger a civil war drew criticism even from Osama bin Laden.
But if al-Shabaab hoped to drive a wedge through Kenyan society and trigger fighting between communities, it has achieved the opposite effect. Muslim community leaders have been more strident in their denunciation of the terror inflicted on civilians than any other sector of society.
In a stroke of good fortune, one of the heroes of the siege was a Kenyan Muslim of Somali ethnicity, Abdul Haji, who won wide praise for his bravery in rescuing numerous trapped individuals. Kenya seems more united today than at any point before the attacks.
The country will, of course, have to confront many difficult questions in the days ahead. It must reform its corrupt police force and overhaul its unreliable border controls department. The question over how much longer the country can host the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp – which is Kenya's third largest city by population – will gain greater urgency.
But the type of heavy-handed crackdown on Somali citizens that would be a recruitment gift for al-Shabaab has not materialised.
It would be too ambitious to say this is a turning point for Kenyan society. Yet solidarity and unity are rising out of the rubble at Westgate mall.
The writer is an editor with the Sunday Nation in Nairobi
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