E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC
4 December 2002
opinion
Accra — Africa has been attacked three times within the past four years in Kenya and Tanzania, and some are trying to understand the sense of it all.
On November 27, 2002 suspected terrorists crashed through the gates of an Israeli hotel in Mombassa. The result was an explosion that killed 13 Kenyans and three Israelis. In 1998, the US Embassy in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed and 275 Africans died.
An unknown group, the Army of Palestine, claimed responsibility for the latest attack, but the official suspicion is on the al-Qaida group. So once again, the Middle East conflict has settled on Kenya.
At this point many Africans are wondering why Africa must bear the brunt of a Middle East conflict. She is not an enabler. Neither is she a global power to force mediation on the combatants, so why this carnage on her soil?
That question has been answered by individual Africans who interpret the attacks as the results of sheer arrogance and contempt for African lives.
On being told about the latest bomb blast, Vice-President Musalia Mudavadi of Kenya said to the BBC that "his country has become a battleground for other people's wars and is being dragged into issues over which it has very little influence." This perspicacious remark is however limiting because it does not infer that the whole African continent is under attack.
The AU doesn't get the point either. As serious as these attacks are, it has been silent both in 1998 and 2002 on the issue. Even the heads of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, the region most affected, are yet to issue a communiqué condemning the attackers.
However, among Africans in North America, there are rumblings about Arab insensitivity to Africans. In their musings, they are struggling to understand why Arabs must enjoy abundant hospitality in Africa, even to the point of being allowed to expropriate key sectors of the continent's economies; yet they pay Africa back with ingratitude.
Time was when it was easy for Africans to sympathise with Middle East problems. They saw it through the prism of religion and not from the point of self-interest. But with these attacks, religious attitude, especially the political brand of Islam in certain parts of Africa today, has come under scrutiny.
A reader, observing the rate of change in Islamic hold on governance in certain states of Nigeria wrote to profileafrica.com to call for a wake up because "There is a new dictatorship abroad in Africa and it is called Islamic Fundamentalism."
Dr. George Ayittey, a professor of economics and a leading Africanist talked recently on Jim Lehrer Report about, "invaders, colonizers and slavers, who used their religions - Christianity and Islam, neither of which is indigenous to Africa - to convert, oppress, exploit and enslave blacks." He said "While the Europeans organised the West African slave trade, the Arabs managed the East African and trans-Saharan counterparts... Over 20 million black slaves were shipped from East Africa to Arabia."
Should the history of slave trade, and current practices in Sudan and Mauritania be enough to turn Arabs into enemies in Africa? Not yet.
One reader wrote to profileafrica.com to complain, upon learning of the atrocity in Kenya: "Would the African Union condemn this? NO! Because it has not been perpetrated by the West." Had the West being the perpetrators, the writer seemed to have implied that African leaders would be lining up to condemn the latest act vociferously.
Majority of African leaders have refused to condemn the Arab connection to the carnage. And no Arab country has condemned the Nairobi and Tanzania bombings since 1998 either. Dr. Ayittey finds in this silence a message that is "particularly arrogant and maddening."
Is this reticence on the part of African leadership caused by fear? If so then it is very horrifying. The fact is a vast religious fissure exists on the African continent that can be found nowhere else. No non-African society has this size of split between Christianity and Islam in its culture, with each facing the other, seething with righteous anger and ready to cause God enough trouble for a long time to come.
Already people in Africa are alarmed, and rightfully so: "Those who caused the planning and the execution of the bombing, be they Africans or non-Africans cannot call themselves friends of Africa. Today it is Mombassa, tomorrow it could be Accra, Lome, Banjul, Ouagadougou," said an Accra Mail editorial (Ghana).
It is likely that a continuation of such terrorist acts on the continent will soon pitch Africans against Arabs and Christians against Muslims soon.
Palestinians have so far no problem identifying themselves as Arabs. "It is not an easy thing to abandon one's identity (Arab)", said Arab League's Secretary General, Amr Mousa in West Africa, November 2002 issue. The question is whether Africans can abandon theirs.
The answer is with all kinds religious sophistries bombarding Africa. There may soon not be any African identity left, let alone a country. Nigeria, for instance, is being torn apart because of religion.
In Nigeria, a twenty-one year old journalist wrote a piece considered by many as a mistake. And hundreds of her compatriots died as a result. Youth alone could have explained her offence to mature adults, but didn't. Instead religious zealots clamoured for her death without any consideration of what God Himself would do to them in return for their self-serving, righteous indignation.
It is such fanaticism that makes places like Kenya dangerous and Islamic terrorists are exploiting it. "If, as seems likely," said Paul Reynolds on BBC on line "al-Qaeda was responsible for the double attack on Israelis in Kenya, its motive could well be to rally Arab opinion against the 'war on terror' declared by US President George W Bush;" on African soil and at Africa's expense.
To the latest carnage in Kenya, President Moi has no more to say except "The world has not come to our aid but we will do our best."
It is difficult not to sympathise with the hopelessness in President Moi's statement. But as president and member of the elite AU club, Moi could have done more than to shrug this off. He could have invited Africa to condemn the attack with the same effort it took to make his lame statement.
The attack was done with a single purpose of killing Israelis. The rest of Africa could go to hell so far as consequences were concerned. But the fact still remains that damage to the Kenyan economy and that of her neighbours will be felt for a long time to come.
Politically, the implication is even worse for Kenya. It was done at a time when Kenya could least tolerate trouble. In December 2002 Kenya goes to the polls. One is reminded of sights in Mombassa and Nairobi, of a large population of Arabs and Muslims, protesting against the Kenyan Government security operations after the Embassy and the 9/11 bombings and to deduce from those scenes that the slightest misstep by the government could send governance in Kenya into a free fall.
The Palestinian condition, no matter what the origin, is tantamount to misery. But the world has to understand, claim some Africans, that Africa is miserable enough without any Middle Eastern additions. Africa has hundred times the misery quotient in one country alone than can be found in all the Middle East, including the West Bank. She does not need to import more trouble.
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