In the evening of last Saturday, March 10, 2012, a heavy blast were committed at a crowded bus station in Nairobi, Kenya. The explosives were thrown out of a car into the crowd waiting for their busses. There were six killed and at least 30 heavy injured. The authorities proclaimed there wouldn’t be any doubt that the radical-islamic “AL Shabaab” are the responsible of this cowardly attack.
This cannot really surprise. Since the invasion of Kenyan troops to Somalia due to the increasing kidnapping of vacationers along the northern Kenyan coast, it was to be seen that there will be more terror attacks in Kenya. This was already shown by the attacks in October 2o11.
The really remarkable point in this issue is about the reports in the German media: Too little, too late! Apart from the online-issues of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ)” and the “Stern” – both of them were the fastest with releasing first reports on Saturday evening 22:48 – and the online-issue of the “Handelsblatt”, who brought a more detailed and pictured article on Sunday noon at 13:oo, there was nothing to see about this incident in German online media.
Until Tuesday 13th. Then the old and well known “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)” came up with its first report – at least 48 hours later – writing about four persons who got killed. A number that unfortunately had to be corrected to six already on sunday.
One has to picture that: Two full days after the incident one is waking up in the offices of the “FAZ” and releases an article about the attack that – by the way – occurred in the million metropole of Nairobi, the capitol of Kenya. And then they are not even on the state of information of two days ago. This is not really a big achievement for the famous and highly respected “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)”, one of Germany’s biggest daily newspaper.
For your information: Nairobi after all stands for the media center of entire Africa. News-Agencies and TV-Stations from all over the world got their Africa headquarters there. Although the power net and internet connection is not very stable on Kenyans country side, not so in Nairobi. There are no power breakdowns in central Nairobi. So that wouldn’t be a working excuse for this lack of actuality.
The impression obtrudes, there will be only reports from Kenya when they absolutely have to. This started with the invasion of the Kenyan troops and the following terror attacks by the “Al Shabaab” in last year. Of course there has been short news in newspapers, Online-Media and TV-News, but no deeper look at the conflict situation or TV-News-Specials.
Can it possibly be, that the Somalia problem should be hidden furthermore because of having no idea for a solution anyway, and all concepts for stabilization of the country wouldn’t be possible without military actions? There is no doubt about it, in times where they messed up in Afghanistan and try to worm one’s way out of there, it wouldn’t be very popular to come up with the next “operation for peace and humanity” or however they would call it. Even not when there are elections in 18 month from now.
However, it also seems generally that there is no increased international interest in resolving the Somali problem. Western governments prefer to fight it with a few frigates cruising around the indian ocean like poking around with straws in a punchbowl and put the issue to shipowners, insurances and finally to cruise passengers. Not to mention the refugees in the area, who wanders between the fronts dying of hunger.
The time has come that the so called civilized world finally aware the possibilities of a pacified and prosper Africa and shows a stronger commitment.
They could even let the Chinese not looking too good, who are only interested in profit and not all in supporting the local population with education and jobs. But even China realized that Africa is the upcoming continent of the future. To improve their image constantly and to spread their view of the world, they already started to run a CCTV-Studio to be the TV and Media-Headquarter of whole Africa. The Europeans, not to mention the Germans, don’t have any plan to compete this.