January 30, 2008
Would-Be Peacemaker Killed in Kenya
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Melitus Mugabe Were, a freshman parliamentarian, could have been one of the keys to unlocking Kenya’s crisis, but he never got the chance.
On Tuesday morning, as he pulled up to the gate of his home, Mr. Were was dragged out of his car and shot to death.
“Whoever did this,” said Elizabeth Mwangi, a friend, “has killed the dreams of many.”
Mr. Were was an opposition politician who grew up in a slum, became a businessman and then gave back. He sponsored teenage mothers to go to college, married a woman of another ethnic group and resisted his party’s often belligerent talk. As Kenya slid into chaos this past month after a disputed election, he shuttled between leaders of different ethnic groups and tried to organize a peace march.
The details are still sketchy, but the shooting appears not to have been a robbery but a hit. Word spread fast and violently, with opposition supporters rioting across Nairobi, the capital. The unrest seems to be escalating, and Kenyans are now literally ripping their country apart, uprooting miles of railroad tracks, chopping down telephone poles, burning government offices and looting schools. Militias from opposing ethnic groups are battling in several towns and Kenyan army helicopters fired warning shots on Tuesday to disperse them. There have been reports of forced circumcisions and beheadings.
The economy is paralyzed. More than 800 people have been killed since the election on Dec. 27. United Nations officials are saying that the government has failed to protect civilians, including girls who are getting raped at displaced persons camps.
Many Kenyans fear their country is tumbling toward disaster.
“The police are not in control,” said Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. “ Actually, nobody is in control.”
Mr. Kiai said he was especially concerned about Mr. Were’s killing because he and other prominent Kenyans have recently received death threats.
“None of us are safe,” Mr. Kiai said.
According to Mr. Were’s guard and family members, Mr. Were had just pulled up to his gate after midnight and was waiting in his Mercedes for the gate to open when another car drew along side him.
“I heard a beep,” said Mr. Were’s wife, Agnes. “And then two loud shots. I ran out and saw my husband bleeding and people were yelling to me, ‘he’s still breathing, he’s still breathing’ but when I got him to the hospital he was dead.”
Mr. Were, 39, whose campaign posters show him smiling with street children, had been shot in the heart and in the eye.
The guard at his house, who was unarmed, said two men yanked Mr. Were out of the car, shot him and drove off, without taking a thing. Family members said he had been followed by suspicious cars several weeks before.
Opposition supporters immediately labeled the killing a political assassination, intended to intimidate Kenya’s opposition movement, which is challenging the election in December that Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, narrowly won, over top opposition leader Raila Odinga.
“We suspect the foul hand of our adversaries in this,” Mr. Odinga said Tuesday.
Police officials say they are investigating closely and ruling nothing out. Some of Mr. Were’s friends said the culprits might have been connected to the other contenders for his parliament seat, who recently filed a petition to challenge the results.
On Tuesday morning, a huge crowd formed in front of Mr. Were’s ranch house and built roadblocks of burning tires and heavy stones. It was the first time that rioters had reached an affluent neighborhood in Nairobi, and it was not just rowdy unemployed youth from the slums who were wreaking havoc.
“This is how we express our outrage,” explained Evans Muremi, a social worker, who stacked burning tires while wearing a jacket and tie.
The election controversy seems to have brought out the worst in Kenya. While the country has been considered one of the most stable and promising in Africa, it is still a very violent place, with carjackings and muggings all too common and mobs routinely stoning to death suspected criminals. Likewise, ethnic tensions have always existed in Kenya, but have never exploded as widely as they have in the past few weeks. Ethnically-driven clashes, fueled by grievances over land and power, have flared in just about every corner of the country.
The problems have laid bare the shortcomings of Kenya’s poorly-paid security forces, who often respond either too harshly or too feebly. Nearly two weeks ago, they shot an unarmed protester at point-blank range in front of rolling TV cameras. On Tuesday, they drove past a crowd of young men pulling down a telephone pole in front of Mr. Were’s house and did nothing.
There is also a crisis of leadership. Kenya’s top politicians have been arguing about who is to blame for the violence more than they have been working together to stop it. Mr. Kibaki, who was considered aloof even before the election, has made few public appearances since his country began to unravel. Western diplomats say he is surrounded by hardliners bent on staying in power.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kibaki began formal negotiations with Mr. Odinga. Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, has been in Kenya for a week trying to bring the two sides together. So far, neither has budged. Both Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga claim to have won the election, Mr. Odinga, who says the election was rigged, is demanding a new election. Mr. Kibaki has refused and despite talk of a power-sharing arrangement, Mr. Kibaki has already moved ahead and given the most important cabinet positions to political allies. Western observers have said the election was so flawed there is no telling who really won.
Mr. Annan has laid out a framework for the negotiations that are expected to take several weeks and focus on several issues, starting with the violence. In speeches on Tuesday, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga urged their followers to stay calm and they both deplored the killing of Mr. Were.
According to friends and family, Mr. Were grew up in a Nairobi slum called Dandora. He was friendly and sharp and caught the eye of some Italian missionaries, who helped put him through school. He lived in Italy for a time and then came back to Kenya to start a home-building company. Five years ago he became a councilman for Dandora. He used his own money to build a footbridge and a small soccer stadium in the slum.
Mr. Were was from the Luhya ethnic group and his wife is Kikuyu. But that didn’t seem to matter.
“He was one of the least tribal people I knew,” said Wycliffe McKenzie, a friend.
He seemed to be more moderate than other opposition leaders and avoided their often belligerent talk. He told supporters not to join protests, which have often become violent and destructive.
Friends described him as a bright spot in a gritty place. Ms. Mwangi said she came to him when she was 19 and the mother of two and needed money to finish high school. He stayed in touch with her through the ups and downs of single motherhood and the pressures of school.
“He told me to hang in there. He said one day you’ll be my personal doctor,” Ms. Mwangi said, as she stared blankly at the metal gate where he was shot. “He told me never to give up.”
Reuben Kyama contributed to this report.
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February 1, 2008
Second Lawmaker Is Killed as Kenya’s Riots Intensify
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — A second Kenyan opposition lawmaker was shot dead on Thursday, and riots immediately exploded in opposition strongholds, putting the country increasingly on edge.
The lawmaker, David Kimutai Too, a former teacher from the volatile Rift Valley, was gunned down by a policeman in Eldoret. Kenyan government officials were quick to say the killing was a “crime of passion” connected to a love triangle. Opposition leaders called it an assassination.
“How can police call this an ordinary murder before any investigations?” said William Ruto, an opposition leader. “There is nothing ordinary about having two members of Parliament killed like this.”
Political negotiations brokered by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, were halted on Thursday because of the shooting, and the current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he would travel to Nairobi on Friday to address the crisis.
Mr. Too was the second member of the Orange Democratic Movement, Kenya’s main opposition party, to be killed this week. It seemed that the bloodletting began after deeply flawed elections in December, claiming more than 800 lives, appears to be pushing Kenya closer to the brink of disaster.
A shock wave of outrage and panic moved across the country as the news of Mr. Too’s death spread. In Kisumu, an opposition stronghold in western Kenya, mobs of young men tore through the streets, burning tires, throwing rocks and blockading roads. Some carried gasoline bombs and vowed to burn down the police station.
The rioters did not appear to accept the government’s explanation of the killing. It seemed that even if Mr. Too’s death had nothing to do with the volatile political situation here, it was bound to be interpreted as being politically motivated, especially coming so soon after the killing of another opposition lawmaker.
“We won’t believe what they say,” said a protester armed with a rock-hurling sling in Kisumu. Referring to Mwai Kibaki, the Kenyan president, he said: “We know the government is involved. Kibaki’s government will never work in Kenya. We will paralyze this country even if they kill our leaders.”
In Eldoret, shopkeepers shuttered their stores and people dashed home. Protesters massed at the police station, and truckloads of paramilitary officers arrived in town. Hospital officials said the police shot 10 people, killing one. Many people feared reprisal killings in the night.
Police officials in Nairobi, the capital, tried to defuse the situation by quickly announcing that Mr. Too’s killing was in no way political, that officers had arrested the culprit and that he would face murder charges.
According to police officials and witnesses, Mr. Too, who friends said was 39 or 40, spent the morning with Eunice Chepkwony, a policewoman who was dating another police officer, Andrew Moache. Mr. Too and Ms. Chepkwony were driving near the woman’s house on the outskirts of Eldoret when Mr. Moache pulled up next to them on a motorcycle. The police said Mr. Moache had suspected that his girlfriend was seeing someone else and was enraged to find her with another man.
Witnesses said that Ms. Chepkwony jumped out of the car to beg Mr. Moache not to kill them. He shot Ms. Chepkwony in the stomach and Mr. Too in the head several times. Mr. Too died instantly. Ms. Chepkwony bled to death in a hospital a few hours later. The police said they later arrested Mr. Moache as he tried to flee.
“I urge people to remain calm and await the law to take its course,” said a statement issued by a police spokesman, Eric Kiraithe.
But Mr. Too’s ethnicity, Kalenjin, is not likely to help the situation. Kalenjins have overwhelmingly supported Kenya’s opposition leaders, like Mr. Ruto and Raila Odinga, the opposition’s presidential candidate, who narrowly lost the election. More than any other group, Kalenjins have mobilized since the election to attack ethnic groups that have backed President Kibaki.
Minutes after Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner on Dec. 30, amid widespread evidence of vote rigging, bands of young Kalenjin men swept across the countryside killing Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, and burning their homes. In one attack, a Kalenjin mob burned a church, killing as many as 50 people hiding inside. Most of them were Kikuyu women and children.
Several Kalenjin elders and men who have taken part in the attacks have been unapologetic, saying that the violence is part of an organized plan to drive Kikuyus from the Rift Valley, which Kalenjins consider their ancestral land. Tens of thousands of Kikuyus have indeed left. On Wednesday, Jendayi E. Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, called the situation ethnic cleansing.
African leaders have been shocked by what has happened to Kenya, which until recently was celebrated as one of the most stable countries on the continent. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, said this week that Kenya’s military should forcefully step in before the country goes too far down the road toward another Rwanda. That country exploded in ethnic violence in 1994, with 800,000 people killed.
On Thursday, Alpha Oumar Konaré, chairman of the African Union commission, said: “Kenya is a country that was a hope for the continent. Today, if you look at Kenya you see violence on the streets. We are even talking about ethnic cleansing. We are even talking about genocide.”
Mr. Konaré, speaking at an African Union meeting in Ethiopia, added, “We cannot sit with our hands folded.”
Mr. Ban was also at the meeting and said he was traveling to Kenya because he was increasingly concerned. “Violence continues, threatening to escalate to catastrophic levels,” he said.
Last week, the African Union dispatched Mr. Annan to Kenya to broker a political compromise between the government and the opposition. Each side claims to have won the election, and so far each has refused to back down.
Mr. Ruto, the opposition leader, said talks were going “O.K.” on Thursday until they ended midday because of Mr. Too’s killing.
Neither of the opposition lawmakers killed this week was especially prominent. Both were just weeks into their new jobs as national politicians. Opposition leaders, however, say that is not the point. The opposition holds a slight edge in Parliament, and its leaders contend that the government is trying to reduce their numbers, an accusation it denies.
On Tuesday, Melitus Mugabe Were, a lawmaker and businessman who grew up in a slum, was shot to death in his driveway by two gunmen. The police are closely investigating the killing, but Mr. Were’s friends and family say he was not robbed and that the killing was a professional hit.
Mr. Too a school headmaster from Kericho in central Kenya. He represented a mostly rural area of lush tea farms. He was an underdog candidate, emerging from a field of 13.
“He was a very humble, quiet man,” said Charles Keter, a member of Parliament from a neighboring district.
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, and Abisalom Omolo from Kisumu.
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February 1, 2008
Second Lawmaker Is Killed as Kenya’s Riots Intensify
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — A second Kenyan opposition lawmaker was shot dead on Thursday, and riots immediately exploded in opposition strongholds, putting the country increasingly on edge.
The lawmaker, David Kimutai Too, a former teacher from the volatile Rift Valley, was gunned down by a policeman in Eldoret. Kenyan government officials were quick to say the killing was a “crime of passion” connected to a love triangle. Opposition leaders called it an assassination.
“How can police call this an ordinary murder before any investigations?” said William Ruto, an opposition leader. “There is nothing ordinary about having two members of Parliament killed like this.”
Political negotiations brokered by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, were halted on Thursday because of the shooting, and the current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he would travel to Nairobi on Friday to address the crisis.
Mr. Too was the second member of the Orange Democratic Movement, Kenya’s main opposition party, to be killed this week. It seemed that the bloodletting began after deeply flawed elections in December, claiming more than 800 lives, appears to be pushing Kenya closer to the brink of disaster.
A shock wave of outrage and panic moved across the country as the news of Mr. Too’s death spread. In Kisumu, an opposition stronghold in western Kenya, mobs of young men tore through the streets, burning tires, throwing rocks and blockading roads. Some carried gasoline bombs and vowed to burn down the police station.
The rioters did not appear to accept the government’s explanation of the killing. It seemed that even if Mr. Too’s death had nothing to do with the volatile political situation here, it was bound to be interpreted as being politically motivated, especially coming so soon after the killing of another opposition lawmaker.
“We won’t believe what they say,” said a protester armed with a rock-hurling sling in Kisumu. Referring to Mwai Kibaki, the Kenyan president, he said: “We know the government is involved. Kibaki’s government will never work in Kenya. We will paralyze this country even if they kill our leaders.”
In Eldoret, shopkeepers shuttered their stores and people dashed home. Protesters massed at the police station, and truckloads of paramilitary officers arrived in town. Hospital officials said the police shot 10 people, killing one. Many people feared reprisal killings in the night.
Police officials in Nairobi, the capital, tried to defuse the situation by quickly announcing that Mr. Too’s killing was in no way political, that officers had arrested the culprit and that he would face murder charges.
According to police officials and witnesses, Mr. Too, who friends said was 39 or 40, spent the morning with Eunice Chepkwony, a policewoman who was dating another police officer, Andrew Moache. Mr. Too and Ms. Chepkwony were driving near the woman’s house on the outskirts of Eldoret when Mr. Moache pulled up next to them on a motorcycle. The police said Mr. Moache had suspected that his girlfriend was seeing someone else and was enraged to find her with another man.
Witnesses said that Ms. Chepkwony jumped out of the car to beg Mr. Moache not to kill them. He shot Ms. Chepkwony in the stomach and Mr. Too in the head several times. Mr. Too died instantly. Ms. Chepkwony bled to death in a hospital a few hours later. The police said they later arrested Mr. Moache as he tried to flee.
“I urge people to remain calm and await the law to take its course,” said a statement issued by a police spokesman, Eric Kiraithe.
But Mr. Too’s ethnicity, Kalenjin, is not likely to help the situation. Kalenjins have overwhelmingly supported Kenya’s opposition leaders, like Mr. Ruto and Raila Odinga, the opposition’s presidential candidate, who narrowly lost the election. More than any other group, Kalenjins have mobilized since the election to attack ethnic groups that have backed President Kibaki.
Minutes after Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner on Dec. 30, amid widespread evidence of vote rigging, bands of young Kalenjin men swept across the countryside killing Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, and burning their homes. In one attack, a Kalenjin mob burned a church, killing as many as 50 people hiding inside. Most of them were Kikuyu women and children.
Several Kalenjin elders and men who have taken part in the attacks have been unapologetic, saying that the violence is part of an organized plan to drive Kikuyus from the Rift Valley, which Kalenjins consider their ancestral land. Tens of thousands of Kikuyus have indeed left. On Wednesday, Jendayi E. Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, called the situation ethnic cleansing.
African leaders have been shocked by what has happened to Kenya, which until recently was celebrated as one of the most stable countries on the continent. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, said this week that Kenya’s military should forcefully step in before the country goes too far down the road toward another Rwanda. That country exploded in ethnic violence in 1994, with 800,000 people killed.
On Thursday, Alpha Oumar Konaré, chairman of the African Union commission, said: “Kenya is a country that was a hope for the continent. Today, if you look at Kenya you see violence on the streets. We are even talking about ethnic cleansing. We are even talking about genocide.”
Mr. Konaré, speaking at an African Union meeting in Ethiopia, added, “We cannot sit with our hands folded.”
Mr. Ban was also at the meeting and said he was traveling to Kenya because he was increasingly concerned. “Violence continues, threatening to escalate to catastrophic levels,” he said.
Last week, the African Union dispatched Mr. Annan to Kenya to broker a political compromise between the government and the opposition. Each side claims to have won the election, and so far each has refused to back down.
Mr. Ruto, the opposition leader, said talks were going “O.K.” on Thursday until they ended midday because of Mr. Too’s killing.
Neither of the opposition lawmakers killed this week was especially prominent. Both were just weeks into their new jobs as national politicians. Opposition leaders, however, say that is not the point. The opposition holds a slight edge in Parliament, and its leaders contend that the government is trying to reduce their numbers, an accusation it denies.
On Tuesday, Melitus Mugabe Were, a lawmaker and businessman who grew up in a slum, was shot to death in his driveway by two gunmen. The police are closely investigating the killing, but Mr. Were’s friends and family say he was not robbed and that the killing was a professional hit.
Mr. Too a school headmaster from Kericho in central Kenya. He represented a mostly rural area of lush tea farms. He was an underdog candidate, emerging from a field of 13.
“He was a very humble, quiet man,” said Charles Keter, a member of Parliament from a neighboring district.
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, and Abisalom Omolo from Kisumu.
Kenyan rivals agree to talks to end violence
Duncan Miriri
Reuters
Saturday, February 02, 2008
CREDIT: Yasuyoshi Chiba, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images
Women walk past burned-out homes near Kericho, Kenya. Former UN head Kofi Annan has brokered a peace deal. (photgraph)
Kenya's government and opposition struck an agreement Friday to take immediate steps to try and end tribal bloodshed in a five-week-old political standoff in which about 850 people have been killed.
The agreement was brokered by former UN head Kofi Annan, leading an African mediation mission to resolve the standoff that began when a Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power. Opposition leader Raila Odinga says the vote was rigged.
Annan said the two sides would discuss how to stop the violence, delivery of humanitarian aid and how to end the political impasse before tackling a longer-term solution in Kenya, East Africa's biggest economy and a popular spot for tourists.
"The first (agenda item) is to take immediate action to stop the violence," Annan told a news conference, adding that both sides would start negotiations Monday.
"But more importantly, the parties agreed that the first three items (on the agenda) could be handled and resolved within seven to 15 days," he said.
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February 2, 2008
Spreading Banditry Dilutes Benefits of a Plan for Ethnic Peace in Kenya
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NANDI HILLS, Kenya — The road from Eldoret to Kericho used to be one of the prettiest drives in Kenya, a ribbon of asphalt threading through lush tea farms, bushy sugar cane and green humpbacked hills. Now it is a gantlet of machete-wielding teenagers, some chewing stalks of sugar cane, others stumbling drunk.
On Friday there were no fewer than 20 checkpoints in the span of 100 miles, and at each barricade — a downed telephone pole, a gnarled tree stump — mobs of rowdy young men jumped in front of cars, yanked at door handles and pulled out knives.
Their actions did not seem to be motivated by ethnic tension, like much of the violence that has killed more than 800 people in Kenya since a flawed election in December.
It was much simpler than that.
“Give us money,” demanded one young man who stood defiantly in the road with a bow in his hands and a quiver of poisoned arrows on his back.
On other fronts, there were signs of progress. The government and the opposition, who had been blaming each other for Kenya’s rapid plunge, signed a peace plan for the first time on Friday night to help defuse tensions and bring an end to the violence.
And despite fears that Kenya would explode again after a second opposition lawmaker was gunned down on Thursday, there were no reports of mass revenge killings. The volatile slums ringing Nairobi, the capital, seemed to be quiet.
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, visited Kenya on Friday and said he was “encouraged by the constructive spirit that has prevailed throughout my discussions so far,” though he said he was still very concerned about the unrest.
“It has led to an intolerable level of deaths, destruction, displacement and suffering,” he said. “It has to stop.”
To help stem the violence, the agreement reached on Friday outlined specific steps to build peace, including refraining from provocative statements, holding joint meetings to promote stability and disbanding militias.
But it was unclear how the plan would address the thornier fact that both sides still claim to have won the election. There is also a question at this point about how well Kenyans are following their leaders.
Far from the political negotiations, Kenya’s countryside seems to be settling into a bizarre state of lawlessness, uncharacteristic of this country and more reminiscent of the checkpoint culture in Somalia or Darfur, in Sudan.
Roadblocks have been a problem since the elections, with angry mobs demanding to see the identification cards of passers-by to determine their ethnic identities. Such clashes led to the deaths of several people a few weeks ago.
But now a different kind of roadblock seems to be taking root, one based more on opportunism than on politics. After one young man extracted a toll of sorts, he quickly examined the bill and stuffed it into his pocket. In case there were any questions, another armed teenager stood nearby, wearing fatigues and a jaunty skipper’s hat.
Kenya’s troubles started in late December when President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of an election that outside observers called deeply flawed. Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, who narrowly lost, said the government had rigged the election, and some Western observers agree.
Many people here tend to vote along ethnic lines, and this election, perhaps more than any other in Kenya’s history, polarized the country.
Mr. Kibaki is Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga is Luo, two of the bigger ethnic groups, and in the mayhem that erupted after the disputed vote, members of ethnic groups that backed Mr. Odinga slaughtered hundreds of Kikuyus and drove them off their land. Kikuyus eventually took their revenge, killing Luos and others.
Throughout all this, Mr. Kibaki has mostly kept quiet, leaving the opposition-bashing to his inner circle of advisers. But on Friday he accused opposition leaders of instigating “a campaign of civil unrest and violence,” a statement that seemed to go against the spirit of the peace agreement.
“There is overwhelming evidence to indicate that the violence was premeditated, and systematically directed at particular communities,” Mr. Kibaki said while attending a summit meeting of African leaders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In Kericho, a stunningly fertile area where much of Kenya’s tea is grown, young men rampaged across the hillsides on Friday, looting and burning dozens of homes. They said they were avenging the death of their representative in Parliament, David Kimutai Too, who was killed Thursday by a policeman.
Police officials quickly announced that Mr. Too’s death was a “crime of passion,” saying a policeman shot his girlfriend and Mr. Too for seeing each other behind his back.
But many opposition supporters reject that, especially because another opposition lawmaker was gunned down on Tuesday in suspicious circumstances. Many of the men burning homes in Kericho were Kalenjin, the ethnic group of Mr. Too, and the houses crackling in flames belonged to Kikuyus.
Kenya’s security forces are struggling to contain this. On Friday a police squad dismantled roadblocks along the Eldoret-Kericho road, sending the young men with the bows and arrows scattering into the tea bushes. The police arrested several suspects looting a burned truck that had been hauling fish. Hundreds of pounds of partly seared fish were spilled across the road.
“Look at this,” said Joseph Mele, a police commander. “We are destroying our own economy.”
But then Mr. Mele brightened.
“Don’t worry — we’ll get a handle on this. Tell the tourists to come back,” he said, referring to the exodus of safarigoers who have left Kenya because of the turmoil. “We’ll protect them.”
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, and Kennedy Abwao from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Duncan Miriri
Reuters
Saturday, February 02, 2008
CREDIT: Yasuyoshi Chiba, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images
Women walk past burned-out homes near Kericho, Kenya. Former UN head Kofi Annan has brokered a peace deal. (photgraph)
Kenya's government and opposition struck an agreement Friday to take immediate steps to try and end tribal bloodshed in a five-week-old political standoff in which about 850 people have been killed.
The agreement was brokered by former UN head Kofi Annan, leading an African mediation mission to resolve the standoff that began when a Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power. Opposition leader Raila Odinga says the vote was rigged.
Annan said the two sides would discuss how to stop the violence, delivery of humanitarian aid and how to end the political impasse before tackling a longer-term solution in Kenya, East Africa's biggest economy and a popular spot for tourists.
"The first (agenda item) is to take immediate action to stop the violence," Annan told a news conference, adding that both sides would start negotiations Monday.
"But more importantly, the parties agreed that the first three items (on the agenda) could be handled and resolved within seven to 15 days," he said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
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****
February 2, 2008
Spreading Banditry Dilutes Benefits of a Plan for Ethnic Peace in Kenya
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NANDI HILLS, Kenya — The road from Eldoret to Kericho used to be one of the prettiest drives in Kenya, a ribbon of asphalt threading through lush tea farms, bushy sugar cane and green humpbacked hills. Now it is a gantlet of machete-wielding teenagers, some chewing stalks of sugar cane, others stumbling drunk.
On Friday there were no fewer than 20 checkpoints in the span of 100 miles, and at each barricade — a downed telephone pole, a gnarled tree stump — mobs of rowdy young men jumped in front of cars, yanked at door handles and pulled out knives.
Their actions did not seem to be motivated by ethnic tension, like much of the violence that has killed more than 800 people in Kenya since a flawed election in December.
It was much simpler than that.
“Give us money,” demanded one young man who stood defiantly in the road with a bow in his hands and a quiver of poisoned arrows on his back.
On other fronts, there were signs of progress. The government and the opposition, who had been blaming each other for Kenya’s rapid plunge, signed a peace plan for the first time on Friday night to help defuse tensions and bring an end to the violence.
And despite fears that Kenya would explode again after a second opposition lawmaker was gunned down on Thursday, there were no reports of mass revenge killings. The volatile slums ringing Nairobi, the capital, seemed to be quiet.
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, visited Kenya on Friday and said he was “encouraged by the constructive spirit that has prevailed throughout my discussions so far,” though he said he was still very concerned about the unrest.
“It has led to an intolerable level of deaths, destruction, displacement and suffering,” he said. “It has to stop.”
To help stem the violence, the agreement reached on Friday outlined specific steps to build peace, including refraining from provocative statements, holding joint meetings to promote stability and disbanding militias.
But it was unclear how the plan would address the thornier fact that both sides still claim to have won the election. There is also a question at this point about how well Kenyans are following their leaders.
Far from the political negotiations, Kenya’s countryside seems to be settling into a bizarre state of lawlessness, uncharacteristic of this country and more reminiscent of the checkpoint culture in Somalia or Darfur, in Sudan.
Roadblocks have been a problem since the elections, with angry mobs demanding to see the identification cards of passers-by to determine their ethnic identities. Such clashes led to the deaths of several people a few weeks ago.
But now a different kind of roadblock seems to be taking root, one based more on opportunism than on politics. After one young man extracted a toll of sorts, he quickly examined the bill and stuffed it into his pocket. In case there were any questions, another armed teenager stood nearby, wearing fatigues and a jaunty skipper’s hat.
Kenya’s troubles started in late December when President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of an election that outside observers called deeply flawed. Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, who narrowly lost, said the government had rigged the election, and some Western observers agree.
Many people here tend to vote along ethnic lines, and this election, perhaps more than any other in Kenya’s history, polarized the country.
Mr. Kibaki is Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga is Luo, two of the bigger ethnic groups, and in the mayhem that erupted after the disputed vote, members of ethnic groups that backed Mr. Odinga slaughtered hundreds of Kikuyus and drove them off their land. Kikuyus eventually took their revenge, killing Luos and others.
Throughout all this, Mr. Kibaki has mostly kept quiet, leaving the opposition-bashing to his inner circle of advisers. But on Friday he accused opposition leaders of instigating “a campaign of civil unrest and violence,” a statement that seemed to go against the spirit of the peace agreement.
“There is overwhelming evidence to indicate that the violence was premeditated, and systematically directed at particular communities,” Mr. Kibaki said while attending a summit meeting of African leaders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In Kericho, a stunningly fertile area where much of Kenya’s tea is grown, young men rampaged across the hillsides on Friday, looting and burning dozens of homes. They said they were avenging the death of their representative in Parliament, David Kimutai Too, who was killed Thursday by a policeman.
Police officials quickly announced that Mr. Too’s death was a “crime of passion,” saying a policeman shot his girlfriend and Mr. Too for seeing each other behind his back.
But many opposition supporters reject that, especially because another opposition lawmaker was gunned down on Tuesday in suspicious circumstances. Many of the men burning homes in Kericho were Kalenjin, the ethnic group of Mr. Too, and the houses crackling in flames belonged to Kikuyus.
Kenya’s security forces are struggling to contain this. On Friday a police squad dismantled roadblocks along the Eldoret-Kericho road, sending the young men with the bows and arrows scattering into the tea bushes. The police arrested several suspects looting a burned truck that had been hauling fish. Hundreds of pounds of partly seared fish were spilled across the road.
“Look at this,” said Joseph Mele, a police commander. “We are destroying our own economy.”
But then Mr. Mele brightened.
“Don’t worry — we’ll get a handle on this. Tell the tourists to come back,” he said, referring to the exodus of safarigoers who have left Kenya because of the turmoil. “We’ll protect them.”
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, and Kennedy Abwao from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
RELIGIOUS PLURALISM IN ACTION - NIGERIA
Road to reconciliation follows path of peace
Imam, pastor unite faiths to sign pact
Richelle Wiseman
For the Calgary Herald
Sunday, February 03, 2008
CREDIT: Grant Black, Calgary Herald
Imam Muhammad Ashafa, left, and Pastor James Wuye brought their remarkable journey of forgiveness to Calgary last week.
For Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye, peace is personal and powerful.
As former militia members engaged in conflict with each other, the two men had to choose between forgiveness and revenge, and their decision to choose forgiveness was the starting point for a grassroots peace movement in Nigeria.
The Imam and the Pastor, a documentary film about their remarkable story, was aired at Calgary's Plaza Theatre last Monday. More than 300 people braved -30 C wind chills to see the film. Initiatives of Change, an international group with a Calgary chapter, sponsored the film and the question-and-answer session that followed.
"We came with a message that transcends religion," Ashafa said to the audience. "We do not say we shall compromise our faiths." "Dialogue is not compromise," added Wuye. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life -- I still hold to that. We disagree, but we are the same. We have the same aches and pains, and we can respect each other and co-exist." The film unfolds their dramatic story. In Nigeria, Christians and Muslims lived side by side in relative peace until the 1980s, when political unrest and economic challenges created major rifts between faiths and ethnic groups.
Ashafa joined a Muslim militia group out of zeal to protect Islam and defend against western influences. Wuye, a Pentecostal pastor, joined a Christian militia group to defend Christianity, its churches and pastors, from attacks by Muslims.
In the ensuing conflict, Ashafa's elderly spiritual teacher and two cousins were killed by Wuye's group; Wuye lost many friends, as well as his right hand.
Both men were filled with hatred for each other and a desire to exact revenge.
But the core teachings of Islam and Christianity broke through their anger.
Ashafa was moved by a sermon at the mosque where the imam described how Prophet Muhammad had forgiven those who had persecuted him, and instead of asking Allah to destroy them, he responded with forgiveness.
Ashafa finally discovered the liberty of forgiving Wuye Then Wuye heard a sermon in which a preacher said, "You cannot preach Christ with hate in your heart. Christ is love. If you want to do this work, you have to forgive." The two men embarked on what has become an extra- ordinary example of faith-based peacemaking.
Five years after the conflict, they established the Interfaith Mediation Centre in Kaduna, which sponsors teams of pastors and imams to travel around Nigeria to trouble spots. Based out of offices in six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, they conduct workshops on conflict resolution and reconciliation.
Ashafa and Wuye's relationship demonstrates that forgiveness is powerful, liberating and crucial for the establishment of peace between individuals, ethnic groups, religious groups and communities.
"I believe that living a Christian life can influence people positively," Wuye states at the end of the film.
For his part, Ashafa wants Islam to be a safe haven for people of other faiths.
"I would give my life to protect his honour and dignity," he says of Wuye. "This is what Islam has taught me to do." The road to reconciliation was initially bumpy, as their friends and followers did not understand their change of heart. Some felt Ashafa and Wuye were sellouts and traitors to their own faiths. Of their former militia friends, Wuye told the audience they had to be "deprogrammed." "They had to be reprogrammed to follow the path of peace," he said. "Seventy per cent of our former militia friends are now working with us." In 2001, at the city where violent conflicts had occurred and many died, Wuye and Ashafa brought together religious leaders to sign the Kaduna Peace Declaration.
Eleven Muslim leaders and 11 Christian leaders joined the governor of Kaduna state to sign the declaration, after which a plaque was unveiled by Nigeria's president.
In 2004, violence broke out in the small village of Yelwa Shendem. Some 600 people died and were buried in mass graves. Wuye and Ashafa made 17 trips to the area to mediate and preach peace.
Little by little, trust was regained to the point where the community joined together in a Festival of Peace.
Their work at the grassroots level has led to the national government setting up a Nigerian Inter-Religious Council, and their film will be screened in Sudan at the invitation of the Sudanese Interfaith Council.
"We are influencing the Nigerian government," Wuye told the audience. "But we are independent. We do what the Almighty has given us to do." While the media often focuses on stories of conflict, bloodshed and controversy, Ashafa hopes reporters will begin to embrace "breakthrough news," and focus on stories of people changing the world for the better.
From bloody conflict, violence and vengeance, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye have moved through forgiveness to become peacemakers who are influencing an entire nation.
Now that's breakthrough news.
Richelle Wiseman is executive director of the Centre for Faith and the Media and co-ordinator for the multi-faith chaplaincy at Mount Royal College.
Road to reconciliation follows path of peace
Imam, pastor unite faiths to sign pact
Richelle Wiseman
For the Calgary Herald
Sunday, February 03, 2008
CREDIT: Grant Black, Calgary Herald
Imam Muhammad Ashafa, left, and Pastor James Wuye brought their remarkable journey of forgiveness to Calgary last week.
For Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye, peace is personal and powerful.
As former militia members engaged in conflict with each other, the two men had to choose between forgiveness and revenge, and their decision to choose forgiveness was the starting point for a grassroots peace movement in Nigeria.
The Imam and the Pastor, a documentary film about their remarkable story, was aired at Calgary's Plaza Theatre last Monday. More than 300 people braved -30 C wind chills to see the film. Initiatives of Change, an international group with a Calgary chapter, sponsored the film and the question-and-answer session that followed.
"We came with a message that transcends religion," Ashafa said to the audience. "We do not say we shall compromise our faiths." "Dialogue is not compromise," added Wuye. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life -- I still hold to that. We disagree, but we are the same. We have the same aches and pains, and we can respect each other and co-exist." The film unfolds their dramatic story. In Nigeria, Christians and Muslims lived side by side in relative peace until the 1980s, when political unrest and economic challenges created major rifts between faiths and ethnic groups.
Ashafa joined a Muslim militia group out of zeal to protect Islam and defend against western influences. Wuye, a Pentecostal pastor, joined a Christian militia group to defend Christianity, its churches and pastors, from attacks by Muslims.
In the ensuing conflict, Ashafa's elderly spiritual teacher and two cousins were killed by Wuye's group; Wuye lost many friends, as well as his right hand.
Both men were filled with hatred for each other and a desire to exact revenge.
But the core teachings of Islam and Christianity broke through their anger.
Ashafa was moved by a sermon at the mosque where the imam described how Prophet Muhammad had forgiven those who had persecuted him, and instead of asking Allah to destroy them, he responded with forgiveness.
Ashafa finally discovered the liberty of forgiving Wuye Then Wuye heard a sermon in which a preacher said, "You cannot preach Christ with hate in your heart. Christ is love. If you want to do this work, you have to forgive." The two men embarked on what has become an extra- ordinary example of faith-based peacemaking.
Five years after the conflict, they established the Interfaith Mediation Centre in Kaduna, which sponsors teams of pastors and imams to travel around Nigeria to trouble spots. Based out of offices in six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, they conduct workshops on conflict resolution and reconciliation.
Ashafa and Wuye's relationship demonstrates that forgiveness is powerful, liberating and crucial for the establishment of peace between individuals, ethnic groups, religious groups and communities.
"I believe that living a Christian life can influence people positively," Wuye states at the end of the film.
For his part, Ashafa wants Islam to be a safe haven for people of other faiths.
"I would give my life to protect his honour and dignity," he says of Wuye. "This is what Islam has taught me to do." The road to reconciliation was initially bumpy, as their friends and followers did not understand their change of heart. Some felt Ashafa and Wuye were sellouts and traitors to their own faiths. Of their former militia friends, Wuye told the audience they had to be "deprogrammed." "They had to be reprogrammed to follow the path of peace," he said. "Seventy per cent of our former militia friends are now working with us." In 2001, at the city where violent conflicts had occurred and many died, Wuye and Ashafa brought together religious leaders to sign the Kaduna Peace Declaration.
Eleven Muslim leaders and 11 Christian leaders joined the governor of Kaduna state to sign the declaration, after which a plaque was unveiled by Nigeria's president.
In 2004, violence broke out in the small village of Yelwa Shendem. Some 600 people died and were buried in mass graves. Wuye and Ashafa made 17 trips to the area to mediate and preach peace.
