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Can Kenya Avert a Bloodbath?
Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008
By NICK WADHAMS/WITEITHIE, KENYA
Walking the paths of this slum north of Nairobi, John Kimani
points to all the homes that now stand unoccupied, the trash on
their floors and the doors swinging wide telling the tale of a
hasty exit. Almost all the ethnic Luos in Witeithie have fled in
the week since local Kikuyus warned them to leave by January 31. "Failure
to do That will Suffer the Consequences," warned fliers scattered
in front of Luo homes. Few waited around to learn what those
consequences might be.
As Kofi Annan tries to mediate a settlement, a political
assassination and tribal violence exacerbate the crisis
And that's how Kimani, who is Kikuyu, prefers it.
"The Luos started it in Kisumu, and now the Luos should not stay
in our neighborhood," said Kimani, referring to the city in
western Kenya that has seen repeated attacks against Kikuyus in
recent weeks. "Yesterday, we were chasing them from here. We don't
want to see them here. They will never stay in peace again."
Attitudes like Kimani's, which seem to be increasingly shared by
many ordinary Kenyans toward their neighbors, are raising fears
that the ethnic violence which began as a protest against an
allegedly rigged election is spiraling out of control. Kenya is no
Rwanda, of course, where a 1994 ethnic genocide claimed hundreds
of thousands of lives. For one thing, Kenya contains many ethnic
groups — 42, as compared to two in Rwanda — and none constitutes
more than about 20% of the population. And the country's political
leaders are currently talking, under the mediating hand of former
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, with a view to heading off the
slide into catastrophe.
Still, there are clear signs that the tribal conflict is now
taking an increasingly organized form, which U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer characterized as "clear
ethnic cleansing." As in the conflicts in what was once Yugoslavia,
the purpose of the increasingly organized mobs killing and
threatening members of other tribes was to force all members of
that tribe to leave an area. And it may take a lot more than
agreement among rival political parties to bring such a conflict
under control.
The violence, initially directed mostly at Kikuyus, followed the
December 27 re-election of Mwai Kibaki, also a Kikuyu, in what
even international observers agreed was a seriously flawed poll.
Within the last week, Kikuyu have been striking back at Luos,
Luhyas, Kalenjin and other supporters of opposition leader Raila
Odinga. The opposition initially characterized the violence as a
spontaneous upsurge of anger, but fliers scattered around
Witeithie — and the findings of a Human Rights Watch investigation
— indicate that activists on both sides of the political divide
have fanned the flames of ethnic resentment and perhaps even
planned the violence to drive their enemies away.
In Eldoret, for example, some locals accused William Ruto, a
leader of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement and a Kalenjin, of
hate speech in the run-up to the vote. "He's the main inciter,"
said a man named Benjamin, who refused to give his last name for
fear of punishment. "He said that if we are not going to win as
ODM, we will not accept to stay with the Kikuyus. They will have
to go."
In an interview with TIME, however, Ruto denied claims that he had
done anything wrong. "Many people, I'm sure in the government,
want to say, 'Ruto is responsible for all this,' because they
think the Rift Valley voted in a way they did not want the Rift
Valley to vote," Ruto said. "But the people of Rift Valley removed
anything to do with Mwai Kibaki. They want to look for excuses for
violence. This is not about William Ruto, my friend."
But Ruto acknowledges that a sense of injustice among non-Kikuyu
Kenyans was an important element of the election. "The most
central issue that informed the debate in this election was about
sharing of resources," said Ruto. "It's not about the Kalenjin
community, it's about the people of Kenya."
The ethnic clashes have certainly exposed deep grievances over
land and other resources. Much of the worst violence has occurred
in the Rift Valley, where land ownership has always been
politically sensitive. In the colonial era, the region's fertile
farmland was reserved for British settlers. Britain sold it off to
the newly independent government, which in turn parceled it out to
members of the Kikuyu tribe, setting off a pattern of ethnic
conflict in the Rift Valley that has persisted for much of Kenya's
independent history. Many Kalenjins and others who had once lived
there believed — rightly or wrongly — that an Odinga victory would
restore their control of the coveted Rift Valley.
Although Kenya analysts believe the country remains a long way
from descending into the horrors of Rwanda, they warn that the
ethnic violence that has already killed more than 850 people
cannot be allowed to fester. Regardless of what started the
violence, or whether it was planned, there are worrying signs that
the killings have created their own momentum and a cycle of
vengeance that threatens to defy control by politicians.
"The Kikuyu are going to find themselves as a single ethnic group
very isolated if Kibaki refuses to go for a recount or some sort
of power-sharing arrangement," said Binaifer Nowrojee, director of
the Open Society Initiative for East Africa. "As long as there is
international attention, there will be restraint. The day the
international community is taken by other crises on the globe,
Kenya will be left to stew in its own juices and it will get worse.
This is the kind of situation if it's not resolved now it will
blow up later, and that's where we parallel into Rwanda."
Back in Witeithie, some Luos are still packing up with less than
24 hours before the deadline set by the fliers. Others were still
debating whether to leave. One woman, Eunice Owour, said her
husband was recovering in the hospital from machete wounds
suffered in an attack by Kikuyus. She did not want to go.
Walking away from the scene, Kimani, the Kikuyu, smiled and shook
his head.
"We will be coming back here at night," he said. "The best option
for her is to leave."
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