Lessons from Westgate

The dust is beginning to settle; the burning mattresses are surely all consumed by now; the so-called rescuers are supposedly all back at their respective barracks by now, loot in tow. But as a Nation, how do we pick up all the pieces, dust ourselves off and turn over a new leaf? What lessons can we claim to have learned from this tragedy? 

Amnesia can kill

In an interview with AlJazeera, Alshabab's spokesman for military operations, Abdulaziz Muscab, quipped that the reason they did not strike Nairobi sooner was, among other reasons, "Kenyans had been expecting an attack." Sheikh Abdulaziz wen't further to state that their aim was "to attack our enemy when they least expect an attack." Classic Art of War.

Soon after KDF's misguided foray into Somalia, an announcement by Alshabab warning of "retaliatory attacks" was released by the rag-tag militants. A knee-jerk reaction followed in Nairobi with heightened security (read:increased body scans) by security personnel, uneasy city inhabitants and predawn government crackdowns on perceived militant sympathizers and co-conspirators. Remember Elgiva Bwire, the 28-year-old who was  sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to grenade attacks in Nairobi? For once it seemed that the Police were doing a bit more than demanding kitu kidogo along our jam packed, dilapidated roads or chasing some corpulent, corrupt female officer for outstretching her hand to receive her daily bread.

But all the fervent activity was soon over. We returned to our devil-may-care, corrupt, hedonistic, live-for-today lifestyles. After all, we thought, a pittance of grenade explosions along some nondescript locations cannot harm a fly. In fact, its a sure way to burn some extra calories as we dash for safety, pushing aside other frightened city dwellers as we jostle for a safe place. Its a guaranteed way to work the upper (and lower) body. Unfortunately, however, the militants had more than just mere grenade attacks planned. A daring and callous morning attack inside a church in Garissa quickly snuffed out 17 lives. But that did not wake us up from our habitual slumber. We continued groping each other to provide a false sense of security. I always felt assaulted and violated whenever a security guard ran that implement over me, by the way.

Then this happened.

The spoils of "war"

We have seen it happen in foreign lands whenever there's a sustained conflict. A few ne'er-do-wells plunder and enrich themselves at the expense of the losers. Never mind that they often have nowhere to store their newly acquired merchandise. The lesson was reinforced at home when the attack happened. This time round, however, it was claimed that the loot was captured for safe-keeping, away from all the harsh elements of the weather, perhaps, or to safeguard it from the scores looking on. Old words took on new meanings, for example: mopping up (blowing up safes), in the final stages (just beginning), sanitizing (storming pubs and consuming any alcoholic beverage in a sealed bottle), neutralize (storm empty shops) among many other adjectives.

My personal favorite was "we are now in control of the building."

Five is a big number  

It took a whole garrison to neutralize the attackers. Initially they were rumored to be between five and fifteen, perhaps to save the faces of the Kenyans. CCTV cameras can only confirm four at most. We literally had "tankers" as one person described them, at westgate. Its amazing that such a small number of attackers led to the complete destruction of an entire section of an upmarket mall. This was hardly a surgical operation on our part; This was a surgeon amputating an entire leg in an attempt to cure a broken bone. I'm not sure but i think i can still hear explosions at westgate.

The militants won the battle -the language battle

We may have eventually crushed the terrorists but while the defence forces battled hard to penetrate the barriers erected by the safes, jewelry stores, well stocked pub fridges and, oh yeah, the terrorists, the attackers and all their propaganda shifted the conflict online in an attempt to misinform the authorities and the public....maybe even tell us one or two facts about the attack. At times, the way they did it made one wonder whether this was the online spokesperson of a rag-tag militia hiding somewhere in a bunker, or a westerner tucked away somewhere safe in a suburban neighborhood and tweeting away as he indulges in a heavy breakfast as he struggles to grasp where on the map the African continent is. Sample the following tweets by the 'mujahid':

“Kenyans will not appreciate the situation without seeing death in all its ghoulish detail” said a tweet.

Another read: ''Here are 2 of the Mujahideen inside #Westgate mall, unruffled and strolling around the mall in such sangfroid manner.'' 

And another: "After 4 days of exposing the vulnerability of their nation, the [Kenyan] government ended the siege in a morally reprehensible manner #westgate" 

And this: "In an act of sheer cowardice, beleaguered Kenyan forces deliberately fired projectiles containing chemical agents into the building #westgate"

"Sangfroid?" As i mentioned before, does this to you sound like a man perched in a hot desert somewhere, wrapped up in a Somali scarf, with a magazine of bullets around his waist and clutching at an AK-47? Please draw your own conclusions

The tone and the wording of their communique was head and shoulders above the lackluster online (and off) performance of Lenku and his minions.

Kenyans from all social networks of life weren't left behind either. Many joked about how the rising plume of black smoke indicated that the militants were electing a pope, or how the terrorists holding hostages inside the mall had gotten bored and resorted to smoking shisha.

In a parting shot, the militants tweeted the following riddle:

"Lets play a game:a mall that aint a mall but you call it a mall! decipher it

Lets hope we have all learned as much as we can from this unfortunate act of terror that befell us at westgate.