Kenya’s Forever War

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/kenyans-are-paying-the-price-for-war-against-al-shabab-in-somalia/?emc=eta1

May 29, 2012, 7:54 AM
Kenya’s Forever War
By DAYO OLOPADE



NAIROBI — A bomb exploded in downtown Nairobi on Monday — the eighth such attack in as many months. It was a far more sophisticated operation than the makeshift grenades that have been tossed from moving cars and into small churches and bars in the recent past. This bomb was big enough to send at least 30 Kenyans to the hospital.

Arriving on the scene to cries of “baba” (“father”), Prime Minister Raila Odinga called the attackers “cowards” and swore, “Kenya will not surrender to terrorists.” The malefactors had not been identified, but he already reasoned that the responsible parties “want to scare investments, they want to scare tourists, they want to scare the people of this country generally.”

Nairobians aren’t particularly scared. By now, when a bomb goes off, we are accustomed to clucking at televised reports through storefront windows and making reassuring calls to loved ones. And we are accustomed to laying blame across the border, in Somalia. On a bus to the bomb site on Monday, I struck up a conversation with a civil servant who had no fear of future attacks, and no doubt about whodunit: “Al-Shabaab, who else?” he shrugged.

Al Shabab, the Somalia-based terrorist group, has claimed responsibility for previous attacks in Kenya. But there are other culprits closer to home: Odinga, President Mwai Kibaki and the Kenyan military brass who last year unilaterally declared open-ended war against Al Shabab, with unacceptable side effects.

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