The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2014 41 In the shock and tragedy of the terrorist attack, the outpouring of charity from Kenyans toward all those affected demonstrated the power of the “Kenyan Spirit.” BY JOASH OMOND I T he upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, burst into international head- lines on Sept. 21, 2013, when uniden- tified gunmen launched a three-day siege of the shopping center that left at least 67 dead and more than 175 wounded. All attackers were report- edly killed in the mass shooting, later claimed by the Somalia-based Islamist group Al-Shabaab. While people around the world decried the seemingly inexo- rable spread of terrorism, Kenyans were forced to come to terms with its reality in a new way. During the two years leading up to “Westgate,” they preferred not to acknowledge the threat of funda- mentalist forces in the region. When Kenyan troops had invaded neighboring Somalia in October 2011, the public exhibited varied reactions. The process of troop deployment met with little resistance from any of the arms of government. A spate of kidnappings of aid workers on the WESTGATE: THE OTHER NAIROBI AND THE FUTURE OF KENYA Joash Omondi is a journalism student at the United States International University in Nairobi. Kenyan border seemed to add fuel to the fire—though, in truth, the kidnappings may have been carried out by any of the cartels operating from inside Somalia, not necessarily al-Shabaab. It was also often argued that the Kenyan troops were unsea- soned and inexperienced, and that the military was eager to demonstrate otherwise. The approval and financial backing of Western allies had added momentum to the operation, which was named “Operation Linda Nchi,” Swahili for “protect the nation.” The official justification was that by invading Somalia we were protecting ourselves. Some believed we had a responsibility to help stabilize our lawless neighbor. Others saw the invasion as a knee-jerk reaction to the kidnapping of a few tourists and foreign aid workers, an event that didn’t deserve a full-scale military assault. Though most Kenyans recognized that we were now “in it,” and there was no turning back, they were slow to grasp the implications. Despite the deadly attacks by al-Shabaab in Kampala the previ- ous year, which killed 74 and injured many others when a bomb went off in the middle of a crowd, few Kenyans anticipated such an eventuality on their soil. The last attack was the deadly 1998 al- Qaida bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, the worst terrorist attack in our country’s history. FEATURE