The Shabaab attack on Kenyan base and tales of social media

An injured soldier is received at Wislon Airport, Nairobi on January 17, 2016 following an ambush on KDF in Somalia by Al Shabaab militants. This was not a matter of being unable to fight; the soldiers were victims of an ambush. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Immediately following the Al-Shabaab attack on the Kenyan military camp in Somalia, local social media trolls were understandably about nothing else.
  • The majority of tweets were from those sanctimonious types who like to call attention to their patriotism.
  • Less starry-eyed commentators chided them for their armchair patriotism and advised those who could to enlist with the army to fight the terrorists.
  • There was another category of tweeters who gave the impression of knowing the military well, or had relatives there who probably were in Somalia.

Immediately following the Al-Shabaab attack on the Kenyan military camp in Somalia, local social media trolls were understandably about nothing else.

Broadly, there were three kinds of postings. The majority were from those sanctimonious types who like to call attention to their patriotism (which tends to be shifty). They quickly created the hashtag #IStandWithKDF.

Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. It is just that the manner they were gushing all over about “our heroes in uniform” who made “the ultimate sacrifice” sounded artificial.

Less starry-eyed commentators chided them for their armchair patriotism and advised those who could to enlist with the army to fight the terrorists.

There was another category of tweeters who gave the impression of knowing the military well, or had relatives there who probably were in Somalia.

Their tweets were more measured, more heartfelt, more touching. These had the most powerful impact. The most annoying of the postings were from those well-known types who use such occasions to broadcast tired political standpoints. They are intoxicated with political grandstanding, and pretending they have military expertise.

These are the kind which keep lecturing us that KDF is on a pointless mission in Somalia, and how everybody involved in the deployment is incompetent.

It was also to them suspicion fell for very offensive photos circulated immediately on Facebook of dead Amisom soldiers being dragged through a dusty Somalia road by Al-Shabaab militants.

For the record, the initial photos were not of Kenyan dead but of Burundi soldiers killed in an earlier attack by Al-Shabaab. It doesn’t make it any better, though.

POSITIVE RESPONSE

There were many gratifying and positive responses from social media users following the Somalia incident.

Yet there was plenty of the usual negativity on display as well. Besides being snide, you don’t come across as very funny when you post something like “KDF soldiers have forgotten to fight and become charcoal traders and sugar smugglers.”

This was not a matter of being unable to fight; the soldiers were victims of an ambush. Their Amisom colleagues from Uganda and Burundi suffered similar bloody ambushes last year.

However, Amisom and KDF in particular could improve on their intelligence gathering. It is inconceivable such brazen attacks can happen without help or connivance of local civilians.

The El-Adde camp that was attacked is in Gedo province, in territory reportedly dominated by the Marehan clan.

They are the late dictator Siad Barre’s clansmen and it is said they form a good chunk of the Al-Shabaab militia. It is understood they are resentful of the KDF for having empowered the rival Ogadeni clan in the Jubaland region at the expense of other clans.

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I am not an avid follower of social media. Far from it. I know of people who practically live their lives on Facebook and Twitter. When I can, I tend to gravitate more on social media to people who are broad-minded and witty. I studiously avoid the bloggers who post long, boring hosannas about their political heroes.

UNECESSARY BITTERNESS

Many bloggers don’t have a fealty to facts. They just have an agenda. You can sense them from miles off.

There is one camp that is cocky and “Jubilates” with self-satisfied triumph. Another that spews its frustrations with unnecessary bitterness.

I am not a hypocrite to expect people can sing one song. Divisions and differences are the way of the world. They are normal.

But it helps greatly when one retains a sense of humour, of proportion – and even occasionally of the absurd – and avoids getting pretentious and shrill.

We are not even exceptional in our social media outpourings. Nigerian bloggers are in a class of their own when it comes to sheer venom and sarcasm.