Kenya’s Westgate tragedy

That attack reiterated the widespread notion that Africa has become a fertile ground for extremist and violent groups to flourish.  In 2011, Al-Shabab militants attacked Lamu town in the coastal district of northern Kenya important and central to its tourist industry. The Lamu episode prompted Kenya’s military involvement in Somalia to safeguard the border between […]

That attack reiterated the widespread notion that Africa has become a fertile ground for extremist and violent groups to flourish.  In 2011, Al-Shabab militants attacked Lamu town in the coastal district of northern Kenya important and central to its tourist industry. The Lamu episode prompted Kenya’s military involvement in Somalia to safeguard the border between it and Somalia from such incursions. Al-Shabab made it clear then that Kenya would pay a heavy price.
According to various accounts, the Westgate attack was preceded by an elaborate staking out of the shopping complex by the group’s members, which made it possible to mount such a heinous act on the scale that was witnessed.
Violent groups have mushroomed in the north and western part of Africa. Two years ago, after the toppling of Muammar Ghadaffi in Libya, the foreign elements of his armed militia fanned across countries bordering it to become willing tools in the hands of Al-Qaida in the Maghreb, which was blamed for attacks in Algeria, Tunisia and Mali and other places. Indeed in Mali, armed groups seized most parts of its northern region and declared it a self governing territory. It took the combined French and ECOWAS forces to put down the rebellion and reintegrate the seized territory back into Mali.
But while the 2011 Lamu attack was apparently aimed at testing the preparedness of the Kenyan authorities, the Westgate one was calculated to draw attention to the viciousness and the damage capacity of Al-Shabbab in the region. It was aimed at striking at the jugular of the Kenyan tourism industry, because the Westgate Mall drew its clientele from the well-to-do who are mainly foreigners and tourists. The Kenyan government’s response to the attack was swift, purposeful and determined in rooting out the Al-Shabbab assailants, it took care to ensure many people were able to come out alive from the building before its soldiers stormed the mall. In addition, the authorities showed the needed vision in insisting that its various ethnic groups should forge a united front while the attack lasted, and in the process avoided a possible civil strife along its ethnic and religious divides that Al-Shabab may have hope for. It was a display of ennobling leadership required in Kenya just recovering from ethnic violence in the wake of the 2007/8 elections.
However, if emerging revelation that some credible intelligence alerted Kenyan authorities a year ago to Al-Shabab’s planning to carry out the attack, and the fact that the group had also made threats in the past, is true, then some officials must take the blame for letting their guards down when they should have done the opposite.   The authorities should know that the only way to keep the group at bay is to adopt a proactive measure to contain its activities in Somalia, until it is defeated or neutralised
 The Westgate attack has showed that terrorists do not respect borders. They therefore constitute real and present danger to all countries in Africa and beyond. It is therefore important to build on the joint effort being made to fight them. It is about time for individual countries to pay more than a passive and phlegmatic attention to the necessity of defeating terrorism, and this should entail putting in place credible and appropriate security and intelligence structures that would not only be on the lookout for perpetrators, but to counter them before they have their way.
In doing this, the African Union (AU) would have to impress it on its members to prioritise joint action through coordination of measures at combating this growing scourge.