The Garissa Terror Attack.

At dawn on Thursday (2/4/15) five gunmen belonging the the Somali al-Shabaab terror group forced their way into the Garissa University College in Garissa, Kenya. As they made their way through the complex the gunmen separated the Christian students from the Muslim students and killed the Christians. Following an almost day long siege 151 people had been killed including four of the gunmen. If you have seen the police photographs of the immediate aftermath they will stay with you.

Due to an unpredictable delay this attacked coincided with the conclusion of the Iran nuclear talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. As I said in my post on the subject the US had deliberately dragged those talks out for an extra two days in order to prevent the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the European Union (EU) reacting to Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen and the US backed overthrow of the Nigerian government.

However the talks had actually been scheduled to take place in order to distract from another significant global event - the March 31st (31/3/15) deadline for nations to submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC's) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As I seem to explain everytime the topic comes up many of the smaller and less capable nations often struggle to keep up with the highly technical aspects of these negotiations. The US was clearly trying to make this problem worse by introducing a whole extra technical complexity in the form of the Iran nuclear talks. Those talks were of course so secretive I had no real clue of what was going on and I'm pretty sure I was a participant.

It used to be that my interest in Middle-Eastern politics/Islamic Terrorism and my interest in climate change negotiations were two entirely separate things. However in recent years they have begun to merge and are now the same thing. Certainly since the 18th Conference of Parties (COP18) that was held in Doha, Qatar in 2012 the Gulf Monarchies who view their entire survival on climate change being allowed to continue have begun to realise that they can no longer disrupt the process by denying the science or tying negotiations up in complex metaphors for other things. Instead they have replaced their negotiating position with a simple ultimatum - either nations will refuse to sign up to a deal or the Gulf Monarchies will send Islamic Terrorists to attack them.

The two main epicentres of this threat have been Somalia which is being fuelled through Yemen and Libya. Some four years after the NATO-led invasion the Libyan government is still in no position to implement a climate change policy or indeed any other sort of policy. In fact in their oil industry they recently had to declare the force majeure conditions that get talked about so much during climate change negotiations. The instability in Libya has since spread to Mali and to Boko Haram who not only threaten Nigeria but also Niger, Cameroon and Chad and appear to have brought down the Nigerian government with the support of the US.

Things really began to escalated following the COP 20 Summit in November/December 2014. A day after that summit ended their was the supposedly Islamist siege in Sydney, Australia. Although this was more of a practical joke by the Australian government rather then a legitimate terror attack three people still ended up losing their lives. Later the same day Islamist terrorists stormed into a school in Peshawar, Pakistan and massacred 145 people - 132 of them children. Three weeks later on January 7th (7/1/15) Islamist gunmen attacked the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, France at the start of two days of attacks that killed 18 across the city which will host the COP 21 Summit where that new climate change deal is scheduled to be signed.

Coming two days after the NDC deadline the Garissa attack is just the latest wave in that intimidation. Within the UNFCCC process Kenya is considered significant. It's development profile means that it is one of the nations that have the most to gain and the most to lose from the success or failure of a new climate change deal. Also one key area of negotiation within that deal is how to respond to the Loss & Damage caused by climate change. The existing work in that area is referred to as "The Nairobi Work Program" after Kenya's capital Nairobi where it was first drawn up.

So the next time US President Barack Obama campaigns on how he is leading the World in the fight to protect it from climate change you'll excuse me if I don't believe him.

23:25 on 4/4/15 (UK date).