While the Obama administration’s response to the attack has not yet been fully determined, it is clear that the decisions the US makes in the coming weeks will shape the West’s policy toward Kenya, Somalia and the entire Horn.
Almost immediately after Kenya entered Somalia in late 2011, the government sought to deepen ties with Israel to assist the country in holding off the threat of retaliatory attacks by Al Shabaab. The latest attack is likely to bring the two countries even closer.
The Obama administration and its allies like Britain and France are likely to respond cautiously and indirectly, but materially, to anti-terrorism efforts in the East African region in coming years, following the Nairobi attack, which analysts said acts as a reminder of lurking global terror threats.
Kenya, like its neighbours in the Eastern Africa region —which is increasingly becoming vulnerable to terror attacks — is expected to emerge a key beneficiary of renewed global anti-terrorism programmes, analysts said.
Washington, for example, is likely to enhance Kenya’s intelligence capabilities and to provide additional military hardware, said Mwangi Kimenyi, head of the Africa programme at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
The US and its allies will probably also provide additional equipment to Amisom, the African Union military contingent in Somalia, the analysts further argued.
Specifically, Amisom may finally get some of the 12 helicopters it is authorised to operate. Nicholas Kay, the UN special representative for Somalia, complained publicly last week that Amisom has not been given even a single attack or supply helicopter.
J Peter Pham, the director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council in Washington, however, cautions that “all the helicopters in the world would not have prevented Shabaab from attacking the mall in Nairobi.”
Mr Pham said the US and other donors must help enhance the professionalism of the Kenya Police and not direct all additional assistance to the country’s armed forces. He noted that police on the scene had failed to interview some of the survivors of the carnage at the Westgate Mall. “They treated and released people without gathering real-time intelligence,” said Mr Pham.
While the Obama administration’s response to the attack has not yet been fully determined, it is clear that the decisions the US makes in the coming weeks will shape the West’s policy toward Kenya, Somalia and the entire Horn. Washington has bankrolled both Amisom and the Somalia government, with the European Union playing a supporting role.
China, meanwhile, has yet to match its growing economic power in Africa with military muscle. The Chinese government condemned the carnage at Westgate, but government-controlled media were critical of the West’s “war on terror.”
Global Times, a Beijing-based publication, said the strategy adopted by the US and its allies has “set off more terrorist attacks and made them spread like a cancer cell.” The West has built a “safety dyke for itself,” the newspaper continued, “while allowing terrorism to spread beyond its dyke.”
Such comments suggest that China will not be joining in any expanded war on Shabaab and may not contribute to a strengthening of Kenya’s counter-terrorism capabilities.
Almost immediately after Kenya entered Somalia in late 2011, the government sought to deepen ties with Israel to assist the country in holding off the threat of retaliatory attacks by Al Shabaab.
In November 2011, then Prime Minister Raila Odinga visited Israel with counter-terrorism on the agenda, and the following year, then defence minister Yusuf Haji also travelled to Tel Aviv to arrange the acquisition of equipment to allow police to monitor remote regions.
The latest attack is likely to bring the two countries even closer. During the Westgate attack, Kenyan security forces received advice from Mossad operatives, and last week, an accord was hammered out to send Kenyan officers for training in Israel.
On their part, officials in the Obama administration are said to be debating whether to resume military strikes inside Somalia. Some US decision-makers remain unwilling to risk a backlash by Somali nationalists that would likely occur if missiles fired from drones killed civilians.
At the same time, Republican opponents of President Obama are criticising him for failing to defeat Al Qaeda, the terror network to which Shabaab has pledged allegiance. A few conservative commentators are urging the US president to take military action against Shabaab, but President Obama seems unlikely to launch any major offensive, as suggested by his unfulfilled threats to strike the Assad regime in Syria.
“The US had a bad experience intervening directly in Somalia,” Mr Kimenyi recalls with regard to the “Black Hawk Down” incident almost 20 years ago in which 18 US soldiers were killed on the ground in Mogadishu.
In addition, “Washington is very proud of the outsourcing it’s done in Somalia,” observes Bronwyn Bruton, a Somalia specialist at the Atlantic Council. She is referring to US training and equipping of Somali government troops and police as well as the 17,000 Amisom soldiers in the country. Ms Bruton says it’s unlikely the US will resume the drone strikes it occasionally carried out in the early years of the Obama administration.
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Even an effective strike on Shabaab inside Somalia may not prevent future terror attacks in Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa, Ms Bruton cautions. She adds that Al Qaeda-aligned forces are eager to hit Western targets, of which there are almost none in Somalia.
Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert and professor at a US university, says the attack on Westgate is intended to provoke a “heavy-handed reaction” by the Kenyan government against the Somali community in Nairobi and in North Eastern Province. Such a response, which could include vigilante violence by ordinary Kenyans, might produce political gains for Shabaab, Prof Menkhaus speculates.
He suggests Shabaab acted out of “desperation” in its attack on Westgate. The militants “crossed the Rubicon” by slaughtering scores of civilians in Kenya, he says and that Shabaab has been significantly weakened by Amisom’s military offensive and by internal feuding.
But the group is obviously not defeated, Mr Pham points out.
The US may in fact have become complacent in its attitude toward Shabaab due to the territorial gains made by Somali government forces and Amisom troops in the past 18 months, he says.
Mr Pham cites “triumphalist” comments by then-Africom commander Carter Ham and by then US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson, after the reversals inflicted on Shabaab in Mogadishu and parts of Somalia.
“The US may have taken its eye off the ball,” Mr Pham says.
