David Kilcullen, Greg Mills & Raila Odinga
The West must not abandon Kenya.
THE attacks claimed by Islamic militants on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall at the weekend, which so far has resulted in the deaths of 70 people and probably three times this number of wounded, has all the elements of a complex modern terrorist action. The attackers selected a venue frequented by foreigners, with at least 18 nationals from the UK, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, India, Ghana, SA and China among the dead. They deliberately targeted defenceless civilians, among them women and children, not military personnel, even though six Kenyan soldiers were killed in the subsequent action to clear the terrorists from the centre. Shoppers and staff were the victims of indiscriminate gunfire and grenades. The technology was as basic as the methods were barbaric.
The attack goes with the neighbourhood — the challenge of Kenya having to live next door to a failed state in Somalia. Responsibility for Westgate has been claimed by alShabaab, the Islamic movement toppled from power in Somalia two years ago by the African Union (AU) Mission In Somalia (Amisom), which includes 4,000 Kenyan troops.
The former Italian colony has not had an effective government, save the disputed breakaway region of Somaliland in the north, for 20 years. But al-Shabaab’s intent to take the fight outside Somalia paradoxically illustrates that some things in Somalia are getting tougher for its insurgency — or at least getting better for the fledgling government in Mogadishu. Along with Amisom’s gains, the election of a new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, last year by the Somali parliament under the United Nations-brokered process has been a step in the right direction, the extent of which could be discerned from alShabaab’s reaction, which denounced the process as a foreign plot.
The Kenyan Amisom contingent, which joined the war in force last year, has enjoyed considerable success. In September last year, it displaced al-Shabaab from the southern Somali port of Kismayo, the key outlet for the charcoal trade from which the Islamists drew much of their income.
Not only do these wars travel over international boundaries, but they pick up recruits along the way. As forensics experts pick over the scene, and police follow up on leads, it seems that the Westgate attackers were not only Somali but may also have included UK and US citizens. One name linked prominently to the attack is Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of London suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay, who killed 26 innocents in blowing up a train in the Tube near King’s Cross on July 7 2005. The crisscrossing does not end there. Lewthwaite has allegedly been travelling on a fake South African passport.
Of course, terrorism on this horrific scale and targeting the weak and defenceless are nothing new in East Africa. Kenya was, little more than 15 years ago, the site of what was the largest atrocity perpetrated by al-Qaeda before 9/11. A total of 212 people were killed and 4,000 wounded in Nairobi and 11 more were murdered in a simultaneous bombing in Dar es Salaam in neighbouring Tanzania. In stressing the enduring international dimension, these attacks, on August 7 1998, marked the date of the eighth anniversary of the arrival of US forces in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Shaabab, like terrorists elsewhere and over history, believe that no one is innocent in their war. But what it has displayed in the Westgate attack is that, far from resembling the movement that ruled Somalia for five years from 2006, al-Shabaab is weakened, not only as a result of Amisom’s efforts, but due to its own internal divisions. Meaning “The Youth” in Arabic, it resembles increasingly a hardline faction less interested in bringing stability to Somalia, as it once pro- fessed and promised, than Islamic radicalism and ungovernability inside and outside Somalia. Little wonder that last year al-Shabaab formally allied itself to al-Qaeda.
At present, al-Shabaab lacks sufficient force to fight a conventional battle of the sort it originally engaged in street by street with Amisom in Mogadishu and Kismayo. Regardless, its fighters do not lack fanatical determination or an element of sophistication.
As al-Shabaab has been pushed out of controlling urban centres in Somalia, it has shifted its modus operandi in three ways: mounting a running insurgency across southern Somalia against Amisom; launching terrorist attacks in Kismayo and Mogadishu; and extending attacks across the region, especially to countries contributing Amisom troops, copycatting its bombing of the crowds watching the July 2010 Fifa World Cup screening in Kampala, which left 74 dead and a near equal number injured.
In fact, now that al-Shabaab is no longer concerned with governance in Somalia, it may have greater resources to launch these types of attacks. Indeed, one goal of the protracted urban siege at Westgate was to show that al-Shabaab is not out of the game, thus resetting the Somali and Kenyan agenda. The Westgate rampage has so far gained 100 hours of media coverage — exactly what alShabaab would have sought and probably much more than a single bombing incident would have garnered.
To give up now on Kenya and fighting alShabaab would be admitting defeat.
Kenya’s struggle against the scourge of terrorism is likely to be no different to other struggles elsewhere — increasingly complex and addressing dimensions other than solely militant extremism, such as problems of urban overstretch, disenchantment and alienation. For it is possible that some of the attackers might have emanated from Eastleigh, a slum a few kilometres from the Westgate mall, where many of Nairobi’s 250,000 Somalis live.
Such wars are not won by firepower alone, but willpower, where the battles are seldom pitched but mostly episodic, usually at a time and place of the terrorists’ choosing. In these struggles, the terrorist, like the insurgent, is elusive and cannot easily be separated from friendly forces. Just as terrorists thrive on networks and cells, they have to be countered by networks of global co-operation and intelligence. Improvised explosive devices, mines, recycled munitions, booby traps, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades are their weapons of choice, along with kidnapping, assassination and other “weapons” of terror. The extent of their cruelty and their determination shape their chances of victory, just as the need for international partnerships and complex solutions provides the hope of defeating this scourge.
While the siege at Westgate was happening, President Uhuru Kenyatta implored western countries not to issue travel advisories against travelling to Kenya. In truth, the damage to tourism is probably already done. Nevertheless, now is not the time for the international community to blink and retreat, but to stand with Kenyans.
It is the time for a fresh surge of funding and toughened political resolve to enable AU troops to take on the remaining 5,000 or so al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia. To ensure success against terrorism and in stabilising Somalia, Kenya, like Amisom, should not be abandoned, but strengthened by its partners. It is a fight we will lose or win together.
Kilcullen is the author of Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla and, with Mills, Somalia: Fixing Africa’s Most Failed State. Mills heads the Brenthurst Foundation. Odinga is a former Kenyan prime minister.