This, from the press release of AQMI after the attack on Grand Bassam. Link here:
http://fr.alakhbar.info/11224-0-AQMI-revele-lidentite-des-auteurs-des-attaques-de-Grand-Bassam.html
Hamza El-Foulani, Abderrahmane El-Foulani and Abderrahmane El-Ansari ‘have respected the order given by their hierarchy in the task of identifying their targets….’
Identifying their targets. Posthumously, I will tell these tools who their identified targets were.
A distraught girl, maybe twelve years old, in bathing suit, face framed with long locks that she got on the cheap in a little coiffeur shop, running as fast as her legs could carry her, shouting ‘They are shooting everywhere’.
A little boy, maybe six or seven, running on slippers dashing through the street parallel to the beach, jumping a low wall into someone’s garden and not stopping to answer any questions.
A woman running a roadside stall, staring with disbelief at the mayhem unfolding before her.
Fathers shielding their children while looking for safety.
Kids, having their Sunday fun on the beach, as they have for generations at Grand Bassam.
These were your identified targets.
Words are not anough. Oh and in your zeal to punish a country for something you did not agree with you have also managed to eliminate the director of the Goethe Institute in Abidjan, a woman loved and respected by many for her commitment to the world of art in this part of the world.
Congratulations.
There will be more lowlife like El-Foulani, El-Foulani and El-Ansari aiming to ‘bring reprisals against France’. They do so by gallantly shooting into unarmed crowds, by terrifying children and their parents. Burning in hell is too gentle a fate for them.
But contempt and anger are surface emotions. We need truly intelligent intelligence and cooperation, in order to catch these vermin before they act. Human intelligence. Building alliances with the overwhelming majority of West Africans who are hard working and fundamentally decent people. Development aid has failed, spectacularly. That mould needs to be broken, urgently. Nobody is buying what you’re selling. You meet people here on their terms. Deviate from that and you’re toast.
Some of this is already happening but far too much is conventional and hideoulsy outdated and unsuccessful. Like the manifestly monumentally stupid way of bombing the crap out of everyone you don’t like. Unfortunately, with Hillary in the White House by early next year we will have plenty more of that to look forward to. ‘We came. We saw. Plenty died.’ Cue heartless laughter…
And then of course, there must be attempts to find the fundamentals as to why ordinary young folk turn into homicidal maniacs in a region that has already seen the Biafra War, the civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, the border war in Guinea, the regional conflict in Casamance, the long crisis in Côte d’Ivoire and the implosion of the state in Mali. To name a few.
I made an attempt to do this myself, after the last act of mindless violence. Just scroll up and you’ll find it there. Maybe it still holds…
Bram Posthumus - Yoff Tales 