As year ends, a balance sheet of pain and change terrorists brought Kenya

So Al Jazeera has just caused a storm with its documentary report claiming that Kenyan security has carried out extrajudicial executions of hundreds of suspected terrorists and their sympathisers.

The Police and government have strenuously denied the accusations, and reports say Al Jazeera will be investigated.

However, now that the second Christmas since the September 2013 attack on the Westgate Mall by Al Shabaab terrorists is coming, it seems like a good time to reflect on their legacy.

The one regrettable thing is that a year later Westgate Mall has not been rebuilt as a sign of defiance against the Shabaab. It would have been interesting to see if Kenyans would have gone back to the mall in large numbers as part of their resolve not to be defeated by terrorists.

The next best thing would be to tear down the mall, as a way of signalling a new start, because right now the only people delighting in the ruined state of the mall are Shabaab. It stands like their trophy.

Life, however, has moved on.

TERRORISM REFUGEES

According to anecdotal evidence, with all the violence and attacks at the Coast, domestic tourists are heading to the Rift Valley and western Kenya in large numbers.

Governor Alfred Mutua’s Machakos County, I am told, has been a beneficiary, receiving many “terrorism refugees” from Nairobi, to partake of its new “People’s” Park, refurbished stadium, and other good neighbourhood things he has done there.

So the Coast’s poison, is the Rift Valley and Western Kenya’s meat, to use a terribly old-fashioned expression.

As we have noted before, another place where “terrorism refugees” have swarmed is Karura Forest.

I remember some years ago walking across the forest with a family member from the Limuru Road entrance through to the Kiambu Road exit.

It was wonderful, but also the second longest walk of my life. Not in terms of distance, but it was emotionally draining. The place was deserted, and half way we could hear (more accurately imagine) all the frightening sounds of the forest that we hear in horror movies.

Today, Karura Forest has a different problem. On some weekends you can’t find space to park. It is flooded by thousands of people. Now a sub-economy selling all manner of things, including a cycling service has mushroomed.

A lot of it is thanks to the Shabaab attack on Westgate. And while the mall stands in its magnificent infamy, one could say that what is happening in the forest of Karura is the biggest defeat for the terrorists. It forced Nairobi to discover its green side.

It made it a better city, in that sense.

One of the things that Shabaab killed in Nairobi is the big movie. I am a movie buff, and our tribe is still in mourning. Things have never been the same since the Westgate mall attack.

The movie theatres at Westgate Mall had become the standard. They drove the consumption patterns, and set the tone on the movies most of the rest of the theatres in the city showed.

The last year has been miserable.

INTERESTING COINCIDENCE

But not everyone is in tears. I suspect the chaps who run the “secondary” market for DVDs are doing a roaring trade, but I also have it in good authority that video streaming online is sharply up, so the likes of Safaricom and Airtel are flogging a lot of data.

In addition, while many people continue to stay away from malls, they have not stopped shopping. What they have done is contract the risk out to someone else.

Thus we have seen the mushrooming of home delivery companies, and online stores like Jumia are becoming ubiquitous.

A year ago I didn’t know anyone who shopped on Jumia or Rupu. Today, I know very few who don’t. One cannot swear that there is a casual link here, but it’s definitely an interesting coincidence.

It is my view that if you want to collapse a society, the best way to achieve that is to make it complacent.

Terrorism brings out the worst; governments tend to do terrible things; and societies can implode as in Iraq.

But if you get a society to innovate and reorganise itself around the risk of terrorism and, in Nairobi’s case, crime, then you have failed.

The only problem with this scenario is that the victims never realise that they have won.