In Garissa, Kenya, a survivor has emerged from hiding more than two days after fanatical gunmen massacred the city’s university killing 148 people. Slaughtered in the name of radical islam by Al-Shabab, which is an islamic militant group based in the neighboring Somalia.
These kind of massacres have become surprisingly common, with much of north and central African democracy facing radical religious fundamentalists.
The issue is not just with islamic fundamentalists, unless we are so short sighted that we forgot about Joseph Kony in Uganda (who is a Christian and claims to have spoken with God).
The issue is that radical fundamentalists offer concrete, and final, answers to difficult life questions, which appeals to many people who have otherwise lost their understanding of the world. When your local resources are sold off for pennies on the dollar to international corporations, it becomes a lot easier to swallow that these guys are fighting “God’s war” than it is when we are sitting behind a computer or phone screen.
Would Somalian Al-Shabab be carrying out raids in neighboring Kenya if Somalia’s coastal waters and land were not being used as a toxic dump site for multinational corporations? Would people join these kind of organizations at all if they had enough to eat and drink, and already felt safe?
I am sure there are people left wondering what is more likely to kill them between corrupt governments and radical resistance movements. Certainly, the vows of retribution against Al-Shabab by the Kenyan president will not likely dull the anger of the kind of people who committed this atrocity at Garissa university.