EXPLOSIVES, TERRORISM AND A WESTGATE IN KAMPALA.

EXPLOSIVES:

I’ve always been fascinated how explosives worked, how such a small quantity of substance or matter carried such a huge size of violent energy!

I grew up in a colorful and highly populated urban area with neighbors from different social groups and cultures. One common thing with such communities that have been through all sorts of motions in life is their value of life and happy moments. These [people] may be construction workers, street vendors, domestic workers, or just refugees drifting through urban life simply to survive whatever threatens their livelihood.

This kind of community doesn’t hesitate celebrating anything in life, be it some political holiday on a calendar, for it’s like [these celebrations] are some sort of psychological anaesthetic to their ways of life. But as usual, cultural diversity always causes different values in community to conflict; it’s the fluidity of these communities that makes it hard for one to hold a grudge for long, reason being everyone’s reliance is on the other.

 An explosive is a substance made out of different mixtures of chemicals with high atomic numbers of carbon (as fuels and not diamonds), Nitrogen, Oxygen, and binders. Some explosives [even high explosives such as RDX] will burn quietly if they are not confined, compacted or detonated. All explosives need to be detonated [sending or forcing a much violent shockwave through their molecular structures, breaking their chemical bonds] in order to achieve the exploding violent effect while releasing excessive amounts of heat energy.

TERRORISM:

Is this ever going to solve any problem, lets grow up.

Terrorism is a multi-faced monster that survives on other already established life forms. It’s a science adopted by the mentally incompetent, a guerrilla tactic for defeated and fragmented forces. When isolated from societal equilibriums, it dries and wastes away; but its strengths are boosted in ethnocentric societies. It is a tiny virus created through complex political and sociological failed formulas.

WESTGATE IN KAMPALA?.....Nuh

 Al-shabaab a terrorist organization based or rooted in Somalia has long been issuing warnings of “retaliation” attacks on all states involved in the regional peace forces inside Somalia (AMISOM). Since the 1998 twin attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to date, these terrorists have tried, but in vain, to hold our conscience hostage that we may up rise against our governments demanding withdraw of our forces from Somalia. They assume (the terrorist) that by attacking and staging horrific scenes in public places where innocent civilians go about their businesses, discontent against the government will grow, security agencies be provoked into rampage harassing the Ugandan Somali community to the extent of creating anger and frustration between the two which was nonexistent, then later all Somalis everywhere would seek retaliation thus turning to the Al-shabaab terrorists to satisfy their discontent. But they miscalculate Uganda’s rich cultural diversity, our vast experience of past conflicts, and our natural internal political skill that continually builds around us a tough immune system from the plague of terrorism.

On the other hand, ethnic tensions and constant wrangling between the two biggest ethnic groups in Kenya, the Kikuyu and Luo, has created a power vacuum that state machinery, especially intelligence services, is on the brink of collapse. This selfish and unpatriotic culture they’ve gloomed since their independence, the “every man to himself” and “the man eat man” tendencies that drives their communities but slowly reshaping their cultural values, have made Kenya a perfect terrorist’s holiday venue. 

We can still tame the beast of terrorism.

SUMMARY:  

Just like any explosive would require to be confined and detonated, so are society’s value mechanisms. Confines of selfishness, unsacrificing/unforgiveness plus the explosive and violent nature of ethnic tensions, terrorism would be so complex to understand or even terminate from society. In the movie “the last Samurai”, an American captain is hired by the Japanese emperor to help in fighting and bringing to submission the Samurai who had rejected to conform to the new western culture which they believed was meant to destroy the true Japanese cultural values. In battle, all the emperor’ soldiers are defeated and the American captain captured by the Samurai and taken to their hill country, where leader of the Samurai rebellion decides that they teach their prisoner the secrets of the Samurai warrior and in return, he would teach them his culture! Later the two are surprised to find out that they were all the same in many ways that they became more than blood brothers.

The same can be applied to East Africa’s terrorism puzzle if we are to defeat its ideology which is always based on foundations of fear and hate.