Kenyan military invades Somalia - and Twitter
Warning enemy civilians of their impending doom is not a new technique. Medieval knights would shout threats to the people of whatever town their armies had besieged, lobbing a dead cow over the walls to underscore the danger (as recreated admirably in Monty Python and the Holy Grail), while US planes dropped thousands of pamphlets over Iraq before the invasion, warning citizens to get out of the way of the incoming troops.
It's a technique used to indemnify the aggressors, an insurance against possible civilian casualties: "Well, we told them we were coming...".
Kenya has brought this old strategy into the 21st century. Meet Major Emmanuel Chirchir (@MajorEChirchir), spokesman of the Kenyan military and now something of a Twitter legend for his tweets about the progress of the Kenyan incursion into Somalia, getting himself nearly 5 000 followers after just a couple of weeks on the social network.
Continue reading the full story in www.dailymaverick.co.za.
Source: Daily Maverick
Daily Maverick is a unique blend of news, information, analysis and opinion delivered from our newsrooms in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. There are many ways to describe exactly what we do (and for the price of a cup of coffee we’re capable of talking your ears off about it), but the best way to understand the end result is to experience it. Every part of Daily Maverick is free-to-air and no payment is required, although free registration is required for a small subset of functions and pages.
Daily Maverick is run by an independently owned, private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation.) Follow Daily Maverick on Twitter at @dailymaverick.
Go to: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/About Simon Allison
Simon Allison is a specialist in African and Middle East politics, with degrees from Rhodes university and the School of Oriental and African Studies. He lived in Egypt for four years. He also co-authors the politics blog Third World Goes Forth.
