Attack a brutal reminder that we are at war with Al-Shabaab

If we were becoming a tad complacent, the deadly Al-Shabaab attack on a Kenyan military camp in southern Somalia on Friday reminds us that we are at war.

When a country is at war, or under attack, it stands together.

Such is the time to set aside petty ethnic, political, religious or other differences and unite in common cause against a common enemy.

The enemy does not differentiate between Jubilee, Cord, Kanu or any other political formation.

It does not ask if a target is Kalenjin, Luo, Giriama, Kikuyu, English, Maasai, Kamba, Indian, Luhya or any other Kenyan community. He kills us all.

When the terrorists send a suicide squad or drive a truck bomb into a shopping mall, university campus, or military camp, the conflagration does not discriminate between ethnicity, colour, religious belief, clan, nationality, gender, occupation or political leanings. It kills us all.

That is why we must stand united and kill him before he kills us.

In this noble calling there can be no room for the faint-hearted, the coward, or the one of divided loyalties.

In time of war, those who would aid or fraternise with the enemy can absolutely not be tolerated.

AGE OF PROPAGANDA
That’s why we must honour the brave young men and women who selflessly volunteer to go into battle so that the rest of us can go about our daily lives in peace and security.

The Kenya Defence Forces soldiers who died for us at the Kulbiyow camp must get the highest accolades, as must those before them who perished in a similar attack at El Adde one year ago, and all the others who have laid down their lives since the Kenyan military incursion to subdue Al-Shabaab in Somalia was launched more than five years ago.

But how will we honour them if we do not know their names and numbers?

Reactions to the Kulbiyow carnage confirm a nation attuned to mute acceptance of official lies.

One year after El Adde, there has never been official confirmation of the number killed, and Kenyans seem to accept this obfuscation as necessary in time of war.

We are seeing the same attitude again, with a government keen on hiding the truth, and a populace comforting itself with meek acceptance of official misinformation and propaganda.

Lies and denials will not bring back the dead, nor change the facts.

By refusing to accept the reality of El Adde, we also refused to learn lessons from Kenya’s biggest military defeat; and, therefore, did not bother to craft the defences that would ensure our soldiers in hostile territory would never again be sitting ducks.

Now Kulbiyow has happened, and again we want to deny the stark truth.

What we are seeing in government statements and media reports is that we truly are in the age of False News and Trumpian Alternative Facts.

For the person who relies on the media to know what is going on, it does not get more bizarre than when two respected, mainstream Sunday newspapers give diametrically opposite accounts of what happened at Kulbiyow.

HONOUR THEM

One’s account of suppressed casualty figures and colourful tales of heroism reads like it came straight out of the pen of the KDF propaganda department.

The other offered what looked like a more realistic account, and immediately faced a backlash for supposedly regurgitating enemy propaganda.

The public must have been left thoroughly confused, but we know we are in trouble as a country when Al-Shabaab propaganda seems more plausible than our own government’s amateurish spin.

Most troubling is reactions to the conflicting reports that are coloured by our usual ethnic-political goggles, so that any accounts not in tandem with the government version are dismissed as traitorous and unpatriotic.

Love for your country does not mean blind loyalty to the ruling party or the refusal to ask questions.

In fact, demanding answers and demanding accountability is the highest form of patriotism.

Our soldiers will have died in vain if we do not ask questions on their behalf; and if we do not individually honour each and every one of them by publicly acknowledging their ultimate sacrifice.

We cannot do so by pretending that they did not die.

Email: [email protected]: Twitter: @MachariaGaitho