Somalia: Attack a Wake-Up Call to the West

opinion

Another day, another attack in a far-flung, volatile land. Westerners are likely to react with a shrug and a sigh to the October 14 truck bombing in Somalia, the world's deadliest attack on civilians in over a decade--if they heard about it at all. Yet the attack has direct implications for the United States and its allies.

Had a bombing that killed at least 358 people, injured 228 others, and left 56 missing taken place in the US or Europe, it would have mesmerized the Western public. But the reality is that the West has long been inured to tragedies in places they find unfamiliar, particularly ones like Somalia where misery seems the order of the day. The country on the Horn of Africa has suffered an array of seemingly insurmountable human-made and natural disasters over the past three decades, from protracted civil war and the rise of the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab to unrelenting drought and famine.

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