The death toll in the bombing that hit the centre of Mogadishu on Saturday continues to rise, with more than 300 people now believed to have been killed and hundreds more seriously injured.
The scale of the loss makes the attack, which involved a truck packed with several hundred kilograms of military-grade and homemade explosives, one of the most lethal terrorist acts anywhere in the world for many years. …
The devastating bombing, which provoked international condemnation, will focus attention on the decade-long battle against al-Shabaab, an [al-Qaeda affiliated] Islamist group, in Somalia
(London Guardian, October 16, 2017)
Of course, if this happened anywhere in Europe or the United States, it would have knocked Harvey Weinstein from his trending perch – complete with scaremongering, wall-to-wall coverage. As it happened, even the cable news networks gave it little more than a perfunctory read.
Granted, for most of you, this is rather like “Breaking News” about the worst famine in Ethiopia. You probably thought nothing could surpass the “worst” famine that led to Live Aid I in 1985. And you’d be forgiven if you exhausted what remained of your compassion for terminally plagued Africa after persistent famine led to Live Aid II in 2005.
Still, if nothing else, this tragedy should disabuse you of any notion that Islamic Jihadists are engaged in the Huntingtonian clash of civilizations. Mind you, perennial clashes between Sunnis and Shiites have long shown that, for every Westerner they kill, these Islamists kill 1000 Muslims. The fighting that erupted yesterday between Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Kurds for control of the oil-rich region of Kirkuk reinforces this spectacle of Muslims terrorizing Muslims.
I have often remarked that mass bombings in Muslims countries have become as commonplace as mass shootings in the United States. And, given how “numb” we’ve become to mass shootings over here, it’s hardly surprising that we think little of bombings over there – even historic ones.
Not to mention the reflexive resentment Somalia incites in most Americans. It stems primarily from two incidents:
- from 1993 when a Somali warlord handed the mighty United States its worst military defeat since Vietnam, which was dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down; and
- from 2009 when Somali pirates commandeered the US containership Maersk Alabama, which was dramatized in the movie Captain Phillips.
This is why I only ask that you juxtapose the terror Islamists incite among Westerners with occasional bombings to the terror they must incite among Muslims with daily ones. This juxtaposition will compel the kind of empathy Saturday’s bombing warrants.
Related commentaries:
Somalia famine…
Somali pirates…
Live Aid…
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