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Kenya Countdown
An Africa expert discusses what can—and should—be done to stop
the violence.
By Katie Paul - Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 1, 2008
Should foreign peacekeepers be deployed to Kenya? In spite of the
involvement of high-profile facilitators, like former U.N.
secretary-general Kofi Annan, killings are continuing in what was
once one of Africa's most stable countries. Almost 1,000 people
have died in political violence since the Dec. 27 presidential
election left incumbent Mwai Kibaki claiming victory over
challenger Raila Odinga. Many of the clashes have pitted members
of Odinga's Luo tribe against Kibaki's Kikuyu, prompting the top
U.S. diplomat for Africa, Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs Jendayi Frazer, to describe the fighting as ethnic
cleansing.
Robert Rotberg, an Africa expert at
Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, spoke to
NEWSWEEK's Katie Paul about where conflict resolution efforts
might be headed and what the international community should do
next.
Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Now that Jendayi Frazer has characterized the
violence in Kenya as ethnic cleansing, has there been any
discussion of sending in troops from the African Union, United
Nations, or anywhere else?
Robert Rotberg: No, no one's talking about sending troops in.
At what point might people start talking about that?
If Kofi Annan's mediation efforts fail, then somebody might talk
about trying to move African troops in to separate the contending
sides, but Kofi Annan is being reinforced today by [U.N. Secretary
General] Ban Ki-Moon, and that's a pretty powerful team. I think
our government and most governments are hoping that Kofi Annan can
bring them together. It's hard to tell from this distance, but it
looks as if that's what he's beginning to do.
What do you think of Frazer's description of what is happening
as ethnic cleansing—especially now that the State Department has
distanced itself from that description?
I think Jendayi Frazer was correct to describe what is happening
as ethnic cleansing, and it was a timely burst of frustration to
call it so. The head of the African Union commission has already
hinted that it might even be genocide, which is a little strong,
so she's not the farthest out on this discussion. And the bright
line between genocide and ethnic cleansing is fairly murky, in any
event … I think it's appropriate that she call it ethnic cleansing,
because it's probably reached that level, with groups trying to
take out other groups, move them out of property, mostly. The
important point here, though, is that this is not some upsurge of
some primordial ethnic attack, but manifestations of longstanding
political resource rivalries.
How does that affect how the international or African community
should handle the situation from the outside?
The best way would be if the government of Kenya and the
opposition created a unified approach, found a ceasefire mechanism
that would call back the mobs and that would maybe develop a
coalition government, maybe a shared power arrangement. Best of
all would be a rerun of the election, [but] I think that's a
little far out. Clearly, the election was stolen [by Kibaki], so
how to get back from a stolen election when the group in power
doesn't want to lose its power of many years and the opposition
feels it's been double-crossed not once but twice.
How do you think the situation in Sudan is impacting any
decisions that are being made regarding Kenya now?
Not much, because ethnic cleansing is different from genocide,
which is government and government proxies attacking the people in
Darfur. That was the original case; now it's government proxies
battling with rebels who are a proxy for Libya or a proxy for
Eritrea or a proxy for Chad … In Kenya it's really an upsurge of
people who are seeing an opportunity to right wrongs, to collect
on chips they never thought they'd be able to collect on. And in
the Rift Valley, move the fat cats out of the places where
impoverished people have been subjected to them for too long.
Does Africa have the resources to deal with these conflicts?
There aren't any African troops to be parachuted into Kenya. The
second thing is, the Kenyan army is one of the best armies in the
region, and they don't seem to have been thoroughly mobilized in
this internal conflict. They're not used to dealing internally;
they're not an army that's been used to repress their own people
too often. If there were a unified government, [a] new coalition
government might authorize the army to prevent the mayhem. And
once security is restored, one's going to see very little of this
tit-for-tat violence.
And what should the international community, neighboring
governments, and others do if we don't see improvement like what
you've described?
If within a week Kofi Annan hasn't successfully brought the
opposition and the government together and created a modus vivendi,
a way of moving forward that eliminates the violence, then it's
probably important for the U.N. to try to round up some peace
enforcers who can go in, whether Bangladeshis or Fijians or
somebody, to hold a ring between the contending forces and put
down the violence. So we've only got a week, I think a week at
most, before one can intervene. If Kofi Annan leaves town in
disgust, that's the moment for Ban Ki-Moon to go to the Security
Council and get a rapid peacekeeping force. There's one trouble
with that, and that's that the U.N. doesn't move quickly enough
once it has a resolution, so it might mean that there might be a
need for a European or British battalion to move in—under U.N.
authorization of course.
Could you go into a little more detail about the distinction
between characterizing this situation as tribalism versus a
conflict over resources?
The important thing is this is not some nasty bunch of Africans
being "tribal," this is violence for political ends. Kenya's a
very sophisticated state. It ranked 15th in the last index of
African governance that I put together, published in September.
That's pretty high up, out of 48 states. So it's not a Congo; it's
not a Sudan. It has been a reasonably well-governed state. The
populace snapped when the government's ability to be fair was
questioned because of the election manipulations, so people began
to lash out and attempt to gain back resources they had lost over
decades of rule by the ruling party. And naturally people try to
hold on to their resources—resources meaning either land or
transport routes or factories or access to the railway, anything
like that that would improve their standard of living. That's what
they've been doing all these last few weeks.
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