“This is Tobias,” the caption reads. The picture is of a handsome boy in a blue striped shirt, his hand propped under his chin. “He died in #GarissaAttack. To us he’s not a number, he’s a son, bro, friend.”
Another picture, this one of a girl with curly hair and a big smile, her hands tucked into her back pockets. “Beatrice Njeri Thinwa, 20. Died in Garissa. She hoped to get a PhD, loved taking pictures, and she loved Kenny Rogers.” These two students and 145 others were murdered by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab at the start of this month.
With the threat of ISIS looming like an angry specter over the Middle East, the world has been paying little attention to the steady increase of violence in Somalia. Somalia has been described as “the world’s most failed state” by both “The New Yorker” and “Foreign Policy,” a region that is chronically unstable, rocked by sectarian violence, and gripped by the cancerous Al-Shabaab, also known as “The Youth.”
This indigenous terror group, originally a part of the larger Al-Ittinada Al-Islami (IAIA), formed in 2003 after the younger, more radical members broke away. Al-Shabaab lost control of Mogadishu in 2011, and the key port city Kismayo in 2012, although they still maintain a death hold on rural Somalia. Al-Shabaab is linked to the better-known Al-Qaeda, and retains the dubious distinction of being the first terror group to recruit an American suicide bomber, Shirwa Ahmed, in 2008.
Al-Shabaab blocked foreign aid, most notably food packages, from reaching Somalis, resulting in a two-year-long famine that killed 258,000, half of them children under the age of five. The group was responsible for the 2010 suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, which killed 70 people watching the World Cup’s final match. It also attacked the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya, leading to a tense, three day stand off with police, killing 68 and injuring many more.
In November of 2014, when Al-Shabaab ambushed a bus traveling to Nairobi, members of the group sorted non-Muslims from Muslims by commanding all passengers to recite lines from the Quran by heart; those who were unable to do so were shot. They used this same practice when they attacked a quarry in Kenya a month later.
But their biggest attack, which would cause the world to sit up and notice their actions, was yet to come. Just after 5 a.m. on the morning of April 2, four heavily armed gunmen entered Garissa University campus and, after shooting the two unarmed guards at the gate, embarked on a killing spree that was to end twelve horrific hours later. Ironically, the attack came the very day after President Uhuru Kenyatta proclaimed, “Kenya is as safe as any country in the world.”
Garissa University students had not thought so for quite some time, as the university is located so close to the long, porous border with Somalia, and they often felt afraid for their safety. Garissa had a reputation for being on the front lines of battle, as it is a primarily Christian institution in a predominantly Muslim area. Even before the attack, students reported that acceptance letters to the school prompted dire warnings from friends and family about the incredibly dangerous conditions, and warnings that they should only attend if they brought a gun.
Many students tried to transfer to different schools, but found that bureaucracy and cost made that a near impossibility, and so they resigned themselves to remaining at Garissa. Hauntingly, there were rumors of an attack, and even some warnings the day before, but students “just thought that it was fooling,” since it was April Fool’s Day.
The attackers’ first target was an early-morning Christian prayer meeting. Of the twenty-seven students in the room at the time, just seven survived. Student Stanley Muli hid in a closet during the attack, waiting desperately for police or army personnel to arrive. It took over two hours for any defense to show up, despite their very quick arrival back in November, when they had broken up a student protest lobbying for better campus security.
As Muli and others hid wherever they could—under beds, in closets, in bathrooms and crawl spaces—other students heeded the instructions of the terrorists, who told them that if they came out of their rooms peacefully, they wouldn’t be harmed. Instead, students that emerged were then murdered. The cherry picking of Muslims from Christians continued, and those students unable to recite Muslim prayers or lines from the Quran were shot point-blank.
Some managed to make a run for it, bursting out pell-mell from the dorms, library, and other buildings, most clad in nothing but pajamas. But over 500 remained hostage inside the complex, later to be used as bargaining chips by the terrorists. Concurrent with the army’s advance, the first reports of casualties trickled in, with students being transported to the local hospital. But hospital employees stated that “what we are getting now are just bodies.”
As the attack stretched on into its eleventh hour, there was a standoff between police and the terrorists—rigged with explosives—who were described as exploding “like bombs” when shot. The surviving students in the school were evacuated to the hospital in Nairobi. All told, 147 were killed and 79 injured. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility, stating that they attacked the school because it was “on Muslim land colonized by non-Muslims.”
In the days that followed, another brutal attack occurred in Mogadishu, when terrorists stormed the Ministry of Higher Education, as well as the Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals, killing ten.
Just this week, Al-Shabaab carried out fresh attacks. The ambush of a U.N. vehicle carrying UNICEF workers killed six. Separately, members of the group assassinated two city officials, along with a former member of Parliament, and a senior prison official.
As the people of Somalia and Kenya struggle to quash the rising tidal waves of violence, the surviving students of Garissa University strive to come to grips with the horror and pain they endured. They hope to put a name and face to every number, a laugh, a dream—some way to show that this person was more than just a sad statistic.
And so they continue to post pictures, to tell about Selpher Wanda, who dreamed of being a teacher; of Gideon Kirui, whose entire village raised money for him to attend Garissa; of Obiero Eider who “beat the odds and made it 2 university” and of all the other innocents who were so senselessly forced from this world before they had a chance to really live.