Little by little, trust was regained to the point where the community joined together in a Festival of Peace.
Their work at the grassroots level has led to the national government setting up a Nigerian Inter-Religious Council, and their film will be screened in Sudan at the invitation of the Sudanese Interfaith Council.
"We are influencing the Nigerian government," Wuye told the audience. "But we are independent. We do what the Almighty has given us to do." While the media often focuses on stories of conflict, bloodshed and controversy, Ashafa hopes reporters will begin to embrace "breakthrough news," and focus on stories of people changing the world for the better.
From bloody conflict, violence and vengeance, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye have moved through forgiveness to become peacemakers who are influencing an entire nation.
Now that's breakthrough news.
Richelle Wiseman is executive director of the Centre for Faith and the Media and co-ordinator for the multi-faith chaplaincy at Mount Royal College.
Inside Kibera there is hope
Africa's second largest slum tries to turn its back on violence that erupted after the disputed Kenya election
Robert Remington
Calgary Herald
Friday, February 08, 2008
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 35d0bb35be
CREDIT: Zohra Bensemra, Reuters
A woman passes by a gate painted with graffiti in Nairobi's Kibera slum.
CREDIT: Zohra Bensemra, Reuters
A child walks past graffiti by artist Solomon Muhandi on Saturday. The artist has painted peace messages all over Kenya's largest slum of Kibera.
Calgary Herald writer Robert Remington reports on how over a million residents of Nairobi's Kibera slum have been coping with the trauma of bloody unrest in the past few weeks.
- - -
One week after he was treated for a machete wound to the head, Zuberi Mije sits in an unlit room in his tin-roofed shack in the Kibera slum and smiles.
"I am feeling much better," he says to nurse Lucia Buyanza, who treated his cut. "I am so thankful."
After checking on her patient, Buyanza steps outside into the sunlight, where a small garden manages to grow alongside Mije's mud hut in Kibera, the second-largest slum in Africa behind Soweto in Johannesburg.
"You see this," she says, touching a small shrub. "Even in a place like this, it is possible to grow flowers."
The scene of some of the worst violence in Kenya's ongoing post-election crisis, the sprawling Kibera slum, home to more than one million people, saw neighbour turn against neighbour after a Dec. 27 election that international observers say was rigged in favour of President Mwai Kibaki.
The disputed election unleashed pent-up tribal divisions over land, wealth and power dating from colonial rule. More than 1,000 have been killed in ethnic and tribal clashes, most of it directed at Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu, who dominate politics and much of Kenya's economy.
Looting and riots erupted after calls for anti-government demonstrations by the Orange Democratic Movement party of Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo tribe, who narrowly lost the disputed election and who has a Luo stronghold in Kibera.
Buyanza, who grew up in Kibera and works in a clinic on the edge of the slum, treated people like Mije for machete cuts to the head and legs. Others came in with poison-tipped arrows in their abdomens.
"It was very bad," says Buyanza, who at the height of the crisis walked to the clinic every day from her home inside Kibera.
While most people cowered inside their tiny shacks, Buyanza walked the deserted street to the clinic, sticking close to the roadside ditch so she could dive into it for cover should violence erupt.
"I was very scared."
Buyanza, 34, is among a group of young community leaders who are organizing a peace march through Kibera on Sunday.
Other peace initiatives have also sprung up in the slum.
Artist Solomon Muhandi, 31, has painted hundreds of messages all over the Kibera, on curbs, speed bumps and on the rusty corrugated metal walls of houses and businesses in the sprawling shantytown. His graffiti reads "Peace Wanted Alive," "Keep Peace" and "Kenya Needs Peace."
Buyanza says people are weary of the violence.
"They feel they are being used. We are burning our own houses and nobody is coming to help us, and at the end of the day, it is my neighbour who is crying," she says.
On Wednesday, Kiberians refused to heed the latest ODM call for demonstrations, opting instead to return to work and send their children to school.
Buyanza says people in Kibera feel abandoned by the country's leaders, who have been huddled all week in a heavily guarded Nairobi hotel for mediation talks headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
"Politicians are talking and drinking fancy teas and having lunches at the hotel. They should come down here, but they are saying they don't have the security to come to us. Where is the security for the common man when they are killed? They need to come to us. We are not that violent. We are their people."
If there is hope for Kibera and for Kenya, it lies not with the feuding Odinga and Kibaki and the perpetuated tribal cronyism of Kenyan politics, but with people like Buyanza and others like her.
"People do not want this to continue," says James Bundi, 25, a Kibera community youth worker who is also involved in organizing the peace march. As the community turned against itself, he says Kiberians came to realize they need to take care of each other because nobody else was going to look after them.
"In Kibera, we know that we need each other, Bundi said. "The politicians do not come here to help us. The city does not even come here to spray for disease. So, we must stick together."
Indeed, the sense of community in Kibera is strong. You can feel it as you walk along the railway line made famous from a scene in the movie The Constant Gardener. You can feel it in the narrow winding mud alleys, where children run up to you and people wave and reach out to shake your hand.
"Thanks for coming to Kibera," says one shop owner. "You are welcome in this place."
After weeks of bloodshed, life is now returning to normal in the slum. People are selling food, clothes and radios. Parents are beginning to send their children back to school.
Most people in Nairobi are afraid to come to Kibera, and its international reputation is one of AIDS, violence, disease and despair.
"The media is going to where there is violence, but they are forgetting there are areas of Kibera that have not been touched," says Buyanza, whose name means "full of joy."
"It would be good to show the nation that not all the slum area is bad."
Among the community projects developed in Kibera is a public toilet that converts human waste to methane gas for fuel to power lights and heaters. At Buyanza's Catholic Church, currently under construction, the round roof drains into a rainwater collection system.
- - -
Kibera sprang up after the First World War as a temporary settlement established by the British colonial government for Nubian soldiers from Sudan, who had been part of the King's African Rifles. Plots were allotted to soldiers as a reward for service on land that was then a forest on the outskirts of Nairobi.
The name Kibera comes from "kibra," a Nubian word for forest, but there is no forest in Kibera anymore -- just dust and mud and the stench from latrines and rotting garbage.
The slum today is a collection of numerous villages, many split along tribal lines.
Tired of being used as political pawns, Buyanza, Bundi and other second-generation Kibera community leaders are using faith to reach out to the young, unemployed youth who make up the majority of those taking part in the violence.
"We have been having talks with other youths to avoid being used by politicians to fuel violence," she wrote in a recent e-mail to a friend.
"We youth are having serious prayer meetings in the evening to seek God's forgiveness and see each other as children of one mother Kenya. There are banners of peace that have been prepared and so on Sunday we shall walk with them around the villages to show solidarity and peace in Kibera.
"I know it is the politicians who are using the young people to kill other innocent Kenyans. We have refused to be used and that is why we are engaging ourselves in this activity of prayer, because we have been born in simplicity and our lives have been guided by virtues that uphold humanity.
"We are sitting on a time bomb, and that's why the violence must be stopped. Justice and peace must prevail, but the leaders are dragging their feet."
Although Buyanza is Catholic, she credits her peace activism to a non-denominational Ismaili Muslim organization.
"I took my nurse's training at the Aga Khan school. It is unlike other nursing schools because they teach you that you can be things like a nurse leader, or a nurse politician, or a nurse journalist. I have chosen to be a nurse leader."
On the narrow pathway that serves as a dividing line in Kibera between Kikuyu and Luo areas, Buyanza points to a building that was burned in the recent rioting. "This was the war zone," she says as we walk past other burned-out buildings.
Many Kiberians, says Bundi, realize the violence is a result of what historian Martin Meredith and others refer to as the "Big Man" politics of Africa -- where elected leaders grab entitlement for themselves, their families and their tribes.
Few, however, know how to change it.
Yet, this much, says Buyanza, is certain: "They are wasting the nation."
[email protected]
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Africa's second largest slum tries to turn its back on violence that erupted after the disputed Kenya election
Robert Remington
Calgary Herald
Friday, February 08, 2008
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 35d0bb35be
CREDIT: Zohra Bensemra, Reuters
A woman passes by a gate painted with graffiti in Nairobi's Kibera slum.
CREDIT: Zohra Bensemra, Reuters
A child walks past graffiti by artist Solomon Muhandi on Saturday. The artist has painted peace messages all over Kenya's largest slum of Kibera.
Calgary Herald writer Robert Remington reports on how over a million residents of Nairobi's Kibera slum have been coping with the trauma of bloody unrest in the past few weeks.
- - -
One week after he was treated for a machete wound to the head, Zuberi Mije sits in an unlit room in his tin-roofed shack in the Kibera slum and smiles.
"I am feeling much better," he says to nurse Lucia Buyanza, who treated his cut. "I am so thankful."
After checking on her patient, Buyanza steps outside into the sunlight, where a small garden manages to grow alongside Mije's mud hut in Kibera, the second-largest slum in Africa behind Soweto in Johannesburg.
"You see this," she says, touching a small shrub. "Even in a place like this, it is possible to grow flowers."
The scene of some of the worst violence in Kenya's ongoing post-election crisis, the sprawling Kibera slum, home to more than one million people, saw neighbour turn against neighbour after a Dec. 27 election that international observers say was rigged in favour of President Mwai Kibaki.
The disputed election unleashed pent-up tribal divisions over land, wealth and power dating from colonial rule. More than 1,000 have been killed in ethnic and tribal clashes, most of it directed at Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu, who dominate politics and much of Kenya's economy.
Looting and riots erupted after calls for anti-government demonstrations by the Orange Democratic Movement party of Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo tribe, who narrowly lost the disputed election and who has a Luo stronghold in Kibera.
Buyanza, who grew up in Kibera and works in a clinic on the edge of the slum, treated people like Mije for machete cuts to the head and legs. Others came in with poison-tipped arrows in their abdomens.
"It was very bad," says Buyanza, who at the height of the crisis walked to the clinic every day from her home inside Kibera.
While most people cowered inside their tiny shacks, Buyanza walked the deserted street to the clinic, sticking close to the roadside ditch so she could dive into it for cover should violence erupt.
"I was very scared."
Buyanza, 34, is among a group of young community leaders who are organizing a peace march through Kibera on Sunday.
Other peace initiatives have also sprung up in the slum.
Artist Solomon Muhandi, 31, has painted hundreds of messages all over the Kibera, on curbs, speed bumps and on the rusty corrugated metal walls of houses and businesses in the sprawling shantytown. His graffiti reads "Peace Wanted Alive," "Keep Peace" and "Kenya Needs Peace."
Buyanza says people are weary of the violence.
"They feel they are being used. We are burning our own houses and nobody is coming to help us, and at the end of the day, it is my neighbour who is crying," she says.
On Wednesday, Kiberians refused to heed the latest ODM call for demonstrations, opting instead to return to work and send their children to school.
Buyanza says people in Kibera feel abandoned by the country's leaders, who have been huddled all week in a heavily guarded Nairobi hotel for mediation talks headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
"Politicians are talking and drinking fancy teas and having lunches at the hotel. They should come down here, but they are saying they don't have the security to come to us. Where is the security for the common man when they are killed? They need to come to us. We are not that violent. We are their people."
If there is hope for Kibera and for Kenya, it lies not with the feuding Odinga and Kibaki and the perpetuated tribal cronyism of Kenyan politics, but with people like Buyanza and others like her.
"People do not want this to continue," says James Bundi, 25, a Kibera community youth worker who is also involved in organizing the peace march. As the community turned against itself, he says Kiberians came to realize they need to take care of each other because nobody else was going to look after them.
"In Kibera, we know that we need each other, Bundi said. "The politicians do not come here to help us. The city does not even come here to spray for disease. So, we must stick together."
Indeed, the sense of community in Kibera is strong. You can feel it as you walk along the railway line made famous from a scene in the movie The Constant Gardener. You can feel it in the narrow winding mud alleys, where children run up to you and people wave and reach out to shake your hand.
"Thanks for coming to Kibera," says one shop owner. "You are welcome in this place."
After weeks of bloodshed, life is now returning to normal in the slum. People are selling food, clothes and radios. Parents are beginning to send their children back to school.
Most people in Nairobi are afraid to come to Kibera, and its international reputation is one of AIDS, violence, disease and despair.
"The media is going to where there is violence, but they are forgetting there are areas of Kibera that have not been touched," says Buyanza, whose name means "full of joy."
"It would be good to show the nation that not all the slum area is bad."
Among the community projects developed in Kibera is a public toilet that converts human waste to methane gas for fuel to power lights and heaters. At Buyanza's Catholic Church, currently under construction, the round roof drains into a rainwater collection system.
- - -
Kibera sprang up after the First World War as a temporary settlement established by the British colonial government for Nubian soldiers from Sudan, who had been part of the King's African Rifles. Plots were allotted to soldiers as a reward for service on land that was then a forest on the outskirts of Nairobi.
The name Kibera comes from "kibra," a Nubian word for forest, but there is no forest in Kibera anymore -- just dust and mud and the stench from latrines and rotting garbage.
The slum today is a collection of numerous villages, many split along tribal lines.
Tired of being used as political pawns, Buyanza, Bundi and other second-generation Kibera community leaders are using faith to reach out to the young, unemployed youth who make up the majority of those taking part in the violence.
"We have been having talks with other youths to avoid being used by politicians to fuel violence," she wrote in a recent e-mail to a friend.
"We youth are having serious prayer meetings in the evening to seek God's forgiveness and see each other as children of one mother Kenya. There are banners of peace that have been prepared and so on Sunday we shall walk with them around the villages to show solidarity and peace in Kibera.
"I know it is the politicians who are using the young people to kill other innocent Kenyans. We have refused to be used and that is why we are engaging ourselves in this activity of prayer, because we have been born in simplicity and our lives have been guided by virtues that uphold humanity.
"We are sitting on a time bomb, and that's why the violence must be stopped. Justice and peace must prevail, but the leaders are dragging their feet."
Although Buyanza is Catholic, she credits her peace activism to a non-denominational Ismaili Muslim organization.
"I took my nurse's training at the Aga Khan school. It is unlike other nursing schools because they teach you that you can be things like a nurse leader, or a nurse politician, or a nurse journalist. I have chosen to be a nurse leader."
On the narrow pathway that serves as a dividing line in Kibera between Kikuyu and Luo areas, Buyanza points to a building that was burned in the recent rioting. "This was the war zone," she says as we walk past other burned-out buildings.
Many Kiberians, says Bundi, realize the violence is a result of what historian Martin Meredith and others refer to as the "Big Man" politics of Africa -- where elected leaders grab entitlement for themselves, their families and their tribes.
Few, however, know how to change it.
Yet, this much, says Buyanza, is certain: "They are wasting the nation."
[email protected]
© The Calgary Herald 2008
February 11, 2008
Kenya’s Middle Class Feeling Sting of Violence
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — George G. Mbugua is a 42-year-old executive with two cars, a closet full of suits and a good job as the chief financial officer of a growing company.
His life has all the trappings of a professional anywhere. He recently joined a country club and has taken up golf.
But unlike anywhere else, this executive has to keep his eyes peeled on the daily commute for stone-throwing mobs. When he gets home after a long day, he has to explain to his daughters why people from different ethnic groups are hacking one another to death. Even his own affluent neighborhood has been affected. Some of the Mbuguas’ neighbors recently fled their five-bedroom homes because of the violence that has exploded in Kenya since a disputed election in December turned this promising African country upside down.
“Nobody’s untouched,” Mr. Mbugua said.
Of all the election-related conflicts that have cracked open in Kenya — Luos versus Kikuyus (two big ethnic groups), The Orange Democratic Movement versus the Party of National Unity (the leading political parties), police versus protesters — none may be more crucial than the struggle between those who seem to have nothing to lose, like the mobs in the slums who burn down their own neighborhoods, and those who are deeply invested in this country’s stability.
The well-established middle class here is thought to be one of the most important factors that separate Kenya from other African countries that have been consumed by ethnic conflict. Millions of Kenyans identify as much with what they do or where they went to college as who their ancestors are. They have overcome ethnic differences, dating between groups and sometimes intermarrying, living in mixed neighborhoods, and sending their children to the best schools they can afford, regardless of who else goes there.
The fighting that rages in the countryside, where men with mud-smeared faces and makeshift weapons are hunting down people of other ethnicities, seems as foreign to many of these white-collar Kenyans as it might to people living thousands of miles away.
But the professionals are hardly retreating. Three times a week, a group of doctors, lawyers, former politicians, writers, wildlife experts, business consultants and professors meet in a conference room at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi, the capital. They call themselves Concerned Citizens for Peace, and they have taken up projects such as raising money for displaced people, organizing candlelight vigils and bending the ear of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, who met with business leaders during his emergency trip to Kenya this month.
The group begins each session by standing up, holding hands and singing the national anthem.
Mr. Mbugua spoke the other day at one of those meetings about the importance of reconciliation in the workplace. His idea was to keep local languages, which many Kenyans speak in addition to the country’s official languages (English and Kiswahili), away from the water cooler.
“We don’t want people to feel excluded when they’re at work,” he said.
Bethuel Kiplagat, a retired ambassador, praised the meeting’s openness. “We must put everything down on the table,” he said, “however painful it is.”
Many African countries are all about haves versus have-nots, with millions of people toiling in the fields, barely surviving, while a tiny elite holds all the wealth. Kenya is different.
James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, estimates that of Kenya’s population of approximately 37 million, about four million are in the middle class, making between $2,500 and $40,000 a year. The number of Kenyans enrolled in college has more than doubled in the past 10 years, to more than 100,000.
“There are sizable fortunes in the hands of people of all ethnic backgrounds,” said Richard Leakey, the noted Kenyan paleontologist. “I think the middle class will ultimately prevail on the government authority in one form or the other to just pull itself together and get on with business.”
Business is hurting. Vigilante roadblocks have paralyzed the flow of goods across the country. Vandals have ripped up miles of railroad tracks. Tourists have bolted from the game parks faster than the antelope in them. The estimated losses are now running into the billions of dollars.
Fanis Anne Nyangayi just started her own marketing company in Nairobi, and she has already had to lay off staff because nobody wants to commit to marketing plans. “Everything’s on hold,” she said.
To her, the ethnic clashes that continue to flare in the Rift Valley, less than 100 miles away, are disturbing — and hard to understand. The disputed election, in which President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, uncorked decades of frustrations about land, political power and economic inequalities. Many Kenyans tend to vote along ethnic lines, and much of the violence since the election has taken on an ethnic cast, with members of groups that tend to support the opposition fighting against members of groups that have backed the president. More than 1,000 people have been killed.
But ethnic identity issues are more complicated in the city. Ms. Nyangayi, 36, said she did not know she was a member of the Luhya ethnic group until she was 10 years old. She was born in Lamu, on the Kenyan coast, moved to Mombasa, a port town, and lived in Nairobi and Kisumu, in the far western part of Kenya. “I can’t even speak Luhya,” a shortcoming that is sometimes viewed as snobby, she said.
“It’s not that I think I’m above being a Luhya,” she explained. “I’m proud of being a Luhya. It’s just that we moved around a lot as a kid, and I missed the bus somewhere.”
Wambua Kilonzo is a lawyer, and he broke with his ethnic group, the Kamba, to vote for Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader who is a Luo. Many Kambas voted for another candidate, Kalonzo Musyoka, who is now vice president. “To me, it was more about the issues,” Mr. Kilonzo said, pointing to Mr. Odinga’s vow to fight corruption and restructure the government.
Mr. Kilonzo’s emerging law practice has been hurt by the election fallout. One of his top clients is the owner of a high-priced safari lodge that until recently had celebrities flying in on a regular basis. The resort is now a luxurious ghost town, and Mr. Kilonzo, 31, doesn’t feel right adding to the owner’s burdens.
“How can I take money from my client when his business is like this?” he said.
Mumo Kituku is a 31-year-old dentist in a clinic near a slum. He pulls teeth for the equivalent of $5 and gets a cut of the clinic’s profits depending on how many patients he serves. But the clinic is near Kibera, one of Nairobi’s more volatile neighborhoods, and in the past month, some of his patients have been afraid to venture out of their homes, reducing his workload and his income. “It’s been rough, man,” he said.
It is issues like those that have pushed business leaders into action. They have struggled to be heard, with the young men sharpening machetes grabbing more headlines than the executives’ quiet efforts to wage peace.
But the white-collar profile has risen in the past few weeks. Executives from multinational and local companies recently met with Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga to stress the economic toll that is accruing while the top politicians continue to posture and the fighting between their supporters rages on. Some businesses have taken out advertisements in the local newspapers urging peace.
“Kenya,” read a message from a bank on Monday, “our unity is our pride.”
Some Kenyan journalists have complained that the middle class is not doing enough. “They have been lulled by a false sense of security they have enjoyed sheltered in their homes and clubs,” wrote Tom Mshindi, a columnist for The Saturday Nation.
That said, business leaders have organized reconciliation workshops and gone back to their companies with plans of action. People like Mr. Mbugua do not want to see their dreams disappear. He wants to establish a financial planning organization in Kenya. And travel the world.
“All my life I’ve wanted to go to Hawaii,” he said. “Is there ice there? And what about deer hunting in Alaska? What’s that like?”
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting.
Kenya’s Middle Class Feeling Sting of Violence
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — George G. Mbugua is a 42-year-old executive with two cars, a closet full of suits and a good job as the chief financial officer of a growing company.
His life has all the trappings of a professional anywhere. He recently joined a country club and has taken up golf.
But unlike anywhere else, this executive has to keep his eyes peeled on the daily commute for stone-throwing mobs. When he gets home after a long day, he has to explain to his daughters why people from different ethnic groups are hacking one another to death. Even his own affluent neighborhood has been affected. Some of the Mbuguas’ neighbors recently fled their five-bedroom homes because of the violence that has exploded in Kenya since a disputed election in December turned this promising African country upside down.
“Nobody’s untouched,” Mr. Mbugua said.
Of all the election-related conflicts that have cracked open in Kenya — Luos versus Kikuyus (two big ethnic groups), The Orange Democratic Movement versus the Party of National Unity (the leading political parties), police versus protesters — none may be more crucial than the struggle between those who seem to have nothing to lose, like the mobs in the slums who burn down their own neighborhoods, and those who are deeply invested in this country’s stability.
The well-established middle class here is thought to be one of the most important factors that separate Kenya from other African countries that have been consumed by ethnic conflict. Millions of Kenyans identify as much with what they do or where they went to college as who their ancestors are. They have overcome ethnic differences, dating between groups and sometimes intermarrying, living in mixed neighborhoods, and sending their children to the best schools they can afford, regardless of who else goes there.
The fighting that rages in the countryside, where men with mud-smeared faces and makeshift weapons are hunting down people of other ethnicities, seems as foreign to many of these white-collar Kenyans as it might to people living thousands of miles away.
But the professionals are hardly retreating. Three times a week, a group of doctors, lawyers, former politicians, writers, wildlife experts, business consultants and professors meet in a conference room at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi, the capital. They call themselves Concerned Citizens for Peace, and they have taken up projects such as raising money for displaced people, organizing candlelight vigils and bending the ear of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, who met with business leaders during his emergency trip to Kenya this month.
The group begins each session by standing up, holding hands and singing the national anthem.
Mr. Mbugua spoke the other day at one of those meetings about the importance of reconciliation in the workplace. His idea was to keep local languages, which many Kenyans speak in addition to the country’s official languages (English and Kiswahili), away from the water cooler.
“We don’t want people to feel excluded when they’re at work,” he said.
Bethuel Kiplagat, a retired ambassador, praised the meeting’s openness. “We must put everything down on the table,” he said, “however painful it is.”
Many African countries are all about haves versus have-nots, with millions of people toiling in the fields, barely surviving, while a tiny elite holds all the wealth. Kenya is different.
James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, estimates that of Kenya’s population of approximately 37 million, about four million are in the middle class, making between $2,500 and $40,000 a year. The number of Kenyans enrolled in college has more than doubled in the past 10 years, to more than 100,000.
“There are sizable fortunes in the hands of people of all ethnic backgrounds,” said Richard Leakey, the noted Kenyan paleontologist. “I think the middle class will ultimately prevail on the government authority in one form or the other to just pull itself together and get on with business.”
Business is hurting. Vigilante roadblocks have paralyzed the flow of goods across the country. Vandals have ripped up miles of railroad tracks. Tourists have bolted from the game parks faster than the antelope in them. The estimated losses are now running into the billions of dollars.
Fanis Anne Nyangayi just started her own marketing company in Nairobi, and she has already had to lay off staff because nobody wants to commit to marketing plans. “Everything’s on hold,” she said.
To her, the ethnic clashes that continue to flare in the Rift Valley, less than 100 miles away, are disturbing — and hard to understand. The disputed election, in which President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, uncorked decades of frustrations about land, political power and economic inequalities. Many Kenyans tend to vote along ethnic lines, and much of the violence since the election has taken on an ethnic cast, with members of groups that tend to support the opposition fighting against members of groups that have backed the president. More than 1,000 people have been killed.
But ethnic identity issues are more complicated in the city. Ms. Nyangayi, 36, said she did not know she was a member of the Luhya ethnic group until she was 10 years old. She was born in Lamu, on the Kenyan coast, moved to Mombasa, a port town, and lived in Nairobi and Kisumu, in the far western part of Kenya. “I can’t even speak Luhya,” a shortcoming that is sometimes viewed as snobby, she said.
“It’s not that I think I’m above being a Luhya,” she explained. “I’m proud of being a Luhya. It’s just that we moved around a lot as a kid, and I missed the bus somewhere.”
Wambua Kilonzo is a lawyer, and he broke with his ethnic group, the Kamba, to vote for Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader who is a Luo. Many Kambas voted for another candidate, Kalonzo Musyoka, who is now vice president. “To me, it was more about the issues,” Mr. Kilonzo said, pointing to Mr. Odinga’s vow to fight corruption and restructure the government.
Mr. Kilonzo’s emerging law practice has been hurt by the election fallout. One of his top clients is the owner of a high-priced safari lodge that until recently had celebrities flying in on a regular basis. The resort is now a luxurious ghost town, and Mr. Kilonzo, 31, doesn’t feel right adding to the owner’s burdens.
“How can I take money from my client when his business is like this?” he said.
Mumo Kituku is a 31-year-old dentist in a clinic near a slum. He pulls teeth for the equivalent of $5 and gets a cut of the clinic’s profits depending on how many patients he serves. But the clinic is near Kibera, one of Nairobi’s more volatile neighborhoods, and in the past month, some of his patients have been afraid to venture out of their homes, reducing his workload and his income. “It’s been rough, man,” he said.
It is issues like those that have pushed business leaders into action. They have struggled to be heard, with the young men sharpening machetes grabbing more headlines than the executives’ quiet efforts to wage peace.
But the white-collar profile has risen in the past few weeks. Executives from multinational and local companies recently met with Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga to stress the economic toll that is accruing while the top politicians continue to posture and the fighting between their supporters rages on. Some businesses have taken out advertisements in the local newspapers urging peace.
“Kenya,” read a message from a bank on Monday, “our unity is our pride.”
Some Kenyan journalists have complained that the middle class is not doing enough. “They have been lulled by a false sense of security they have enjoyed sheltered in their homes and clubs,” wrote Tom Mshindi, a columnist for The Saturday Nation.
That said, business leaders have organized reconciliation workshops and gone back to their companies with plans of action. People like Mr. Mbugua do not want to see their dreams disappear. He wants to establish a financial planning organization in Kenya. And travel the world.
“All my life I’ve wanted to go to Hawaii,” he said. “Is there ice there? And what about deer hunting in Alaska? What’s that like?”
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting.
February 12, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Kenya’s War of Words
By SIMIYU BARASA
Nairobi, Kenya
WHEN you find yourself at a wedding discussing how more than 800 people have been killed and more than 250,000 kicked out of their homes for having certain ethnic origins, you know there is something terribly wrong with your country. Living in Nairobi the past few months has been like living in a relatively comfortable glass cave in the middle of hell.
What began in late December as protests against election irregularities has spiraled into killings based on which tribe your identity card and speech indicate you belong to. English and Swahili, the languages that were supposed to unite us, have now been rendered useless. In these times, when belonging or not belonging to a particular tribe can be the difference between not being dead or being seriously dead, what chance does a person like me have? I was born to a Luhya father and a Taita mother, but I speak the Kikuyu language of Kiambu, where I was raised.
The politicians no longer have the ability to stop the violence, despite their posturing that they could do so at the snap of their fingers. We see Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, posing with the rival contenders, President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, in photo sessions where the two antagonists shake hands and smile and call for peace. But the political rhetoric seems a joke; we know that revenge and counter-revenge are what the various ethnic groups really seek — to “do to what they did to our tribe mates.”
Daily life is a constant kaleidoscope of languages for those of us who are of mixed ethnic heritage. We must gauge what sort of street or village we are in and, like a chameleon, speak the “correct” tongue.
My sister Rozi, a health worker, was recently taking a patient to a hospital in western Kenya when their ambulance was forced to stop by youths who demanded to know what tribe she came from. The youths were hunting members of Mr. Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe. When they saw that her ID card showed a mixed Taita-Luhya name, they asked her to speak in Luhya to prove she wasn’t a Kikuyu.
“I really can’t speak it because my mother is a Taita!” she pleaded, explaining that our father had never taught us his language. In desperation, staring at the freshly chopped corpses around her, she showed them a photocopy of my mother’s national identity card, which she had had the foresight to put in her purse. This apparently convinced them, and she was let go.
Never before has it been important in our family to know which tribe we should belong to. My sisters and brothers have names from both of our parents’ communities. I know no tribe. I know only languages.
Supposedly cosmopolitan Nairobi has now been Balkanized, with whole neighborhoods turned into exclusive reserves of certain tribes. Some have imported murderous thugs from rural areas to protect their own — the Mungiki street gang for the Kikuyus; the Chingororo for the Gusii tribe; and groups taking the names Baghdad Boys and Taliban for the Luo people.
Where can those of us of mixed heritage, who do not know their tribes’ war cries, find refuge? My Luhya name is problematic in itself: The Kikuyus, who support Mr. Kibaki, are hunting Luhyas, whom they claim voted for Mr. Odinga, a Luo. And the Luos are hunting Luhyas as well, claiming they voted for President Kibaki. Such is my fate for having a father belonging to a tribe that apparently voted 50-50!
Virtually all the major police stations and church compounds in Central, Rift Valley, Western, Nyanza and Nairobi Provinces have been turned into camps for internal refugees. These people’s laments are all the same: We were born here; we don’t even know any relatives in our so-called ancestral lands; we are Kenyans, not people of whatever tribe you want to pin on us. Yet the government now says that it will relocate them to their ancestral homes. For many, this means ethnic cleansing and death.
Many of my friends have now resorted to taking crash courses in the dialects of the tribes indicated on their identity cards, “just in case it comes in handy.” We sit in groups and laugh morbidly at the e-mail messages from our former classmates who are now abroad asking us if we are safe. After we graduated from high school, many of our friends faked bank-account statements to get student visas and fled to the United States, to wash toilets between university courses. Not me: I proudly swore to them that I was sticking here because I am an Africanist, a believer in the African dream. Now my faith in my countrymen has faded faster than the newness of the New Year.
In this climate, inter-tribal marriages have become so rare that they are the subject of TV news reports. This is greatly upsetting to those of us who — thinking about our parents marrying all those years ago — never felt that living a life outside your clan was a significant matter. We love Kenya, without thinking of our neighbors’ lineage. It is from us that Kenya will rise afresh.
Simiyu Barasa is filmmaker and writer.
****
February 12, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
A Deal We Can Live With
By MAINA KIAI and L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
Nairobi, Kenya
UNTIL December, Kenya was the most stable nation in East Africa. It has long been a willing partner in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. Yet the United States has mostly stood by as our country has descended into chaos.
More than 800 people have been killed and at least 250,000 driven from their homes since rigged presidential elections on Dec. 27. Two opposition members of Parliament have been gunned down, and human rights defenders have received death threats.
Thankfully, for the first time since the election, there is a glimmer of hope. On Friday, Kofi Annan, who has led an African Union mediation effort, announced that President Mwai Kibaki and his opponent in the presidential election, Raila Odinga, have agreed to negotiate a power-sharing agreement. Levels of tension in the country have already abated.
But Kenya will not be able to take the crucial steps to stability alone. We need sustained international pressure for as long as it takes to get the country back on track. Washington must refrain from simplistic characterizations of the violence as a matter of ethnic cleansing or tribal conflict, when in fact the roots of the problem are political.
To play an effective role, the United States must maintain consistent and strong pressure to ensure that Kenya’s leaders treat the mediation with utmost seriousness. Kenyans welcome American leadership on Kenya at the United Nations Security Council. The recent decision to bar hard-line politicians and their families from entering the United States is another step in the right direction. It appears to have been a decisive factor in prompting the parties to finally sit at the table.
Washington should continue to work in concert with other strong voices, like the European Union, to push for the restoration of democracy in Kenya. Additionally, the personal assets of the hard-liners and the leaders of the violence should be traced and frozen.
Congress should call for the International Republican Institute, an elections-monitoring organization that conducted an exit poll on the presidential vote, to release its findings. Suspicions that the institute has suppressed its results not because they were flawed but because they showed that Mr. Odinga won have fueled mistrust.
Finally, the United States can use another pressure point. It must freeze the millions of dollars of military assistance Kenya receives each year, pending a successful outcome to the negotiations. Some of the security forces benefiting from this aid and equipment have been killing Kenyan civilians with impunity. The United States must not be an accessory to their brutality.
The Annan agreement presents an opportunity for Kenya to step back from the brink of disaster. Kenya can now fix the “winner take all” political system that prompted the recent election rigging, and end the impunity for human rights violations that has dogged our country since independence.
The Annan mediation effort must push the parties to agree to a one- to two-year transitional government, with both sides exercising equal powers. This government’s chief tasks, besides keeping the country running, must be to carry out badly needed constitutional reforms around presidential powers, and to create the conditions for new free and fair elections.
Restructuring the electoral commission, the police and the judiciary is also critical. The perpetrators of the election fraud and the violence must be prosecuted to restore Kenyans’ faith in the power of the vote. Only then can new presidential elections be held.
The current calm must not be mistaken for peace. A critical opportunity will be lost if the mediation effort results only in political horse-trading between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga. Without these critical reforms, the gains made in the last few days will secure only a short-lived truce.
Above all, the United States and the world must ensure that the Kenyan people’s vote is respected. If we cannot uphold our democratic choice, the future of Kenya will be lost.
Maina Kiai is the chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, a nongovernmental organization.
Op-Ed Contributor
Kenya’s War of Words
By SIMIYU BARASA
Nairobi, Kenya
WHEN you find yourself at a wedding discussing how more than 800 people have been killed and more than 250,000 kicked out of their homes for having certain ethnic origins, you know there is something terribly wrong with your country. Living in Nairobi the past few months has been like living in a relatively comfortable glass cave in the middle of hell.
What began in late December as protests against election irregularities has spiraled into killings based on which tribe your identity card and speech indicate you belong to. English and Swahili, the languages that were supposed to unite us, have now been rendered useless. In these times, when belonging or not belonging to a particular tribe can be the difference between not being dead or being seriously dead, what chance does a person like me have? I was born to a Luhya father and a Taita mother, but I speak the Kikuyu language of Kiambu, where I was raised.
The politicians no longer have the ability to stop the violence, despite their posturing that they could do so at the snap of their fingers. We see Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, posing with the rival contenders, President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, in photo sessions where the two antagonists shake hands and smile and call for peace. But the political rhetoric seems a joke; we know that revenge and counter-revenge are what the various ethnic groups really seek — to “do to what they did to our tribe mates.”
Daily life is a constant kaleidoscope of languages for those of us who are of mixed ethnic heritage. We must gauge what sort of street or village we are in and, like a chameleon, speak the “correct” tongue.
My sister Rozi, a health worker, was recently taking a patient to a hospital in western Kenya when their ambulance was forced to stop by youths who demanded to know what tribe she came from. The youths were hunting members of Mr. Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe. When they saw that her ID card showed a mixed Taita-Luhya name, they asked her to speak in Luhya to prove she wasn’t a Kikuyu.
“I really can’t speak it because my mother is a Taita!” she pleaded, explaining that our father had never taught us his language. In desperation, staring at the freshly chopped corpses around her, she showed them a photocopy of my mother’s national identity card, which she had had the foresight to put in her purse. This apparently convinced them, and she was let go.
Never before has it been important in our family to know which tribe we should belong to. My sisters and brothers have names from both of our parents’ communities. I know no tribe. I know only languages.
Supposedly cosmopolitan Nairobi has now been Balkanized, with whole neighborhoods turned into exclusive reserves of certain tribes. Some have imported murderous thugs from rural areas to protect their own — the Mungiki street gang for the Kikuyus; the Chingororo for the Gusii tribe; and groups taking the names Baghdad Boys and Taliban for the Luo people.
