How militant can you get?

The headline of Michael Phillips’s Wall Street Journal story on the back page of the A section yesterday signals trouble ahead: “Militants Stall Completion of Kenya Trade Hub.” Datelined Lamu, Kenya, the story opens this way: “Al Qaeda militants are disrupting one of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure projects, forestalling Kenya’s plans for establishing a new regional trade hub on the Indian Ocean.”

At least part of the trouble is linguistic. The “militants,” it turns out, are members of al-Shabaab (as the Journal spells it), “a violent Islamist group based in neighboring Somalia[.]” The group “has attacked road construction crews and security forces in the area [of the Chinese-built Lamu Port].”

The militants pose an obvious danger: “[O]n a key, 150-mile stretch of road, from the port to the town of Garissa, the threat of militant attacks has put a stopper in the hoped-for flow of shipping containers.”

We have a stake in the happenings: “Hundreds of U.S. commandos and other troops are deployed to Somalia to help local forces battle the militants.”

Things can get hairy with the militants: “In 2020, militants attacked a joint U.S.-Kenyan base near the site of the Lamu Port, killing three Americans.”

Here is a little background:

During the first two years of attempted construction of the road, beginning in 2021, 16 people were killed and 40 wounded in militant attacks, including Kenyan and Chinese workers, according to Patrick Mutahi, director of the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies, a Nairobi think tank.

Al-Shabaab attacks resulted in 30 deaths among civilians and security personnel between January and November last year across Garissa and Lamu counties, though not on the road itself. At least 23 militants died in retaliatory operations.

A little more background:

In one incident in 2023, a buried bomb—triggered by a militant with a remote detonator—hit one of four security vehicles escorting a convoy of engineers on a road inspection, according to one person who was on the scene. The attack ended in a firefight, with the engineers forced to take cover in a ditch. A few escorts were slightly injured, the person said.

How militant can you get? Forget the Gulf of America. President Trump might want to get militant about encouraging news outlets to refer to “militants” as “terrorists” in the interest of reporting the news rather than obscuring it.