The news from Nairobi following the attack on Westgate Mall on Sept. 21 has been appalling. But given the frequency of attackers al-Shabab’s grenade-throwing in Nairobi, the incident should not have come as a surprise to regional experts. Yet, despite the magnitude of the death toll, the Kenyan government has shown a remarkable sangfroid, both in managing the crisis and taming the potential for ethnic flare-ups. 

While investigations are still in progress, analysts and experts have choreographed the attack into different interpretations, but it seems to me that the focus has been misplaced.

The attack at Westgate has received several misreadings, primarily on the part of Kenya, but to a large extent on the part of its allies in the wider war against al-Shabab.

In the beginning, the Kenyan invasion of the southern Somali city of Kismayo only broke al-Shabab's back and, more importantly, created an opportunity for the group to reorganize and rebrand its operational tactics. Just a few days before the attack, I wrote a piece in which I argued that al-Shabab is now far more lethal than it has ever been before.