Where can those of us of mixed heritage, who do not know their tribes’ war cries, find refuge? My Luhya name is problematic in itself: The Kikuyus, who support Mr. Kibaki, are hunting Luhyas, whom they claim voted for Mr. Odinga, a Luo. And the Luos are hunting Luhyas as well, claiming they voted for President Kibaki. Such is my fate for having a father belonging to a tribe that apparently voted 50-50!
Virtually all the major police stations and church compounds in Central, Rift Valley, Western, Nyanza and Nairobi Provinces have been turned into camps for internal refugees. These people’s laments are all the same: We were born here; we don’t even know any relatives in our so-called ancestral lands; we are Kenyans, not people of whatever tribe you want to pin on us. Yet the government now says that it will relocate them to their ancestral homes. For many, this means ethnic cleansing and death.
Many of my friends have now resorted to taking crash courses in the dialects of the tribes indicated on their identity cards, “just in case it comes in handy.” We sit in groups and laugh morbidly at the e-mail messages from our former classmates who are now abroad asking us if we are safe. After we graduated from high school, many of our friends faked bank-account statements to get student visas and fled to the United States, to wash toilets between university courses. Not me: I proudly swore to them that I was sticking here because I am an Africanist, a believer in the African dream. Now my faith in my countrymen has faded faster than the newness of the New Year.
In this climate, inter-tribal marriages have become so rare that they are the subject of TV news reports. This is greatly upsetting to those of us who — thinking about our parents marrying all those years ago — never felt that living a life outside your clan was a significant matter. We love Kenya, without thinking of our neighbors’ lineage. It is from us that Kenya will rise afresh.
Simiyu Barasa is filmmaker and writer.
****
February 12, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
A Deal We Can Live With
By MAINA KIAI and L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
Nairobi, Kenya
UNTIL December, Kenya was the most stable nation in East Africa. It has long been a willing partner in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. Yet the United States has mostly stood by as our country has descended into chaos.
More than 800 people have been killed and at least 250,000 driven from their homes since rigged presidential elections on Dec. 27. Two opposition members of Parliament have been gunned down, and human rights defenders have received death threats.
Thankfully, for the first time since the election, there is a glimmer of hope. On Friday, Kofi Annan, who has led an African Union mediation effort, announced that President Mwai Kibaki and his opponent in the presidential election, Raila Odinga, have agreed to negotiate a power-sharing agreement. Levels of tension in the country have already abated.
But Kenya will not be able to take the crucial steps to stability alone. We need sustained international pressure for as long as it takes to get the country back on track. Washington must refrain from simplistic characterizations of the violence as a matter of ethnic cleansing or tribal conflict, when in fact the roots of the problem are political.
To play an effective role, the United States must maintain consistent and strong pressure to ensure that Kenya’s leaders treat the mediation with utmost seriousness. Kenyans welcome American leadership on Kenya at the United Nations Security Council. The recent decision to bar hard-line politicians and their families from entering the United States is another step in the right direction. It appears to have been a decisive factor in prompting the parties to finally sit at the table.
Washington should continue to work in concert with other strong voices, like the European Union, to push for the restoration of democracy in Kenya. Additionally, the personal assets of the hard-liners and the leaders of the violence should be traced and frozen.
Congress should call for the International Republican Institute, an elections-monitoring organization that conducted an exit poll on the presidential vote, to release its findings. Suspicions that the institute has suppressed its results not because they were flawed but because they showed that Mr. Odinga won have fueled mistrust.
Finally, the United States can use another pressure point. It must freeze the millions of dollars of military assistance Kenya receives each year, pending a successful outcome to the negotiations. Some of the security forces benefiting from this aid and equipment have been killing Kenyan civilians with impunity. The United States must not be an accessory to their brutality.
The Annan agreement presents an opportunity for Kenya to step back from the brink of disaster. Kenya can now fix the “winner take all” political system that prompted the recent election rigging, and end the impunity for human rights violations that has dogged our country since independence.
The Annan mediation effort must push the parties to agree to a one- to two-year transitional government, with both sides exercising equal powers. This government’s chief tasks, besides keeping the country running, must be to carry out badly needed constitutional reforms around presidential powers, and to create the conditions for new free and fair elections.
Restructuring the electoral commission, the police and the judiciary is also critical. The perpetrators of the election fraud and the violence must be prosecuted to restore Kenyans’ faith in the power of the vote. Only then can new presidential elections be held.
The current calm must not be mistaken for peace. A critical opportunity will be lost if the mediation effort results only in political horse-trading between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga. Without these critical reforms, the gains made in the last few days will secure only a short-lived truce.
Above all, the United States and the world must ensure that the Kenyan people’s vote is respected. If we cannot uphold our democratic choice, the future of Kenya will be lost.
Maina Kiai is the chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, a nongovernmental organization.
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/world ... ?th&emc=th
February 15, 2008
Signs in Kenya of a Land Redrawn by Ethnicity
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
OTHAYA, Kenya — Sarah Wangoi has spent her entire life — all 70 years of it — in the Rift Valley. But last month, she was chased off her farm by a mob that called her a foreigner. She now sleeps on the cold floor of a stranger’s house, seeking refuge in an area of Kenya where her ethnic group, the Kikuyu, is strong. It is, supposedly, her homeland.
“I am safe now,” said Ms. Wangoi, though the mob still chases her in her dreams.
Across the country, William Ojiambo sat in a field where the ground was too hard to plow. He, too, sought refuge with his ethnic group, the Luo. He used to live in an ethnically mixed town called Nakuru but was recently evicted by a gang from another ethnic group that burned everything he owned.
“We came here with nothing, like cabbages thrown in the back of a truck,” Mr. Ojiambo said.
Kenya used to be considered one of the most promising countries in Africa. Now it is in the throes of ethnically segregating itself. Ever since a deeply flawed election in December kicked off a wave of ethnic and political violence, hundreds of thousands of people have been violently driven from their homes and many are now resettling in ethnically homogenous zones.
Luos have gone back to Luo land, Kikuyus to Kikuyu land, Kambas to Kamba land and Kisiis to Kisii land. Even some of the packed slums in the capital, Nairobi, have split along ethnic lines.
The bloodletting across the country that has killed more than 1,000 people since the election seems to have subsided in the past week. But the trucks piled high with mattresses, furniture, blankets and children keep chugging across the countryside, an endless convoy of frightened people who in their desperation are redrawing the map of Kenya.
The United Nations and Western powers are pushing for a political compromise, and President Bush said he would send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “deliver a message” to Kenya’s leaders.
On Thursday, officials here said that Kenyan government and opposition leaders had agreed in principle to join together in a coalition government but that they remained bitterly divided over the specifics, especially how much power the opposition would have. Two officials close to the negotiations said the government had rejected the opposition’s offer to split power between the president, who would remain head of state and the military’s commander in chief, and a newly created prime minister position.
Whatever deal is struck will have to address the growing de facto segregation, since a resettlement of the country may further entrench the political and ethnic divisions that have recently erupted. Shattered trust is much harder to rebuild than smashed huts, and many people say they will never go back to where they fled.
“How can we, when it was our friends who did this to us?” said Joseph Ndungu, a shopkeeper in the Rift Valley, who said that men he used to play soccer with burned down his shop.
The government is lending a hand in the country’s separation, at least for the moment. Police officers are escorting people back to their ancestral homes, as the government calls them, which seems to be thinly veiled language for ethnic separation.
Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, said this was only temporary until it was safe for people to live together again.
“Kenyans have the right to reside anywhere in the country,” he said.
But the mass migrations and resettlements that have been set in motion may be hard to reverse.
Take Joseph Mwanzia Maingi, a retired teacher who was just driven out of Narok, a town in the Rift Valley, by a gang of local men with bows and arrows. He fled to his father’s farm in an area that is a stronghold of the Kamba ethnic group, his people. He is now building a house. And not looking back.
“I don’t see any peace agreement that can guarantee our security there,” said Mr. Maingi, speaking of Narok, where he had lived happily for 40 years.
The ethnic segregation is pulling students and teachers out of schools and leaving thousands of jobs vacant across the economy. If it continues, said David Anderson, an African studies professor at Oxford University, “it’ll be an utter disaster.”
“You’ll never be able to reconstitute the state in a meaningful way,” he said. “You’ll have undone 50 years of work.”
The roots of the problem go deeper than the disputed election, in which the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.
At the heart is a tangle of long-festering political, economic and land issues. Part of the trouble is the winner-take-all system in Kenya, which happens in much of Africa, where leaders often favor members of their own ethnic group and in the process alienate large swaths of the population. Many people in Kenya saw this coming even before independence in 1963.
“We were worried about the smaller tribes getting dominated by the bigger ones,” said Joseph Martin Shikuku, a 75-year-old opposition figure. “And you know what? That’s exactly what happened.”
Mr. Shikuku was one of the founders of an independence-era political movement that embraced a philosophy called majimboism that has been around in Kenya since the 1950s. Majimboism means federalism or regionalism in Kiswahili, and it was intended to protect local rights, especially those connected to land. But in the extreme, majimboism is code for certain areas of the country to be reserved for specific ethnic groups, fueling the kind of ethnic cleansing that has swept the country since the election.
Majimboism has always had a strong following in the Rift Valley, the epicenter of the recent violence, where many locals have long believed that their land was stolen by outsiders.
“Majimboism was submerged but it never really died,” Mr. Anderson said. In some ways, the election in December was a referendum on majimboism. It pitted today’s majimboists, represented by Mr. Odinga, who campaigned for regionalism, against Mr. Kibaki, who stood for the status quo of a highly centralized government that has delivered considerable economic growth but has repeatedly displayed the problems of too much power concentrated in too few hands — corruption, aloofness, favoritism and its flip side, marginalization.
Because Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu, the largest and most powerful ethnic group in Kenya, and Mr. Odinga is a Luo, a group that feels it has never gotten its fair share, the political and ethnic tensions aggravated by this election have often blurred — with disastrous results.
Other African countries have struggled with ways of defusing ethnic rivalries. Ethiopia set up a system in the mid-1990s called ethnic federalism, which carved the country into ethnic-based regions, each with broad power — at least on paper — including the right to secede. But Ethiopia’s leaders soon concluded that too much regional autonomy would tear the country apart, and Ethiopia is now more or less centrally controlled by members of a small ethnic group.
Tanzania took the opposite approach. It de-emphasized ethnicity. It encouraged people to speak Kiswahili, and not their mother tongues, as a way to build Tanzanian-ness. The government sent children to high schools in different areas to expose them to different communities. Tanzanian election law even makes it illegal to campaign for office based on ethnic group.
In Kenya, such campaigning has been dangerous. Human rights organizations have accused several politicians this election season of using hate speech to incite their supporters. Land became the explosive issue, and after the election, opposition supporters rampaged against people who they perceived had not only voted for the president but had also taken their land long before then. To members of the Kalenjin ethnic group, this meant Kikuyus, even if they had lived next door for generations.
The small town of Londiani in the Rift Valley is just one example. Kikuyu traders settled here decades ago. In early February, residents said that hundreds of Kalenjin raiders poured down from the nearby scruffy hills. Even the Good Start nursery school was burned to the ground. The next morning, children with flakes of ash in their hair picked through the rubble, salvaging what they could — a mosquito coil here, a dented lantern there. With no fire engines in town and with running water scarce, all people of Londiani could do was run outside and watch the school burn.
Kikuyus have since taken their revenge, organizing into gangs armed with iron bars and table legs and hunting down Luos and Kalenjins in Kikuyu-dominated areas like Nakuru. “We are achieving our own perverse version of majimboism,” wrote one of Kenya’s leading columnists, Macharia Gaitho.
Many Kenyans blame William Ruto, a charismatic, smooth-talking opposition leader and a Kalenjin elder, for starting the violence in the Rift Valley. Kenyan government officials say that they are compiling evidence that Mr. Ruto instructed his supporters to kill and that he may soon be charged with murder.
Mr. Ruto, 41, denies any involvement.
“They will not touch me,” he said. “My hands are very clean.”
Still, hundreds of thousands of Kikuyus have fled the Rift Valley, followed by members of other communities displaced by revenge killings. The United Nations estimates that at least 600,000 people have been uprooted. About half have gone to camps in churches, police stations, stables and prisons. The living conditions are often horrible.
“Now they’re eating rats,” read a headline in a Kenyan newspaper.
In Othaya, in the hilly green center of Kikuyu-dominated Central Province, residents mobilized to absorb their relatives from the Rift Valley — and any other Kikuyus who escaped with them.
“I was expecting five or six people,” said Miriam Wanjiku, one of the hosts. “Then a whole bus showed up.”
Ms. Wanjiku found houses and abandoned stores for dozens of people to sleep in. She helped able-bodied men — many were wounded — get jobs at the local tea plantations that roll across the hills like one giant, verdant hedge. The children were put in school.
But there was little for the elderly to do. Ms. Wangoi spends her day on a couch, staring at the floor.
“They were sliced like meat,” she said, when asked what happened to her neighbors.
Ms. Wanjiku listened closely, looking distressed.
“I think she needs counseling,” she said.
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/world ... ?th&emc=th
February 15, 2008
Signs in Kenya of a Land Redrawn by Ethnicity
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
OTHAYA, Kenya — Sarah Wangoi has spent her entire life — all 70 years of it — in the Rift Valley. But last month, she was chased off her farm by a mob that called her a foreigner. She now sleeps on the cold floor of a stranger’s house, seeking refuge in an area of Kenya where her ethnic group, the Kikuyu, is strong. It is, supposedly, her homeland.
“I am safe now,” said Ms. Wangoi, though the mob still chases her in her dreams.
Across the country, William Ojiambo sat in a field where the ground was too hard to plow. He, too, sought refuge with his ethnic group, the Luo. He used to live in an ethnically mixed town called Nakuru but was recently evicted by a gang from another ethnic group that burned everything he owned.
“We came here with nothing, like cabbages thrown in the back of a truck,” Mr. Ojiambo said.
Kenya used to be considered one of the most promising countries in Africa. Now it is in the throes of ethnically segregating itself. Ever since a deeply flawed election in December kicked off a wave of ethnic and political violence, hundreds of thousands of people have been violently driven from their homes and many are now resettling in ethnically homogenous zones.
Luos have gone back to Luo land, Kikuyus to Kikuyu land, Kambas to Kamba land and Kisiis to Kisii land. Even some of the packed slums in the capital, Nairobi, have split along ethnic lines.
The bloodletting across the country that has killed more than 1,000 people since the election seems to have subsided in the past week. But the trucks piled high with mattresses, furniture, blankets and children keep chugging across the countryside, an endless convoy of frightened people who in their desperation are redrawing the map of Kenya.
The United Nations and Western powers are pushing for a political compromise, and President Bush said he would send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “deliver a message” to Kenya’s leaders.
On Thursday, officials here said that Kenyan government and opposition leaders had agreed in principle to join together in a coalition government but that they remained bitterly divided over the specifics, especially how much power the opposition would have. Two officials close to the negotiations said the government had rejected the opposition’s offer to split power between the president, who would remain head of state and the military’s commander in chief, and a newly created prime minister position.
Whatever deal is struck will have to address the growing de facto segregation, since a resettlement of the country may further entrench the political and ethnic divisions that have recently erupted. Shattered trust is much harder to rebuild than smashed huts, and many people say they will never go back to where they fled.
“How can we, when it was our friends who did this to us?” said Joseph Ndungu, a shopkeeper in the Rift Valley, who said that men he used to play soccer with burned down his shop.
The government is lending a hand in the country’s separation, at least for the moment. Police officers are escorting people back to their ancestral homes, as the government calls them, which seems to be thinly veiled language for ethnic separation.
Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, said this was only temporary until it was safe for people to live together again.
“Kenyans have the right to reside anywhere in the country,” he said.
But the mass migrations and resettlements that have been set in motion may be hard to reverse.
Take Joseph Mwanzia Maingi, a retired teacher who was just driven out of Narok, a town in the Rift Valley, by a gang of local men with bows and arrows. He fled to his father’s farm in an area that is a stronghold of the Kamba ethnic group, his people. He is now building a house. And not looking back.
“I don’t see any peace agreement that can guarantee our security there,” said Mr. Maingi, speaking of Narok, where he had lived happily for 40 years.
The ethnic segregation is pulling students and teachers out of schools and leaving thousands of jobs vacant across the economy. If it continues, said David Anderson, an African studies professor at Oxford University, “it’ll be an utter disaster.”
“You’ll never be able to reconstitute the state in a meaningful way,” he said. “You’ll have undone 50 years of work.”
The roots of the problem go deeper than the disputed election, in which the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.
At the heart is a tangle of long-festering political, economic and land issues. Part of the trouble is the winner-take-all system in Kenya, which happens in much of Africa, where leaders often favor members of their own ethnic group and in the process alienate large swaths of the population. Many people in Kenya saw this coming even before independence in 1963.
“We were worried about the smaller tribes getting dominated by the bigger ones,” said Joseph Martin Shikuku, a 75-year-old opposition figure. “And you know what? That’s exactly what happened.”
Mr. Shikuku was one of the founders of an independence-era political movement that embraced a philosophy called majimboism that has been around in Kenya since the 1950s. Majimboism means federalism or regionalism in Kiswahili, and it was intended to protect local rights, especially those connected to land. But in the extreme, majimboism is code for certain areas of the country to be reserved for specific ethnic groups, fueling the kind of ethnic cleansing that has swept the country since the election.
Majimboism has always had a strong following in the Rift Valley, the epicenter of the recent violence, where many locals have long believed that their land was stolen by outsiders.
“Majimboism was submerged but it never really died,” Mr. Anderson said. In some ways, the election in December was a referendum on majimboism. It pitted today’s majimboists, represented by Mr. Odinga, who campaigned for regionalism, against Mr. Kibaki, who stood for the status quo of a highly centralized government that has delivered considerable economic growth but has repeatedly displayed the problems of too much power concentrated in too few hands — corruption, aloofness, favoritism and its flip side, marginalization.
Because Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu, the largest and most powerful ethnic group in Kenya, and Mr. Odinga is a Luo, a group that feels it has never gotten its fair share, the political and ethnic tensions aggravated by this election have often blurred — with disastrous results.
Other African countries have struggled with ways of defusing ethnic rivalries. Ethiopia set up a system in the mid-1990s called ethnic federalism, which carved the country into ethnic-based regions, each with broad power — at least on paper — including the right to secede. But Ethiopia’s leaders soon concluded that too much regional autonomy would tear the country apart, and Ethiopia is now more or less centrally controlled by members of a small ethnic group.
Tanzania took the opposite approach. It de-emphasized ethnicity. It encouraged people to speak Kiswahili, and not their mother tongues, as a way to build Tanzanian-ness. The government sent children to high schools in different areas to expose them to different communities. Tanzanian election law even makes it illegal to campaign for office based on ethnic group.
In Kenya, such campaigning has been dangerous. Human rights organizations have accused several politicians this election season of using hate speech to incite their supporters. Land became the explosive issue, and after the election, opposition supporters rampaged against people who they perceived had not only voted for the president but had also taken their land long before then. To members of the Kalenjin ethnic group, this meant Kikuyus, even if they had lived next door for generations.
The small town of Londiani in the Rift Valley is just one example. Kikuyu traders settled here decades ago. In early February, residents said that hundreds of Kalenjin raiders poured down from the nearby scruffy hills. Even the Good Start nursery school was burned to the ground. The next morning, children with flakes of ash in their hair picked through the rubble, salvaging what they could — a mosquito coil here, a dented lantern there. With no fire engines in town and with running water scarce, all people of Londiani could do was run outside and watch the school burn.
Kikuyus have since taken their revenge, organizing into gangs armed with iron bars and table legs and hunting down Luos and Kalenjins in Kikuyu-dominated areas like Nakuru. “We are achieving our own perverse version of majimboism,” wrote one of Kenya’s leading columnists, Macharia Gaitho.
Many Kenyans blame William Ruto, a charismatic, smooth-talking opposition leader and a Kalenjin elder, for starting the violence in the Rift Valley. Kenyan government officials say that they are compiling evidence that Mr. Ruto instructed his supporters to kill and that he may soon be charged with murder.
Mr. Ruto, 41, denies any involvement.
“They will not touch me,” he said. “My hands are very clean.”
Still, hundreds of thousands of Kikuyus have fled the Rift Valley, followed by members of other communities displaced by revenge killings. The United Nations estimates that at least 600,000 people have been uprooted. About half have gone to camps in churches, police stations, stables and prisons. The living conditions are often horrible.
“Now they’re eating rats,” read a headline in a Kenyan newspaper.
In Othaya, in the hilly green center of Kikuyu-dominated Central Province, residents mobilized to absorb their relatives from the Rift Valley — and any other Kikuyus who escaped with them.
“I was expecting five or six people,” said Miriam Wanjiku, one of the hosts. “Then a whole bus showed up.”
Ms. Wanjiku found houses and abandoned stores for dozens of people to sleep in. She helped able-bodied men — many were wounded — get jobs at the local tea plantations that roll across the hills like one giant, verdant hedge. The children were put in school.
But there was little for the elderly to do. Ms. Wangoi spends her day on a couch, staring at the floor.
“They were sliced like meat,” she said, when asked what happened to her neighbors.
Ms. Wanjiku listened closely, looking distressed.
“I think she needs counseling,” she said.
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
February 19, 2008
Rice Brings Incentives to End Kenya Violence
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NAIROBI, Kenya — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Kenya on Monday to try to break the deadlock between Kenya’s rival politicians, and it seemed that she was bringing carrots, not sticks.
Just before she ducked into a battery of high-powered meetings, Ms. Rice said that if Kenya’s leaders resolve this crisis, “they are going to find a very supportive United States in terms of additional work on reconstruction and reconciliation support.”
“I’m going to emphasize that there is a lot to be gained in a relationship with the United States through resolution of this political crisis,” she said.
Ms. Rice said she did not want to talk about threats, sanctions or provisions that might punish Kenya’s leading politicians, who have been bitterly at odds since a disputed election in December plunged the country into violence.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in fighting that has followed mostly ethnic lines and as a result has segregated many areas of the country into ethnically homogenous zones. Many Kenyans believe the only solution is for the government and opposition to share power.
Ms. Rice’s promises of more help for Kenya, which already receives more than half a billion dollars of annual American aid, fit in with President Bush’s approach of rewarding countries who embrace democracy and American-approved development programs.
Her visit is part of President Bush’s trip to five nations in Africa. The president is currently in Tanzania, one of the most stable countries on the continent and a beneficiary of huge amounts of American aid. He has been criticized for avoiding Africa’s hot spots, like Congo, Sudan and now Kenya.
The trouble here started in late December when the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.
Supporters of the two politicians have battled across the country and the election controversy has stirred up deep-seated grievances over land and economic inequality that have been dogging Kenya since independence in 1963.
Ms. Rice was scheduled to meet with Mr. Kibaki, Mr. Odinga and Kenyan business leaders. The country’s economy, which until recently was one of the strongest in Africa, has been brought to its knees by the turbulence and violence.
Ms. Rice started her visit by meeting with Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general who has spent the past four weeks in Kenya trying to broker a truce.
Officials close to the negotiations say the Kenyan government is now the obstacle to a deal. The opposition has proposed a number of power-sharing possibilities, including having Mr. Kibaki remain the president, head of state and commander-in-chief of the military while Mr. Odinga becomes the prime minister and head of government.
Mr. Kibaki’s team has rejected that and said that it will give the opposition some cabinet posts but little else. The fear is that unless the government includes the opposition in a meaningful way, opposition supporters will revert to violence and Kenya will join the growing club of failed states in Africa.
Ms. Rice made it clear that the United States wants “real power sharing” though she did not wade into specifics and said it was up to Kenya’s leaders to do that.
She said that Kenya’s government needs to make “electoral and constitutional reforms that frankly should have been made several years ago.”
When asked about the creation of a prime minister post, Ms. Rice replied, "That would be one way that it could be done."
Mr. Odinga has said that the prime minister post is the bare minimum the opposition would accept.
“Beyond that, we will be out of government,” he said in an interview Sunday night. Mr. Kibaki was not the stumbling block, Mr. Odinga said. The problem was a small clique of “hardliners” around Mr. Kibaki.
“I’m sure he’s willing for a power sharing arrangement that would give him a decent way out to get our country out of this mess,” Mr. Odinga said.
Mr. Odinga said that unless a deal is reached soon, Kenya will be ungovernable.
“The moment it is announced that the talks collapsed, I am sure there will be an eruption countrywide,” he said. “It will be chaos.”
Kenya’s government has dismissed these threats and blamed opposition leaders for orchestrating violence, which the opposition has denied. The government also seems to be increasingly wary of foreign mediators, like Ms. Rice.
“We encourage our friends to support us and not to make any mistake of putting a gun to anybody’s head,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula on Sunday. “We are not anybody’s colony."
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
Rice Brings Incentives to End Kenya Violence
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NAIROBI, Kenya — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Kenya on Monday to try to break the deadlock between Kenya’s rival politicians, and it seemed that she was bringing carrots, not sticks.
Just before she ducked into a battery of high-powered meetings, Ms. Rice said that if Kenya’s leaders resolve this crisis, “they are going to find a very supportive United States in terms of additional work on reconstruction and reconciliation support.”
“I’m going to emphasize that there is a lot to be gained in a relationship with the United States through resolution of this political crisis,” she said.
Ms. Rice said she did not want to talk about threats, sanctions or provisions that might punish Kenya’s leading politicians, who have been bitterly at odds since a disputed election in December plunged the country into violence.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in fighting that has followed mostly ethnic lines and as a result has segregated many areas of the country into ethnically homogenous zones. Many Kenyans believe the only solution is for the government and opposition to share power.
Ms. Rice’s promises of more help for Kenya, which already receives more than half a billion dollars of annual American aid, fit in with President Bush’s approach of rewarding countries who embrace democracy and American-approved development programs.
Her visit is part of President Bush’s trip to five nations in Africa. The president is currently in Tanzania, one of the most stable countries on the continent and a beneficiary of huge amounts of American aid. He has been criticized for avoiding Africa’s hot spots, like Congo, Sudan and now Kenya.
The trouble here started in late December when the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.
Supporters of the two politicians have battled across the country and the election controversy has stirred up deep-seated grievances over land and economic inequality that have been dogging Kenya since independence in 1963.
Ms. Rice was scheduled to meet with Mr. Kibaki, Mr. Odinga and Kenyan business leaders. The country’s economy, which until recently was one of the strongest in Africa, has been brought to its knees by the turbulence and violence.
Ms. Rice started her visit by meeting with Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general who has spent the past four weeks in Kenya trying to broker a truce.
Officials close to the negotiations say the Kenyan government is now the obstacle to a deal. The opposition has proposed a number of power-sharing possibilities, including having Mr. Kibaki remain the president, head of state and commander-in-chief of the military while Mr. Odinga becomes the prime minister and head of government.
Mr. Kibaki’s team has rejected that and said that it will give the opposition some cabinet posts but little else. The fear is that unless the government includes the opposition in a meaningful way, opposition supporters will revert to violence and Kenya will join the growing club of failed states in Africa.
Ms. Rice made it clear that the United States wants “real power sharing” though she did not wade into specifics and said it was up to Kenya’s leaders to do that.
She said that Kenya’s government needs to make “electoral and constitutional reforms that frankly should have been made several years ago.”
When asked about the creation of a prime minister post, Ms. Rice replied, "That would be one way that it could be done."
Mr. Odinga has said that the prime minister post is the bare minimum the opposition would accept.
“Beyond that, we will be out of government,” he said in an interview Sunday night. Mr. Kibaki was not the stumbling block, Mr. Odinga said. The problem was a small clique of “hardliners” around Mr. Kibaki.
“I’m sure he’s willing for a power sharing arrangement that would give him a decent way out to get our country out of this mess,” Mr. Odinga said.
Mr. Odinga said that unless a deal is reached soon, Kenya will be ungovernable.
“The moment it is announced that the talks collapsed, I am sure there will be an eruption countrywide,” he said. “It will be chaos.”
Kenya’s government has dismissed these threats and blamed opposition leaders for orchestrating violence, which the opposition has denied. The government also seems to be increasingly wary of foreign mediators, like Ms. Rice.
“We encourage our friends to support us and not to make any mistake of putting a gun to anybody’s head,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula on Sunday. “We are not anybody’s colony."
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
February 18, 2008
Tanzania Welcomes Bush, but Obama Is Topic No. 1 on the Streets
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — President Bush has been smothered with affection here, never more so than on Sunday, when he sat at a wooden desk under a sweltering sun with President Jakaya Kikwete by his side and signed a $698 million grant of foreign aid to Tanzania.
But while people here in the capital city of this East African nation are excited about Mr. Bush, another American politician seems to excite them even more — Senator Barack Obama.
Mr. Bush is on a six-day, five-country tour to spotlight American efforts to fight poverty and disease in Africa. Though the president’s face is on billboards all over town, the name Obama is on the lips of Tanzanians — from taxi drivers to city merchants to the artisans who sell wooden Masai warriors in makeshift stalls at a dusty open-air market on the outskirts of town.
Halfway around the world, Mr. Bush cannot escape the race to succeed him.
“It seemed like there was a lot of excitement for me — wait a minute, maybe you missed it!” he said, only half in jest, on Sunday, after Mr. Kikwete was asked about Mr. Obama during their joint news conference here.
To be sure, there is excitement about Mr. Bush. The White House says foreign aid to Africa doubled during his first term and will nearly double again, to $8.7 billion a year by 2010, if his budget proposals are adopted. The $698 million agreement he signed Sunday is the largest grant awarded so far by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, established to assist countries that embrace democracy and fight corruption.
Tanzania also benefits from Mr. Bush’s global AIDS initiative, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, called Pepfar. Mr. Bush visited an AIDS clinic on Sunday to spotlight the program, which is to expire this year.
He called on Congress to reauthorize it and to keep intact a provision that sets aside one-third of money for AIDS prevention on programs that promote abstinence. Critics of that provision, including the independent Institute of Medicine, say it hampers prevention efforts.
“Pepfar is working,” Mr. Bush said at the news conference. “It is a balanced program. It is an A.B.C. program: abstinence, be faithful, and condoms.”
Africa is one corner of the world where, despite the war in Iraq, the image of the United States remains favorable — a point Mr. Kikwete made, ever so gingerly, to Mr. Bush.
“Different people may have different views about your administration and your legacy,” the Tanzanian president said. But Tanzanians, he said, believed that Mr. Bush and his administration “have been good friends of our country and have been good friends of Africa.”
Yet Africans, like many Americans, are already looking ahead to the next president of the United States. And, as in the United States, race and gender play a role in the debate. An unscientific sampling on Sunday turned up little mention of Senator John McCain and his fellow Republicans; but talk of Mr. Obama and his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, was everywhere.
“I hear a lot of people say maybe the Americans are not yet ready to get a lady president or a black president,” said Ndesumbuke Lamtane Merinyo, a batik fabric designer displaying his wares at the upscale Kilimanjaro Hotel Kempinski overlooking the Indian Ocean, where the Bushes are staying. Of Mr. Obama, he said, “Africans feel like they might get more attention from America once America has a black president.”
Outside of town, at the Mwenge Village market, Theresa Maridadi, 62, was seated with a newspaper in her lap, debating the Democrats with her son, Lucas Kahtoza, who lit up at the mention of Mr. Obama’s name and put his hand to his chest.
“Remember, Obama is from Africa,” he said. “From my heart, it is good.”
His mother cut him off. “Why you want to like Obama because he come from Africa?” she demanded. She is for Mrs. Clinton: “Her husband was the president, she has more exposure. She’s mature, she’s a woman. It’s good for a woman to lead that country.”
President Kikwete’s minister for tourism and natural resources, Shama Mwangunga, shared the sentiment. “Even people in the villages, they watch between Obama and Clinton,” she said, waiting for Sunday’s news conference to begin. But she favors Mrs. Clinton, who visited Tanzania while her husband was president.
At least one Tanzanian refused to weigh in on the race — Mr. Kikwete. After a subtle warning from Mr. Bush to steer clear, he artfully ducked Sunday’s news conference question.
“Well, I don’t think I can venture into that territory, either,” he said. “Of course, people talk with excitement of Obama — well, our excitement is that President Bush is at the end of his term, and the U.S. is going to get a new president, whoever that one is. For us, the most important thing is, let him be as good a friend of Africa as President Bush has been.”
Tanzania Welcomes Bush, but Obama Is Topic No. 1 on the Streets
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — President Bush has been smothered with affection here, never more so than on Sunday, when he sat at a wooden desk under a sweltering sun with President Jakaya Kikwete by his side and signed a $698 million grant of foreign aid to Tanzania.
But while people here in the capital city of this East African nation are excited about Mr. Bush, another American politician seems to excite them even more — Senator Barack Obama.
Mr. Bush is on a six-day, five-country tour to spotlight American efforts to fight poverty and disease in Africa. Though the president’s face is on billboards all over town, the name Obama is on the lips of Tanzanians — from taxi drivers to city merchants to the artisans who sell wooden Masai warriors in makeshift stalls at a dusty open-air market on the outskirts of town.
Halfway around the world, Mr. Bush cannot escape the race to succeed him.
“It seemed like there was a lot of excitement for me — wait a minute, maybe you missed it!” he said, only half in jest, on Sunday, after Mr. Kikwete was asked about Mr. Obama during their joint news conference here.
To be sure, there is excitement about Mr. Bush. The White House says foreign aid to Africa doubled during his first term and will nearly double again, to $8.7 billion a year by 2010, if his budget proposals are adopted. The $698 million agreement he signed Sunday is the largest grant awarded so far by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, established to assist countries that embrace democracy and fight corruption.
Tanzania also benefits from Mr. Bush’s global AIDS initiative, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, called Pepfar. Mr. Bush visited an AIDS clinic on Sunday to spotlight the program, which is to expire this year.
He called on Congress to reauthorize it and to keep intact a provision that sets aside one-third of money for AIDS prevention on programs that promote abstinence. Critics of that provision, including the independent Institute of Medicine, say it hampers prevention efforts.
“Pepfar is working,” Mr. Bush said at the news conference. “It is a balanced program. It is an A.B.C. program: abstinence, be faithful, and condoms.”
Africa is one corner of the world where, despite the war in Iraq, the image of the United States remains favorable — a point Mr. Kikwete made, ever so gingerly, to Mr. Bush.
“Different people may have different views about your administration and your legacy,” the Tanzanian president said. But Tanzanians, he said, believed that Mr. Bush and his administration “have been good friends of our country and have been good friends of Africa.”
Yet Africans, like many Americans, are already looking ahead to the next president of the United States. And, as in the United States, race and gender play a role in the debate. An unscientific sampling on Sunday turned up little mention of Senator John McCain and his fellow Republicans; but talk of Mr. Obama and his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, was everywhere.
“I hear a lot of people say maybe the Americans are not yet ready to get a lady president or a black president,” said Ndesumbuke Lamtane Merinyo, a batik fabric designer displaying his wares at the upscale Kilimanjaro Hotel Kempinski overlooking the Indian Ocean, where the Bushes are staying. Of Mr. Obama, he said, “Africans feel like they might get more attention from America once America has a black president.”
Outside of town, at the Mwenge Village market, Theresa Maridadi, 62, was seated with a newspaper in her lap, debating the Democrats with her son, Lucas Kahtoza, who lit up at the mention of Mr. Obama’s name and put his hand to his chest.
“Remember, Obama is from Africa,” he said. “From my heart, it is good.”
His mother cut him off. “Why you want to like Obama because he come from Africa?” she demanded. She is for Mrs. Clinton: “Her husband was the president, she has more exposure. She’s mature, she’s a woman. It’s good for a woman to lead that country.”
President Kikwete’s minister for tourism and natural resources, Shama Mwangunga, shared the sentiment. “Even people in the villages, they watch between Obama and Clinton,” she said, waiting for Sunday’s news conference to begin. But she favors Mrs. Clinton, who visited Tanzania while her husband was president.
At least one Tanzanian refused to weigh in on the race — Mr. Kikwete. After a subtle warning from Mr. Bush to steer clear, he artfully ducked Sunday’s news conference question.
“Well, I don’t think I can venture into that territory, either,” he said. “Of course, people talk with excitement of Obama — well, our excitement is that President Bush is at the end of his term, and the U.S. is going to get a new president, whoever that one is. For us, the most important thing is, let him be as good a friend of Africa as President Bush has been.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/opini ... ?th&emc=th
February 21, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Machetes and Elections
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KISUMU, Kenya
Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.
A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.
He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.
