Richard Onyonka, our urbane assistant minister for Foreign Affairs from Kitutu Chache, chose to act the sole Mr Nice as Kenyans tried to recover from the shock of two grenade attacks in Nairobi on a single day this past week.

Besides sending military tanks and putting more boots on the ground in Somalia to fight Al-Shabaab, Mr Onyonka announced at a press conference that Kenya will be opening a new warfront through which our glib-tongued diplomats will seek to defeat the terrorists with sheer force of reason.

No doubt Mr Onyonka’s thinking is informed by high diplomatic ideals.

Faced with non-conventional enemies like Al-Shabaab, many states now recognise the fact that they have to be at their creative best to prevail.

Even America, for all its military might, has in the past toyed with the idea of engaging elements of the Taliban in a charm offensive in its efforts to escape from the snare of a 10-year war in Afghanistan.

But to think that Kenya can sit down some bloodthirsty terrorist in a boardroom in Nairobi and hope to beat sense into his fundamentalist head only two weeks into a war the group claims it is winning is to take him too seriously.

There is no such thing as a good terrorist or a good Al-Shabaab as some free-lounging expert on the Horn of Africa is won’t to lecture you about from the green zone of Nairobi’s Village Market.

Al-Shabaab, like its big-brother affiliate Al-Qaeda, is largely inspired by the extremist Wahhabi ideology which imagines an Islamic caliphate extending from Saudia Arabia to Somalia, including parts of northern Kenya.

But beyond the territorial jokes, a negotiation session with Al-Shabaab could actually throw up more gems than would be thought reasonable in the circumstances.

A typical Al-Shabaab demand would be that some areas in the country perceived to be predominantly Muslim be governed under Sharia law.

Also likely to be on the table for discussion is the shape of your favourite sambusa (and I mean samosa) whose triangular dimensions the extremist group finds offensive due to its supposed resemblance to the symbol of the Christian Holy Trinity.

If Al-Shabaab has its way in the negotiations, women living in such areas might also find themselves being flogged for wearing a bra just as young men might have to tame their wild passion for televised matches in the English soccer premier league.

Talking to Al-Shabaab would therefore be negotiating away our freedoms and culture.