The Kenyan authorities are not held in high esteem:
News of the [Westgate mall] assault was beginning to spread via frantic phones calls, texts, and WhatsApp messages. Westgate is in the heart of a Kenyan-Indian part of the city, and the close-knit community there knew better than to rely on the authorities to send help. Instead, the call went out to the community’s own licensed gun holders, who were organized into self-appointed armed neighborhood watch units.
Harish Patel, a member of an outfit calling itself the Krisna Squad, was returning home from a morning spent volunteering at the nearby Hindu crematorium when he received a distress call: There was a robbery at the Nakumatt store in Westgate, with shooting going on. A couple of minutes later, the 43-year-old was within sight of the mall. He patted the pistol he wore on his hip and grabbed the spare magazine he kept in his car.
On the western side of town, Abdul Haji was in a business meeting at the Yaya Centre, another Nairobi shopping mall. The 38-year-old bitumen trader was sipping an Americano when his white iPhone chirruped. It was a text message from his brother: “Trapped in Westgate. Terrorist attack. Pray for me.”
Abdul abandoned the business meeting and rushed to his silver SUV in the basement. As he sped toward Westgate, swerving around cars and over sidewalks to cut through the traffic, he ran through a mental checklist: He had his gun, as always, a Ceska 9mm, but no spare magazine and no body armor.
He reached Westgate minutes after Nura and Harish.
[...]
When Abdul, an ethnic-Somali Kenyan who is Muslim, arrived carrying a pistol, Harish got in his face, shouting. Abdul pulled out his gun license ID and calmed Harish down.
Nura was the first to go up the ramp toward the rooftop car park, spurred on by shame at the cowardice of his police colleagues rather than the desire to be a hero. The carnage in the car park was horrifying. There was a mess of bodies in the corner, more scattered beneath the open-sided marquees, and still others poked out from beneath and between cars. Nura thought he was spearheading a rescue mission, but all he could see were bodies and blood. It looked like a slaughterhouse. Nura noticed some movement and stopped, suddenly realizing how he must appear: an ethic-Somali man in civilian clothes, clutching an AK-47. “I am the police,” he shouted in English. “I’m the good guy!”
[...]
The crowd outside Westgate was growing, but with no sign of any official or organized security response. Instead, an ad hoc volunteer rescue mission had begun to take shape, comprising a motley crew of uniformed, plainclothes, and off-duty police and licensed civilian gun holders. From the rooftop car park, they could hear shooting inside and could tell it was not coming from the mall’s upper levels. Nura led the way with Abdul and Harish and two plainclothes armed officers: two Muslims, a Hindu, and two Christians. All Kenyans.
Imagine driving to the scene of a terrorist attack, armed with a pistol, against AKs and grenades. No thank you.
By the way, I mentioned that the authorities aren’t held in high esteem:
Most of the at least 67 people who were killed at Westgate died in the first hour of the attack, before any rescue effort had even begun. Kenyan security forces did not launch their operation until 4:00 p.m., by which time it was already too late: Most of those who would escape had already escaped; most of those who would be wounded had already been struck; and most of those who would die were already dead. It is likely that many of the victims bled to death in the slow hours between the start of the attack and the arrival of help.
A special police unit trained in counterterrorism operations, known as the Recce Squad, eventually entered from the rooftop car park. Kenyan soldiers entered from the ground floor. Neither group was in communication with the other. Soon afterwards, there was a shootout on the first floor between the Recce Squad and the soldiers, in which the police unit’s commander was killed and another two officers were wounded. The remaining Recce Squad members pulled out of the operation in disgust, and the army, too, withdrew.
After the friendly fire incident, Westgate became a military operation. Armored personnel carriers with heavy machine guns patrolled in front of the mall; soldiers with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades moved in and out; and sporadic gunfire and explosions echoed from within. On Sunday, Kenya’s interior minister claimed that there were as many as 15 attackers and that the siege was ongoing. By that time, however, the mall was mostly under the army’s control. On Monday, a rocket fired by the Kenyan army collapsed the back of the mall, dropping the rooftop car park into the basement, pancaking the room where the terrorists had taken shelter and throwing a thick plume of smoke into the Nairobi sky. The fire burned for days. Parked cars with full fuel tanks fell into the gaping hole and exploded like bombs.
[...]
Before and after blowing up the mall, the Kenyan army looted shops, broke open safes, and emptied tills. The looting was captured on closed-circuit television cameras and reported by business owners after they returned to the mall and found their shops ransacked and stock missing. A public inquiry into the disastrously ineffective security response was promised but never delivered. Somehow, Kenya’s interior minister managed to cling to his job for another 15 months. The army chief retired this spring, with full honors.
Welcome to Kenya!
This reminds me of my flying experience in The Gambia. I was a student pilot at Banjul airport when a brushfire swept across it. While we moved aircraft and cars and fought the fire the airport fire engine was unserviceable and several local fire fighters were crying like babies. It was pretty shocking to see how little effort they put in.