The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him. Doctors did some repair work and say he will recover physically, but as he sat in a church shelter for the displaced here in Kisumu in western Kenya, he seethed with hostility that may never heal.
“When I see Kikuyu shops that have been burned down,” he told me, “I feel good inside.” Never again will Robert be friendly with Kikuyu or have anything to do with them; he is now a symbol of the primeval tribal tensions that threaten Kenya’s future.
The prime villain is President Mwai Kibaki, who would have been hailed as a hero if he had obeyed the will of the people in the December election. Instead, he — and a cast of thugs around him — appear to have stolen the election, starting a spiral of tribal violence that has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 300,000. Mr. Kibaki’s intransigence risks the collapse of his country, possibly even civil war.
The man who probably had the election stolen from him, Raila Odinga, is a Luo, as was Barack Obama’s Kenyan father. Many Kenyans grimly note that a Luo may become president of the United States before being permitted to become president of Kenya.
Many Kenyans also say that the United States has been a part of the problem. In our desire for stability, we acquiesced in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signaling that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election.
The United States cozied up to Mr. Kibaki and initially congratulated him on his “victory,” without being emphatic enough that election-rigging is intolerable.
Since then, the U.S. has come around and played a helpful role in nudging Mr. Kibaki to make concessions, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Kenya on Monday usefully added pressure.
More broadly, the U.S. has pursued policies in Africa that are akin to our policies in Pakistan, and Mr. Kibaki is one of our African Musharrafs. In the interest of short-term stability, we acquiesce in despotic behavior that eventually creates instability. Granted, these are tough balances to strike. But look at Kenya or Pakistan today, and it’s clear that we got the balance wrong.
Flying over northern Kenya to Eldoret, you see smoke still rising from some of the countless Kikuyu farms that have been burned to the ground in areas where many Kikuyu were murdered. And here in Kisumu, the arriving Luo tell horrific stories.
“My wife was burned to death with our two children, aged 5 and 1 ½,” said Nicholas Ochieng, speaking as if in a daze. “Now I have no wife, no children, no house, no job. I have nothing.”
Mary Odhiambo, an aid worker tending to the new arrivals, said one shell-shocked woman arrived on a bus still clutching her husband’s head, wrapped up in newspapers, after a mob had hacked it off and mockingly presented it to her. A man arrived with his own severed penis in a sock.
“We have people coming in from Kikuyu areas, and they swear that before they die, they have to kill a Kikuyu,” said Ms. Odhiambo.
If Mr. Kibaki does not back down, Kenya will completely blow up. Kofi Annan is working heroically to broker a compromise, and a power-sharing agreement is possible in which Mr. Kibaki remains president for a couple of years and Mr. Odinga serves as prime minister.
But so far, Mr. Kibaki hasn’t been willing to make necessary concessions.
“If the talks collapse, there will be an explosion countrywide,” Mr. Odinga said in an interview, adding: “It will be bloodier than before.”
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. On the blog, you can also read posts from guest bloggers, including a public schoolteacher in Chicago, a Columbia University public health specialist in Rwanda and an American aid worker in Bangladesh.
February 21, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Machetes and Elections
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KISUMU, Kenya
Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.
A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.
He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.
The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him. Doctors did some repair work and say he will recover physically, but as he sat in a church shelter for the displaced here in Kisumu in western Kenya, he seethed with hostility that may never heal.
“When I see Kikuyu shops that have been burned down,” he told me, “I feel good inside.” Never again will Robert be friendly with Kikuyu or have anything to do with them; he is now a symbol of the primeval tribal tensions that threaten Kenya’s future.
The prime villain is President Mwai Kibaki, who would have been hailed as a hero if he had obeyed the will of the people in the December election. Instead, he — and a cast of thugs around him — appear to have stolen the election, starting a spiral of tribal violence that has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 300,000. Mr. Kibaki’s intransigence risks the collapse of his country, possibly even civil war.
The man who probably had the election stolen from him, Raila Odinga, is a Luo, as was Barack Obama’s Kenyan father. Many Kenyans grimly note that a Luo may become president of the United States before being permitted to become president of Kenya.
Many Kenyans also say that the United States has been a part of the problem. In our desire for stability, we acquiesced in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signaling that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election.
The United States cozied up to Mr. Kibaki and initially congratulated him on his “victory,” without being emphatic enough that election-rigging is intolerable.
Since then, the U.S. has come around and played a helpful role in nudging Mr. Kibaki to make concessions, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Kenya on Monday usefully added pressure.
More broadly, the U.S. has pursued policies in Africa that are akin to our policies in Pakistan, and Mr. Kibaki is one of our African Musharrafs. In the interest of short-term stability, we acquiesce in despotic behavior that eventually creates instability. Granted, these are tough balances to strike. But look at Kenya or Pakistan today, and it’s clear that we got the balance wrong.
Flying over northern Kenya to Eldoret, you see smoke still rising from some of the countless Kikuyu farms that have been burned to the ground in areas where many Kikuyu were murdered. And here in Kisumu, the arriving Luo tell horrific stories.
“My wife was burned to death with our two children, aged 5 and 1 ½,” said Nicholas Ochieng, speaking as if in a daze. “Now I have no wife, no children, no house, no job. I have nothing.”
Mary Odhiambo, an aid worker tending to the new arrivals, said one shell-shocked woman arrived on a bus still clutching her husband’s head, wrapped up in newspapers, after a mob had hacked it off and mockingly presented it to her. A man arrived with his own severed penis in a sock.
“We have people coming in from Kikuyu areas, and they swear that before they die, they have to kill a Kikuyu,” said Ms. Odhiambo.
If Mr. Kibaki does not back down, Kenya will completely blow up. Kofi Annan is working heroically to broker a compromise, and a power-sharing agreement is possible in which Mr. Kibaki remains president for a couple of years and Mr. Odinga serves as prime minister.
But so far, Mr. Kibaki hasn’t been willing to make necessary concessions.
“If the talks collapse, there will be an explosion countrywide,” Mr. Odinga said in an interview, adding: “It will be bloodier than before.”
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. On the blog, you can also read posts from guest bloggers, including a public schoolteacher in Chicago, a Columbia University public health specialist in Rwanda and an American aid worker in Bangladesh.
February 22, 2008
Editorial
Kenya’s Glimmer of Hope
After weeks of horrific tribal violence, Kenya’s rival leaders appear to be closing in on a political deal. That is the only hope for stopping the killing and the only chance for salvaging a country that until recently was one of Africa’s most stable and prosperous.
We strongly urge President Mwai Kibaki to conclude, and implement, an agreement that would share real power with his principal challenger, Raila Odinga. Anything less will stoke more fury and destruction. Together, the two must quickly address constitutional and land reform issues that are the root causes of the chaos.
It is terrifying how quickly Kenya began to tear itself apart after December’s disputed presidential elections — and after the electoral commission hastily handed a second term to Mr. Kibaki over Mr. Odinga.
The violence since has been the stuff of nightmares: rapes, mutilations and ethnic purges. More than 1,000 people have died, and 300,000 have been driven from their homes. While there has been a lull in recent days, the economy is paralyzed and observers warn that all sides are still armed and ready to attack.
Diplomats from the United Nations, the African Union and the United States have spent weeks prodding Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga toward some compromise. On Thursday, Kenya’s government announced that it would create a new position of prime minister for Mr. Odinga, one of his chief demands. Any deal would quickly fall apart if Mr. Kibaki also doesn’t cede some real authority and responsibility. Mr. Odinga deserves a meaningful role — and Kenya’s survival requires it.
That will not be enough. The government must prosecute those responsible for the worst violence and provide new homes for the displaced. An independent commission — made up of the country’s most-respected leaders — must be established to find out what really happened in the December vote and to recommend ways to reform and strengthen the electoral system.
There will be no lasting peace, we fear, unless Kenya addresses the fundamental inequalities that turned neighbor against neighbor and ethnic group against ethnic group. This is a winner-take-all system in which presidents hold tremendous power and favor members of their own ethnic group. Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu, the largest and most powerful ethnic group in Kenya, while Mr. Odinga is a Luo, a group that feels that it has never gotten its fair share.
The government must find ways to create new jobs and more equitably share land. Kenya needs a more balanced government system that gives all groups a voice and a sense that their rights will be protected.
Kenya will need a lot of outside help to pull back from the abyss. The international community must be ready to offer aid and technical help to encourage essential reforms. It must also be ready to impose punishments on anyone who stands in the way of a settlement.
Editorial
Kenya’s Glimmer of Hope
After weeks of horrific tribal violence, Kenya’s rival leaders appear to be closing in on a political deal. That is the only hope for stopping the killing and the only chance for salvaging a country that until recently was one of Africa’s most stable and prosperous.
We strongly urge President Mwai Kibaki to conclude, and implement, an agreement that would share real power with his principal challenger, Raila Odinga. Anything less will stoke more fury and destruction. Together, the two must quickly address constitutional and land reform issues that are the root causes of the chaos.
It is terrifying how quickly Kenya began to tear itself apart after December’s disputed presidential elections — and after the electoral commission hastily handed a second term to Mr. Kibaki over Mr. Odinga.
The violence since has been the stuff of nightmares: rapes, mutilations and ethnic purges. More than 1,000 people have died, and 300,000 have been driven from their homes. While there has been a lull in recent days, the economy is paralyzed and observers warn that all sides are still armed and ready to attack.
Diplomats from the United Nations, the African Union and the United States have spent weeks prodding Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga toward some compromise. On Thursday, Kenya’s government announced that it would create a new position of prime minister for Mr. Odinga, one of his chief demands. Any deal would quickly fall apart if Mr. Kibaki also doesn’t cede some real authority and responsibility. Mr. Odinga deserves a meaningful role — and Kenya’s survival requires it.
That will not be enough. The government must prosecute those responsible for the worst violence and provide new homes for the displaced. An independent commission — made up of the country’s most-respected leaders — must be established to find out what really happened in the December vote and to recommend ways to reform and strengthen the electoral system.
There will be no lasting peace, we fear, unless Kenya addresses the fundamental inequalities that turned neighbor against neighbor and ethnic group against ethnic group. This is a winner-take-all system in which presidents hold tremendous power and favor members of their own ethnic group. Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu, the largest and most powerful ethnic group in Kenya, while Mr. Odinga is a Luo, a group that feels that it has never gotten its fair share.
The government must find ways to create new jobs and more equitably share land. Kenya needs a more balanced government system that gives all groups a voice and a sense that their rights will be protected.
Kenya will need a lot of outside help to pull back from the abyss. The international community must be ready to offer aid and technical help to encourage essential reforms. It must also be ready to impose punishments on anyone who stands in the way of a settlement.
February 28, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
A Genocide Foretold
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
JUBA, Sudan
The Sudanese government started the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur, and now it seems to be preparing to start the second here among the thatch-roof huts of southern Sudan.
South Sudan is rich in oil, but its people are among the poorest in the world, far poorer than those in Darfur. Only 1 percent of girls here finish elementary school, meaning that a young woman is more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than to become literate. Leprosy and Ebola linger here. South Sudan is the size of Texas, yet it has only 10 miles of paved road and almost no electricity; just about the only running water here is the Nile River.
The poverty is mostly the result of the civil war between North and South Sudan that raged across the southern part of the country for two decades and cost 2 million lives. For many impoverished villagers, their only exposure to modern technology has been to endure bombings by the Sudanese Air Force. The war finally ended, thanks in part to strong American pressure, in 2005 with a landmark peace agreement — but that peace is now fraying.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is backing away from the peace agreement, and prodding Arab militias to revive the war with the South Sudan military forces. Small-scale armed clashes have broken out since late last year, and it looks increasingly likely that Darfur will become simply the prologue to a far bloodier conflict that engulfs all Sudan.
Even my presence here is a sign of the rising tensions and mistrust. The Sudanese government refuses me visas, but the authorities in the south let me enter from Kenya without a visa because they want the word to get out that war is again looming.
The authorities in disputed areas such as the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State also welcomed me, rather than arresting me, even though those areas technically are on the northern side of the dividing line. Local officials in both areas warned that President Bashir and his radical Arab political party are preparing to revive the war against non-Arab groups in the south and center of the country.
“If things go on as they are now, war will break out,” said Sila Musa Kangi, the commissioner of Kormuk in Blue Nile. “And it can break out at any time.”
Although people speak of renewed “war,” the violence is more likely to resemble what happens in a stockyard. If it is like the last time, government-sponsored Arab militias will slaughter civilians so as to terrorize local populations and drive them far away from oil wells.
Under the 2005 deal that ended the war, Sudan is supposed to hold elections early next year, but President Bashir is unlikely to allow them because he almost surely would lose. Likewise, Mr. Bashir is unlikely to abide by his commitment to allow the south to hold a referendum in 2011 to decide whether to separate from Sudan because southerners would likely vote overwhelmingly for independence — and more than three-quarters of the country’s oil is in the south.
Already, the Sudanese government is backtracking on its commitments under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or C.P.A.: It still hasn’t withdrawn all of its troops from the south; it hasn’t accepted a boundary commission report for the oil-rich border area of Abyei; it keeps delaying a census needed for the elections; and it appears to be cheating the south of oil revenues. And the U.S. and other countries have acquiesced in all this.
“We say to the international community, ‘you midwifed the C.P.A., and then you left,’ ” said Rebecca Garang, the widow of the longtime southern leader, John Garang. “You must come back and check the baby.”
Those who focused on Sudan’s atrocities in Darfur, myself included, may have inadvertently removed the spotlight from South Sudan. Without easing the outrage over Darfur — where the bloodshed has been particularly appalling lately — we must broaden the focus to include the threat to the south.
One of the lessons of Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia is that it is much easier to avert a genocide ahead of time than to put the pieces together afterward. So let’s not wait until gunshots are ringing out again all over the south.
There are steps that the U.S. can take to diminish the risk of a new war. We can work with the international community to raise the costs to President Bashir of defying his treaty obligations.
We can warn Sudan that if it starts a new war, we will supply anti-aircraft weapons to the south to make it harder for the north to resume bombing hospitals, churches and schools. We can also raise the possibility of protecting the south with a no-fly zone, which might be enough to deter Mr. Bashir from starting yet another genocide.
Comment on this column on my blog at: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.
Op-Ed Columnist
A Genocide Foretold
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
JUBA, Sudan
The Sudanese government started the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur, and now it seems to be preparing to start the second here among the thatch-roof huts of southern Sudan.
South Sudan is rich in oil, but its people are among the poorest in the world, far poorer than those in Darfur. Only 1 percent of girls here finish elementary school, meaning that a young woman is more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than to become literate. Leprosy and Ebola linger here. South Sudan is the size of Texas, yet it has only 10 miles of paved road and almost no electricity; just about the only running water here is the Nile River.
The poverty is mostly the result of the civil war between North and South Sudan that raged across the southern part of the country for two decades and cost 2 million lives. For many impoverished villagers, their only exposure to modern technology has been to endure bombings by the Sudanese Air Force. The war finally ended, thanks in part to strong American pressure, in 2005 with a landmark peace agreement — but that peace is now fraying.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is backing away from the peace agreement, and prodding Arab militias to revive the war with the South Sudan military forces. Small-scale armed clashes have broken out since late last year, and it looks increasingly likely that Darfur will become simply the prologue to a far bloodier conflict that engulfs all Sudan.
Even my presence here is a sign of the rising tensions and mistrust. The Sudanese government refuses me visas, but the authorities in the south let me enter from Kenya without a visa because they want the word to get out that war is again looming.
The authorities in disputed areas such as the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State also welcomed me, rather than arresting me, even though those areas technically are on the northern side of the dividing line. Local officials in both areas warned that President Bashir and his radical Arab political party are preparing to revive the war against non-Arab groups in the south and center of the country.
“If things go on as they are now, war will break out,” said Sila Musa Kangi, the commissioner of Kormuk in Blue Nile. “And it can break out at any time.”
Although people speak of renewed “war,” the violence is more likely to resemble what happens in a stockyard. If it is like the last time, government-sponsored Arab militias will slaughter civilians so as to terrorize local populations and drive them far away from oil wells.
Under the 2005 deal that ended the war, Sudan is supposed to hold elections early next year, but President Bashir is unlikely to allow them because he almost surely would lose. Likewise, Mr. Bashir is unlikely to abide by his commitment to allow the south to hold a referendum in 2011 to decide whether to separate from Sudan because southerners would likely vote overwhelmingly for independence — and more than three-quarters of the country’s oil is in the south.
Already, the Sudanese government is backtracking on its commitments under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or C.P.A.: It still hasn’t withdrawn all of its troops from the south; it hasn’t accepted a boundary commission report for the oil-rich border area of Abyei; it keeps delaying a census needed for the elections; and it appears to be cheating the south of oil revenues. And the U.S. and other countries have acquiesced in all this.
“We say to the international community, ‘you midwifed the C.P.A., and then you left,’ ” said Rebecca Garang, the widow of the longtime southern leader, John Garang. “You must come back and check the baby.”
Those who focused on Sudan’s atrocities in Darfur, myself included, may have inadvertently removed the spotlight from South Sudan. Without easing the outrage over Darfur — where the bloodshed has been particularly appalling lately — we must broaden the focus to include the threat to the south.
One of the lessons of Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia is that it is much easier to avert a genocide ahead of time than to put the pieces together afterward. So let’s not wait until gunshots are ringing out again all over the south.
There are steps that the U.S. can take to diminish the risk of a new war. We can work with the international community to raise the costs to President Bashir of defying his treaty obligations.
We can warn Sudan that if it starts a new war, we will supply anti-aircraft weapons to the south to make it harder for the north to resume bombing hospitals, churches and schools. We can also raise the possibility of protecting the south with a no-fly zone, which might be enough to deter Mr. Bashir from starting yet another genocide.
Comment on this column on my blog at: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.
There is a photograph and a video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/world ... ref=slogin
February 29, 2008
Kenya Rivals Reach Peace Agreement
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s rival leaders broke their tense standoff on Thursday, agreeing to share power in a deal that may end the violence that has engulfed this nation but could be the beginning of a long and difficult political relationship.
The country seemed to let out a collective cheer as Mwai Kibaki, the president, and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, sat down at a desk in front of the president’s office, with a bank of television cameras rolling, and signed an agreement that creates a powerful prime minister position for Mr. Odinga and splits cabinet posts between the government and the opposition.
The two sides, which have been bitterly at odds for the past two months, will now be fused together in a government of national unity.
But there are still many thorny issues to resolve, starting with how the new government will function with essentially two bosses who have tried unsuccessfully to work together before. The government must also deal with the delicate business of reassigning the choice positions already given to Mr. Kibaki’s allies.
There is also a deeply divided country to heal. More than 1,000 Kenyans have been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes in an uncharacteristic burst of violence set off by a deeply flawed election in December. Much of the fighting, like the voting, has been along ethnic lines.
The two-page power-sharing agreement, which came after intense international pressure and mediation by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, seemed to serve as a contract to pull Kenya back from the brink. Both leaders urged their supporters, who have battled viciously across the country in recent weeks, to respect it.
“I call on Kenyans to embrace the spirit of togetherness,” Mr. Kibaki said.
Mr. Odinga was beaming next to him. He said that Kenyans should “celebrate and love each other” and “destroy the monster that is called ethnicity.”
Kenyans were glued to their television sets and radios across the country as the news broke. In downtown Nairobi, the capital, a crowd poured into the streets and danced and shouted until they were run off by police officers shooting tear gas. In offices across town, business executives, who have watched their profits fall and their investments fail over the past two months, finally exhaled.
“Yes, I’m relieved; you don’t know what we’ve been through,” said Ngovi Kitau, the managing director of a large car dealership. He had just come from a meeting at which his company had decided to let go 10 employees a month because business was so bad.
Still, he injected a note of caution that many Kenyans seemed to feel. “It’s a marriage of convenience, and it’s the best way out because it’s going to get the country moving again,” Mr. Kitau said. “But it’s not a solution.”
The agreement is pretty close to what opposition leaders had been demanding. It appears that the Kenyan government, reluctant at first to cede any substantial power, finally gave in after American officials, among others, insisted on “real power sharing” and threatened to punish anyone who blocked a deal.
One person close to the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the Kenyan government felt as if “it had its back against the wall.” Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, seemed to say as much.
“The outside pressure was relatively important,” Mr. Mutua said. “We are responsive to our neighbors and friends.”
Kenya used to be considered one of the most prosperous and stable nations in Africa, known as an oasis of peace in a turbulent region. But the country spun into chaos on Dec. 30 after the national election commission declared Mr. Kibaki the winner of a closely contested race against Mr. Odinga, who claims to have won the most votes.
Election observers have been unanimous in saying that the results were tainted by irregularities, with some saying that the government rigged the tallying of votes to give Mr. Kibaki a slender, 11th-hour edge.
The controversy spawned bloodletting across the country, with supporters of Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki attacking one other in brutal battles. Few were spared. Entire villages were razed. Women and children were burned alive.
Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki are from different ethnic groups, and the election seems to have kicked the lid off a set of simmering political, ethnic and economic issues. Many people have fled ethnically mixed areas in convoys of overloaded trucks, creating a degree of ethnic segregation that this country has never experienced.
The violence has cooled down in the past few weeks, but the tension and displacements have continued. Many Kenyans have said that the country will not return to peace until the dueling politicians agree to some sort of solution.
Mr. Annan took the lead in trying to bring the two sides together. For the past month, he has been meeting nearly every day with negotiators for Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga, searching for a political compromise. More than anyone else, Mr. Annan has been the hope of this country. A baby rhino recently born in one of Kenya’s fabled game parks was even named after him.
But earlier this week, Mr. Annan seemed to have run into a brick wall. Negotiators deadlocked over whether they would share responsibilities or share power, with the government refusing to give Mr. Odinga substantial authority or to amend the Constitution to create the position of prime minister. Mr. Annan then decided to bypass the negotiation teams and go directly to Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki. He met with them behind closed doors for more than four hours on Thursday.
At 4:30 p.m. local time, Mr. Annan, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga emerged. The two leaders signed the agreement with Mr. Annan standing behind them, his hands clasped, as a crowd of diplomats, cabinet ministers and political supporters clapped.
Under the deal, the party that holds a majority in Parliament — currently Mr. Odinga’s — will elect a prime minister to “coordinate and supervise” government affairs. The cabinet positions will be divided, based on parliamentary strength. Parliament will pass an act and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing all this.
One concern, though, is that this is not the first time Mr. Kibaki, 76, and Mr. Odinga, 63, have vowed to work together. The two were close political allies in 2002, when Mr. Kibaki was elected president, but they soon had a falling out. The issue back then was the same issue as today: whether to make Mr. Odinga prime minister, which Mr. Kibaki initially promised but then refused to do.
The two men are now supposed to spearhead the effort for constitutional reform, land reform, electoral reform and a complete overhaul of Kenya’s political system.
Their supporters seemed more or less placated on Thursday.
Rono Kibet, an opposition supporter who less than two months ago was burning down the houses of members of Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, said: “We will now stop the fighting. The agreement is very good.”
Nicholas Kamau, a Kibaki supporter, said some of his friends were grumbling that Mr. Kibaki sold them out.
“But most people have been waiting for this agreement,” he said. “We did not want another war.”
Mr. Annan said the deal was Kenya’s only way out of the crisis.
“Today we have reached an important staging post, but the journey is far from over,” Mr. Annan said. “Let the spirit of healing begin today. Let it begin now.”
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/world ... ref=slogin
February 29, 2008
Kenya Rivals Reach Peace Agreement
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s rival leaders broke their tense standoff on Thursday, agreeing to share power in a deal that may end the violence that has engulfed this nation but could be the beginning of a long and difficult political relationship.
The country seemed to let out a collective cheer as Mwai Kibaki, the president, and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, sat down at a desk in front of the president’s office, with a bank of television cameras rolling, and signed an agreement that creates a powerful prime minister position for Mr. Odinga and splits cabinet posts between the government and the opposition.
The two sides, which have been bitterly at odds for the past two months, will now be fused together in a government of national unity.
But there are still many thorny issues to resolve, starting with how the new government will function with essentially two bosses who have tried unsuccessfully to work together before. The government must also deal with the delicate business of reassigning the choice positions already given to Mr. Kibaki’s allies.
There is also a deeply divided country to heal. More than 1,000 Kenyans have been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes in an uncharacteristic burst of violence set off by a deeply flawed election in December. Much of the fighting, like the voting, has been along ethnic lines.
The two-page power-sharing agreement, which came after intense international pressure and mediation by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, seemed to serve as a contract to pull Kenya back from the brink. Both leaders urged their supporters, who have battled viciously across the country in recent weeks, to respect it.
“I call on Kenyans to embrace the spirit of togetherness,” Mr. Kibaki said.
Mr. Odinga was beaming next to him. He said that Kenyans should “celebrate and love each other” and “destroy the monster that is called ethnicity.”
Kenyans were glued to their television sets and radios across the country as the news broke. In downtown Nairobi, the capital, a crowd poured into the streets and danced and shouted until they were run off by police officers shooting tear gas. In offices across town, business executives, who have watched their profits fall and their investments fail over the past two months, finally exhaled.
“Yes, I’m relieved; you don’t know what we’ve been through,” said Ngovi Kitau, the managing director of a large car dealership. He had just come from a meeting at which his company had decided to let go 10 employees a month because business was so bad.
Still, he injected a note of caution that many Kenyans seemed to feel. “It’s a marriage of convenience, and it’s the best way out because it’s going to get the country moving again,” Mr. Kitau said. “But it’s not a solution.”
The agreement is pretty close to what opposition leaders had been demanding. It appears that the Kenyan government, reluctant at first to cede any substantial power, finally gave in after American officials, among others, insisted on “real power sharing” and threatened to punish anyone who blocked a deal.
One person close to the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the Kenyan government felt as if “it had its back against the wall.” Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, seemed to say as much.
“The outside pressure was relatively important,” Mr. Mutua said. “We are responsive to our neighbors and friends.”
Kenya used to be considered one of the most prosperous and stable nations in Africa, known as an oasis of peace in a turbulent region. But the country spun into chaos on Dec. 30 after the national election commission declared Mr. Kibaki the winner of a closely contested race against Mr. Odinga, who claims to have won the most votes.
Election observers have been unanimous in saying that the results were tainted by irregularities, with some saying that the government rigged the tallying of votes to give Mr. Kibaki a slender, 11th-hour edge.
The controversy spawned bloodletting across the country, with supporters of Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki attacking one other in brutal battles. Few were spared. Entire villages were razed. Women and children were burned alive.
Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki are from different ethnic groups, and the election seems to have kicked the lid off a set of simmering political, ethnic and economic issues. Many people have fled ethnically mixed areas in convoys of overloaded trucks, creating a degree of ethnic segregation that this country has never experienced.
The violence has cooled down in the past few weeks, but the tension and displacements have continued. Many Kenyans have said that the country will not return to peace until the dueling politicians agree to some sort of solution.
Mr. Annan took the lead in trying to bring the two sides together. For the past month, he has been meeting nearly every day with negotiators for Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga, searching for a political compromise. More than anyone else, Mr. Annan has been the hope of this country. A baby rhino recently born in one of Kenya’s fabled game parks was even named after him.
But earlier this week, Mr. Annan seemed to have run into a brick wall. Negotiators deadlocked over whether they would share responsibilities or share power, with the government refusing to give Mr. Odinga substantial authority or to amend the Constitution to create the position of prime minister. Mr. Annan then decided to bypass the negotiation teams and go directly to Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki. He met with them behind closed doors for more than four hours on Thursday.
At 4:30 p.m. local time, Mr. Annan, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga emerged. The two leaders signed the agreement with Mr. Annan standing behind them, his hands clasped, as a crowd of diplomats, cabinet ministers and political supporters clapped.
Under the deal, the party that holds a majority in Parliament — currently Mr. Odinga’s — will elect a prime minister to “coordinate and supervise” government affairs. The cabinet positions will be divided, based on parliamentary strength. Parliament will pass an act and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing all this.
One concern, though, is that this is not the first time Mr. Kibaki, 76, and Mr. Odinga, 63, have vowed to work together. The two were close political allies in 2002, when Mr. Kibaki was elected president, but they soon had a falling out. The issue back then was the same issue as today: whether to make Mr. Odinga prime minister, which Mr. Kibaki initially promised but then refused to do.
The two men are now supposed to spearhead the effort for constitutional reform, land reform, electoral reform and a complete overhaul of Kenya’s political system.
Their supporters seemed more or less placated on Thursday.
Rono Kibet, an opposition supporter who less than two months ago was burning down the houses of members of Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, said: “We will now stop the fighting. The agreement is very good.”
Nicholas Kamau, a Kibaki supporter, said some of his friends were grumbling that Mr. Kibaki sold them out.
“But most people have been waiting for this agreement,” he said. “We did not want another war.”
Mr. Annan said the deal was Kenya’s only way out of the crisis.
“Today we have reached an important staging post, but the journey is far from over,” Mr. Annan said. “Let the spirit of healing begin today. Let it begin now.”
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
There is a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/world ... kenya.html
March 1, 2008
As Kenya Bleeds, Tourism Also Suffers
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
KEEKOROK, Kenya — Nancy Holan just had the safari of her life. She and a friend flew to Kenya from Detroit and as they cruised the wide open plains, they had the lions, zebras and elephants all to themselves.
“It was wonderful,” she said.
Not far away, Isaac Rotich, a high-end safari guide, paced an empty game lodge in freshly polished safari boots. He can spot a six-inch lizard 50 feet away, and tell you the name — in Kiswahili, English and Latin — of the plant it is sitting on. He has spent years building this career and was making $30,000 a year, a king’s ransom in these parts.
Now he is afraid of losing it all.
“We’re hurting, big time,” Mr. Rotich said.
This is what Kenya’s legendary safari business has become: wonderful for tourists, disastrous for just about everyone else.
Tourism is one of Kenya’s biggest industries, but the violence that exploded after a flawed election in December has eviscerated the business, with bookings down 80 to 90 percent in most areas. Even after a peace deal was signed Thursday, government and tourism officials worried that it could take months — if not years — to recover.
Kenya’s rival politicians have agreed to share power, and on Friday many people here praised them for finally calming the country down. But the long-term economic consequences are just beginning to sink in. “We will work very hard to see what we can salvage,” said Rose Musonye Kwena, an official at the Kenya Tourist Board, who estimated that even if there was no more major violence this year business would still be down 50 percent.
The images of machete-wielding mobs caused a tourist stampede, and the lingering uncertainty over the country’s direction has caused a wave of cancellations, leaving dozens of hotels closed and thousands of guides, drivers, cooks, waiters, masseuses, wood carvers and bead stringers out of work. Many of them support a vast network of relatives. A continued tourism meltdown could push millions of Kenyans toward poverty, which was one of the underlying causes of the violence in the first place.
The downturn also threatens to reverse the momentum that Kenya has made in recent years to protect land and animals. Government officials are worried about out-of-work guides and trackers poaching game. Village elders in animal-rich areas who had been persuaded that conservation and tourism would be profitable have been re-examining this equation and considering selling off their land.
Sales mean farms, and farms mean fences, which could block the millions of zebra, wildebeest and antelope that migrate across the famous Masai Mara game reserve each year, possibly endangering one of the most spectacular gatherings of animal life on the planet. “It’s absolutely catastrophic,” said Calvin Cottar, the owner of an upscale safari camp.
Kenya’s billion-dollar tourism industry, which injects critically needed foreign exchange into the economy, is hardly the only victim. The election crisis, which started when Kenya’s election commission declared the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, the winner of a closely contested race, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, has killed more than 1,000 people and balkanized Kenya, with hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes and resettling in ethnically homogenous zones.
The violence punched a hole through the economy, disrupting coffee and tea production, knocking down the stock market’s value and bruising transport, manufacturing, construction and nearly every other industry — except maybe the funeral trade.
Tourism could take among the longest to bounce back, because it is especially sensitive to perceptions, and the well-publicized bloodshed of the past two months has badly dented Kenya’s image. Last year, the country had more than two million tourists. In January, there were only 55,000 new arrivals, well below projections. The truth is that most of the violence has subsided and it never really touched the tourist areas, like the Masai Mara.
But many Western governments seem to think otherwise. Australia is still warning its citizens traveling to Kenya to stay indoors, not exactly the greatest plug for game watching.
“These warnings are a real problem for us,” Mr. Cottar said. Even if the game lodges have been perfectly safe, he said, people have not wanted to come to Kenya if they think “they will be drinking Champagne while somebody is getting hacked to death over the hill.”
His resort is as good an example as any. Cottars 1920s Mara Safari Camp is one of the most luxurious lodges in Kenya, charging up to $710 a night per person, and is usually booked solid at this time of year. Now it is deserted.
It is nestled in an especially picturesque corner of the Masai Mara, overlooking the green hills of Africa that inspired Ernest Hemingway and so many others. The lodge plays up the old-school theme, decked out with leather trunks, brass telescopes and pith helmets. On Sunday, the only guests were a couple from Kenya who paid cut-rate local prices, which allow the lodges to stay open — but just barely.
The couple, James and Lel Cartwright, arrived in their own plane. For once, the air over the Masai Mara was clear as glass. “It was stunning,” Mrs. Cartwright said. “There’s usually a wall of dust from all the minibuses.”
The staff at Cottars threw on their fezzes and best smiles. But underneath they seemed down. Their salaries have been halved. The tips have dried up. Daniel Lanke, a waiter at Cottars, just enrolled his ninth child in private school but now, he said, “I can’t even buy him socks.”
In the villages around the lodge, it is the same story. At the sound of a truck, Masai women dash in from the fields and set up tables full of souvenirs. Some have not sold a necklace for months. “We are going to go hungry,” said one woman, Nalarame Noloswesh, who has seven children.
Many lodges have teamed up with local communities, sharing a slice of their profits in exchange for using the communities’ land. The whole point was to make tourism more profitable than agriculture, so villagers would have an incentive to set aside their land for animals.
Kenya’s tourism officials seem to appreciate the stakes. They are planning to begin a huge marketing campaign to reassure potential visitors that Kenya is safe. Mr. Cottar says that he will donate some of his proceeds to the Kenyan Red Cross to emphasize that “if you go on safari now, you’ll be helping the country.” But those with the means may not wait.
Mr. Rotich, the safari guide, is fully aware of his skills. He is an expert game spotter, speaks impeccable English and seems genuinely interested in every form of life on the veldt, from the towering giraffe to the lowly dung beetle. “This is all I know,” he said.
The other day, he found a herd of 150 elephants eating grass in a clearing. Babies wrestled with one another as their enormous mothers lumbered past.
The elephant train was headed south to Tanzania, where the safari industry is booming because many tourists are flocking there instead. Mr. Rotich said he might join them. “I love Kenya,” he said. “But I have my dreams.”
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/world ... kenya.html
March 1, 2008
As Kenya Bleeds, Tourism Also Suffers
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
KEEKOROK, Kenya — Nancy Holan just had the safari of her life. She and a friend flew to Kenya from Detroit and as they cruised the wide open plains, they had the lions, zebras and elephants all to themselves.
“It was wonderful,” she said.
Not far away, Isaac Rotich, a high-end safari guide, paced an empty game lodge in freshly polished safari boots. He can spot a six-inch lizard 50 feet away, and tell you the name — in Kiswahili, English and Latin — of the plant it is sitting on. He has spent years building this career and was making $30,000 a year, a king’s ransom in these parts.
Now he is afraid of losing it all.
“We’re hurting, big time,” Mr. Rotich said.
This is what Kenya’s legendary safari business has become: wonderful for tourists, disastrous for just about everyone else.
Tourism is one of Kenya’s biggest industries, but the violence that exploded after a flawed election in December has eviscerated the business, with bookings down 80 to 90 percent in most areas. Even after a peace deal was signed Thursday, government and tourism officials worried that it could take months — if not years — to recover.
Kenya’s rival politicians have agreed to share power, and on Friday many people here praised them for finally calming the country down. But the long-term economic consequences are just beginning to sink in. “We will work very hard to see what we can salvage,” said Rose Musonye Kwena, an official at the Kenya Tourist Board, who estimated that even if there was no more major violence this year business would still be down 50 percent.
The images of machete-wielding mobs caused a tourist stampede, and the lingering uncertainty over the country’s direction has caused a wave of cancellations, leaving dozens of hotels closed and thousands of guides, drivers, cooks, waiters, masseuses, wood carvers and bead stringers out of work. Many of them support a vast network of relatives. A continued tourism meltdown could push millions of Kenyans toward poverty, which was one of the underlying causes of the violence in the first place.
The downturn also threatens to reverse the momentum that Kenya has made in recent years to protect land and animals. Government officials are worried about out-of-work guides and trackers poaching game. Village elders in animal-rich areas who had been persuaded that conservation and tourism would be profitable have been re-examining this equation and considering selling off their land.
