Nairobi (dpa) – Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab scored a major victory in its Twitter propaganda war with Kenya this week after Nairobi's military spokesman was very publicly caught lying. Kenya sent its military into Somalia in October following a string of kidnappings of tourists and aid workers on its soil, which Nairobi blamed on al-Shabaab. While fighting on the ground has been limited due to bad weather, it has burst into life on the social media site. The Twitter battle took a new twist Wednesday when Major Emmanuel Chirchir, the spokesman, posted images of a man being stoned to death, claiming the victim was a Kenyan being executed in the Somali insurgent stronghold of Kismayo. Mukhtar Ibrahim, a Somali-American journalist, swiftly pointed out on his Twitter account that the pictures were originally published in 2009 and were of a man being executed for adultery. Moreover, Ibrahim noted, the incident took place in a different town and was carried out by another organization, Hizbul Islam – an Islamist group which was independent at the time, although it has since merged with al-Shabaab. The pictures in question actually finished second in the 2010 World Press Photo general news category awards, raising the question how Chirchir could have hoped to successfully misrepresent such high-profile images. Al-Shabaab, responding through its officially sanctioned HSMPress Twitter account, gleefully pounced on the revelation. “Damage Control: #KDF must employ a new PR strategy to save face; @MajorEChirchir's half-witted Twitter Psyops have made him a laughing stock,” the insurgent group wrote on its feed, using the abbreviation for the Kenya Defence Forces. The response from Kenya's bustling Twitter community was also instantaneous, and robust, condemning the spokesman. Chirchir's mobile telephone was turned off Thursday morning, and he was steadfastly ignoring all requests through Twitter asking him to explain the pictures. It isn't the first time that Chirchir has found himself mocked on the website. Shortly after Kenya's incursion began, he tweeted that donkeys could be the targets of Kenyan air raids, as they were being used to move insurgent supplies, leading to much derision. Al-Shabaab's press team – believed to be run by diaspora Somalis – has consistently outwitted Kenya, delivering the insurgents' messages in impeccable English and making the Kenyans look like amateurs in the eyes of many observers. “The Kenyans are not only inexperienced in war militarily, but they are inexperienced propaganda-wise,” Rashid Abdi, Horn of Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group, told dpa. “They are dealing with an extremely savvy enemy. Al-Shabaab has supporters all over the diaspora who are very talented when it comes to the use of blogging sites,” noted Abdi. The consequence of Chirchir's efforts on Twitter are that the credibility of Kenya's claims relating to its military gains are being undermined. Now that he has been caught red-handed, even ordinary Kenyans are being to doubt their own version of events. “Well @MajorEChirchir, lying has seriously dented chances of Kenyans believing any further KDF ‘stories' whether true or not,” one Kenyan wrote on Twitter. There have been no significant ground battles following months of bad weather that bogged down Kenya's forces, bringing to a halt the advance that was supposed to quickly see Kenyan boots on the ground in Kismayo. Even after the rains stopped, fighting has been confined to skirmishes as Kenya uses its air force to pound al-Shabaab targets. It is these airstrikes that are the subject of extravagant claims by Chirchir. Journalists were already taking his claims with a pinch of salt, as he regularly reported dozens of al-Shabaab fighters killed in air raids with no evidence to back it up. The insurgents are just as quick to issue inflated death tolls in their favour. Chirchir had previously cautioned the media not to listen to al-Shabaab's propaganda, setting himself up as the authoritative source on everything happening in southern Somalia. The outcome of the war on the ground is far from certain, despite al-Shabaab facing its biggest challenge since the insurgency began in early 2007, coming under pressure from African Union peacekeepers, Kenya, Ethiopia and various pro-government forces. Yet few can doubt the war on Twitter is, for now, going the way the insurgents want. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/EyZ1n Tags: Kenya, Shabab, Somalia, twitter Section: East Africa, Latest News, Tech
