The dawn of April 2, 2015 will go down in history as one of Kenya’s
darkest moments. Garissa University campus was choked with the stench of death
and drenched with innocent blood. Hundreds of young men and women were murdered.
Scores were injured. A nation is grieving.
Al-Shabaab, a Somali group affiliated to Al-Qaeda has claimed
responsibility for the unspeakable horror. This despicable and cowardly attack
comes just months after Al-Shabaab killed 36 quarry workers. We still remember
Westgate. In a brazen attack on a church an Al-Shabaab militant’s bullet killed
a mother and lodged in a baby’s skull. In November Al-Shabaab gunmen attacked a
bus and murdered 28 passengers.
The unrelenting, sustained assault by Al-Shabaab militants has
left us befuddled. The political grievance behind these attacks is lame.
Al-Shabaab has not put forth a coherent or compelling ideological front to
justify the scale of violence unleashed upon innocent Kenyans. This is not to
discount that fact that Al-Shabaab militants have often claimed that terrorist
attacks have been provoked by Kenya’s military presence in Somalia and the
crack down on radical Muslim clerics.
Terrorism, especially the kind executed under the pretext of
preserving Islam is now the biggest threat to global peace and development. This
is the Jihadist ideology, which holds that the rest of the world is comprised
of unbelievers whose sole mission is the destruction on Islam. Moreover,
Jihadists claim that the only morally correct form of governance is the
Caliphate, under the supreme law of Sharia.
Images of burqa-clad women, the plunder of Islamic shrines and
beheaded infidels in Islamic State (IS) controlled territories have led many in
Christendom to believe, out of ignorance, that Islam is inherently hostile to
modernity and human rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The attacks in Kenya and the barbarism of IS in Iran, Syria and
Yemen are perpetrated by a small but potent minority of evil human beings,
heretics, who claim to be custodians of Islam. They must be condemned in the
strongest terms. In my view, mainstream Muslim clerics and scholars have been
passive and too slow to respond to the orgy of unspeakable decapitations and
other despicable horrors promoted by jihadists.
The relationship between peace loving people of Muslim and
Christian faiths must not be defined by ignorance and bigotry. Such a clash of
ignorance will embolden potent minority groups such as Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab and
IS who sow conflict, hatred and death. It
would be unfortunate for religious leader to suggest that the Garissa attack or
other previous attacks constitute a systematic persecution of Christians by
their Muslim brethren.
Terrorism, as advanced by the Jihadist ideology is a complex
existential global problem. It is certainly not a religious war pitting
Christians against Muslims. In Kenya, it is not ethnic Somali people against
other Kenyan ethnic communities. Elsewhere, Shi’a Muslims have had their Imams
murdered and their followers persecuted, accusing them of failing to enforce
Islamic law or even the proper veiling of women.
We must halt the march of violent extremism. We must apply new tools, build new coalitions
and advance more peaceful means to resolve conflict and promote pluralism. For
over two decades now we have used military methods to prosecute the so-called
war against terror. The idea that you can torture and blast terrorist groups
out of existence has run its course. Boko Haram is alive and well. IS is on the
march. Al-Qaeda affiliated groups are emboldened.
To win the war against Al-Shabaab Kenya must not resort
exclusively to the use of military force. Heavy-handed approaches such as raids
in Somali neighborhoods and indiscriminate mass arrest of ethnic Somalis fuels
resentment and give ideological ammunition to demented Jihadists. Extrajudicial,
gangland execution of Muslim clerics plays into the hands of violent extremists
and fuels resentment among moderate Muslims.
President Kenyatta acknowledged that the “planners and
financiers of the Garissa University College attacks are deeply embedded in our
communities”. Moreover, radicalization that breeds terrorism does not happen
under the cover of darkness. The point is that Jihadist extremism is not always
imported. The deranged murderers are our fellow citizens.
I hope this signals the dawn of a new approach in the fight
against terrorism. We need an approach that wages a blistering propaganda war to
win the hearts and minds of segments of our society who are susceptible to
radicalization.
Thanks for this post, Alex. 2 related thoughts that have been on my mind recently (wanted to blog about them actually! but this seems like an appropriate place to put them forward):
ReplyDelete-Do you think the fight against terrorism by Kenya should include stopping the marginalization of Kenya's north eastern provinces? Similarly, stopping discrimination of Muslims and Somalis? At the same time reducing corruption in the security system (e.g. unnecessary delays in responses to emergencies, unnecessary extortion by police forces as is currently happening in Wajir/Mandera/Garissa and as before in Eastleigh)
-Do you agree that the motivations of terrorist groups are not religious (religion used as an excuse and to brainwash recruits) but about power and politics?