Sales mean farms, and farms mean fences, which could block the millions of zebra, wildebeest and antelope that migrate across the famous Masai Mara game reserve each year, possibly endangering one of the most spectacular gatherings of animal life on the planet. “It’s absolutely catastrophic,” said Calvin Cottar, the owner of an upscale safari camp.
Kenya’s billion-dollar tourism industry, which injects critically needed foreign exchange into the economy, is hardly the only victim. The election crisis, which started when Kenya’s election commission declared the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, the winner of a closely contested race, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, has killed more than 1,000 people and balkanized Kenya, with hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes and resettling in ethnically homogenous zones.
The violence punched a hole through the economy, disrupting coffee and tea production, knocking down the stock market’s value and bruising transport, manufacturing, construction and nearly every other industry — except maybe the funeral trade.
Tourism could take among the longest to bounce back, because it is especially sensitive to perceptions, and the well-publicized bloodshed of the past two months has badly dented Kenya’s image. Last year, the country had more than two million tourists. In January, there were only 55,000 new arrivals, well below projections. The truth is that most of the violence has subsided and it never really touched the tourist areas, like the Masai Mara.
But many Western governments seem to think otherwise. Australia is still warning its citizens traveling to Kenya to stay indoors, not exactly the greatest plug for game watching.
“These warnings are a real problem for us,” Mr. Cottar said. Even if the game lodges have been perfectly safe, he said, people have not wanted to come to Kenya if they think “they will be drinking Champagne while somebody is getting hacked to death over the hill.”
His resort is as good an example as any. Cottars 1920s Mara Safari Camp is one of the most luxurious lodges in Kenya, charging up to $710 a night per person, and is usually booked solid at this time of year. Now it is deserted.
It is nestled in an especially picturesque corner of the Masai Mara, overlooking the green hills of Africa that inspired Ernest Hemingway and so many others. The lodge plays up the old-school theme, decked out with leather trunks, brass telescopes and pith helmets. On Sunday, the only guests were a couple from Kenya who paid cut-rate local prices, which allow the lodges to stay open — but just barely.
The couple, James and Lel Cartwright, arrived in their own plane. For once, the air over the Masai Mara was clear as glass. “It was stunning,” Mrs. Cartwright said. “There’s usually a wall of dust from all the minibuses.”
The staff at Cottars threw on their fezzes and best smiles. But underneath they seemed down. Their salaries have been halved. The tips have dried up. Daniel Lanke, a waiter at Cottars, just enrolled his ninth child in private school but now, he said, “I can’t even buy him socks.”
In the villages around the lodge, it is the same story. At the sound of a truck, Masai women dash in from the fields and set up tables full of souvenirs. Some have not sold a necklace for months. “We are going to go hungry,” said one woman, Nalarame Noloswesh, who has seven children.
Many lodges have teamed up with local communities, sharing a slice of their profits in exchange for using the communities’ land. The whole point was to make tourism more profitable than agriculture, so villagers would have an incentive to set aside their land for animals.
Kenya’s tourism officials seem to appreciate the stakes. They are planning to begin a huge marketing campaign to reassure potential visitors that Kenya is safe. Mr. Cottar says that he will donate some of his proceeds to the Kenyan Red Cross to emphasize that “if you go on safari now, you’ll be helping the country.” But those with the means may not wait.
Mr. Rotich, the safari guide, is fully aware of his skills. He is an expert game spotter, speaks impeccable English and seems genuinely interested in every form of life on the veldt, from the towering giraffe to the lowly dung beetle. “This is all I know,” he said.
The other day, he found a herd of 150 elephants eating grass in a clearing. Babies wrestled with one another as their enormous mothers lumbered past.
The elephant train was headed south to Tanzania, where the safari industry is booming because many tourists are flocking there instead. Mr. Rotich said he might join them. “I love Kenya,” he said. “But I have my dreams.”
Reuben Kyama contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
There is a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/opini ... ?th&emc=th
March 2, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Africa’s Next Slaughter
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ABYEI, Sudan
This dusty little town of rutted dirt streets is surrounded by janjaweed, Arab militias armed by the Sudanese government and paid to do its dirty work.
But this isn’t Darfur, where the janjaweed have played the central role in the genocide that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Rather, Abyei is on the edge of southern Sudan, in a region that is supposed to be at peace.
In the 1980s and 1990s, it was here that the government perfected the techniques that later became notorious in Darfur: mass rape and murder by armed militias, so as to terrorize civilians and drive them away. Now Sudan is coming full circle, apparently preparing to apply the same techniques again to Abyei and parts of the south.
With international attention distracted by Darfur and the United States presidential race, the Sudanese government now is chipping away at the 2005 peace treaty that ended the north-south war in Sudan. If war erupts, as many expect, the flash point will probably be here in Abyei, where the northern government is pumping oil from wells it refuses to give up.
“War is going to take place,” Joseph Dut Paguot, the acting government administrator in the Abyei region, said bluntly.
Chol Changath Chol, a representative of South Sudan in Abyei, agreed: “If there are no changes, war will come. It will break out here and spread everywhere.”
Since late November, there have been repeated clashes in the Abyei area between South Sudan’s armed forces and a large tribe of Arab nomads, the Misseriya, which is armed and backed by the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Mr. Paguot said that several hundred people had been killed in these clashes, and that some of the gunmen were government soldiers who had taken off their uniforms to masquerade as tribal fighters.
On Feb. 7, gunmen from the Misseriya shot up and looted a bus arriving in Abyei and began blockading the road that leads into the town from the north. That has cut off supplies, so shops in the town market are running out of fuel and food, and prices are rising.
“It is reaching a critical point for the poor,” said Jason Matus, a United Nations official in Abyei.
A group of Misseriya has appointed officials to create their own government for Abyei and has threatened to march in with thousands of armed men to install it. This is almost exactly the same approach that President Omar al-Bashir has taken in Darfur: arm the janjaweed and unleash them on a black African population, then dismiss the slaughter as just “tribal fighting.”
Mr. Paguot said that 16,000 militia members were gathered on the north side of Abyei, backed by a few tanks and many pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, ready to invade. They aren’t called the janjaweed, but it’s the same idea.
Some local officials and Misseriya elders have worked heroically to avert violence, but state-controlled newspapers in Khartoum are carrying false reports of attacks on Arabs, inflaming tensions.
In the 2005 peace agreement that ended 20 years of war between North and South Sudan, both sides agreed to accept the “final and binding” ruling of the Abyei Boundary Commission. But President Bashir has rejected the findings because they would mean giving up oil wells.
The agreement came about because of tireless diplomacy by the Bush administration, but since then Washington has dropped the ball. It is still possible to avert a new slaughter here, but only if there is a major international effort — involving the United Nations, Egypt, China and Europe as well as the United States — to ensure that the peace agreement is followed and that President Bashir will pay a price for attacking the south.
A crucial step would be for China to suspend transfers of arms to Sudan until the Khartoum government works for peace with the south and in Darfur. Unfortunately, China refuses to take that step.
Mr. Bashir’s plan seems to be to encourage Arab nomads to drive out other ethnic groups from areas with oil. Then once fighting begins, he would have an excuse to cancel national elections next year — which he would almost surely lose — and he might be able to rally Sudanese Arabs behind him in a nationalist campaign to hold on to the oil fields.
So remember this little town of Abyei. It’s the tinderbox for Africa’s next war, which will probably resemble Darfur but be carried out on a much wider scale.
“If there is just one bullet in Abyei,” said Col. Valentino Tocmac, the commander of the south’s forces here, “that will be the end of the peace.”
Comment on this column on my blog at: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/opini ... ?th&emc=th
March 2, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Africa’s Next Slaughter
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ABYEI, Sudan
This dusty little town of rutted dirt streets is surrounded by janjaweed, Arab militias armed by the Sudanese government and paid to do its dirty work.
But this isn’t Darfur, where the janjaweed have played the central role in the genocide that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Rather, Abyei is on the edge of southern Sudan, in a region that is supposed to be at peace.
In the 1980s and 1990s, it was here that the government perfected the techniques that later became notorious in Darfur: mass rape and murder by armed militias, so as to terrorize civilians and drive them away. Now Sudan is coming full circle, apparently preparing to apply the same techniques again to Abyei and parts of the south.
With international attention distracted by Darfur and the United States presidential race, the Sudanese government now is chipping away at the 2005 peace treaty that ended the north-south war in Sudan. If war erupts, as many expect, the flash point will probably be here in Abyei, where the northern government is pumping oil from wells it refuses to give up.
“War is going to take place,” Joseph Dut Paguot, the acting government administrator in the Abyei region, said bluntly.
Chol Changath Chol, a representative of South Sudan in Abyei, agreed: “If there are no changes, war will come. It will break out here and spread everywhere.”
Since late November, there have been repeated clashes in the Abyei area between South Sudan’s armed forces and a large tribe of Arab nomads, the Misseriya, which is armed and backed by the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Mr. Paguot said that several hundred people had been killed in these clashes, and that some of the gunmen were government soldiers who had taken off their uniforms to masquerade as tribal fighters.
On Feb. 7, gunmen from the Misseriya shot up and looted a bus arriving in Abyei and began blockading the road that leads into the town from the north. That has cut off supplies, so shops in the town market are running out of fuel and food, and prices are rising.
“It is reaching a critical point for the poor,” said Jason Matus, a United Nations official in Abyei.
A group of Misseriya has appointed officials to create their own government for Abyei and has threatened to march in with thousands of armed men to install it. This is almost exactly the same approach that President Omar al-Bashir has taken in Darfur: arm the janjaweed and unleash them on a black African population, then dismiss the slaughter as just “tribal fighting.”
Mr. Paguot said that 16,000 militia members were gathered on the north side of Abyei, backed by a few tanks and many pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, ready to invade. They aren’t called the janjaweed, but it’s the same idea.
Some local officials and Misseriya elders have worked heroically to avert violence, but state-controlled newspapers in Khartoum are carrying false reports of attacks on Arabs, inflaming tensions.
In the 2005 peace agreement that ended 20 years of war between North and South Sudan, both sides agreed to accept the “final and binding” ruling of the Abyei Boundary Commission. But President Bashir has rejected the findings because they would mean giving up oil wells.
The agreement came about because of tireless diplomacy by the Bush administration, but since then Washington has dropped the ball. It is still possible to avert a new slaughter here, but only if there is a major international effort — involving the United Nations, Egypt, China and Europe as well as the United States — to ensure that the peace agreement is followed and that President Bashir will pay a price for attacking the south.
A crucial step would be for China to suspend transfers of arms to Sudan until the Khartoum government works for peace with the south and in Darfur. Unfortunately, China refuses to take that step.
Mr. Bashir’s plan seems to be to encourage Arab nomads to drive out other ethnic groups from areas with oil. Then once fighting begins, he would have an excuse to cancel national elections next year — which he would almost surely lose — and he might be able to rally Sudanese Arabs behind him in a nationalist campaign to hold on to the oil fields.
So remember this little town of Abyei. It’s the tinderbox for Africa’s next war, which will probably resemble Darfur but be carried out on a much wider scale.
“If there is just one bullet in Abyei,” said Col. Valentino Tocmac, the commander of the south’s forces here, “that will be the end of the peace.”
Comment on this column on my blog at: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.
March 3, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
African Genocide Averted
By ROGER COHEN
NAIROBI, Kenya
For Kofi Annan, the Kenyan peace negotiations began in a Geneva hospital.
The former UN secretary general was on his way to the airport on Jan. 15 when a fever obliged him to turn around. Doctors wanted him hospitalized for 10 days, ''so negotiations for my release after five days began right there.'' He used the time to place calls to U.S., European and African leaders.
His message, he told me, was clear: ''I said we have to make sure there's just one mediation process. Otherwise you have the protagonists trying to bottom shop, looking elsewhere if they don't like what you're offering. You get diplomatic tourism and that's no good.''
Kenya was burning. Kenya, the stable East African country from which international officials had fanned out to confront crises in Somalia, Rwanda and Darfur. Kenya, impossible mosaic of some 40 tribes that somehow held. That Kenya, 45 years after independence, was fissuring.
Annan, arriving on Jan 22, had one obsession: ''We can't let this happen to Kenya.'' Not after the one million dead between Rwanda and Darfur. Not after his UN tenure produced agreement at the world summit of 2005 on ''R2P'' the global ''responsibility to protect'' citizens in states whose own governments prove unable to do so.
''Kenya had been the safe haven in a tumultuous region and suddenly Kenya itself was going,'' Annan said. ''And when you have ethnic violence, if you don't mediate quickly, you get a hopeless situation.''
Yes, ethnic killing erupts like milk boiling up. Within weeks of the disputed Dec. 27 election, several hundred dead had pushed several hundred thousand people into flight. A single tribal murder is a huge dispersal multiplier: one dead, one thousand on the move. The math of national decomposition is implacable.
Luos killing Kikuyus. Kikuyus murdering in revenge. Kalenjins getting in the mix. Everywhere, ethnic lines being drawn in blood and ashes.
We've seen this movie once too often since the Cold War ended.
My colleague Jeffrey Gettleman, who has chronicled the Kenyan crisis with immense authority, speaks of ''Annan Zen.'' Annan needed that imperturbability. The atmosphere between the Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, who had been declared the narrow winner of a demonstrably rigged election, and Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who felt robbed, was ''very icy,'' Annan said.
A little over a month later, the remarkable power-sharing outcome can, I believe, serve as a model: Call it the Nairobi paradigm or Annan's R2P marker.
A regional organization, in this case the African Union, takes the lead in providing a mandate for swift preventive action. The UN Security Council issues a supportive statement. American power is used, not in sledgehammer mode, but with well-timed discretion. Intervention is choreographed by a single authoritative figure prepared to stay five weeks for peace.
Five weeks! Shades of Kissinger in the Middle East. I see Annan's persistence as a reminder of how shallow Bush administration peace pursuits have been, with the exception of Christopher Hill's North Korean labors.
Annan focused first on halting the killing because ''nobody could say I am not for stopping violence.'' He listened to calls for ''reruns, recounts,'' but knew ''bad decisions get people killed.'' He endured harangues from Martha Karua, the justice minister, who said she was ''breathless'' at how Annan was ''encouraging violence and lack of respect for the rule of law'' by demanding power sharing with Odinga.
Kibaki's team kept saying, ''We won it fair and square,'' as Odinga's countered, ''You stole it fair and square.'' Kibaki, a Kikuyu, talked of ''accommodating'' the opposition; Odinga, a Luo, bridled. If pushed, he would form ''an alternative government.''
''It took a while to convince them that there was no way either side could run the country without the other, that it was a perfect political gridlock,'' Annan told me.
He got a German official to explain grand coalitions. He got Jakaya Kikwete, the Tanzanian leader, to talk about how presidents and prime ministers work together. He was helped by President George W. Bush declaring during his recent African visit that ''there ought to be a power sharing agreement.''
Kibaki's foreign minister retorted that Kenya would not be ''given conditions by foreign states'' — the old anti-imperialist thing. But this was international intervention of another kind. The pressure cornered Kibaki. He ceded, empowering Odinga as a prime minister with authority anchored by constitutional change.
''When we talk of intervention, people think of the military,'' Annan said. ''But under R2P, force is a last resort. Political and diplomatic intervention is the first mechanism. And I think we've seen a successful example of its application.''
Some will quibble over technicalities, but Kenya kindled the somnolent spirit of R2P. We've also seen American might in subtler guise: listening better, applying soft power. That's another reason what happened in Nairobi matters so much.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
Op-Ed Columnist
African Genocide Averted
By ROGER COHEN
NAIROBI, Kenya
For Kofi Annan, the Kenyan peace negotiations began in a Geneva hospital.
The former UN secretary general was on his way to the airport on Jan. 15 when a fever obliged him to turn around. Doctors wanted him hospitalized for 10 days, ''so negotiations for my release after five days began right there.'' He used the time to place calls to U.S., European and African leaders.
His message, he told me, was clear: ''I said we have to make sure there's just one mediation process. Otherwise you have the protagonists trying to bottom shop, looking elsewhere if they don't like what you're offering. You get diplomatic tourism and that's no good.''
Kenya was burning. Kenya, the stable East African country from which international officials had fanned out to confront crises in Somalia, Rwanda and Darfur. Kenya, impossible mosaic of some 40 tribes that somehow held. That Kenya, 45 years after independence, was fissuring.
Annan, arriving on Jan 22, had one obsession: ''We can't let this happen to Kenya.'' Not after the one million dead between Rwanda and Darfur. Not after his UN tenure produced agreement at the world summit of 2005 on ''R2P'' the global ''responsibility to protect'' citizens in states whose own governments prove unable to do so.
''Kenya had been the safe haven in a tumultuous region and suddenly Kenya itself was going,'' Annan said. ''And when you have ethnic violence, if you don't mediate quickly, you get a hopeless situation.''
Yes, ethnic killing erupts like milk boiling up. Within weeks of the disputed Dec. 27 election, several hundred dead had pushed several hundred thousand people into flight. A single tribal murder is a huge dispersal multiplier: one dead, one thousand on the move. The math of national decomposition is implacable.
Luos killing Kikuyus. Kikuyus murdering in revenge. Kalenjins getting in the mix. Everywhere, ethnic lines being drawn in blood and ashes.
We've seen this movie once too often since the Cold War ended.
My colleague Jeffrey Gettleman, who has chronicled the Kenyan crisis with immense authority, speaks of ''Annan Zen.'' Annan needed that imperturbability. The atmosphere between the Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, who had been declared the narrow winner of a demonstrably rigged election, and Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who felt robbed, was ''very icy,'' Annan said.
A little over a month later, the remarkable power-sharing outcome can, I believe, serve as a model: Call it the Nairobi paradigm or Annan's R2P marker.
A regional organization, in this case the African Union, takes the lead in providing a mandate for swift preventive action. The UN Security Council issues a supportive statement. American power is used, not in sledgehammer mode, but with well-timed discretion. Intervention is choreographed by a single authoritative figure prepared to stay five weeks for peace.
Five weeks! Shades of Kissinger in the Middle East. I see Annan's persistence as a reminder of how shallow Bush administration peace pursuits have been, with the exception of Christopher Hill's North Korean labors.
Annan focused first on halting the killing because ''nobody could say I am not for stopping violence.'' He listened to calls for ''reruns, recounts,'' but knew ''bad decisions get people killed.'' He endured harangues from Martha Karua, the justice minister, who said she was ''breathless'' at how Annan was ''encouraging violence and lack of respect for the rule of law'' by demanding power sharing with Odinga.
Kibaki's team kept saying, ''We won it fair and square,'' as Odinga's countered, ''You stole it fair and square.'' Kibaki, a Kikuyu, talked of ''accommodating'' the opposition; Odinga, a Luo, bridled. If pushed, he would form ''an alternative government.''
''It took a while to convince them that there was no way either side could run the country without the other, that it was a perfect political gridlock,'' Annan told me.
He got a German official to explain grand coalitions. He got Jakaya Kikwete, the Tanzanian leader, to talk about how presidents and prime ministers work together. He was helped by President George W. Bush declaring during his recent African visit that ''there ought to be a power sharing agreement.''
Kibaki's foreign minister retorted that Kenya would not be ''given conditions by foreign states'' — the old anti-imperialist thing. But this was international intervention of another kind. The pressure cornered Kibaki. He ceded, empowering Odinga as a prime minister with authority anchored by constitutional change.
''When we talk of intervention, people think of the military,'' Annan said. ''But under R2P, force is a last resort. Political and diplomatic intervention is the first mechanism. And I think we've seen a successful example of its application.''
Some will quibble over technicalities, but Kenya kindled the somnolent spirit of R2P. We've also seen American might in subtler guise: listening better, applying soft power. That's another reason what happened in Nairobi matters so much.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
March 13, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Global Rose as Social Tool
By ROGER COHEN
NAIVASHA, Kenya – The view persists that a rose is a rose is a rose. But that's so 20th century! In this new era a rose is a global product vested with the power to bring social and environmental change.
I am not asking you to remove the romance from a rose, for that would be asking too much, but as you pick out blooms for your beloved at the supermarket, try resetting your rose associations in order to see the world as it is.
From here in Kenya's Rift Valley, Longonot Horticulture exports 90,000 rose stems a day. Its rose bushes come in red, yellow, orange, white, pink and cerise. Whatever color bunch a London or Copenhagen supermarket needs, it will provide pronto.
Flower production has grown rapidly. Longonot started with just 10 acres of roses in 2002; it now farms 60 acres. "The conditions are right," Harry Milbank, the general manager, told me. "You've got many hours of sunlight and high altitude coolness. If it's too hot, the rose bolts. It puts out a flower with a small head."
Nobody loves a bolting rose, of course. Long stems and large heads are prized. As with good wine, too much heat is the enemy of refinement.
Milbank, from a white Zimbabwean farming family targeted by the peevish tyrant Robert Mugabe, ushered me into a greenhouse of 60,000 bushes. He explained how the planting is done at a slight slope so that water is recuperated and the need to cut when a bud is neither too tight nor too open.
"If there's too much cerise," he said, "We hold back and send yellow."
Now, walk yourselves back from those pretty yellow roses on a store shelf and what you find is this: Kenyan women in green uniforms, taking roses from a cold room, cutting them to a standard length of 20.5 inches, removing leaves and thorns, bunching them, and wrapping them (complete with plant food package).
Within two days, the roses will be in Europe, probably Britain, where 70 percent of production goes. A small number is flown to the United States. By the fifth day, they will be in supermarkets. A four-day shelf life is allowed, and a 7-day guarantee is given buyers. So the roses must be good for just over two weeks.
Most of the roses I saw were destined for the Sainsbury's supermarket chain in Britain, with a price tag of the equivalent of $10 already affixed. I asked Helen Buyaki, aged 27, one of 1,800 employees at the farm, what she earns: "4,500 shillings a month." That's 70 bucks.
Look at the global economy one way and Buyaki earns the equivalent of seven bunches of roses for a month's labor. That smacks of exploitation. Look at it another and she has a job she'd never have had until globalization came along.
I say what's going on here is hopeful. It's a primer in how globalization can be good for humanity – and not just rich humanity. As Milbank put it, "More and more people want a socially and ethically acceptable rose."
What's that mean? It means Longonot has worked to acquire "fair trade" certification from the International Fair Trade Association, a group that insists producers look after workers in industries from flowers to coffee. Europeans and Americans are increasingly demanding "fair trade" products.
So Buyaki, like others, gets free health care. Workers spraying chemicals have the right protective clothing. Use of chemicals is cut by the breeding of tiny predatory mites that feed on destructive flower-eating mites and by the production of natural compost.
Being anti-globalization is dumb. A good way to improve globalization is to insist on fair trade certification. The harsh edges of capitalism were once rounded in Europe under socialism's rose banner. That's done. Now the challenge is global poverty.
Africans don't need charity. They need the jobs globalization brings. They also need the developed world's social and environmental pressure.
It makes sense to produce flowers here. The carbon footprint of a Kenyan rose is much smaller than that of a Dutch rose grown with artificial heating and lighting.
But life has been hard recently. Kenya's many tribes have long flocked to the Rift Valley for economic opportunity. So when a disputed election sparked ethnic violence, the local toll was heavy.
Longonot was shut down; Luo employees fled to the west and have not returned; a camp down the road houses about 1,300 refugee Luos in tents.
This violence reflects many things, among them how critical African job-creation is. "These clashes are really about poverty. If people have money, they care less who's ruling," Julius Njuguna, a manager, told me.
Think again: roses, refugees and righting African wrongs are linked. A rose that's a social tool can smell as sweet.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
Op-Ed Columnist
The Global Rose as Social Tool
By ROGER COHEN
NAIVASHA, Kenya – The view persists that a rose is a rose is a rose. But that's so 20th century! In this new era a rose is a global product vested with the power to bring social and environmental change.
I am not asking you to remove the romance from a rose, for that would be asking too much, but as you pick out blooms for your beloved at the supermarket, try resetting your rose associations in order to see the world as it is.
From here in Kenya's Rift Valley, Longonot Horticulture exports 90,000 rose stems a day. Its rose bushes come in red, yellow, orange, white, pink and cerise. Whatever color bunch a London or Copenhagen supermarket needs, it will provide pronto.
Flower production has grown rapidly. Longonot started with just 10 acres of roses in 2002; it now farms 60 acres. "The conditions are right," Harry Milbank, the general manager, told me. "You've got many hours of sunlight and high altitude coolness. If it's too hot, the rose bolts. It puts out a flower with a small head."
Nobody loves a bolting rose, of course. Long stems and large heads are prized. As with good wine, too much heat is the enemy of refinement.
Milbank, from a white Zimbabwean farming family targeted by the peevish tyrant Robert Mugabe, ushered me into a greenhouse of 60,000 bushes. He explained how the planting is done at a slight slope so that water is recuperated and the need to cut when a bud is neither too tight nor too open.
"If there's too much cerise," he said, "We hold back and send yellow."
Now, walk yourselves back from those pretty yellow roses on a store shelf and what you find is this: Kenyan women in green uniforms, taking roses from a cold room, cutting them to a standard length of 20.5 inches, removing leaves and thorns, bunching them, and wrapping them (complete with plant food package).
Within two days, the roses will be in Europe, probably Britain, where 70 percent of production goes. A small number is flown to the United States. By the fifth day, they will be in supermarkets. A four-day shelf life is allowed, and a 7-day guarantee is given buyers. So the roses must be good for just over two weeks.
Most of the roses I saw were destined for the Sainsbury's supermarket chain in Britain, with a price tag of the equivalent of $10 already affixed. I asked Helen Buyaki, aged 27, one of 1,800 employees at the farm, what she earns: "4,500 shillings a month." That's 70 bucks.
Look at the global economy one way and Buyaki earns the equivalent of seven bunches of roses for a month's labor. That smacks of exploitation. Look at it another and she has a job she'd never have had until globalization came along.
I say what's going on here is hopeful. It's a primer in how globalization can be good for humanity – and not just rich humanity. As Milbank put it, "More and more people want a socially and ethically acceptable rose."
What's that mean? It means Longonot has worked to acquire "fair trade" certification from the International Fair Trade Association, a group that insists producers look after workers in industries from flowers to coffee. Europeans and Americans are increasingly demanding "fair trade" products.
So Buyaki, like others, gets free health care. Workers spraying chemicals have the right protective clothing. Use of chemicals is cut by the breeding of tiny predatory mites that feed on destructive flower-eating mites and by the production of natural compost.
Being anti-globalization is dumb. A good way to improve globalization is to insist on fair trade certification. The harsh edges of capitalism were once rounded in Europe under socialism's rose banner. That's done. Now the challenge is global poverty.
Africans don't need charity. They need the jobs globalization brings. They also need the developed world's social and environmental pressure.
It makes sense to produce flowers here. The carbon footprint of a Kenyan rose is much smaller than that of a Dutch rose grown with artificial heating and lighting.
But life has been hard recently. Kenya's many tribes have long flocked to the Rift Valley for economic opportunity. So when a disputed election sparked ethnic violence, the local toll was heavy.
Longonot was shut down; Luo employees fled to the west and have not returned; a camp down the road houses about 1,300 refugee Luos in tents.
This violence reflects many things, among them how critical African job-creation is. "These clashes are really about poverty. If people have money, they care less who's ruling," Julius Njuguna, a manager, told me.
Think again: roses, refugees and righting African wrongs are linked. A rose that's a social tool can smell as sweet.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
March 29, 2008
Stalemate in Kenya Over Top Posts
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Power-sharing in Kenya, apparently, is easier said than done.
Exactly one month after Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, and its top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, signed a power-sharing agreement in front of hundreds of cheering Kenyans and the world’s news media, the two remained deadlocked Friday over the formation of a new government.
Their agreement was supposed to usher in a “grand coalition,” billed as the only way to end two months of postelection bloodshed, ethnic tension and destruction that had turned Kenya, once a paradigm of stability, nearly upside down.
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, who helped broker the agreement, was hailed as a national hero. Pictures of his goateed face have festooned matatus, the rugged little minibuses that prowl Kenya’s streets. A baby rhino has even been named after him.
But his work may not be over. On Friday, the two sides continued to bicker over cabinet posts. Mr. Kibaki has offered the opposition a number of ministries, including roads, public works and tourism and wildlife, but Mr. Odinga, who is poised to become the prime minister of the new unity government, is holding out for the meatier portfolios, like finance.
Mr. Kibaki cannot part with that because “the president sets the national agenda, and finance is part of the national agenda,” according to Alfred Mutua, the president’s spokesman. The president, as commander in chief, is also refusing to give up control of internal security, defense and foreign affairs.
“We were naïve to think that after the coalition agreement, we would sit down as partners,” Mr. Mutua said. “They came sitting down as adversaries.”
The opposition says the agreement is not about partners or adversaries; it is about fairness.
“It can’t be that one side gets the 10 most important ministries and the other side gets the balance,” said Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman. “We’re being extremely reasonable. We’re just saying, ‘Stick to the spirit of the agreement.’ ”
And now Mr. Annan seems to be getting dragged back into the dispute. He spoke to both men by telephone this week, and the two sides have sent documents to him in New York, laying out their positions.
Mr. Annan’s response is, “They are big boys and can handle this themselves,” according to a person close to Mr. Annan who was not authorized to speak publicly. “What are we going to do? Have him fly back every time they hit a hard patch? They know what a grand coalition is. It’s time for them to do it.”
Meanwhile, many of the more than half million Kenyans displaced by the violence continue to suffer. Three women died this week at a camp for displaced people from exposure to cold weather, according to local news reports.
****
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/world ... ?th&emc=th
March 29, 2008
Somalia’s Government Teeters on Collapse
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week.
Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.
Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“I feel this slipping away,” he said.
By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support. When it took power here in the capital 15 months ago, backed by thousands of Ethiopian troops, it was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia’s ceaseless cycles of war and suffering.
But now its leaders say that unless they get more help — international peacekeepers, weapons, training and money to pay their soldiers, among other things — this transitional government will fall just like the 13 governments that came before it.
Less than a third of the promised African Union soldiers have arrived, the United Nations has shied away from sending peacekeepers and even the Ethiopians are taking a back seat, often leaving the government’s defense to teenage Somalis with clackety guns who are overwhelmed.
The Islamists have been gaining recruits, overrunning towns and becoming bolder. The new prime minister, credited as the government’s best — and possibly last — hope, is reaching out to them, and some are receptive. But it is unclear whether he has the power within his own divided government to strike a meaningful peace deal before it is too late.
The looming failure is making many people here and abroad question the strategy of installing the transitional government by force. In December 2006, Ethiopian troops, aided by American intelligence, ousted the Islamist administration that briefly controlled Mogadishu, bringing the transitional government to the city for the first time.
The Bush administration said it was concerned about terrorists using Somalia as a sanctuary. The hunt for them continued with a recent American cruise missile strike aimed at a suspect in southern Somalia, but it missed, and wounded several civilians and promptly incited protests.
Many Somalis, European diplomats and critics in Congress also question the State Department’s decision this month to label a Somali resistance group a terrorist organization, which many fear will only raise its profile among the increasingly disillusioned populace.
“The policy has failed,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. “We’re Baghdad-izing Mogadishu and Somalia. We’re making people feel wrongly treated and pushing them toward more radical positions.”
In recent weeks, the Islamists have routed warlords and militiamen who have been absorbed into the government forces but are undermining what little progress transitional leaders have made with their predatory tactics, like stealing food. After 17 years of civil war, Somalia’s violence seems to be driven not so much by clan hatred, ideology or religiosity, but by something much simpler: survival.
“We haven’t been paid in eight months,” said a government soldier named Hassan, who said he could not reveal his last name. “We rob people so we can eat.”
Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister, does not deny that government troops rob civilians. “This is the biggest problem we have,” he said in an interview this month.
But, he said, he does not have the money to pay them. Each month, more than half of government’s revenue, mostly from port taxes, disappears — stolen by “our people,” the prime minister said.
That leaves Mr. Nur with about $18 million a year to run a failed state of nine million of some of the world’s neediest, most collectively traumatized people.
And a failed state may be a generous term. In many ways, Somalia is not a state at all, but more a lawless space between its neighbors and the sea. Sometimes it seems that if anything binds this country together, it is scar tissue.
Take Hassan Ali Elmi, who was blinded by a bullet in 1992 and has been living ever since in a cell-like room in the gutted former Ministry of Public Works building. His son tugs him into town to beg for the equivalent of a few pennies a day, which buy less and less. At night, he lies on a thin foam mattress and waits for the shooting to stop. It doesn’t.
“All Somalia, all gun,” he said.
His neighbors are recently displaced people living in cardboard huts that crumble in the rain. Aid organizations say that more than half of Mogadishu’s estimated one million people are on the run.
War, drought, displacement, high food prices and the exodus of aid workers, many of the elements that lined up in the early 1990s to create a famine, are lining up again. The United Nations World Food Program said on Thursday, in a warning titled “Somalia Sinking Deeper Into Abyss of Suffering,” that the country was the most dangerous in the world for aid workers.
Most Somalis do not argue with that. They say Mogadishu is more capriciously violent than it has ever been, with roadside bombs, militias shelling one another across neighborhoods, doctors getting shot in the head and 10-year-olds hurling grenades. Police officials said that many insurgents were actually hungry children paid a few dollars for their work.
In the shrinking zone that the government controls in southern Mogadishu, a couple of buildings have been splashed with a fresh coat of paint. Girls wearing bandannas dribble basketballs in a gym. Men sell fish by the seaside. A beat of life goes on. But north Mogadishu is another story.
“It’s like ‘Mad Max’ out there,” said Abdi Awaleh Jama, an ambassador at large, pointing from the presidential palace north toward the expanse of huts and ruins stretching into the distance.
In the rat-tat-tat of nightly machine-gun fire, people are beginning to hear the government’s death knell. Many residents have mixed feelings about this. They contend that the government has enabled warlords. They say, almost without exception, that things were better under the Islamists. But they fear what lies ahead.
“We’re getting addicted to anarchy,” said Dahabo Abdulleh, a fuel seller.
Mr. Nur, a former Red Crescent official who became prime minister in November, is trying to peel away moderate Islamists from militant ones and get them to negotiate. He is making concessions to business leaders, who are widely suspected of financing the Islamists out of clan allegiances, and allowing them to form their own protection force. United Nations officials are trying to help Mr. Nur’s prospects by providing $14 million to pay key government salaries and fix up ministries.
“This is urgent,” said William Paton, the acting United Nations coordinator for Somalia. “They are on thin ice.”
Government officials say much of the resistance is simply spoilers who are deeply invested in the status quo of chaos, like gun runners, counterfeiters and importers of expired baby formula.
But some of the men believed to be the biggest spoilers are part of the government. To get clan support and — just as crucially — more militiamen, transitional leaders have cut deals with warlords like Mohammed Dheere, now Mogadishu’s mayor, and Abdi Qeybdid, now the police chief. These are the same men whom the C.I.A. paid in 2006 to fight the Islamists, a strategy that backfired because the population turned against them, mostly because of their legacy of terrorizing civilians.
Hassan, the government soldier, said he had been in one of these warlord militias since he was 8. He cannot read or write. He has thin wrists, a delicate face, empty eyes and a wife and two children to feed, which is why he said he routinely robs people.
“We are losing,” he said.
He said many of his friends were defecting to the Islamists because that was the only way to survive.
The Islamists have briefly captured several towns in recent weeks, freeing prisoners, snatching weapons and then melting back into the bush. Gone are the beards and the checkered scarves they used to wear. Many, like a young man named Elmi, are clean-shaven and favor crisply pressed suits.
Elmi, who like Hassan said he could not reveal his last name, said business owners sold gold, real estate and sheep to raise money for the Islamists. Elmi said that he was part of the battle at the market on March 20 that began with the looting, and that the government lost three trucks, which was corroborated by government soldiers.
“We were there because we are everywhere,” Elmi said.
Mr. Abdirizak, the government official, buried some of the victims of that battle, young government troops who were slipped into graves behind the presidential palace in the moonlight.
A soldier, Abdi Rashid, had been wounded in another firefight about a month before, and according to Mr. Abdirizak, “he shouldn’t even have been out there that day. It’s just that we don’t have enough guys.”
Mr. Abdi was shot in the heart at the market as the Islamists surrounded government troops. His last words to his friends, who wanted to carry him to safety, were, “Get out of here, get out of here!”
Mr. Abdirizak fell silent.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll stay,” he finally said. “I want to help. But I didn’t come here to get killed.”
Stalemate in Kenya Over Top Posts
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Power-sharing in Kenya, apparently, is easier said than done.
Exactly one month after Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, and its top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, signed a power-sharing agreement in front of hundreds of cheering Kenyans and the world’s news media, the two remained deadlocked Friday over the formation of a new government.
Their agreement was supposed to usher in a “grand coalition,” billed as the only way to end two months of postelection bloodshed, ethnic tension and destruction that had turned Kenya, once a paradigm of stability, nearly upside down.
