During the infamous Westgate hostage incident, Kenyans saw one Abdul Haji, a civilian licensed to carry a gun heroically enter the building as he attempted to rescue his brother. As I followed the proceedings online, I suddenly realized that there was something very wrong because I was expecting to see the one and only Nancy Baraza, or CMB Prezzo, or Prof. Obel if not Tom Cholmondley (sp) or other high-profile civilians stepping forward at the crucial hour of need, for the love of their country, to show the terrorists that in deed we are one.
I can temporarily excuse CMB Prezzo because earlier that day he had been involved in a gun-drama with a foreign soldier and must have been on the run when Al Shabaab stormed Westgate, otherwise I'm sure he'd have wasted no time displaying his musketry and gun-handling skills on the terrorists' skulls.
Equally MIA was one John Harun Mwau aka "The Boss." Legend has it that he is among the best marksmen Kenya has ever produced and would occasionally shoot off birds from the air without wasting a single shot!
What about the much-talked about presidential guards? What about the GSU Recce squad? What about our "Highly trained Commando Unit" which mainly exists in conversations but has never been seen in action?
And now the story of the tunnel makes me think that even G4S guards would have daringly accessed the building and subdued the gunmen or at least seal off the tunnel to delay the attackers' escape.
Isn't it embarrassing that neither Kimaiyo nor Karangi could think of tactical ways of taking back the building and rescuing the hostages rather than blasting it?
I used to think that bombing could only be done against enemy installations and not private property. I used to think that our security forces always got trained on urban warfare tactics. I used to think we had hostage negotiators whose skills should have been used to keep the death toll to a minimum.
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