Senseless [and sensible] violence: Mourning the dead at Westgate Mall
Soon after the wires began broadcasting the death toll at Westgate Mall, messages began to trickle in from well-meaning groups, declaring outrage at this act of 'senseless violence.' The implication is that there is another kind of violence, not only different but also sensible. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s pledge to up his contribution to the War on Terror should be seen in light of this distinction.
For most people, the Somali saga begins with an episode commemorated in the Hollywood blockbuster,Black Hawk Down. The televised killing and humiliation of a handful of US marines by members of a warlord’s ragtag militia led to the withdrawal of US forces from the country. For the next decade, rival warlords contended over Somali territory. Then came the Union of Islamic Courts, a coalition that not only pledged to restore law and order in the country, but actually managed to do so. Faced with clan-based mobilisation by warlords, the Union of Courts mobilised the same Somalis along religious lines that cut across clan allegiances.
The US saw this development differently, alarmed that the law the Union of Courts restored was not any law but sharia, the law of Islam. It did not matter that this was more a version of local custom which local people seemed to welcome and herald as the harbinger of peaceful times. Blind to its local resonance, the US saw the Union of Islamic Courts as nothing but an Al Qaeda conspiracy, a threat to international peace. In the years that followed, it put together and backed a coalition of warlords, aptly titled Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT).
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Source: Aljazeera Network