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, who helped broker the agreement, was hailed as a national hero. Pictures of his goateed face have festooned matatus, the rugged little minibuses that prowl Kenya’s streets. A baby rhino has even been named after him.
But his work may not be over. On Friday, the two sides continued to bicker over cabinet posts. Mr. Kibaki has offered the opposition a number of ministries, including roads, public works and tourism and wildlife, but Mr. Odinga, who is poised to become the prime minister of the new unity government, is holding out for the meatier portfolios, like finance.
Mr. Kibaki cannot part with that because “the president sets the national agenda, and finance is part of the national agenda,” according to Alfred Mutua, the president’s spokesman. The president, as commander in chief, is also refusing to give up control of internal security, defense and foreign affairs.
“We were naïve to think that after the coalition agreement, we would sit down as partners,” Mr. Mutua said. “They came sitting down as adversaries.”
The opposition says the agreement is not about partners or adversaries; it is about fairness.
“It can’t be that one side gets the 10 most important ministries and the other side gets the balance,” said Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman. “We’re being extremely reasonable. We’re just saying, ‘Stick to the spirit of the agreement.’ ”
And now Mr. Annan seems to be getting dragged back into the dispute. He spoke to both men by telephone this week, and the two sides have sent documents to him in New York, laying out their positions.
Mr. Annan’s response is, “They are big boys and can handle this themselves,” according to a person close to Mr. Annan who was not authorized to speak publicly. “What are we going to do? Have him fly back every time they hit a hard patch? They know what a grand coalition is. It’s time for them to do it.”
Meanwhile, many of the more than half million Kenyans displaced by the violence continue to suffer. Three women died this week at a camp for displaced people from exposure to cold weather, according to local news reports.
****
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/world ... ?th&emc=th
March 29, 2008
Somalia’s Government Teeters on Collapse
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week.
Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.
Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“I feel this slipping away,” he said.
By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support. When it took power here in the capital 15 months ago, backed by thousands of Ethiopian troops, it was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia’s ceaseless cycles of war and suffering.
But now its leaders say that unless they get more help — international peacekeepers, weapons, training and money to pay their soldiers, among other things — this transitional government will fall just like the 13 governments that came before it.
Less than a third of the promised African Union soldiers have arrived, the United Nations has shied away from sending peacekeepers and even the Ethiopians are taking a back seat, often leaving the government’s defense to teenage Somalis with clackety guns who are overwhelmed.
The Islamists have been gaining recruits, overrunning towns and becoming bolder. The new prime minister, credited as the government’s best — and possibly last — hope, is reaching out to them, and some are receptive. But it is unclear whether he has the power within his own divided government to strike a meaningful peace deal before it is too late.
The looming failure is making many people here and abroad question the strategy of installing the transitional government by force. In December 2006, Ethiopian troops, aided by American intelligence, ousted the Islamist administration that briefly controlled Mogadishu, bringing the transitional government to the city for the first time.
The Bush administration said it was concerned about terrorists using Somalia as a sanctuary. The hunt for them continued with a recent American cruise missile strike aimed at a suspect in southern Somalia, but it missed, and wounded several civilians and promptly incited protests.
Many Somalis, European diplomats and critics in Congress also question the State Department’s decision this month to label a Somali resistance group a terrorist organization, which many fear will only raise its profile among the increasingly disillusioned populace.
“The policy has failed,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. “We’re Baghdad-izing Mogadishu and Somalia. We’re making people feel wrongly treated and pushing them toward more radical positions.”
In recent weeks, the Islamists have routed warlords and militiamen who have been absorbed into the government forces but are undermining what little progress transitional leaders have made with their predatory tactics, like stealing food. After 17 years of civil war, Somalia’s violence seems to be driven not so much by clan hatred, ideology or religiosity, but by something much simpler: survival.
“We haven’t been paid in eight months,” said a government soldier named Hassan, who said he could not reveal his last name. “We rob people so we can eat.”
Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister, does not deny that government troops rob civilians. “This is the biggest problem we have,” he said in an interview this month.
But, he said, he does not have the money to pay them. Each month, more than half of government’s revenue, mostly from port taxes, disappears — stolen by “our people,” the prime minister said.
That leaves Mr. Nur with about $18 million a year to run a failed state of nine million of some of the world’s neediest, most collectively traumatized people.
And a failed state may be a generous term. In many ways, Somalia is not a state at all, but more a lawless space between its neighbors and the sea. Sometimes it seems that if anything binds this country together, it is scar tissue.
Take Hassan Ali Elmi, who was blinded by a bullet in 1992 and has been living ever since in a cell-like room in the gutted former Ministry of Public Works building. His son tugs him into town to beg for the equivalent of a few pennies a day, which buy less and less. At night, he lies on a thin foam mattress and waits for the shooting to stop. It doesn’t.
“All Somalia, all gun,” he said.
His neighbors are recently displaced people living in cardboard huts that crumble in the rain. Aid organizations say that more than half of Mogadishu’s estimated one million people are on the run.
War, drought, displacement, high food prices and the exodus of aid workers, many of the elements that lined up in the early 1990s to create a famine, are lining up again. The United Nations World Food Program said on Thursday, in a warning titled “Somalia Sinking Deeper Into Abyss of Suffering,” that the country was the most dangerous in the world for aid workers.
Most Somalis do not argue with that. They say Mogadishu is more capriciously violent than it has ever been, with roadside bombs, militias shelling one another across neighborhoods, doctors getting shot in the head and 10-year-olds hurling grenades. Police officials said that many insurgents were actually hungry children paid a few dollars for their work.
In the shrinking zone that the government controls in southern Mogadishu, a couple of buildings have been splashed with a fresh coat of paint. Girls wearing bandannas dribble basketballs in a gym. Men sell fish by the seaside. A beat of life goes on. But north Mogadishu is another story.
“It’s like ‘Mad Max’ out there,” said Abdi Awaleh Jama, an ambassador at large, pointing from the presidential palace north toward the expanse of huts and ruins stretching into the distance.
In the rat-tat-tat of nightly machine-gun fire, people are beginning to hear the government’s death knell. Many residents have mixed feelings about this. They contend that the government has enabled warlords. They say, almost without exception, that things were better under the Islamists. But they fear what lies ahead.
“We’re getting addicted to anarchy,” said Dahabo Abdulleh, a fuel seller.
Mr. Nur, a former Red Crescent official who became prime minister in November, is trying to peel away moderate Islamists from militant ones and get them to negotiate. He is making concessions to business leaders, who are widely suspected of financing the Islamists out of clan allegiances, and allowing them to form their own protection force. United Nations officials are trying to help Mr. Nur’s prospects by providing $14 million to pay key government salaries and fix up ministries.
“This is urgent,” said William Paton, the acting United Nations coordinator for Somalia. “They are on thin ice.”
Government officials say much of the resistance is simply spoilers who are deeply invested in the status quo of chaos, like gun runners, counterfeiters and importers of expired baby formula.
But some of the men believed to be the biggest spoilers are part of the government. To get clan support and — just as crucially — more militiamen, transitional leaders have cut deals with warlords like Mohammed Dheere, now Mogadishu’s mayor, and Abdi Qeybdid, now the police chief. These are the same men whom the C.I.A. paid in 2006 to fight the Islamists, a strategy that backfired because the population turned against them, mostly because of their legacy of terrorizing civilians.
Hassan, the government soldier, said he had been in one of these warlord militias since he was 8. He cannot read or write. He has thin wrists, a delicate face, empty eyes and a wife and two children to feed, which is why he said he routinely robs people.
“We are losing,” he said.
He said many of his friends were defecting to the Islamists because that was the only way to survive.
The Islamists have briefly captured several towns in recent weeks, freeing prisoners, snatching weapons and then melting back into the bush. Gone are the beards and the checkered scarves they used to wear. Many, like a young man named Elmi, are clean-shaven and favor crisply pressed suits.
Elmi, who like Hassan said he could not reveal his last name, said business owners sold gold, real estate and sheep to raise money for the Islamists. Elmi said that he was part of the battle at the market on March 20 that began with the looting, and that the government lost three trucks, which was corroborated by government soldiers.
“We were there because we are everywhere,” Elmi said.
Mr. Abdirizak, the government official, buried some of the victims of that battle, young government troops who were slipped into graves behind the presidential palace in the moonlight.
A soldier, Abdi Rashid, had been wounded in another firefight about a month before, and according to Mr. Abdirizak, “he shouldn’t even have been out there that day. It’s just that we don’t have enough guys.”
Mr. Abdi was shot in the heart at the market as the Islamists surrounded government troops. His last words to his friends, who wanted to carry him to safety, were, “Get out of here, get out of here!”
Mr. Abdirizak fell silent.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll stay,” he finally said. “I want to help. But I didn’t come here to get killed.”
A tiny ray of hope for Africa
Timothy Giannuzzi
Calgary Herald
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Tyranny might be about to breathe its last, if only in one tiny corner of the globe. By Wednesday, results from Saturday's general election in Zimbabwe had trickled in with a rapidity that would embarrass a glacier, but they were emerging. Together with independent polling, they indicate that the wretched country's ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and its iron-fisted president, Robert Mugabe, lost the election or might at least have to face a run-off against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Observers in and out of the country were wary, suspicious that skulduggery was afoot and that the delay was just an opportunity for the government to unleash its arsenal of dirty tricks in an all-out effort for survival. However, some reports out of Zimbabwe suggest the pause was occasioned by negotiations between Mugabe and the opposition aimed at hashing out a means for the 84-year-old dictator to step down safely (i.e., without having to pay for his crimes).
Regardless of the outcome, the situation in Zimbabwe points to an interesting conclusion: the notion that Africa can heal itself. There's no denying the urgent need.
Africa acquired its epithet, the Dark Continent, in the 19th century from Europeans largely ignorant of its geography, but today the name is more apt than ever. Take a look at a composite satellite map of the Earth at night. Europe and the Middle East are jewel-bright, afire with myriad glimmering lights like stationary fireflies. By contrast, save for a few forlorn spots mostly on its fringes, neighbouring Africa is a light-sucking void, shadowed in gloom.
Despite endless goodwill in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars of aid money and debt forgiveness, Africa remains poor, poorly governed and poorly developed and these shadows seem unlikely to lift any time soon. Africa is projected to suffer worst from climate change despite being least able to cope with it. Meanwhile, despite the spread of (and lack of a cure for) AIDS, Africa's population will roughly double over the next 50 years even as resources diminish. In the worst affected parts of Africa (the extreme south), a full third of the adult population is already infected with AIDS.
The outlook for African governance is no better. Now that China has arrived in the region with pocketfuls of cash, a hunger for resources and no qualms, ruling kleptocrats have even less incentive to pay heed to the nagging of First World governments who formerly held the purse strings. All this means Africa, already restricted in world markets by protectionism, will become less competitive and less able to develop.
So, Africa is slated to become a poorer, more disease-ridden, more crowded and probably more violent place. This is not a justification to give up, but rather a reason to consider the results of the Zimbabwean election hopeful.
Zimbabwe is the basket case of Africa, so badly mismanaged that inflation has topped 100,000 per cent, average life expectancy has declined to the mid-30s, an estimated
80 per cent of the population is unemployed and almost a quarter of the population has emigrated. The economy is in the toilet, thanks to cronyism and land seizures, and the government has responded to the crisis by driving millions of the poor out of slums and into homelessness. Zimbabwe is about as low as any country can get.
The amazing thing is that, despite all this, Zimbabweans have still shown up in large numbers to boot Mugabe and the ZANU-PF out of office. Emigrants have even returned from South Africa just to vote. Expectations of proper behaviour have altered so much that Mugabe has even behaved half-decently, refraining from blatantly obvious acts of ballot-stuffing or intimidation , probably because the glare of worldwide attention and the force of concerted opposition have left the government on the defensive and uncertain how to proceed. Talk of a deal, although officially denied, could very well be the despot's way of floating a line to gauge public and world opinion about retirement.
The moral of the story is clear. Africa is not doomed to be the land of misery and low expectations forever. Africans' moral outrage can force a new path. Now, if only someone would shove Mugabe onto the sidelines. And keep him there.
Timothy Giannuzzi is a Calgary writer who specializes in foreign affairs. His column appears every second Thursday.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Timothy Giannuzzi
Calgary Herald
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Tyranny might be about to breathe its last, if only in one tiny corner of the globe. By Wednesday, results from Saturday's general election in Zimbabwe had trickled in with a rapidity that would embarrass a glacier, but they were emerging. Together with independent polling, they indicate that the wretched country's ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and its iron-fisted president, Robert Mugabe, lost the election or might at least have to face a run-off against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Observers in and out of the country were wary, suspicious that skulduggery was afoot and that the delay was just an opportunity for the government to unleash its arsenal of dirty tricks in an all-out effort for survival. However, some reports out of Zimbabwe suggest the pause was occasioned by negotiations between Mugabe and the opposition aimed at hashing out a means for the 84-year-old dictator to step down safely (i.e., without having to pay for his crimes).
Regardless of the outcome, the situation in Zimbabwe points to an interesting conclusion: the notion that Africa can heal itself. There's no denying the urgent need.
Africa acquired its epithet, the Dark Continent, in the 19th century from Europeans largely ignorant of its geography, but today the name is more apt than ever. Take a look at a composite satellite map of the Earth at night. Europe and the Middle East are jewel-bright, afire with myriad glimmering lights like stationary fireflies. By contrast, save for a few forlorn spots mostly on its fringes, neighbouring Africa is a light-sucking void, shadowed in gloom.
Despite endless goodwill in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars of aid money and debt forgiveness, Africa remains poor, poorly governed and poorly developed and these shadows seem unlikely to lift any time soon. Africa is projected to suffer worst from climate change despite being least able to cope with it. Meanwhile, despite the spread of (and lack of a cure for) AIDS, Africa's population will roughly double over the next 50 years even as resources diminish. In the worst affected parts of Africa (the extreme south), a full third of the adult population is already infected with AIDS.
The outlook for African governance is no better. Now that China has arrived in the region with pocketfuls of cash, a hunger for resources and no qualms, ruling kleptocrats have even less incentive to pay heed to the nagging of First World governments who formerly held the purse strings. All this means Africa, already restricted in world markets by protectionism, will become less competitive and less able to develop.
So, Africa is slated to become a poorer, more disease-ridden, more crowded and probably more violent place. This is not a justification to give up, but rather a reason to consider the results of the Zimbabwean election hopeful.
Zimbabwe is the basket case of Africa, so badly mismanaged that inflation has topped 100,000 per cent, average life expectancy has declined to the mid-30s, an estimated
80 per cent of the population is unemployed and almost a quarter of the population has emigrated. The economy is in the toilet, thanks to cronyism and land seizures, and the government has responded to the crisis by driving millions of the poor out of slums and into homelessness. Zimbabwe is about as low as any country can get.
The amazing thing is that, despite all this, Zimbabweans have still shown up in large numbers to boot Mugabe and the ZANU-PF out of office. Emigrants have even returned from South Africa just to vote. Expectations of proper behaviour have altered so much that Mugabe has even behaved half-decently, refraining from blatantly obvious acts of ballot-stuffing or intimidation , probably because the glare of worldwide attention and the force of concerted opposition have left the government on the defensive and uncertain how to proceed. Talk of a deal, although officially denied, could very well be the despot's way of floating a line to gauge public and world opinion about retirement.
The moral of the story is clear. Africa is not doomed to be the land of misery and low expectations forever. Africans' moral outrage can force a new path. Now, if only someone would shove Mugabe onto the sidelines. And keep him there.
Timothy Giannuzzi is a Calgary writer who specializes in foreign affairs. His column appears every second Thursday.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
There is a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/world ... ?th&emc=th
April 6, 2008
Displaced Kenyans Live in Limbo as Aid Lags After Election Strife
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Clinton Masheti, 8 years old and all alone, sits on a wooden bench rolling snakes out of clay. When the men came and started burning down houses in his village, his parents ran away — without him.
He now lives in the Nairobi Children’s Home, a place with cheery paintings on the wall and lots of blank little faces. He is among thousands of children lost or abandoned during the fighting that followed Kenya’s disputed election in December. If Clinton’s parents are not found by August, he will be put up for adoption.
“My father was a farmer,” he said.
That seemed to be all he knew.
In another part of town not far away, Jane Wanjiru has been living in muddy uncertainty since January.
She and about 200 other displaced people are camping just up the road from one of Nairobi’s fanciest malls. Their tents and clotheslines are curious sights so close to the Mercedes-Benzes and mansions, a reminder in case anyone here needs one that the issue of displaced people is not isolated to the Rift Valley, where most of the election-related bloodshed was, but has crept into the capital, Nairobi.
Still, very little has been done about it. More than 300,000 people remain homeless, living in camps or staying temporarily with relatives, but top politicians have been preoccupied with haggling over cabinet posts and forming a coalition government.
Officials recently announced that the new government would include 40 ministries, a Kenyan record, and many people fear that the money for salaries, cars and staff for the bloated cabinet will eat into what the displaced people need.
Donors have pledged millions of dollars to build homes and resettle people, but most of that is in limbo. And now it is the rainy season.
Nearly every day, the skies crack open and the water gushes down. Tents collapse, latrines overflow, firewood gets soggy, food goes uncooked and diseases like malaria and the flu flourish. Many of the displaced people are farmers, and the same rains they would have prayed for, had they not been violently driven off their land, are now a curse.
Three women in a camp recently died from exposure to the cold and 5-month-old twins from pneumonia.
“The rains are my biggest fear,” said Naomi Shaban, Kenya’s minister of special programs, who oversees the displaced persons camps. “These people are living in tents, and these are not just showers, they are heavy rains. There is a lot of contamination, with children playing in the water. We anticipate health problems.”
Many displaced people in this nation of 37 million are worried about how long they can survive and feel abandoned by their government. Ms. Wanjiru, who voted for Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, said she did not support him — or any other politician — anymore.
“All we get are words,” she said.
She spends her days washing the few clothes she has and sitting in a cracked plastic chair watching the cars go by. A mother of six with a seventh on the way, she said she did not even have the bus fare to go into town or check out the mall.
“I lost everything,” she said.
Ms. Shaban defended the president, saying he was very concerned about the plight of the displaced people and that helping them is a post-election priority. She said the government had already spent $11 million on food and medicine since January, though the distribution of supplies was sometimes delayed, because some of the people hanging around the displaced persons camps were “impostors” and it took time to verify who the real victims were.
The Kenyan government is asking donor nations, including the United States, to provide nearly $500 million to resettle people and rebuild the tens of thousands of burned down homes, businesses, public utilities and schools.
After the disputed election, supporters of the government and of the leading opposition party raged against each other. More than 1,000 people were killed, many quite brutally, and much of the fighting was along ethnic lines.
Ms. Shaban, like many other government officials, insisted that most of the displaced people would eventually go home.
“As the healing process goes on, more and more want to go back,” she said.
But many people are scared. Hundreds of thousands have already resettled in areas where their ethnic group dominates, because that is seen as the only way to guarantee safety. Just a few days ago, in late March, leaflets were circulated in several Rift Valley towns telling Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, that if they returned, they would be killed.
“People are still bitter,” said Florence Muia, a Catholic nun who works with displaced people. “They have seen this violence before, and this time they are saying never again.”
Many of the displaced children, traumatized into near silence, simply have nothing to return to.
Naomi and Joseph Nganga were abandoned by their father after a mob burned down their house in the Rift Valley and their mother died from a stomach sickness in a displaced persons camp. They are sister and brother, 9 and 10 years old, and live in the children’s home with about 80 others, including: Clinton, who speaks in whispers; a 3-year-old whom workers call Baby Joshua because they do not have any more information about him; and a cheerful 16-year-old named Millicent who has a baby of her own.
The boys wear V-neck sweaters and the girls plaid dresses. They play in bare concrete rooms and drink plastic mugs of tea for a snack.
When asked if he wanted to stay in the children’s home in Nairobi or go back to his village, Joseph’s voice dropped to a mumble.
“I just want to go to school,” he said.
His sister nodded next to him and then looked down at her cracked leather shoes.
****
April 6, 2008
Rival Resists Zimbabwe Runoff, Saying He Won
By CELIA W. DUGGER
JOHANNESBURG — The Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday insisted that he had won the presidential election outright and that no runoff vote would be needed. He also warned that the governing party was readying a campaign of violence against his supporters to hang on to power.
Mr. Tsvangirai (pronounced CHANG-guh-rye) promised safety to President Robert Mugabe, 84, if he stepped aside.
But early Sunday, the government-run Sunday Mail newspaper reported that Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, referring to “errors” in the tally, had asked for a recount in the election.
The party also called on the election commission to “defer the announcement of the presidential election result,” the newspaper said on its Web site.
Mr. Tsvangirai’s call for Mr. Mugabe to enter talks aimed at a peaceful, democratic transition had already seemed unlikely to find a warm reception from ZANU-PF. On Friday it said Mr. Mugabe would take part in a runoff if neither he nor Mr. Tsvangirai, 56, won a majority.
The opposition and Mr. Mugabe’s party are jockeying for political position as the country and the world wait with consternation for Zimbabwean election officials to announce the outcome of a presidential election held last Saturday, a race that by the opposition’s count gave Mr. Tsvangirai a bare majority, though an independent projection of results found him well ahead but short of a majority.
Lawyers for Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, Movement for Democratic Change, tried Saturday to force the Electoral Commission to release the official tally through a petition to the High Court. A hearing is expected on Sunday.
When the lawyers approached the court in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, on Saturday morning, to file the lawsuit, armed police officers briefly blocked them from entering, Reuters reported.
“We can’t go in,” an opposition lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, told journalists. “They are threatening to shoot. They say no one enters the court.”
A growing chorus that includes Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, has appealed for a speedy release of the vote count. But on Saturday, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, perhaps the most important international player in Zimbabwe’s electoral drama, counseled patience after meeting Mr. Brown in London, news agencies reported.
“I think there is time to wait,” said Mr. Mbeki, who was appointed by a regional bloc of nations to mediate in Zimbabwe but has been accused by Mr. Tsvangirai of favoring Mr. Mugabe. “Let’s see the outcome of the election results.”
The governing party, which has led the country into a ruinous economic decline, lost its majority in the lower house of Parliament in last week’s election for the first time since the country’s independence from white rule in 1980, but is now demanding a recount for 16 seats, apparently in a bid to reclaim control.
Mr. Tsvangirai, who was beaten by the police in a crackdown on the opposition last year, warned at a news conference in Harare that Mr. Mugabe’s party would resort to violent intimidation of his supporters during a runoff. He expressed reservations about participating in a runoff, though he stopped short of threatening a boycott.
He said the party was mobilizing youth militias and veterans of the independence struggle to carry out a campaign he described as a war against the people.
The party, which confiscated large, commercial farms of white farmers, helping lead to the economy’s collapse, is stoking fears that an opposition government would take land given to blacks and return it to whites. Much of the land was given to Mr. Mugabe’s cronies, Zimbabwe analysts say.
A state-run newspaper, The Herald, said Saturday that white farmers were returning “in droves,” threatening to reclaim their land, a charge Roy Bennett, the opposition party’s treasurer, called “absolute nonsense.”
There are signs that Mr. Mugabe’s party is tightening its grip on the country. The police blocked the main roads leading into Harare’s center on Saturday, and were searching vehicles.
The government has also cracked down on foreign journalists, who have been covering the election without accreditation. On Thursday, the police arrested Barry Bearak, a correspondent in the Johannesburg bureau of The New York Times, on charges related to covering the election without official permission from the government. He was still being held in a Harare jail on Saturday.
Mr. Tsvangirai’s party ran large advertisements in major South African newspapers on Saturday calling on Zimbabwe’s neighbors and other countries to support its efforts to unseat Mr. Mugabe.
“At this stage, we offer the hand of peace to the current regime, and will recognize and respect their rights, if the transition is expedited without further ado, but this offer will not remain open indefinitely,” the advertisement said.
An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/world ... ?th&emc=th
April 6, 2008
Displaced Kenyans Live in Limbo as Aid Lags After Election Strife
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Clinton Masheti, 8 years old and all alone, sits on a wooden bench rolling snakes out of clay. When the men came and started burning down houses in his village, his parents ran away — without him.
He now lives in the Nairobi Children’s Home, a place with cheery paintings on the wall and lots of blank little faces. He is among thousands of children lost or abandoned during the fighting that followed Kenya’s disputed election in December. If Clinton’s parents are not found by August, he will be put up for adoption.
“My father was a farmer,” he said.
That seemed to be all he knew.
In another part of town not far away, Jane Wanjiru has been living in muddy uncertainty since January.
She and about 200 other displaced people are camping just up the road from one of Nairobi’s fanciest malls. Their tents and clotheslines are curious sights so close to the Mercedes-Benzes and mansions, a reminder in case anyone here needs one that the issue of displaced people is not isolated to the Rift Valley, where most of the election-related bloodshed was, but has crept into the capital, Nairobi.
Still, very little has been done about it. More than 300,000 people remain homeless, living in camps or staying temporarily with relatives, but top politicians have been preoccupied with haggling over cabinet posts and forming a coalition government.
Officials recently announced that the new government would include 40 ministries, a Kenyan record, and many people fear that the money for salaries, cars and staff for the bloated cabinet will eat into what the displaced people need.
Donors have pledged millions of dollars to build homes and resettle people, but most of that is in limbo. And now it is the rainy season.
Nearly every day, the skies crack open and the water gushes down. Tents collapse, latrines overflow, firewood gets soggy, food goes uncooked and diseases like malaria and the flu flourish. Many of the displaced people are farmers, and the same rains they would have prayed for, had they not been violently driven off their land, are now a curse.
Three women in a camp recently died from exposure to the cold and 5-month-old twins from pneumonia.
“The rains are my biggest fear,” said Naomi Shaban, Kenya’s minister of special programs, who oversees the displaced persons camps. “These people are living in tents, and these are not just showers, they are heavy rains. There is a lot of contamination, with children playing in the water. We anticipate health problems.”
Many displaced people in this nation of 37 million are worried about how long they can survive and feel abandoned by their government. Ms. Wanjiru, who voted for Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, said she did not support him — or any other politician — anymore.
“All we get are words,” she said.
She spends her days washing the few clothes she has and sitting in a cracked plastic chair watching the cars go by. A mother of six with a seventh on the way, she said she did not even have the bus fare to go into town or check out the mall.
“I lost everything,” she said.
Ms. Shaban defended the president, saying he was very concerned about the plight of the displaced people and that helping them is a post-election priority. She said the government had already spent $11 million on food and medicine since January, though the distribution of supplies was sometimes delayed, because some of the people hanging around the displaced persons camps were “impostors” and it took time to verify who the real victims were.
The Kenyan government is asking donor nations, including the United States, to provide nearly $500 million to resettle people and rebuild the tens of thousands of burned down homes, businesses, public utilities and schools.
After the disputed election, supporters of the government and of the leading opposition party raged against each other. More than 1,000 people were killed, many quite brutally, and much of the fighting was along ethnic lines.
Ms. Shaban, like many other government officials, insisted that most of the displaced people would eventually go home.
“As the healing process goes on, more and more want to go back,” she said.
But many people are scared. Hundreds of thousands have already resettled in areas where their ethnic group dominates, because that is seen as the only way to guarantee safety. Just a few days ago, in late March, leaflets were circulated in several Rift Valley towns telling Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, that if they returned, they would be killed.
“People are still bitter,” said Florence Muia, a Catholic nun who works with displaced people. “They have seen this violence before, and this time they are saying never again.”
Many of the displaced children, traumatized into near silence, simply have nothing to return to.
Naomi and Joseph Nganga were abandoned by their father after a mob burned down their house in the Rift Valley and their mother died from a stomach sickness in a displaced persons camp. They are sister and brother, 9 and 10 years old, and live in the children’s home with about 80 others, including: Clinton, who speaks in whispers; a 3-year-old whom workers call Baby Joshua because they do not have any more information about him; and a cheerful 16-year-old named Millicent who has a baby of her own.
The boys wear V-neck sweaters and the girls plaid dresses. They play in bare concrete rooms and drink plastic mugs of tea for a snack.
When asked if he wanted to stay in the children’s home in Nairobi or go back to his village, Joseph’s voice dropped to a mumble.
“I just want to go to school,” he said.
His sister nodded next to him and then looked down at her cracked leather shoes.
****
April 6, 2008
Rival Resists Zimbabwe Runoff, Saying He Won
By CELIA W. DUGGER
JOHANNESBURG — The Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday insisted that he had won the presidential election outright and that no runoff vote would be needed. He also warned that the governing party was readying a campaign of violence against his supporters to hang on to power.
Mr. Tsvangirai (pronounced CHANG-guh-rye) promised safety to President Robert Mugabe, 84, if he stepped aside.
But early Sunday, the government-run Sunday Mail newspaper reported that Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, referring to “errors” in the tally, had asked for a recount in the election.
The party also called on the election commission to “defer the announcement of the presidential election result,” the newspaper said on its Web site.
Mr. Tsvangirai’s call for Mr. Mugabe to enter talks aimed at a peaceful, democratic transition had already seemed unlikely to find a warm reception from ZANU-PF. On Friday it said Mr. Mugabe would take part in a runoff if neither he nor Mr. Tsvangirai, 56, won a majority.
The opposition and Mr. Mugabe’s party are jockeying for political position as the country and the world wait with consternation for Zimbabwean election officials to announce the outcome of a presidential election held last Saturday, a race that by the opposition’s count gave Mr. Tsvangirai a bare majority, though an independent projection of results found him well ahead but short of a majority.
Lawyers for Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, Movement for Democratic Change, tried Saturday to force the Electoral Commission to release the official tally through a petition to the High Court. A hearing is expected on Sunday.
When the lawyers approached the court in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, on Saturday morning, to file the lawsuit, armed police officers briefly blocked them from entering, Reuters reported.
“We can’t go in,” an opposition lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, told journalists. “They are threatening to shoot. They say no one enters the court.”
A growing chorus that includes Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, has appealed for a speedy release of the vote count. But on Saturday, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, perhaps the most important international player in Zimbabwe’s electoral drama, counseled patience after meeting Mr. Brown in London, news agencies reported.
“I think there is time to wait,” said Mr. Mbeki, who was appointed by a regional bloc of nations to mediate in Zimbabwe but has been accused by Mr. Tsvangirai of favoring Mr. Mugabe. “Let’s see the outcome of the election results.”
The governing party, which has led the country into a ruinous economic decline, lost its majority in the lower house of Parliament in last week’s election for the first time since the country’s independence from white rule in 1980, but is now demanding a recount for 16 seats, apparently in a bid to reclaim control.
Mr. Tsvangirai, who was beaten by the police in a crackdown on the opposition last year, warned at a news conference in Harare that Mr. Mugabe’s party would resort to violent intimidation of his supporters during a runoff. He expressed reservations about participating in a runoff, though he stopped short of threatening a boycott.
He said the party was mobilizing youth militias and veterans of the independence struggle to carry out a campaign he described as a war against the people.
The party, which confiscated large, commercial farms of white farmers, helping lead to the economy’s collapse, is stoking fears that an opposition government would take land given to blacks and return it to whites. Much of the land was given to Mr. Mugabe’s cronies, Zimbabwe analysts say.
A state-run newspaper, The Herald, said Saturday that white farmers were returning “in droves,” threatening to reclaim their land, a charge Roy Bennett, the opposition party’s treasurer, called “absolute nonsense.”
There are signs that Mr. Mugabe’s party is tightening its grip on the country. The police blocked the main roads leading into Harare’s center on Saturday, and were searching vehicles.
The government has also cracked down on foreign journalists, who have been covering the election without accreditation. On Thursday, the police arrested Barry Bearak, a correspondent in the Johannesburg bureau of The New York Times, on charges related to covering the election without official permission from the government. He was still being held in a Harare jail on Saturday.
Mr. Tsvangirai’s party ran large advertisements in major South African newspapers on Saturday calling on Zimbabwe’s neighbors and other countries to support its efforts to unseat Mr. Mugabe.
“At this stage, we offer the hand of peace to the current regime, and will recognize and respect their rights, if the transition is expedited without further ado, but this offer will not remain open indefinitely,” the advertisement said.
An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe
April 9, 2008
Unrest in Kenya as Peace Plan Falters
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
LAMU, Kenya — Riots erupted in Kenya on Tuesday as opposition leaders announced that they were suspending talks with the government over a stalled power sharing agreement.
According to witnesses, dozens of young men stormed into the streets of Kibera, a sprawling slum in the capital, Nairobi, lighting bonfires, ripping up railroad tracks and throwing rocks at police officers in a scene reminiscent of the violence that convulsed Kenya in the wake of the Dec. 27 election.
“No cabinet, no peace!” the protesters yelled, referring to the cabinet that has yet to be formed because of bitter divisions between the government and the opposition.
The eruption was the first major riot since Feb. 28, when rival politicians signed a power sharing agreement that was billed as the only way to end weeks of bloodshed after the disputed presidential election.
The post-election violence killed more than 1,000 people, and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes; most of them are still displaced. Much of the violence flared along ethnic lines and threatened to ruin Kenya’s cherished image as a bastion of stability in a chaotic region.
Now, it seems, some of that instability has returned. Riots also broke out in Kisumu, in western Kenya, where witnesses said hundreds of angry opposition supporters blocked the road to the airport and stoned cars. Unruly protests were reported in several other towns. Police officials could not be reached for comment. By the close of business on Tuesday, the Kenyan currency had dropped against the dollar, reflecting the serious damage a few protests can do to an already jittery economy.
The problem that set off the disturbances seemed to be the same issue that has bedeviled the reconciliation efforts from the beginning: the division of power. Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, whom opposition leaders and some Western election observers have accused of stealing the vote in December, seems reluctant to grant opposition leaders substantial power.
Under the power sharing accord, Mr. Kibaki and the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, agreed to form a national unity government in which cabinet positions would be doled out equally. Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, spent weeks in Kenya building the framework for such a government.
But Mr. Kibaki’s side has refused to cede enough powerful ministries, like finance, foreign affairs or internal security, to placate the opposition.
It is not clear whether the riots are part of a campaign by opposition supporters to press the government to give up important positions, or if they signal a more serious breakdown in the power sharing agreement. Opposition leaders have denied organizing the protests and said they were spontaneous.
Anyang Nyong’o, secretary-general of Mr. Odinga’s party, the Orange Democratic Movement, said it had suspended negotiations until the president’s side “fully recognizes the 50-50 power sharing arrangement and the principle of portfolio balance.”
Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman, said that the suspension was meant to be temporary and that Mr. Odinga wanted the talks to resume — but only after each side had sent two emissaries to negotiate about negotiating.
“It’s definitely a step back,” Mr. Lone said. “But there is a profound disagreement about the notions of power sharing.”
Mr. Kibaki, meanwhile, has blamed the opposition for confronting him with “preconditions and ultimatums.”
“This matter must come to a close without further delay,” he said in a statement issued Monday. “I invite Odinga to engage constructively so that we can conclude the formation of the new cabinet.”
Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, said Tuesday, “the delay is very simple.”
“Somebody, somewhere is holding Odinga hostage,” he said. “They really want to draw this out.”
Mr. Kibaki seems to have the stickiest political calculations to make. His parliamentary coalition is made up of several smaller parties, compared with Mr. Odinga’s movement, which is one political organization and seemingly unified. Diplomats and political scientists here say Mr. Kibaki needs to hand out as many influential cabinet posts as possible to retain political support in Parliament, which is about evenly split between Mr. Kibaki’s and Mr. Odinga’s allies.
Mr. Kibaki has pushed for the cabinet to be expanded to 40 ministers, which would be a Kenyan record, from about 35. Mr. Odinga’s party — with many trade organizations — has criticized this, saying that Kenya lacks the money to pay for so many positions, especially when thousands of people still live in tents.
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting from Nairobi.
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting from Nairobi.
Unrest in Kenya as Peace Plan Falters
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
LAMU, Kenya — Riots erupted in Kenya on Tuesday as opposition leaders announced that they were suspending talks with the government over a stalled power sharing agreement.
According to witnesses, dozens of young men stormed into the streets of Kibera, a sprawling slum in the capital, Nairobi, lighting bonfires, ripping up railroad tracks and throwing rocks at police officers in a scene reminiscent of the violence that convulsed Kenya in the wake of the Dec. 27 election.
“No cabinet, no peace!” the protesters yelled, referring to the cabinet that has yet to be formed because of bitter divisions between the government and the opposition.
The eruption was the first major riot since Feb. 28, when rival politicians signed a power sharing agreement that was billed as the only way to end weeks of bloodshed after the disputed presidential election.
The post-election violence killed more than 1,000 people, and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes; most of them are still displaced. Much of the violence flared along ethnic lines and threatened to ruin Kenya’s cherished image as a bastion of stability in a chaotic region.
