Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the terror attack in Nairobi in which at least 14 people were killed and scores injured. The question the terror attack raises is why the group continues to target Kenya.
Word of an attack first spread through Twitter, as it so often does.
“Does anyone know what’s happening in Riverside? There’s been an explosion and what sounds like gunshots.”
“14 Riverside is under attack. There are gunshots and explosions.”
Soon most of Nairobi knew that gunmen had blasted their way through security and detonated a suicide bomb in the lobby of the upscale DusitD2 hotel at 14 Riverside Drive, a complex that also houses a cluster of businesses including banks, restaurants and retail establishments. Friends and loved ones of those trapped inside gathered anxiously at the police perimeter, glued to their phones as periodic gunshots and blasts echoed from within.
A security and policy analyst who specialises in the Horn of Africa, Abdullahi Boru Halakhe, said this type of rhetoric avoids addressing a central question: Why Kenya is being attacked in the first place.
“Every time these attacks pop up you’ll hear the president and the whole government machinery saying the usual stuff,” he said. “‘Hey look, it’s over, we’ve been tested, we’ll come back stronger,’ yadda yadda yadda.”
“But from a policy perspective, as long as we are inside Somalia, Kenyans will continue to be attacked.”
Kenya has had troops in Somalia since 2011, an intervention that marked the beginning of a series of retaliatory attacks. Riverside comes three years to the day after a massive Al Shabab assault on Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) in El Adde, Somalia resulted in the deaths of at least 141 Kenyan soldiers, according to a CNN investigation.