Ordinary citizens are in a somber mood,government officials look for answers and the business community counts its losses. The dark clouds of terrorism still hang over Kenya following the black Saturday of September 21, 2013.

A week after the Westgate Mall terror attack in Nairobi, the stench emanating from the rubble of what used to be one of Kenya’s high-end shopping centers and the twisted fragments of burnt-out vehicles nearby was a gloomy reminder of that horrific day. There was no mistaking that the country had received a heavy blow to its underbelly from al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group.

“The Westgate terror attack has forever left an indelible stain, not just in the hearts of victims and family, but also in the presumably clean fabric of security intelligentsia,” Javas Bigambo, a governance consultant with Interthoughts Consulting in Nairobi and a commentator on African affairs toldChinAfrica.

With at least 62 people dead, and the business community reporting that they lost more than Sh45 million (about $530,000), this attack was second in severity only to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, in which the global terror group al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the deaths of more than 200 people. 

Far-reaching effects

But besides the casualties and economic impact, experts in behavioral analysis and international security operations agree that this unprecedented attack on Kenyan soil would have far-reaching effects on the continent, and even the world at large.

“The Westgate attack points to a dramatic comeback of al-Shabaab as a home grown jihad movement,” Peter Kagwanja, CEO of the Africa Policy Institute, an influential think-tank, wrote in theSunday Nation, a week after the incident.

“Globally, the attack has shocked the conscience of the world, propelling counter-terrorism back as a central tenet,” he wrote. His argument was that although the Somali terror group had lost their stronghold in Southern Somalia, it would be imprudent to celebrate victory.

This is because terror groups are amorphous and fast-changing, which means that although the groups identify their targets, the targets are often unknowing, able to respond to an attack only after it has occurred, or, once the enemy is defined, on the battlefield.

“Terrorists are merely fixated on the unquestionable fact that the world has refused to submit to their evil and petrifying maneuvers,” Bigambo said.

Root causes

But how did this attack come about?

In September 2012, the African Mission in Somalia (Amisom) Forces captured the Somali port city of Kismayu, which had been a key source of al-Shabaab’s revenue from the sale of charcoal, illegal taxes and fishing. This was about 45 percent of its revenue stream, according to a UN Monitoring Report on Somalia and Eritrea released in July 2013.

But the militants had by then become affiliated to al-Qaeda and changed their tactics of recruitment and operation. Between October 2011 and September 2013, there were 24 terrorist attacks in East Africa, 17 of which were in Kenya.

The Westgate Mall in Nairobi is owned by Israelis and some observers say this could be a deliberate way of al-Shabaab reaching out to other global merchants of terror.

“There is an attempt by al-Shabaab to tell the world, ‘look, we are down [after losing Kismayu] but not yet out.’ There is a global appeal in their propaganda,” said Maurice Amutabi, a Kenyan scholar specializing on African history and culture.

By luring foreign terror-prospects with the promise of money, a better life, and the chance to take part in a global jihadist movement, the terrorists have identified a cheaper means of marketing their evil, much to the misfortune of the individuals persuaded to join the effort and all who are affected by it.  

Psychological effects

“There were physical injuries and deaths, but the terrorists also intended to dent our psychological resolve to fight terrorism,” said Dr. Gladys Mwiti, the Chair of Kenya’s Psychology Association.

Mwiti, who was part of the counseling teams in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, September 11 attacks in the United States, the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks, said terror attacks often have the potential of morphing from a personal issue, into a cultural, even societal issue.

“In a situation where people are very free and sociable, this attack can begin to curtail their freedom. People might start asking themselves if it’s worth going to big shopping malls,” she said.

In the case of Mumbai and the United States, the attacks led to observable friction between Muslims and members of other religions.

“We know that terrorism is not a synonym of Islam, but people affected by this terror would associate the two. We should be very careful not to throw away this coexistence because that is exactly what terrorists want,” she said.

“The experience we have is that many people have been affected by this attack. A lot of it is that people are angry with the whole attack. It is not just the frustration, but there is a lot of sadness. The effect is that people may be scared of getting together and of being happy, but we must not give in to that,” she added.

But this threat also has something to do with the mindset of terrorists themselves.

In an article appearing in theJournal of Conflict Resolution(Vol. 49), Jeff Victoroff, a psychiatrist at the University of Southern California, observed that the mindset of terrorists seems to benefit from growth in global commerce and improvements in information technology, which “facilitates cooperative aggression by far-flung but like minded-conspirators,” as well as by the rise in religious fundamentalism.

When people can reach weapons with ease, he wrote, there is the potential for “macro-terrorist acts,” which could be masterminded by small groups or even disgruntled individuals, who, according to Victoroff, aim to “influence the target audience and change that audience’s behavior in a way that will serve the interests of the terrorist.”

As with the Westgate attack, terrorists often target non-combatants who do not expect to be attacked.

Global problem

Al-Shabaab used twitter to post updates of their attack, thereby drawing benefit from the growth in Internet accessibility in Africa.

Holding hostages was a new tactic by al-Shabaab and psychologists say that apart from benefiting from media coverage of their tweets, the attack also served to provide satisfaction of revenge and humiliation of the enemy.

According to the Global Terrorism Index, there were 3,582 global attacks between 2002 and August this year. This figure could be worrisome, considering that it corresponds to the period when the “War on Terror” was launched.

Al-Shabaab’s boast that it would attack all countries with troops in Somalia, means Westgate was a warning to Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi and all allies of troops fighting in Somalia.

“This [terrorist threat] is now an African, if not a global problem. This is going to be a menace in the region for some time,” David Pulkol, a former director of Uganda’s intelligence gathering arm, External Security Organization (ESO), toldChinAfrica.

Pulkol, who led Uganda’s ESO in the early 2000s, said that security forces in the region must now “deliver the deadliest injury on the might” of al-Shabaab, especially since most government decisions to enter Somalia and fight terrorists still enjoy legitimacy back home. 

(Reporting from Kenya)