Now, it seems, some of that instability has returned. Riots also broke out in Kisumu, in western Kenya, where witnesses said hundreds of angry opposition supporters blocked the road to the airport and stoned cars. Unruly protests were reported in several other towns. Police officials could not be reached for comment. By the close of business on Tuesday, the Kenyan currency had dropped against the dollar, reflecting the serious damage a few protests can do to an already jittery economy.
The problem that set off the disturbances seemed to be the same issue that has bedeviled the reconciliation efforts from the beginning: the division of power. Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, whom opposition leaders and some Western election observers have accused of stealing the vote in December, seems reluctant to grant opposition leaders substantial power.
Under the power sharing accord, Mr. Kibaki and the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, agreed to form a national unity government in which cabinet positions would be doled out equally. Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, spent weeks in Kenya building the framework for such a government.
But Mr. Kibaki’s side has refused to cede enough powerful ministries, like finance, foreign affairs or internal security, to placate the opposition.
It is not clear whether the riots are part of a campaign by opposition supporters to press the government to give up important positions, or if they signal a more serious breakdown in the power sharing agreement. Opposition leaders have denied organizing the protests and said they were spontaneous.
Anyang Nyong’o, secretary-general of Mr. Odinga’s party, the Orange Democratic Movement, said it had suspended negotiations until the president’s side “fully recognizes the 50-50 power sharing arrangement and the principle of portfolio balance.”
Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman, said that the suspension was meant to be temporary and that Mr. Odinga wanted the talks to resume — but only after each side had sent two emissaries to negotiate about negotiating.
“It’s definitely a step back,” Mr. Lone said. “But there is a profound disagreement about the notions of power sharing.”
Mr. Kibaki, meanwhile, has blamed the opposition for confronting him with “preconditions and ultimatums.”
“This matter must come to a close without further delay,” he said in a statement issued Monday. “I invite Odinga to engage constructively so that we can conclude the formation of the new cabinet.”
Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, said Tuesday, “the delay is very simple.”
“Somebody, somewhere is holding Odinga hostage,” he said. “They really want to draw this out.”
Mr. Kibaki seems to have the stickiest political calculations to make. His parliamentary coalition is made up of several smaller parties, compared with Mr. Odinga’s movement, which is one political organization and seemingly unified. Diplomats and political scientists here say Mr. Kibaki needs to hand out as many influential cabinet posts as possible to retain political support in Parliament, which is about evenly split between Mr. Kibaki’s and Mr. Odinga’s allies.
Mr. Kibaki has pushed for the cabinet to be expanded to 40 ministers, which would be a Kenyan record, from about 35. Mr. Odinga’s party — with many trade organizations — has criticized this, saying that Kenya lacks the money to pay for so many positions, especially when thousands of people still live in tents.
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting from Nairobi.
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting from Nairobi.
April 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Memo to Bush on Darfur
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
President Bush seems genuinely troubled by the slaughter in Darfur and has periodically suggested to Condoleezza Rice: Why can’t we just send troops in and take care of it? Each time, Ms. Rice patiently explains: You can’t invade a third Muslim country, especially one with oil. And so Mr. Bush backs off and does nothing.
But this week marks the 14th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide — the last time we said “never again.” And while Ms. Rice is right that we can’t send in American ground troops, there are concrete steps that President Bush can take if he wants to end his shameful passivity:
1. Work with France to end the proxy war between Sudan and Chad and to keep Sudan from invading Chad and toppling its government. Stopping the Darfur virus from infecting the surrounding countries must be a top priority. And even if the West lacks the gumption to do much within Sudan, it should at least try to block the spread of genocide to the entire region.
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is leading the way in providing a European force to stabilize Chad and Central African Republic, and we should back him strongly. If Sudan dispatches additional proxy troops, France and the U.S. should use aircraft to strafe the invaders. But we should also push Chad’s repressive president to accommodate his domestic opponents rather than imprison them.
2. Broaden the focus from “save Darfur” to “save Sudan.” There is a growing risk that the war between North and South Sudan will resume in the coming months and that Sudan will shatter into pieces. The U.S. should try to shore up the fraying north-south peace agreement and urgently help South Sudan with an anti-aircraft capability, to deter Khartoum from striking the South.
3. Right before or after this summer’s G-8 summit, President Bush should convene an international conference on Sudan, inviting among others Mr. Sarkozy, Gordon Brown of Britain, Hu Jintao of China, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Sudanese leaders themselves. The conference should be convened in Kigali, Rwanda, so that participants can reflect on the historical resonance of genocide.
One aim would be to pressure China to suspend arms transfers to Sudan until it seriously pursues peace in Darfur (we’ll get further by treating China as important rather than as evil). Such an arms suspension would be the single best way to induce Sudan to make concessions needed to achieve peace. The conference would also focus on supporting the U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur with helicopters, training and equipment.
4. The conference should aim to restart a Darfur peace process, because the only way the slaughter will truly end is with a peace agreement. A prominent figure like Kofi Annan should lead the talks, working full time and with a first-rate staff to crack heads of Sudanese officials and rebel leaders alike.
5. The U.N. and U.S. should take South Sudan up on its offers in 2004 and 2005 to provide up to 10,000 peacekeepers for Darfur. South Sudanese peacekeepers wouldn’t need visas or interpreters. They can simply walk to Darfur from their present positions, and they would make a huge difference in security.
6. The U.S. should impose a no-fly zone over Darfur from the air base in Abeche, Chad (or even from our existing base in Djibouti). We wouldn’t keep planes in the air or shoot down Sudanese aircraft. Rather, the next time Sudan breaches the U.N. ban on offensive military flights, we would wait a day or two and then destroy a Sudanese Antonov bomber on the ground.
Aid groups mostly oppose this approach for fear that Sudan would respond by cutting off humanitarian access, and that’s a legitimate concern. We should warn Sudan that any such behavior would lead it to lose other aircraft. Sudan’s leaders are practical and covet their planes.
7. We should warn Sudan that if it provokes a war with the South, attacks camps for displaced people or invades a neighboring country, we will destroy its air force. As Roger Winter, a longtime Sudan expert, puts it: “They act when they are credibly threatened. They don’t react when we throw snow at them.”
8. The central reason for our failure in Sudan is that we haven’t proffered meaningful sticks or carrots. A no-fly zone is a stick, but we also should reiterate that if President Omar al-Bashir seeks peace in Darfur and South Sudan, then the U.S. will normalize relations, lift sanctions and take Sudan off the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
If President Bush takes all these steps, will they succeed in ending the genocide? We don’t know, but pretending that there is nothing more that we can do is as dishonest as it is disgraceful.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
Op-Ed Columnist
Memo to Bush on Darfur
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
President Bush seems genuinely troubled by the slaughter in Darfur and has periodically suggested to Condoleezza Rice: Why can’t we just send troops in and take care of it? Each time, Ms. Rice patiently explains: You can’t invade a third Muslim country, especially one with oil. And so Mr. Bush backs off and does nothing.
But this week marks the 14th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide — the last time we said “never again.” And while Ms. Rice is right that we can’t send in American ground troops, there are concrete steps that President Bush can take if he wants to end his shameful passivity:
1. Work with France to end the proxy war between Sudan and Chad and to keep Sudan from invading Chad and toppling its government. Stopping the Darfur virus from infecting the surrounding countries must be a top priority. And even if the West lacks the gumption to do much within Sudan, it should at least try to block the spread of genocide to the entire region.
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is leading the way in providing a European force to stabilize Chad and Central African Republic, and we should back him strongly. If Sudan dispatches additional proxy troops, France and the U.S. should use aircraft to strafe the invaders. But we should also push Chad’s repressive president to accommodate his domestic opponents rather than imprison them.
2. Broaden the focus from “save Darfur” to “save Sudan.” There is a growing risk that the war between North and South Sudan will resume in the coming months and that Sudan will shatter into pieces. The U.S. should try to shore up the fraying north-south peace agreement and urgently help South Sudan with an anti-aircraft capability, to deter Khartoum from striking the South.
3. Right before or after this summer’s G-8 summit, President Bush should convene an international conference on Sudan, inviting among others Mr. Sarkozy, Gordon Brown of Britain, Hu Jintao of China, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Sudanese leaders themselves. The conference should be convened in Kigali, Rwanda, so that participants can reflect on the historical resonance of genocide.
One aim would be to pressure China to suspend arms transfers to Sudan until it seriously pursues peace in Darfur (we’ll get further by treating China as important rather than as evil). Such an arms suspension would be the single best way to induce Sudan to make concessions needed to achieve peace. The conference would also focus on supporting the U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur with helicopters, training and equipment.
4. The conference should aim to restart a Darfur peace process, because the only way the slaughter will truly end is with a peace agreement. A prominent figure like Kofi Annan should lead the talks, working full time and with a first-rate staff to crack heads of Sudanese officials and rebel leaders alike.
5. The U.N. and U.S. should take South Sudan up on its offers in 2004 and 2005 to provide up to 10,000 peacekeepers for Darfur. South Sudanese peacekeepers wouldn’t need visas or interpreters. They can simply walk to Darfur from their present positions, and they would make a huge difference in security.
6. The U.S. should impose a no-fly zone over Darfur from the air base in Abeche, Chad (or even from our existing base in Djibouti). We wouldn’t keep planes in the air or shoot down Sudanese aircraft. Rather, the next time Sudan breaches the U.N. ban on offensive military flights, we would wait a day or two and then destroy a Sudanese Antonov bomber on the ground.
Aid groups mostly oppose this approach for fear that Sudan would respond by cutting off humanitarian access, and that’s a legitimate concern. We should warn Sudan that any such behavior would lead it to lose other aircraft. Sudan’s leaders are practical and covet their planes.
7. We should warn Sudan that if it provokes a war with the South, attacks camps for displaced people or invades a neighboring country, we will destroy its air force. As Roger Winter, a longtime Sudan expert, puts it: “They act when they are credibly threatened. They don’t react when we throw snow at them.”
8. The central reason for our failure in Sudan is that we haven’t proffered meaningful sticks or carrots. A no-fly zone is a stick, but we also should reiterate that if President Omar al-Bashir seeks peace in Darfur and South Sudan, then the U.S. will normalize relations, lift sanctions and take Sudan off the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
If President Bush takes all these steps, will they succeed in ending the genocide? We don’t know, but pretending that there is nothing more that we can do is as dishonest as it is disgraceful.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
April 14, 2008
Unity Cabinet Formed in Kenya, Ending Deadlock
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — President Mwai Kibaki announced a new — and enormous — national unity cabinet here on Sunday, ending weeks of anxious deadlock that had threatened to plunge Kenya back into violence.
Allies of Mr. Kibaki, who was declared the winner of a deeply flawed election in December, retained the most powerful ministries, like finance and foreign affairs, but the leading opposition party managed to get some major posts, including local government and agriculture.
And as anticipated, the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who claims to have won the presidential vote, was appointed prime minister.
The two sides were under mounting pressure from foreign governments, especially the United States, and from Kenyans to strike a deal that would end the bitter, and often dangerous, atmosphere that has hung over the country since December.
While the voting itself went peacefully, the country exploded in violence afterward with supporters of the government and of the opposition raging against each other. More than 1,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands were displaced and Kenya’s image as one of Africa’s most stable and promising countries was seriously damaged.
In late February, the government and the opposition agreed to share power, but they haggled over who would be selected for each post.
On Sunday, it took Mr. Kibaki more than 10 minutes to read aloud the list of ministers and assistant ministers, totaling 94 people, nearly half of Parliament. It is the biggest cabinet Kenya has ever had.
Because of all the politicking and the need to placate various interest groups, Mr. Kibaki has created several new, highly paid positions, like the minister of development of northern Kenya and other arid lands. Trade organizations and human rights groups have roundly criticized adding those positions as inefficient and wasteful, especially when thousands of displaced Kenyans are still living in tents.
Mr. Kibaki defended the expanded cabinet as crucial for Kenya’s development.
“Let us put politics aside and get to work,” he said in a televised address on Sunday. “Let us build a new Kenya where justice is our shield and defender, and where peace, liberty and plenty will be found throughout our country.”
The opposition party said it was disappointed that it had not gotten as many powerful positions as it wanted.
“But we decided that it was more important to get a government in place,” said Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman. “There was too much chaos and hunger and restlessness in the country.”
Opposition supporters who said they were angry about the delay in forming a cabinet rioted in several towns across Kenya last week, and Mr. Lone credited that outburst with moving the process along.
“The international pressure had been there for some time, and the riots really focused our minds on how fragile things were,” he said. Mr. Lone said the deal was sealed in a secret seven-hour meeting on Saturday between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga.
The cabinet faces a mountain of challenges and needs. Kenya, after all, is a relatively poor country, with a fast-growing population, exploding slums and diminishing available land. In addition, the election stirred long-simmering grievances, which violently split many parts of the country down ethnic lines.
There was also direct economic damage from the fighting, with countless homes, businesses, factories and schools burned to the ground, investor confidence low and Kenya’s fabled safari business on its knees.
So it is no surprise that many Kenyans doubt that the cabinet deal will be a cure-all. While jubilation greeted the power-sharing agreement in February, with crowds cheering in the streets, this time the mood was more muted and even skeptical.
“I don’t see this lasting long,” said Wambua Kilonzo, a lawyer in Nairobi, the capital. “There’s been too much bad blood already. Everything that has been done so far has only been done by the force of the arm.”
What seemed to irk people most was the size of the cabinet.
“We have been duped,” said Simoni Birundu, national chairman of the Name and Shame Corruption Networks Campaign, a nonprofit group. “We needed a lean cabinet so that it does not consume all our national resources.”
Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, called the bloated cabinet “an insult.”
“The politicians are not interested in us,” he said. “They’re interested in themselves. We go begging for money from other countries to feed our children. And then we use our taxpayers’ money to buy big houses and limousines. Here we are talking about a new Kenya. But instead of going forward, we’re going backward.”
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
Unity Cabinet Formed in Kenya, Ending Deadlock
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — President Mwai Kibaki announced a new — and enormous — national unity cabinet here on Sunday, ending weeks of anxious deadlock that had threatened to plunge Kenya back into violence.
Allies of Mr. Kibaki, who was declared the winner of a deeply flawed election in December, retained the most powerful ministries, like finance and foreign affairs, but the leading opposition party managed to get some major posts, including local government and agriculture.
And as anticipated, the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who claims to have won the presidential vote, was appointed prime minister.
The two sides were under mounting pressure from foreign governments, especially the United States, and from Kenyans to strike a deal that would end the bitter, and often dangerous, atmosphere that has hung over the country since December.
While the voting itself went peacefully, the country exploded in violence afterward with supporters of the government and of the opposition raging against each other. More than 1,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands were displaced and Kenya’s image as one of Africa’s most stable and promising countries was seriously damaged.
In late February, the government and the opposition agreed to share power, but they haggled over who would be selected for each post.
On Sunday, it took Mr. Kibaki more than 10 minutes to read aloud the list of ministers and assistant ministers, totaling 94 people, nearly half of Parliament. It is the biggest cabinet Kenya has ever had.
Because of all the politicking and the need to placate various interest groups, Mr. Kibaki has created several new, highly paid positions, like the minister of development of northern Kenya and other arid lands. Trade organizations and human rights groups have roundly criticized adding those positions as inefficient and wasteful, especially when thousands of displaced Kenyans are still living in tents.
Mr. Kibaki defended the expanded cabinet as crucial for Kenya’s development.
“Let us put politics aside and get to work,” he said in a televised address on Sunday. “Let us build a new Kenya where justice is our shield and defender, and where peace, liberty and plenty will be found throughout our country.”
The opposition party said it was disappointed that it had not gotten as many powerful positions as it wanted.
“But we decided that it was more important to get a government in place,” said Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman. “There was too much chaos and hunger and restlessness in the country.”
Opposition supporters who said they were angry about the delay in forming a cabinet rioted in several towns across Kenya last week, and Mr. Lone credited that outburst with moving the process along.
“The international pressure had been there for some time, and the riots really focused our minds on how fragile things were,” he said. Mr. Lone said the deal was sealed in a secret seven-hour meeting on Saturday between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga.
The cabinet faces a mountain of challenges and needs. Kenya, after all, is a relatively poor country, with a fast-growing population, exploding slums and diminishing available land. In addition, the election stirred long-simmering grievances, which violently split many parts of the country down ethnic lines.
There was also direct economic damage from the fighting, with countless homes, businesses, factories and schools burned to the ground, investor confidence low and Kenya’s fabled safari business on its knees.
So it is no surprise that many Kenyans doubt that the cabinet deal will be a cure-all. While jubilation greeted the power-sharing agreement in February, with crowds cheering in the streets, this time the mood was more muted and even skeptical.
“I don’t see this lasting long,” said Wambua Kilonzo, a lawyer in Nairobi, the capital. “There’s been too much bad blood already. Everything that has been done so far has only been done by the force of the arm.”
What seemed to irk people most was the size of the cabinet.
“We have been duped,” said Simoni Birundu, national chairman of the Name and Shame Corruption Networks Campaign, a nonprofit group. “We needed a lean cabinet so that it does not consume all our national resources.”
Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, called the bloated cabinet “an insult.”
“The politicians are not interested in us,” he said. “They’re interested in themselves. We go begging for money from other countries to feed our children. And then we use our taxpayers’ money to buy big houses and limousines. Here we are talking about a new Kenya. But instead of going forward, we’re going backward.”
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
There is a related video which summarizes the essay linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/world ... &th&emc=th
April 21, 2008
Human Wave Flees Violence in Zimbabwe
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
ALONG THE SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE BORDER — Sarah Ngewerume was driven to the river by despair.
She said she had seen gangs loyal to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, beating people — some to death — in the dusty roads of her village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters.
“It was terrifying,” said Ms. Ngewerume, a 49-year-old former shopkeeper.
Last week she waded across the Limpopo River, bribed a man fixing a border fence on the other side and slipped into a nearby South African farm.
She was among the latest desperate arrivals in what South Africa’s biggest daily newspaper is calling “Mugabe’s Tsunami,” a wave of more than 1,000 people every day who are fleeing Zimbabwe across the Limpopo to escape into South Africa.
When a shallow, glassy river and a few coils of razor wire are the only things separating one of Africa’s most developed countries from one of its most miserable, the inevitable result is millions of illegal border jumpers. But South African and Zimbabwean human rights groups say that the flow of people into South Africa has been surging in the three weeks since Zimbabwe’s disputed election and during the violent crackdown that followed. One Zimbabwean named Washington, who goes back and forth across the border ferrying Super Sure cake flour and Blazing Beef potato snacks, said the government was now using food as a weapon and channeling much of the United Nations-donated grain to supporters of the ruling party.“As we speak,” he said, “people are starving.”
He seemed more defeated than anything else. “People hate the government,” he said. “But they are too scared to fight it.”
Commercials are now running on Zimbabwean TV showing grainy images of captives from the liberation war in the 1970s and reminding citizens not to disobey their leaders, recent arrivals said.
In the past, countless Zimbabwean men escaped to South Africa to drive cabs or work on construction sites and send money home. But these days, many of the Zimbabweans fleeing are women and children willing to take considerable risks to get out for good.
“We were hoping for change and waiting to see what would happen in the election,” said Faithi Mano, one of more than a dozen Zimbabweans interviewed after they had crossed the border last week. “Now, I have decided to quit that place.”
It does not look as if Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, will leave office without a fight. After early election results from the March 29 vote indicated he was losing to the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the election commission put the brakes on announcing results. The presidential results still have not been released, and a recount begun Saturday in 23 Parliament races is now threatening to drag things out further — the opposition has deemed it “illegal.”
If there is a runoff between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai, many fear it could get even bloodier. Human Rights Watch issued a report on Saturday saying members of Mr. Mugabe’s party were running “torture camps” where they took opposition supporters for nightly beatings.
On Sunday, the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said more than 400 supporters had been arrested, 500 attacked, 10 killed and 3,000 families displaced. The party released a detailed, day-by-day chronicle of violence that listed huts being burned, people getting cracked in the head with bottles and farms being invaded. The party blamed Mugabe supporters and sometimes government soldiers.
The government has denied any wrongdoing and accused opposition leaders of treason. Mr. Tsvangirai has said it is too dangerous for him to stay in Zimbabwe and has been spending time in South Africa.
The border between South Africa and Zimbabwe stretches about 150 miles, and it is headache-hot out here. “Beware of crocodile” signs shimmer in the sun, the grass is yellow and crisp, and at night, the trees churn with clouds of heat-crazed insects.
For the people who make it through, there is a pipeline of sympathy waiting on the other side. Fellow Zimbabweans living in South Africa — often perfect strangers — have taken in border jumpers, giving them a safe house and a warm cup of porridge, and helping them along their way to Messina, about 10 miles south, and then onward to the bigger cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Joyce Dube, director of the Southern African Women’s Institute for Migration Affairs, which tracks the border issue, said the only reason more people were not crossing was the recently beefed-up security on the South African side. “It’s getting tougher to get through,” she said.
South African military helicopters thunder over the Limpopo and soldiers prowl the border roads, searching car trunks for human cargo. Crews of men in red jumpsuits drip with sweat as they fix the fences. But it is a cat-and-mouse game. No sooner have they patched a hole than it is punched through again.
The fence runs for miles, a shining metal snake going up and down the tawny hills. It used to be deadly, electrified by a high-voltage current. That was in the 1980s, when South Africa and newly independent Zimbabwe were practically at war. Back then, many people were going the other way, fleeing South Africa’s repressive apartheid government to escape to Zimbabwe.
At the time, Zimbabwe was one of Africa’s stars. Mr. Mugabe had turned a relatively small, landlocked country into an economic powerhouse that produced beef, grain and tobacco.
“Bob Mugabe was my hero,” said a white Zimbabwean farmer who drove into Messina the other day for supplies. He did not want to give his name because he went on to criticize Mr. Mugabe’s more recent policies and said he was afraid he could be evicted from his farm for doing so. “I know it sounds funny, but it’s true. You have no idea how beautiful Zim was.” Zim is the affectionate nickname for Zimbabwe.
But in the late 1990s, Mr. Mugabe felt he needed to deliver on long-promised land reforms, and Britain, the former colonial ruler, was stalling on paying for them. Mr. Mugabe then encouraged blacks to seize white-owned farms. Whites fled, industrialized agriculture crashed, and today the inflation rate is more than 150,000 percent. Supermarkets often have no food, and 80 percent of the people have no jobs.
The Movement for Democratic Change ran on these woes, and in 2002 it nearly won power, though the elections were marred by violence and intimidation.
This time there was hope that things would be different. Recent arrivals say that a few weeks before the vote, the bullying suddenly seemed to let up — perhaps, some thought, because the ruling party was sure it would win. But when the first results showed Mr. Mugabe losing badly, the government went silent. There were some talks about Mr. Mugabe stepping aside. Then the crackdown began.
Ms. Ngewerume, the escaped former shopkeeper, said opposition supporters in her village in central Zimbabwe became easy targets because they had danced and sung in the streets after early results were tacked up on polling station doors. When the final results did not come, they went into hiding. But the thugs found them anyway, she said.
“I can’t see how Mugabe could win again after all this,” she said.
But, she added, many opposition supporters probably would not take the chance again to cross “the old man,” as Mr. Mugabe is often called.
Ms. Ngewerume was visibly pained just talking politics as she stood under a tree on a farm near the border. “I just want to go there,” she said, stabbing her finger vaguely south, in the direction of Johannesburg. “I’m just struggling to go forward to get something better.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/world ... &th&emc=th
April 21, 2008
Human Wave Flees Violence in Zimbabwe
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
ALONG THE SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE BORDER — Sarah Ngewerume was driven to the river by despair.
She said she had seen gangs loyal to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, beating people — some to death — in the dusty roads of her village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters.
“It was terrifying,” said Ms. Ngewerume, a 49-year-old former shopkeeper.
Last week she waded across the Limpopo River, bribed a man fixing a border fence on the other side and slipped into a nearby South African farm.
She was among the latest desperate arrivals in what South Africa’s biggest daily newspaper is calling “Mugabe’s Tsunami,” a wave of more than 1,000 people every day who are fleeing Zimbabwe across the Limpopo to escape into South Africa.
When a shallow, glassy river and a few coils of razor wire are the only things separating one of Africa’s most developed countries from one of its most miserable, the inevitable result is millions of illegal border jumpers. But South African and Zimbabwean human rights groups say that the flow of people into South Africa has been surging in the three weeks since Zimbabwe’s disputed election and during the violent crackdown that followed. One Zimbabwean named Washington, who goes back and forth across the border ferrying Super Sure cake flour and Blazing Beef potato snacks, said the government was now using food as a weapon and channeling much of the United Nations-donated grain to supporters of the ruling party.“As we speak,” he said, “people are starving.”
He seemed more defeated than anything else. “People hate the government,” he said. “But they are too scared to fight it.”
Commercials are now running on Zimbabwean TV showing grainy images of captives from the liberation war in the 1970s and reminding citizens not to disobey their leaders, recent arrivals said.
In the past, countless Zimbabwean men escaped to South Africa to drive cabs or work on construction sites and send money home. But these days, many of the Zimbabweans fleeing are women and children willing to take considerable risks to get out for good.
“We were hoping for change and waiting to see what would happen in the election,” said Faithi Mano, one of more than a dozen Zimbabweans interviewed after they had crossed the border last week. “Now, I have decided to quit that place.”
It does not look as if Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, will leave office without a fight. After early election results from the March 29 vote indicated he was losing to the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the election commission put the brakes on announcing results. The presidential results still have not been released, and a recount begun Saturday in 23 Parliament races is now threatening to drag things out further — the opposition has deemed it “illegal.”
If there is a runoff between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai, many fear it could get even bloodier. Human Rights Watch issued a report on Saturday saying members of Mr. Mugabe’s party were running “torture camps” where they took opposition supporters for nightly beatings.
On Sunday, the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said more than 400 supporters had been arrested, 500 attacked, 10 killed and 3,000 families displaced. The party released a detailed, day-by-day chronicle of violence that listed huts being burned, people getting cracked in the head with bottles and farms being invaded. The party blamed Mugabe supporters and sometimes government soldiers.
The government has denied any wrongdoing and accused opposition leaders of treason. Mr. Tsvangirai has said it is too dangerous for him to stay in Zimbabwe and has been spending time in South Africa.
The border between South Africa and Zimbabwe stretches about 150 miles, and it is headache-hot out here. “Beware of crocodile” signs shimmer in the sun, the grass is yellow and crisp, and at night, the trees churn with clouds of heat-crazed insects.
For the people who make it through, there is a pipeline of sympathy waiting on the other side. Fellow Zimbabweans living in South Africa — often perfect strangers — have taken in border jumpers, giving them a safe house and a warm cup of porridge, and helping them along their way to Messina, about 10 miles south, and then onward to the bigger cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Joyce Dube, director of the Southern African Women’s Institute for Migration Affairs, which tracks the border issue, said the only reason more people were not crossing was the recently beefed-up security on the South African side. “It’s getting tougher to get through,” she said.
South African military helicopters thunder over the Limpopo and soldiers prowl the border roads, searching car trunks for human cargo. Crews of men in red jumpsuits drip with sweat as they fix the fences. But it is a cat-and-mouse game. No sooner have they patched a hole than it is punched through again.
The fence runs for miles, a shining metal snake going up and down the tawny hills. It used to be deadly, electrified by a high-voltage current. That was in the 1980s, when South Africa and newly independent Zimbabwe were practically at war. Back then, many people were going the other way, fleeing South Africa’s repressive apartheid government to escape to Zimbabwe.
At the time, Zimbabwe was one of Africa’s stars. Mr. Mugabe had turned a relatively small, landlocked country into an economic powerhouse that produced beef, grain and tobacco.
“Bob Mugabe was my hero,” said a white Zimbabwean farmer who drove into Messina the other day for supplies. He did not want to give his name because he went on to criticize Mr. Mugabe’s more recent policies and said he was afraid he could be evicted from his farm for doing so. “I know it sounds funny, but it’s true. You have no idea how beautiful Zim was.” Zim is the affectionate nickname for Zimbabwe.
But in the late 1990s, Mr. Mugabe felt he needed to deliver on long-promised land reforms, and Britain, the former colonial ruler, was stalling on paying for them. Mr. Mugabe then encouraged blacks to seize white-owned farms. Whites fled, industrialized agriculture crashed, and today the inflation rate is more than 150,000 percent. Supermarkets often have no food, and 80 percent of the people have no jobs.
The Movement for Democratic Change ran on these woes, and in 2002 it nearly won power, though the elections were marred by violence and intimidation.
This time there was hope that things would be different. Recent arrivals say that a few weeks before the vote, the bullying suddenly seemed to let up — perhaps, some thought, because the ruling party was sure it would win. But when the first results showed Mr. Mugabe losing badly, the government went silent. There were some talks about Mr. Mugabe stepping aside. Then the crackdown began.
Ms. Ngewerume, the escaped former shopkeeper, said opposition supporters in her village in central Zimbabwe became easy targets because they had danced and sung in the streets after early results were tacked up on polling station doors. When the final results did not come, they went into hiding. But the thugs found them anyway, she said.
“I can’t see how Mugabe could win again after all this,” she said.
But, she added, many opposition supporters probably would not take the chance again to cross “the old man,” as Mr. Mugabe is often called.
Ms. Ngewerume was visibly pained just talking politics as she stood under a tree on a farm near the border. “I just want to go there,” she said, stabbing her finger vaguely south, in the direction of Johannesburg. “I’m just struggling to go forward to get something better.”
May 6, 2008
Scarred by Strife After Election, Kenya Begins to Heal
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
MOLO, Kenya — The bus was full. Expectant faces pressed against the windows. Soldiers stood guard with their guns.
It was time to go home.
“I’m ready,” said Dominick Ngigi, an 80-year-old farmer, stoically clutching a plastic bag with no more in it than a sweater and a flashlight.
For the first time since Kenya’s disputed election erupted in crisis in December, the government has started a large-scale operation to resettle thousands of people violently driven off their land.
Many have been living in squalid, wet camps that turned into breeding grounds for disease, crime, idleness and frustration. They have been languishing for more than four months, since the disputed election set off a wave of ethnic and political bloodshed that pitted neighbor against neighbor and drove upward of 600,000 people from their homes. More than 1,000 people were killed, and Kenya, once celebrated for its stability and relative harmony in a tumultuous region, ripped apart along ethnic lines.
Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Operation Return Home), which began in full on Monday, was all about stitching the country back together.
Packed buses with heavily armed soldiers in tow rumbled across a scarred landscape, past homes with roofs burned off, past trees downed in January to block roads, past the very spots where farmers, laborers, mothers and children were killed by machetes, arrows and fire.
The buses disgorged the occupants into familiar settings, but now with a strange dynamic: new arrivals in their old homes.
“I feel lucky to be back,” said Meshak Njata, a farmer, as he inspected a few baby pineapples in his weed-choked garden.
Still, not everyone felt that way.
At one camp in Molo, a large town in the Rift Valley where much of the fighting occurred, a mini-protest broke out Monday morning when hundreds of displaced people refused to leave.
Peter Ngoge, a shopkeeper, shook a piece of notebook paper listing several demands. He spoke for many, as evidenced by the feisty crowd behind him, when he said he would not leave the camp until the government improved security and paid compensation to those displaced.
“There’s no peace out there,” he said.
“What do you think is going to happen?” a man in a grubby sweater next to him asked. “They will kill us.”
Molo is emblematic of the us-versus-them problem still festering in Kenya. The town is nestled in a breathtaking sweep of rolling hills and impossibly green farmland. But it lies on a fault line between the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu, two powerful ethnic groups that battled viciously after the election. The Kalenjin mainly supported the opposition, and the Kikuyu mainly supported the government, which is led by president Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu. Most of the families driven off their land were Kikuyus.
Kenya’s leaders face a growing economic and food crisis, and they decided that, ethnic tensions aside, now is not the time for miles of productive farmland to go to waste. As part of Operation Rudi Nyumbani, the government is promising food, tools, new houses and even cash for those who return to their farms.
To make its plan work, the government has said, there must be genuine ethnic reconciliation. Over the past several weeks, local administrators have held meetings, seminars and soccer games to build trust between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin.
“It’s a process,” said Katee Mwanza, Molo’s district commissioner.
And that process may be bearing fruit. Some Kalenjin elders, who just a few months ago had insisted that Kikuyus leave the Rift Valley, came to the Molo police station on Monday to welcome the Kikuyus back home.
“The war’s over,” said Samuel Kirui, a Kalenjin elder.
The change of heart came, he said, because “our leaders have agreed to work together, so why can’t we?”
But are the leaders really working together? Mr. Kibaki, who was declared the winner of the election despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, finally named a unity government in April, appointing his top rival, Raila Odinga, as prime minister. But the government’s first joint exercise, a tour of the turbulent Rift Valley, was marred by protocol wars centering on who was more senior, Mr. Odinga or Kalonzo Musyoka, the vice president and a Kibaki ally.
Those squabbles frustrated many Kenyans, especially at a time when the country is still suffering from self-inflicted wounds. The election crisis has crippled the safari business, one of Kenya’s biggest industries, with recent figures showing tourism down more than 50 percent. Inflation is shooting up, and jail guards recently held a violent strike. Teachers and nurses have threatened to follow suit. Yet the president’s cabinet is bigger than ever, with more than 90 ministers and assistant ministers and a record-breaking budget.
Meanwhile, many displaced people are returning to nothing.
“No cows, no sheep, no house, no corn,” said Mr. Ngigi, the farmer, as he got ready to board a bus. “All that is bad. But life in a camp is worse.”
Scarred by Strife After Election, Kenya Begins to Heal
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
MOLO, Kenya — The bus was full. Expectant faces pressed against the windows. Soldiers stood guard with their guns.
It was time to go home.
“I’m ready,” said Dominick Ngigi, an 80-year-old farmer, stoically clutching a plastic bag with no more in it than a sweater and a flashlight.
For the first time since Kenya’s disputed election erupted in crisis in December, the government has started a large-scale operation to resettle thousands of people violently driven off their land.
Many have been living in squalid, wet camps that turned into breeding grounds for disease, crime, idleness and frustration. They have been languishing for more than four months, since the disputed election set off a wave of ethnic and political bloodshed that pitted neighbor against neighbor and drove upward of 600,000 people from their homes. More than 1,000 people were killed, and Kenya, once celebrated for its stability and relative harmony in a tumultuous region, ripped apart along ethnic lines.
Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Operation Return Home), which began in full on Monday, was all about stitching the country back together.
Packed buses with heavily armed soldiers in tow rumbled across a scarred landscape, past homes with roofs burned off, past trees downed in January to block roads, past the very spots where farmers, laborers, mothers and children were killed by machetes, arrows and fire.
The buses disgorged the occupants into familiar settings, but now with a strange dynamic: new arrivals in their old homes.
“I feel lucky to be back,” said Meshak Njata, a farmer, as he inspected a few baby pineapples in his weed-choked garden.
Still, not everyone felt that way.
At one camp in Molo, a large town in the Rift Valley where much of the fighting occurred, a mini-protest broke out Monday morning when hundreds of displaced people refused to leave.
Peter Ngoge, a shopkeeper, shook a piece of notebook paper listing several demands. He spoke for many, as evidenced by the feisty crowd behind him, when he said he would not leave the camp until the government improved security and paid compensation to those displaced.
“There’s no peace out there,” he said.
“What do you think is going to happen?” a man in a grubby sweater next to him asked. “They will kill us.”
Molo is emblematic of the us-versus-them problem still festering in Kenya. The town is nestled in a breathtaking sweep of rolling hills and impossibly green farmland. But it lies on a fault line between the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu, two powerful ethnic groups that battled viciously after the election. The Kalenjin mainly supported the opposition, and the Kikuyu mainly supported the government, which is led by president Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu. Most of the families driven off their land were Kikuyus.
Kenya’s leaders face a growing economic and food crisis, and they decided that, ethnic tensions aside, now is not the time for miles of productive farmland to go to waste. As part of Operation Rudi Nyumbani, the government is promising food, tools, new houses and even cash for those who return to their farms.
To make its plan work, the government has said, there must be genuine ethnic reconciliation. Over the past several weeks, local administrators have held meetings, seminars and soccer games to build trust between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin.
“It’s a process,” said Katee Mwanza, Molo’s district commissioner.
And that process may be bearing fruit. Some Kalenjin elders, who just a few months ago had insisted that Kikuyus leave the Rift Valley, came to the Molo police station on Monday to welcome the Kikuyus back home.
“The war’s over,” said Samuel Kirui, a Kalenjin elder.
The change of heart came, he said, because “our leaders have agreed to work together, so why can’t we?”
