Al-Shabaab has been defeated, operation completed, says Kenyatta
‘White widow’ in Kenyan horror may have been on SA passport, writes Wyndham Hartley
THE attack on an upmarket shopping mall in Kenya’s capital Nairobi has raised questions whether SA could be vulnerable to similar attacks, particularly given the levels of US, UK and European investment in the country.
They come as rumours swirl about the involvement of Briton Samantha Lewthwaite, dubbed the “white widow”, who could be one of the masterminds of similar insurgent attacks in East Africa. She is said to have been using a South African travel document.
Ms Lewthwaite is believed to be a key member of Somalia’s alQaeda-linked al-Shabaab group and is wanted in connection with an alleged plot to attack hotels and restaurants in Kenya. She is the widow of a suicide bomber who killed 50 people on London’s underground in 2005.
Home affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa yesterday reportedly said the department stood ready to assist the Kenyan authorities to probe the details of the passport.
The attack by 10-15 extremists on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, which began on Saturday, has resulted in the deaths of at least 62 people and mirrors the attack on hotels in Mumbai three years ago.
Anneli Botha, senior researcher on terrorism at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, says the key question is whether SA is a target or a safe haven. SA has been used before as a safe haven where attacks could have been planned, she says. Among the factors counting against SA becoming a target is that groups such as al-Shabaab are loosely organised. Nevertheless, while key strategists might want to preserve the safe-haven opportunities of a place such as SA, hardliners might care less about that.
Defence expert Helmoed Romer Heitman says while there is no “hard” terrorist threat against SA, this does not mean it is not vulnerable. With its porous borders it would be easy to get arms and explosives into the country.
Ms Botha says SA should not “jump the gun” and say it falls outside the threat of terrorist attacks simply because SA is not involved in Somalia and does not support the so-called US war on terror.
One of the key issues is being able to acquire valid travel documents, she says. A false passport where the photographs have been changed is easy to detect but a “genuine” passport is different. “That is what makes South African passports so vulnerable because if they are obtained through corruption at home affairs they would be genuine and so can’t be detected.
Mr Heitman says: “The discussion should not be about SA’s policies towards the Middle East and the US meaning that the country could never be a target, but also about a responsibility to stop attacks elsewhere.
“We present targets; our security is bad; and there are lunatic fringe groups that associate themselves with al-Qaeda and the like, who are not under their control and might well do something.
“Remember also that it is not only Islamists who spawn terrorists — we had our own right-wing fruitcakes recently, just as they have in the US; Asia teaches us that Buddhists and Hindus are just as good at killing civilians as Muslims; and we need to remember that Christians are too, as in Ulster.
“A resurgence of the formerly Soviet-sponsored groups like the Red Brigades in Europe is also possible … it is not beyond one or the other of the new major powers to use groups like that. And remember the coastal cities and think of Mumbai,” Mr Heitman said.
He said a knee-jerk reaction to prevent legally owned firearms going into malls would not stop terrorists, but would make life easier for them. But he did not believe alQaeda would want to “rock the boat” in SA because it was a transit area for the group and a place to hide among a largely conservative Muslim population that believes in “live and let live”.
KENYA’S president said his forces had “defeated” Islamists from Somalia’s al-Shabaab yesterday, shooting dead five and capturing 11 others suspected of killing 67 people during a fourday siege at a shopping mall.
“The operation is now over,” Uhuru Kenyatta told Kenyans in a televised address, adding that more bodies, seemingly both gunmen and hostages, remained under rubble after three floors in part of the Westgate centre collapsed late in the mission.
“We have ashamed and defeated our attackers,” he said.
Police said those who stormed into restaurants and shops at a busy lunchtime on Saturday, spraying bullets and grenades, were now either dead or in custody: “Now it is for the forensic and criminal experts,” said a police spokesman, Masoud Mwinyi.
The Red Cross said earlier yesterday that 63 people were unaccounted for. About 60 civilians were already confirmed dead in the first days of violence. Kenyan officials declined to say late yesterday-how many more may have died later, with gunmen who had vowed to kill hostages and go down fighting if attacked.
It also remained unclear who the attackers were, beyond their loyalty to al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, which had demanded Kenya pull troops out of Somalia. The president said he could not confirm they included two or three Americans or a British woman who might be the widow of a London suicide bomber.
However, al-Shabaab themselves, on Twitter, denied that any women took part. After days of trumpeting defiance on behalf of those holding out in the mall, however, the group’s silence on their fate late yesterda suggested their mission had ended.
“There are several bodies trapped in the rubble, including the terrorists,” Mr Kenyatta said.
He put the confirmed death toll so far at 61 civilians and six security personnel, as well as five of the militants. The official toll previously stood at 62.
Officials said the gunmen had set a major fire on Monday in a supermarket. Yesterday, a thin trail of smoke drifted into a soggy sky as darkness fell, the result, rescue volunteers said, of soldiers detonating locked doors in a search of militants.
Police were letting some people retrieve cars left behind when shoppers fled in panic as gunmen, whom officials had said numbered about a dozen or more, burst upon them.
But journalists and others were still kept well away behind a security cordon.
The president said he could not confirm intelligence reports of British and American militants, adding that forensic tests were being carried out to establish their nationalities. On Monday, the government denied speculation of women being among the guerrillas, but said some had been dressed as women.
It would be unusual for Islamist militants to put women on the frontline and al-Shabaab categorically denied it.
The African Union yesterday vowed to continue its fight against al-Shabaab in Somalia.
“Our resolve is to fight now more than ever before,” said AU executive branch deputy head Erastus Mwencha. The bloody siege underscored the difficulty of fighting al-Shabaab militia, whose threat extends beyond the borders of Somalia, Mr Mwencha said.
DEAR SIR — As Africa reels with news of the attacks in Nairobi, the issue to be urgently addressed is the role that Saudi Arabian Wahhabi fundamentalists play in funding and indoctrinating the Boko Haram and al-Shabaab organisations as “false-flag” instigators of terrorism.
The Saudi royal family, in conjunction with the US war industry, has used its oil wealth since the 1980s to destabilise Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and even faraway places such as Nicaragua and the Philippines.
The purpose of the al-Yamamah “slush fund” negotiated in 1985 by UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and prince Bandar, funded by Saudi oil and administered by the Bank of England is: to guarantee American and British support for the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection; to fund covert destabilisation of resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa; and to maintain the military and economic dominance of the US by pricing oil in dollars.
Sydney Kaye (Letters: Humbug about Israel, September 23) declares: “It is a bit of a stretch to call the one Middle East country that spends time educating and feeding all its people, and is productively involved in technological advances in health and agriculture, a threat to world peace.”
That bleat is remarkably similar to what SA’s propagandists parroted about this country as a bastion of freedom and prosperity during the 1970s. The reality was, and is, diametrically different. As surrogates in the Middle East for what president Dwight Eisenhower described as the “military- industrial complex”, Israel and Saudi Arabia are close collaborators in this diabolical strategy of destabilising Asia and Africa. Just as apartheid SA was dumped once it had outlived its use to the British empire, so the same fate awaits apartheid Israel with the prospective demise of the US empire.
Terry Crawford-Browne Cape Town