Al Shabaab somehow sounds levelheaded in this amazing exchange with Burundi’s president

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — It’s not often (or ever, really) that Al Shabaab comes out looking like the levelheaded one.

But the violent Somali terrorist organization did just that over the weekend.

During his first appearance in the capital, Bujumbura, since last week’s failed coup, Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza on Sunday avoided the subject of the coup and everything that preceded it. Instead he focused on the apparent threat posed by Al Shabaab. He said he was “very preoccupied” by the terrorist group.

That’s pretty surprising. His country has been consumed by protests in recent weeks against the president’s wish to serve an entirely unconstitutional third term. The unrest culminated last week when a faction of the country’s military attempted to overthrow the government.

“We have taken measures against Al Shabaab,” Nkurunziza told confused journalists at his presidential palace. "The agenda is to put in place proactive measures to face these attacks that are a security risk to the citizens of Burundi.”

Any reporters hoping to hear about how he might resolve some of the country’s more pressing issues left disappointed.

It is, of course, true that Al Shabaab poses a threat in the region, having attacked Kenya and Uganda in recent years. An African Union force, backed by the United Nations, is now fighting Al Shabaab in Somalia.

But it was hard not to interpret the president’s remarks as an attempt to establish a pretext for cracking down on protesters who oppose him. Al Shabaab itself appeared to see through it, calling the president’s remarks “dumbfounding.”

“We think that this is an attempt by him to appease his people, who are standing in the streets protesting against his dictatorship, or to divert the world's attention from him while he possibly prepares his mass revenge," Sheikh Ali Mahamud Rage, a spokesman for Al Shabaab, told Reuters in a statement.

Sounds about right, doesn’t it?