GEORGETOWN, Guyana – It is the attack by al-Shabab militants on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, which has been dominating the foreign news reports since Saturday. At the time of writing, President Uhuru Kenyatta had just announced that the siege was over and the security forces were ‘mopping-up.’ The full body count is still not known, because three floors of the mall had collapsed, and there may be dead among the debris. The Kenyan army and police killed five of the militants and captured 11 alive.
Unlike al Qaeda, with which it is associated at some level if not integrated, al-Shabab exists in the Western mind only at the fringes of consciousness. This is because it is a Somali jihadist organization, which was driven out of Mogadishu and then appears to have splintered as a consequence of power struggles, among other things. Some analysts have suggested that the group which attacked the mall may be a new faction incorporating foreign jihadis. Whether or not that is so, al-Shabab, despite the fact that it has become degraded in comparison with its earlier incarnation, has already demonstrated its capacity for damage with its bomb attacks on Mogadishu. This is since the Somali capital was visibly returning to some semblance of normal economic and social life after the jihadists left.
The storming of the Westgate Mall, however, has certainly brought al-Shabab to the forefront in the mind of the Western public, not just because a number of foreigners from a variety of countries have been killed and injured, but also because Kenya’s foreign minister has claimed that among the jihadis were two or three Americans and one British woman. President Kenyatta said yesterday he could not confirm this, and it would depend on the results of forensic tests, among other things. Whatever the case, the snippet about the woman sent the British press into a frenzy of speculation as to whether she was Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of one of the London July 7, 2005 bombers.
