Opinion

A Spreading Smear

Al Shabaab has bloody hands, but its attack brought Kenya together

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A Spreading Smear
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Commentators are referring to it as ‘Kenya’s 9/11’. However, the terrorists who held hundreds hostage in the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi from September 21 appeared to have drawn inspiration from the terrorists who took over Mumbai’s Taj Hotel in 2008. Like in Mumbai, the target appeared to be foreigners and the well-hee­led. Like in Mumbai, the crisis dragged on for three days.

By the fourth day, when it ended, at least 68 people were reported to have lost their lives; around 175 had been injured. Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, who was in Nairobi to attend a literary festival, was killed in the attack, as were Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s nephew and his fiance. Five of the attackers were killed and eleven were in cust­ody, according to official sources.

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Among the dead were prominent Ind­ian origin persons, including Ruh­­ila Adutia-Sood, a radio presen­ter with East FM, that caters to the approximately 50,000 people of Ind­ian or Pakistani origin in Kenya. Adutia-Sood, who was at a children’s cooking festival in the mall when the attackers gunned her down, was six months pregnant. Other Indian origin persons who lost their lives included Mitul Shah, chairman of the giant Bidco Oil Company, and Paramshu Jain, the son of a branch manager at the Bank of Baroda.

East FM presenter Kamal Kaur, a colleague of Adutia-Sood, told reporters that the terrorist who sprayed bullets at the festival fired even at the children. Kaur’s two children survived shrapnel wounds, but many were killed or injured. On her Twitter account, Kaur posted: “I’ve finally broken the news to the kids about their beloved Ruhila Auntie. My daughter’s sobs will forever weigh on my soul.”

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The Westgate mall is an upmarket shopping complex housing designer stores, posh restaurants and multiplex cinemas popular with Nairobi’s growing middle class. On the day of the attack, 10-15 heavily armed people entered the mall and began shooting indiscriminately. Like in the Taj attack, their aim appeared to be not just to harm people, but to stage a hostage scenario that would gain maximum media coverage.

A key ally of the West, including Israel, Kenya has been vulnerable to terror attacks. Over 200 people were killed when the US embassy in Nairobi was bombed by Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in August 1997. In November 2007, terrorists bombed an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa.

Terrorist threats escalated since October 2011, when Kenya sent its military to Somalia to oust the Al Shabaab movement, which it blamed for kidnappings of tourists and aid workers along Kenya’s coast and at the Dad­aab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, host to a large Somali refugee population. The Kenyan military secured parts of southern Somalia, notably the port of Kismayo, an Al Shabaab stronghold. Al Shabaab, which claims links with Al Qaeda, promised revenge. A series of small-scale terror attacks in northeastern Kenya and in the Som­ali-dominated Nairobi neighbourhood of Eastleigh have happened in recent years, but none garnered the kind of global media attention that the group craves.

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Some analysts believe that one obj­ective of the attack might have been to turn Kenya’s predominantly Muslim, ethnic Somalis against the government, since the state would now crack down on terrrorists, many of whom at the Westgate mall are said to be of Somali origin. The attack seems to have had the opposite eff­ect. Kenya, a country that has suffe­red from deep-rooted ethnic ani­mo­sities, has never been more uni­ted. Kenyatta brought together opposition leaders during the crisis who, in a rare show of solidarity, promised to stand united. A fund set up by the Kenya Red Cross to help the victims raised about $750,000, and thousands donated blood after an app­eal.

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Residents of Indian origin played a prominent role. The Visa Oswal Centre, a large community complex built by Kenya’s wealthy Jain community, and located next to the Westgate mall, was turned into a counselling and information centre for the bereaved. Two hospitals founded by Indian-ori­gin people—the M.P. Shah Hospital and the Aga Khan University Hospital—attended to the hundreds of injured.

People living near the mall—many of them of Indian origin—helped in rescue efforts and provided food to security forces. Amritpal Rupra, who lost two relatives in the attack, handed biscuits and water to the security personnel. “This is our country,” he told Kenya’s Daily Nation. “We have to help people because that is what we are known for.”

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(Rasna Warah is a columnist with Daily Nation, Kenya’s leading daily. She is also the author of Mogadishu Then and Now, a pictorial that showcases Somalia’s capital city before and after the civil war in 1991.)

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