But are the leaders really working together? Mr. Kibaki, who was declared the winner of the election despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, finally named a unity government in April, appointing his top rival, Raila Odinga, as prime minister. But the government’s first joint exercise, a tour of the turbulent Rift Valley, was marred by protocol wars centering on who was more senior, Mr. Odinga or Kalonzo Musyoka, the vice president and a Kibaki ally.
Those squabbles frustrated many Kenyans, especially at a time when the country is still suffering from self-inflicted wounds. The election crisis has crippled the safari business, one of Kenya’s biggest industries, with recent figures showing tourism down more than 50 percent. Inflation is shooting up, and jail guards recently held a violent strike. Teachers and nurses have threatened to follow suit. Yet the president’s cabinet is bigger than ever, with more than 90 ministers and assistant ministers and a record-breaking budget.
Meanwhile, many displaced people are returning to nothing.
“No cows, no sheep, no house, no corn,” said Mr. Ngigi, the farmer, as he got ready to board a bus. “All that is bad. But life in a camp is worse.”
May 13, 2008
In Kenya, Violence Shakes Running Community
By JERÉ LONGMAN
ELDORET, Kenya — When Luke Kibet won the world marathon championship last August, he became a favorite to achieve what no Kenyan has despite this country’s distance-running brilliance — an Olympic gold medal in the 26.2-mile race.
With the Summer Games in Beijing approaching in August, though, Kibet’s Olympic hopes have grown remote. He and many of Kenya’s majestic runners — including dozens of Olympic contenders — had their lives disrupted by the ethnic violence that followed a disputed presidential election last December. About 1,200 people were killed, and several hundred thousand fled their homes.
Among those killed were Lucas Sang, a quarter-miler who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics, and Wesley Ngetich, an elite marathon runner. On Dec. 31, during rioting here in the Rift Valley, Kibet was hit in the head with a stone and knocked unconscious. He sustained a concussion and stopped training for two weeks. In February, he pulled out a pistol to extricate himself from another potential attack.
Kibet said these events left him traumatized, unable to focus on his training. Then he pulled a hamstring, the direct result, he says, of interrupted training. Last month, Kibet finished a disappointing 11th at the London Marathon — seven minutes off the pace.
He has been named an alternate to the Kenyan Olympic marathon team, but his chance of competing in Beijing will now depend on whether another runner drops out.
“When you see people die, it stays in your mind,” Kibet, 25, said at his home.
The workout regimens of many of Kenya’s elite runners were disrupted in January and February. Some runners received death threats. Many remained indoors for a week or more, afraid to leave their homes. Others left the country to train in more hospitable environments.
Meanwhile, the reputation of the country’s runners as peaceful ambassadors was also dealt a blow. An international monitoring agency reported in February that some Kenyan runners, many with military backgrounds, might have participated in the violence, and could have lent financial aid and transportation assistance to tribal militias.
The chaos has since abated. In mid-April, the government formed a national unity cabinet. Yet it is too soon to know whether the ethnic strife and training disruptions will affect Kenya’s medal chances at the Beijing Olympics.
Kenya won no gold medals, and only a pair of bronzes, at the world indoor track championships in March, while its distance-running rival, Ethiopia, won three golds and six medals over all. Ethiopia also swept all four individual races at the world cross-country championships in March. Kenya won team titles in the men’s senior and junior divisions, but it failed to win an individual event for the first time in more than 20 years.
The news has been far more encouraging on the marathon front. Although Kibet has struggled, his fellow Kenyans won the top three international spring marathons in Boston, London and Rotterdam. And David Rudisha, a teenage sensation, ran the world’s fastest time of the year — 1 minute 44.20 seconds — in winning the 800 meters at the African championships this month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Such accomplishments indicate that the violence ended early enough for Kenya’s runners to prepare for Beijing, Kenyan Olympic and track officials said.
“A super performance will let the world know we are still a powerhouse in athletics,” said David Okeyo, secretary general of the Kenyan track and field federation.
Most of Kenya’s elite runners belong to the Kalenjin tribe and live in and around this regional center in the Rift Valley, with its moderate climate and altitude of nearly 7,000 feet. This was also the site of some of the most incendiary post-election violence.
Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, which has long held political and economic dominance, won re-election last December amid charges of ballot-rigging. The Kalenjins backed the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo tribe, who later became prime minister in a power-sharing agreement. When Odinga lost, this normally tranquil country exploded.
A church was burned in a village outside Eldoret on New Year’s Day. As many as 50 people died after being trapped inside. Distance running, which along with safari tourism gives Kenya much of its international recognition, became for a time frivolous and dangerous.
Magdaline Chemjor, who won the 2007 Amsterdam Marathon, told an often-repeated story of how roadblocks interrupted her running routes. She tried to continue training by hiding in the forests, then stopped altogether for two weeks in January.
“People would say, ‘Why are you running when others are being killed?’ ” Chemjor said. “I was just praying that everything would go away. This is my job.”
Lucia Kimani, a Kikuyu, needed a police escort to the airport here from nearby Iten so that she could fly out to compete in the Dubai Marathon in January. Catherine Ndereba, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the women’s marathon, holed up in her house outside Nairobi, the capital, for a week in January while her sister brought her food.
Extra security was provided in March as the Kenyan team gathered in the central town of Embu to train for the world cross-country championships. Embu is a Kikuyu area, and some Kalenjin runners, fearful of being attacked, accepted psychological counseling, said Elias Makori, sports editor of The Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper.
“They had to be talked to to make sure everything was O.K. with their lives,” Makori said.
Two of the world’s best marathoners, Robert Cheruiyot and Martin Lel, were among a group of runners whose manager received a threatening e-mail message: “We know where they live and what cars they drive.”
Cheruiyot and Lel left Kenya in late January and trained for weeks in Namibia before returning home after the violence subsided.
Last month, Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon for the fourth time, and Lel won his third London Marathon. Both were named to Kenya’s Olympic team.
“After the election, they couldn’t train properly,” said Federico Rosa, an Italian who manages the two. “There was daily killing. It was almost a civil war. So we made a plan to train outside, to avoid any problems.”
Moses Kiptanui, a 1996 Olympic silver medalist and former world-record holder in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, said he was threatened by police officers here who accused him of transporting fuel to be used for burning houses. He was only transporting the fuel for use on his farm, Kiptanui said, adding that the threats made him wary enough to “make sure I’m always in the right place at the right time.”
The suggestion that some Kenyan runners were enablers of the violence emerged publicly in February in a report by the International Crisis Group, an independent, nongovernment organization that seeks to prevent and resolve conflict.
The crisis group noted that athletes had become community leaders and had grown wealthy with their earnings from international races, buying farmland and other real estate. Their motivation for providing cash and transportation to tribal militias was partly economic, the report said.
“They allegedly want the Kikuyus evicted so they can take their farms and property,” the report said.
Many athletes are also members of the armed forces or are prison officers and are sponsored by these groups. Most accounts of the death of Sang, the 1988 Olympian and a former army corporal, “suggest he met his death on the outskirts of Eldoret while commanding part of a Kalenjin raiding party,” the report said.
François Grignon, the director of African operations for the crisis group, said influential leaders like athletes would have faced tremendous pressure to become involved when ethnic conflict threatened Kenyan society.
“Athletes, like doctors and lawyers, were asked to contribute and help in the defense of their community,” Grignon said. “They would have been perceived as traitors if they didn’t participate.”
The report infuriated Kenyan sports officials and athletes, who are demanding proof of the accusations. Sang’s friends said he was stoned to death and burned after stopping his car to observe a building fire.
“Those are nonsense,” Kipchoge Keino, president of Kenya’s Olympic committee and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, said of the crisis group’s accusations. “We want the evidence now. It’s not true. It’s hurting the names of the athletes who have dedicated themselves to bettering their lives and running for the glory of the country.”
Luke Kibet basked in that glory after winning the marathon at the 2007 world track and field championships in Osaka, Japan. The race was run in hot, humid conditions, similar to those expected in Beijing. He became an early Olympic favorite. When Kibet returned to Eldoret, he was given a welcoming ceremony from the airport to his father’s house.
By late December, that embrace had vanished. When post-election violence broke out, Kibet was hit in the back of the head with a stone. At the time, he said he was flagging down an ambulance to assist a man who had been shot in the back. Kibet was taken to a hospital, where he received five stitches. He said he saw numerous bodies at the hospital, some of which had been beheaded.
“I saw many things,” Kibet, a Kalenjin, said. “I was afraid to train. I was afraid for my life.”
Kibet said he slept outside for a week in January to protect his house while 15 women and children crowded inside, including his wife and young son and daughter. An inspector in the national prison system, Kibet said he and fellow runners who helped him guard his house were armed with two machine guns.
In February, as Kibet and four other runners drove to Nairobi, armed with pistols, he said they were stopped by Kikuyus who blocked the road with sheep. As a group of men approached his car with machetes, Kibet said he fired his pistol into the air. The crowd dispersed.
Months later, Kibet said he harbored no ill will toward Kikuyus, and said he counted many Kikuyu runners among his friends. He echoed a sentiment held by many runners and officials — that success in Beijing, whether he is there or not — may prove instructive to a country trying to heal itself.
“If people can see Kalenjin and Kikuyus running together, talking together, they might say they can do like that, too,” Kibet said.
In Kenya, Violence Shakes Running Community
By JERÉ LONGMAN
ELDORET, Kenya — When Luke Kibet won the world marathon championship last August, he became a favorite to achieve what no Kenyan has despite this country’s distance-running brilliance — an Olympic gold medal in the 26.2-mile race.
With the Summer Games in Beijing approaching in August, though, Kibet’s Olympic hopes have grown remote. He and many of Kenya’s majestic runners — including dozens of Olympic contenders — had their lives disrupted by the ethnic violence that followed a disputed presidential election last December. About 1,200 people were killed, and several hundred thousand fled their homes.
Among those killed were Lucas Sang, a quarter-miler who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics, and Wesley Ngetich, an elite marathon runner. On Dec. 31, during rioting here in the Rift Valley, Kibet was hit in the head with a stone and knocked unconscious. He sustained a concussion and stopped training for two weeks. In February, he pulled out a pistol to extricate himself from another potential attack.
Kibet said these events left him traumatized, unable to focus on his training. Then he pulled a hamstring, the direct result, he says, of interrupted training. Last month, Kibet finished a disappointing 11th at the London Marathon — seven minutes off the pace.
He has been named an alternate to the Kenyan Olympic marathon team, but his chance of competing in Beijing will now depend on whether another runner drops out.
“When you see people die, it stays in your mind,” Kibet, 25, said at his home.
The workout regimens of many of Kenya’s elite runners were disrupted in January and February. Some runners received death threats. Many remained indoors for a week or more, afraid to leave their homes. Others left the country to train in more hospitable environments.
Meanwhile, the reputation of the country’s runners as peaceful ambassadors was also dealt a blow. An international monitoring agency reported in February that some Kenyan runners, many with military backgrounds, might have participated in the violence, and could have lent financial aid and transportation assistance to tribal militias.
The chaos has since abated. In mid-April, the government formed a national unity cabinet. Yet it is too soon to know whether the ethnic strife and training disruptions will affect Kenya’s medal chances at the Beijing Olympics.
Kenya won no gold medals, and only a pair of bronzes, at the world indoor track championships in March, while its distance-running rival, Ethiopia, won three golds and six medals over all. Ethiopia also swept all four individual races at the world cross-country championships in March. Kenya won team titles in the men’s senior and junior divisions, but it failed to win an individual event for the first time in more than 20 years.
The news has been far more encouraging on the marathon front. Although Kibet has struggled, his fellow Kenyans won the top three international spring marathons in Boston, London and Rotterdam. And David Rudisha, a teenage sensation, ran the world’s fastest time of the year — 1 minute 44.20 seconds — in winning the 800 meters at the African championships this month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Such accomplishments indicate that the violence ended early enough for Kenya’s runners to prepare for Beijing, Kenyan Olympic and track officials said.
“A super performance will let the world know we are still a powerhouse in athletics,” said David Okeyo, secretary general of the Kenyan track and field federation.
Most of Kenya’s elite runners belong to the Kalenjin tribe and live in and around this regional center in the Rift Valley, with its moderate climate and altitude of nearly 7,000 feet. This was also the site of some of the most incendiary post-election violence.
Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, which has long held political and economic dominance, won re-election last December amid charges of ballot-rigging. The Kalenjins backed the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo tribe, who later became prime minister in a power-sharing agreement. When Odinga lost, this normally tranquil country exploded.
A church was burned in a village outside Eldoret on New Year’s Day. As many as 50 people died after being trapped inside. Distance running, which along with safari tourism gives Kenya much of its international recognition, became for a time frivolous and dangerous.
Magdaline Chemjor, who won the 2007 Amsterdam Marathon, told an often-repeated story of how roadblocks interrupted her running routes. She tried to continue training by hiding in the forests, then stopped altogether for two weeks in January.
“People would say, ‘Why are you running when others are being killed?’ ” Chemjor said. “I was just praying that everything would go away. This is my job.”
Lucia Kimani, a Kikuyu, needed a police escort to the airport here from nearby Iten so that she could fly out to compete in the Dubai Marathon in January. Catherine Ndereba, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the women’s marathon, holed up in her house outside Nairobi, the capital, for a week in January while her sister brought her food.
Extra security was provided in March as the Kenyan team gathered in the central town of Embu to train for the world cross-country championships. Embu is a Kikuyu area, and some Kalenjin runners, fearful of being attacked, accepted psychological counseling, said Elias Makori, sports editor of The Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper.
“They had to be talked to to make sure everything was O.K. with their lives,” Makori said.
Two of the world’s best marathoners, Robert Cheruiyot and Martin Lel, were among a group of runners whose manager received a threatening e-mail message: “We know where they live and what cars they drive.”
Cheruiyot and Lel left Kenya in late January and trained for weeks in Namibia before returning home after the violence subsided.
Last month, Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon for the fourth time, and Lel won his third London Marathon. Both were named to Kenya’s Olympic team.
“After the election, they couldn’t train properly,” said Federico Rosa, an Italian who manages the two. “There was daily killing. It was almost a civil war. So we made a plan to train outside, to avoid any problems.”
Moses Kiptanui, a 1996 Olympic silver medalist and former world-record holder in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, said he was threatened by police officers here who accused him of transporting fuel to be used for burning houses. He was only transporting the fuel for use on his farm, Kiptanui said, adding that the threats made him wary enough to “make sure I’m always in the right place at the right time.”
The suggestion that some Kenyan runners were enablers of the violence emerged publicly in February in a report by the International Crisis Group, an independent, nongovernment organization that seeks to prevent and resolve conflict.
The crisis group noted that athletes had become community leaders and had grown wealthy with their earnings from international races, buying farmland and other real estate. Their motivation for providing cash and transportation to tribal militias was partly economic, the report said.
“They allegedly want the Kikuyus evicted so they can take their farms and property,” the report said.
Many athletes are also members of the armed forces or are prison officers and are sponsored by these groups. Most accounts of the death of Sang, the 1988 Olympian and a former army corporal, “suggest he met his death on the outskirts of Eldoret while commanding part of a Kalenjin raiding party,” the report said.
François Grignon, the director of African operations for the crisis group, said influential leaders like athletes would have faced tremendous pressure to become involved when ethnic conflict threatened Kenyan society.
“Athletes, like doctors and lawyers, were asked to contribute and help in the defense of their community,” Grignon said. “They would have been perceived as traitors if they didn’t participate.”
The report infuriated Kenyan sports officials and athletes, who are demanding proof of the accusations. Sang’s friends said he was stoned to death and burned after stopping his car to observe a building fire.
“Those are nonsense,” Kipchoge Keino, president of Kenya’s Olympic committee and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, said of the crisis group’s accusations. “We want the evidence now. It’s not true. It’s hurting the names of the athletes who have dedicated themselves to bettering their lives and running for the glory of the country.”
Luke Kibet basked in that glory after winning the marathon at the 2007 world track and field championships in Osaka, Japan. The race was run in hot, humid conditions, similar to those expected in Beijing. He became an early Olympic favorite. When Kibet returned to Eldoret, he was given a welcoming ceremony from the airport to his father’s house.
By late December, that embrace had vanished. When post-election violence broke out, Kibet was hit in the back of the head with a stone. At the time, he said he was flagging down an ambulance to assist a man who had been shot in the back. Kibet was taken to a hospital, where he received five stitches. He said he saw numerous bodies at the hospital, some of which had been beheaded.
“I saw many things,” Kibet, a Kalenjin, said. “I was afraid to train. I was afraid for my life.”
Kibet said he slept outside for a week in January to protect his house while 15 women and children crowded inside, including his wife and young son and daughter. An inspector in the national prison system, Kibet said he and fellow runners who helped him guard his house were armed with two machine guns.
In February, as Kibet and four other runners drove to Nairobi, armed with pistols, he said they were stopped by Kikuyus who blocked the road with sheep. As a group of men approached his car with machetes, Kibet said he fired his pistol into the air. The crowd dispersed.
Months later, Kibet said he harbored no ill will toward Kikuyus, and said he counted many Kikuyu runners among his friends. He echoed a sentiment held by many runners and officials — that success in Beijing, whether he is there or not — may prove instructive to a country trying to heal itself.
“If people can see Kalenjin and Kikuyus running together, talking together, they might say they can do like that, too,” Kibet said.
May 17, 2008
Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world ... nted=print
DAGAARI, Somalia — The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut.
She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.
At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.
The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn’t even respond to a pinch.
Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.
But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.
This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos.
“We’re really in the perfect storm,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia economist and top United Nations adviser, who recently visited neighboring Kenya.
There has been a collision of troubles throughout the region: skimpy rainfall, disastrous harvests, soaring food prices, dying livestock, escalating violence, out-of-control inflation, and shrinking food aid because of many of these factors.
Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too.
A recent headline in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers blared, “25,000 villagers risk starving,” referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. “These places aren’t on the brink,” Mr. Sachs said. “They’ve gone over the cliff.”
Many Somalis are trying to stave off starvation with a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. Some village elders said their children were chewing on their own lips and tongues because they had no food. The weather has been merciless — intensely hot days, followed by cruelly clear nights.
This week, Saida Mohamed Afrah, another emaciated mother, left her two children under a tree and went scavenging for food and water. When she came back two hours later, her children were dead.
She had little to say about the drought. “I just wish my children had died in my lap,” she said.
The United Nations has declared a wide swath of central Somalia a humanitarian emergency, the final stage before a full-blown famine. But Christian Balslev-Olesen, the head of Unicef operations in Somalia, said the situation was likely to become a famine in the coming weeks.
Famine is defined by several criteria, including malnutrition, mortality, food and water scarcity and destruction of livelihood. Some of those factors, like an acute malnutrition rate of 24 percent in some areas of Somalia, have already soared past emergency thresholds and are closing in on famine range. Mr. Balslev-Olesen said Unicef recently received reports of people dying from hunger and thirst. It is hard to know exactly how many, he said, though local elders have put the number in the mid-hundreds.
“We have all the indicators in place for a catastrophe,” Mr. Balslev-Olesen said. “We cannot call it that yet. But I’m very much concerned it’s just a matter of weeks until we have to.”
Many people already consider Somalia a catastrophe. It has some of the highest malnutrition rates anywhere in the world — in a good year. The collapse of the central government in 1991 plunged Somalia into a spiral of clan-driven bloodshed that it has yet to pull out of. The era began with a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The consensus now is that all the same elements of the early 1990s — high-intensity conflict, widespread displacement and drought — are lining up again, and at a time of the biggest spike in global food prices in more than 30 years. The United Nations says 2.6 million Somalis need assistance and the number could soon swell to 3.5 million, nearly half the estimated population. If there is excellent rain or a sudden peace, the crisis may ease. But weather projections and even the rosiest political forecasts do not predict that.
Whether Somalia slips into a famine may depend on aid, and right now, that does not look so good either. Eleven aid workers have been killed this year, and United Nations officials say Somalia is as complicated — and dangerous — as ever.
Beyond the warlord and clan fighting, there is now a budding conflict with Western aid workers. The Bush administration has said that terrorists with Al Qaeda are hiding in Somalia, sheltered by local Islamists, and has gone after them with American airstrikes. But a recent American attack on an Islamist leader in Dusa Marreb, a town in the center of the drought zone, has spawned a wave of revenge threats against Western aid workers. The United Nations and private aid organizations say it is now too dangerous to expand their life-saving work in Dusa Marreb.
“We’re in a different contextual environment right now,” said Chris Smoot, the program director for World Vision aid projects in Somalia. He said there were anti-Western “rogue elements that can shut you down, in any shape or form, at any time.”
Aid is also a serious problem in the contested Ogaden region of Ethiopia, across the border from here. A recent report written by a contractor working for the United States Agency for International Development said the drought there was “clearly worsening” and that the response by the Ethiopian government, one of America’s closest allies in Africa, was “absolutely abysmal.”
This may be no accident. The Ethiopian government is struggling with an insurgency in the Ogaden, and the report said that “food is clearly being used as a weapon,” with the government starving out rebel areas, while a mysterious warehouse of American-donated food was discovered across the road from an Ethiopian Army base. “The U.S.G.,” meaning the United States government, “cannot in good conscience allow the food operation to continue in its current manifestation,” the report said. “This situation would be absolutely shameful in any other country.”
The report was not made public, though a copy was provided to The New York Times. When asked about it, a senior American aid official characterized the report as “just a snapshot and one person’s observations and impressions.” But the senior aid official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said: “We’re not saying there’s not a crisis in the Ogaden. We’re not saying the Ethiopian response has been satisfactory. But some progress has been made. And we need more.”
Ethiopian officials declined comment and have denied human rights abuses in the Ogaden.
All across this region, one of the poorest of the poor, people are left to the mercies of the desert. In central Somalia, for instance, fewer than five inches of rain have fallen in the past year and a half, aid officials say. The winds are harsh, throats are dry. This area, like much of the Horn of Africa, is too arid for farming. The people here, in lonely outposts like Dagaari, survive by grazing goats, sheep, cattle and camels, selling the animals for money they use to buy food.
“But nobody wants a skinny goat,” explained Abdul Kadir Nur, a herder in Dagaari.
That was about all he had left after the drought killed 400 of his 450 animals.
Not far from the pile of goat bones is a circle of stones. It is the grave of his toddler son.
Mr. Abdul Kadir said the boy had died of hunger and that he had been placed in his grave at an angle, “so he can sleep.”
He walked a few more steps, his flip-flops digging into the crunchy earth. He arrived at Ms. Safia’s hut, where several people were peering in the doorway, watching her sweat on the dirt floor. The nearest hospital was only a half hour away, but nobody had any money to pay for a ride.
“She will most likely die,” an elder said and walked away.
Ms. Safia’s son seemed to sense that. He curled up next to his mother while he still could, his face pressed against the damp cloth that covered her. Her ribs moved up and down, up and down, in quick shallow breaths.
Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world ... nted=print
DAGAARI, Somalia — The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut.
She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.
At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.
The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn’t even respond to a pinch.
Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.
But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.
This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos.
“We’re really in the perfect storm,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia economist and top United Nations adviser, who recently visited neighboring Kenya.
There has been a collision of troubles throughout the region: skimpy rainfall, disastrous harvests, soaring food prices, dying livestock, escalating violence, out-of-control inflation, and shrinking food aid because of many of these factors.
Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too.
A recent headline in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers blared, “25,000 villagers risk starving,” referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. “These places aren’t on the brink,” Mr. Sachs said. “They’ve gone over the cliff.”
Many Somalis are trying to stave off starvation with a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. Some village elders said their children were chewing on their own lips and tongues because they had no food. The weather has been merciless — intensely hot days, followed by cruelly clear nights.
This week, Saida Mohamed Afrah, another emaciated mother, left her two children under a tree and went scavenging for food and water. When she came back two hours later, her children were dead.
She had little to say about the drought. “I just wish my children had died in my lap,” she said.
The United Nations has declared a wide swath of central Somalia a humanitarian emergency, the final stage before a full-blown famine. But Christian Balslev-Olesen, the head of Unicef operations in Somalia, said the situation was likely to become a famine in the coming weeks.
Famine is defined by several criteria, including malnutrition, mortality, food and water scarcity and destruction of livelihood. Some of those factors, like an acute malnutrition rate of 24 percent in some areas of Somalia, have already soared past emergency thresholds and are closing in on famine range. Mr. Balslev-Olesen said Unicef recently received reports of people dying from hunger and thirst. It is hard to know exactly how many, he said, though local elders have put the number in the mid-hundreds.
“We have all the indicators in place for a catastrophe,” Mr. Balslev-Olesen said. “We cannot call it that yet. But I’m very much concerned it’s just a matter of weeks until we have to.”
Many people already consider Somalia a catastrophe. It has some of the highest malnutrition rates anywhere in the world — in a good year. The collapse of the central government in 1991 plunged Somalia into a spiral of clan-driven bloodshed that it has yet to pull out of. The era began with a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The consensus now is that all the same elements of the early 1990s — high-intensity conflict, widespread displacement and drought — are lining up again, and at a time of the biggest spike in global food prices in more than 30 years. The United Nations says 2.6 million Somalis need assistance and the number could soon swell to 3.5 million, nearly half the estimated population. If there is excellent rain or a sudden peace, the crisis may ease. But weather projections and even the rosiest political forecasts do not predict that.
Whether Somalia slips into a famine may depend on aid, and right now, that does not look so good either. Eleven aid workers have been killed this year, and United Nations officials say Somalia is as complicated — and dangerous — as ever.
Beyond the warlord and clan fighting, there is now a budding conflict with Western aid workers. The Bush administration has said that terrorists with Al Qaeda are hiding in Somalia, sheltered by local Islamists, and has gone after them with American airstrikes. But a recent American attack on an Islamist leader in Dusa Marreb, a town in the center of the drought zone, has spawned a wave of revenge threats against Western aid workers. The United Nations and private aid organizations say it is now too dangerous to expand their life-saving work in Dusa Marreb.
“We’re in a different contextual environment right now,” said Chris Smoot, the program director for World Vision aid projects in Somalia. He said there were anti-Western “rogue elements that can shut you down, in any shape or form, at any time.”
Aid is also a serious problem in the contested Ogaden region of Ethiopia, across the border from here. A recent report written by a contractor working for the United States Agency for International Development said the drought there was “clearly worsening” and that the response by the Ethiopian government, one of America’s closest allies in Africa, was “absolutely abysmal.”
This may be no accident. The Ethiopian government is struggling with an insurgency in the Ogaden, and the report said that “food is clearly being used as a weapon,” with the government starving out rebel areas, while a mysterious warehouse of American-donated food was discovered across the road from an Ethiopian Army base. “The U.S.G.,” meaning the United States government, “cannot in good conscience allow the food operation to continue in its current manifestation,” the report said. “This situation would be absolutely shameful in any other country.”
The report was not made public, though a copy was provided to The New York Times. When asked about it, a senior American aid official characterized the report as “just a snapshot and one person’s observations and impressions.” But the senior aid official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said: “We’re not saying there’s not a crisis in the Ogaden. We’re not saying the Ethiopian response has been satisfactory. But some progress has been made. And we need more.”
Ethiopian officials declined comment and have denied human rights abuses in the Ogaden.
All across this region, one of the poorest of the poor, people are left to the mercies of the desert. In central Somalia, for instance, fewer than five inches of rain have fallen in the past year and a half, aid officials say. The winds are harsh, throats are dry. This area, like much of the Horn of Africa, is too arid for farming. The people here, in lonely outposts like Dagaari, survive by grazing goats, sheep, cattle and camels, selling the animals for money they use to buy food.
“But nobody wants a skinny goat,” explained Abdul Kadir Nur, a herder in Dagaari.
That was about all he had left after the drought killed 400 of his 450 animals.
Not far from the pile of goat bones is a circle of stones. It is the grave of his toddler son.
Mr. Abdul Kadir said the boy had died of hunger and that he had been placed in his grave at an angle, “so he can sleep.”
He walked a few more steps, his flip-flops digging into the crunchy earth. He arrived at Ms. Safia’s hut, where several people were peering in the doorway, watching her sweat on the dirt floor. The nearest hospital was only a half hour away, but nobody had any money to pay for a ride.
“She will most likely die,” an elder said and walked away.
Ms. Safia’s son seemed to sense that. He curled up next to his mother while he still could, his face pressed against the damp cloth that covered her. Her ribs moved up and down, up and down, in quick shallow breaths.
Refugees return to Sudan as doctors
Jeff Adams
For the Calgary Herald
Sunday, May 18, 2008
In this yearly season of graduation ceremonies, when thousands occur at universities worldwide, very few if any will be more profoundly meaningful than the one held Saturday in this city along the muddy Nile River.
For the 11 new doctors here, all Sudanese who have strong connections to Calgary, Saturday marked the hard-fought conclusion to their 23-year, seemingly impossible journey that has featured more challenges than most of us can even imagine, let alone overcome.
"I never lost hope that I would come back," Daniel Madit Duop said. "I knew I was on a mission, and it was a God-given opportunity when Samaritan's Purse offered to help me."
"We grew up with that mission in our lives -- it has been part of our journey," Duop said.
In a severely underdeveloped nation where there are barely 30 practising physicians for almost 10 million people, 11 more doctors is cause for great celebration.
"These people are laying the foundation for a strong medical system in South Sudan," said the U.S. government's consulate representative here, one of the speakers at the graduation. "They're going to be an inspiration each day they go to work."
As children, they walked for days, weeks and sometimes months to escape civil war in their Sudanese homeland. By the time they arrived at refugee camps in Ethiopia, many of their family and friends had been gunned down by government soldiers, devoured by crocodiles, or succumbed to starvation, dehydration or exhaustion.
From Ethiopia, they were sent by boat to Cuba -- part of a group of Sudan's 600 best and brightest youngsters given the daunting task by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army of equipping themselves to rebuild South Sudan when the war eventually ended.
They obtained their high schooling, then their medical degrees, in Cuba while the war in Sudan continued. They entered Canada as refugees, discovered their Cuban medical credentials were not recognized, and laboured for years in factory jobs -- including meat packing plants in High River and Brooks.
As the civil war in Sudan wound down, one of the 11 approached Samaritan's Purse Canada three years ago and asked the Christian relief and development agency to help them return to southern Sudan to rebuild its infrastructure.
Duop put Samaritan's Purse in touch with several of his former medical school classmates who also wanted to go home.
Samaritan's Purse then approached the University of Calgary's medical school, offering to help finance the creation of a special refresher/upgrading program.
The doctors finished the nine-month program in the fall of 2006, then began residencies that Samaritan's Purse had arranged at hospitals in Kenya.
The 11 completed their residencies recently and are back in Sudan, assigned to various hospitals and clinics throughout the south.
"You have come at the right time to join us in the challenge of rebuilding together," Dr. Stanley Ambajoro, of the South Sudan Ministry of Health, told the physicians during their graduation ceremony Saturday in Juba, the national capital, before giving each of them a special framed certificate.
Jeff Adams is Director of Samaritan's Purse Canada's Communications and Creative Services Department
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Jeff Adams
For the Calgary Herald
Sunday, May 18, 2008
In this yearly season of graduation ceremonies, when thousands occur at universities worldwide, very few if any will be more profoundly meaningful than the one held Saturday in this city along the muddy Nile River.
For the 11 new doctors here, all Sudanese who have strong connections to Calgary, Saturday marked the hard-fought conclusion to their 23-year, seemingly impossible journey that has featured more challenges than most of us can even imagine, let alone overcome.
"I never lost hope that I would come back," Daniel Madit Duop said. "I knew I was on a mission, and it was a God-given opportunity when Samaritan's Purse offered to help me."
"We grew up with that mission in our lives -- it has been part of our journey," Duop said.
In a severely underdeveloped nation where there are barely 30 practising physicians for almost 10 million people, 11 more doctors is cause for great celebration.
"These people are laying the foundation for a strong medical system in South Sudan," said the U.S. government's consulate representative here, one of the speakers at the graduation. "They're going to be an inspiration each day they go to work."
As children, they walked for days, weeks and sometimes months to escape civil war in their Sudanese homeland. By the time they arrived at refugee camps in Ethiopia, many of their family and friends had been gunned down by government soldiers, devoured by crocodiles, or succumbed to starvation, dehydration or exhaustion.
From Ethiopia, they were sent by boat to Cuba -- part of a group of Sudan's 600 best and brightest youngsters given the daunting task by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army of equipping themselves to rebuild South Sudan when the war eventually ended.
They obtained their high schooling, then their medical degrees, in Cuba while the war in Sudan continued. They entered Canada as refugees, discovered their Cuban medical credentials were not recognized, and laboured for years in factory jobs -- including meat packing plants in High River and Brooks.
As the civil war in Sudan wound down, one of the 11 approached Samaritan's Purse Canada three years ago and asked the Christian relief and development agency to help them return to southern Sudan to rebuild its infrastructure.
Duop put Samaritan's Purse in touch with several of his former medical school classmates who also wanted to go home.
Samaritan's Purse then approached the University of Calgary's medical school, offering to help finance the creation of a special refresher/upgrading program.
The doctors finished the nine-month program in the fall of 2006, then began residencies that Samaritan's Purse had arranged at hospitals in Kenya.
The 11 completed their residencies recently and are back in Sudan, assigned to various hospitals and clinics throughout the south.
"You have come at the right time to join us in the challenge of rebuilding together," Dr. Stanley Ambajoro, of the South Sudan Ministry of Health, told the physicians during their graduation ceremony Saturday in Juba, the national capital, before giving each of them a special framed certificate.
Jeff Adams is Director of Samaritan's Purse Canada's Communications and Creative Services Department
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Hope returns to wartorn Sudan
Jeff Adams
For the Calgary Herald
Monday, May 19, 2008
Every time Dr. Daniel Madit Duop saves the lives of another mother and her newborn baby by performing an emergency caesarean section, the former Calgarian says it helps to briefly restore life to his own mom. She died during childbirth in 1983, only months after civil war began in their Sudanese homeland.
"It brings back my mother in some way," Duop says with a sad smile, choking back tears. "It relieves some of the pain."
That pain dates back almost 25 years to when he, his siblings, mother and father were escaping marauding government soldiers from the north. The terrified family was among hundreds of thousands of people in southern Sudan -- including the famous nation's "lost boys" -- whose only hope was to walk to refugee camps in neighbouring Ethiopia.
During their desperate journey, Duop's pregnant mother went into labour. She struggled for two agonizing days amidst the chaos of war to deliver her child before both mother and baby died.
In response to this tragedy, the then 13-year-old Duop vowed to learn whatever was necessary to ensure he could help other women and babies avoid similar tragedies.
He got his opportunity to learn when the rebel army sent him and about 600 young Sudanese to Cuba to become educated as their nation's next generation of leaders.
Duop studied medicine. But when the war dragged on, he couldn't return home -- ending up in Canada as a refugee whose foreign-acquired medical training wasn't recognized.
After years of working at a meat-packing plant in High River, Duop obtained help from Samaritan's Purse Canada to fulfil his long-awaited mission.
The Christian international relief and development agency, inspired by Duop's courage and vision, enrolled him and several of his medical school classmates also living in Canada in a special nine-month refresher-upgrading program organized in partnership with the University of Calgary's medical school. Then Samaritan's Purse help arrange residencies for them at several Kenyan hospitals.
Duop completed his residency earlier this year and is now a much-needed doctor at a war-damaged hospital in the dusty city of Malakal
"We are all very grateful to have Daniel here," says Dr. Gabriel Gatwich, the hospital's director-general. "We are just getting out of a war, when almost everything collapsed. We are starting from zero. The schools have been destroyed. The hospitals have been destroyed. Everything was destroyed. But step by step, we are making changes."
Much of Duop's hospital work is in obstetrics and gynecology. He has already performed several life-saving caesarean sections -- a relatively common procedure in North America that would have almost certainly saved his own mother's life.
The quiet-spoken man with the scraggly goatee is becoming known as a skilled surgeon and physician -- so much so that four mothers have named their newborn babies "Doctor Daniel" in a heart-felt tribute to him.
Reminding Duop of this prompts an embarrassed laugh. He is equally embarrassed by repeated suggestions he is a hero for returning to help rebuild southern Sudan.
"I'm not a hero," Duop says, while making his daily hospital rounds. "This is my mission, and my mission is not yet finished. We have a lot of rebuilding to do."
Michael Tut Pur agrees. He is another of the 11 Sudan-born, Cuba-Calgary-Kenya- educated physicians who recently returned home and began working. Tut Pur has been assigned to a hospital in Akobo, only two kilometres from where he grew up.
"When I came back here, a lot of people didn't think that a medical doctor would come because of the hostilities and people killed in this area (Akobo changed hands between government and rebel forces several times during the civil war)," Tut Pur said, while examining a crying malnourished baby.
"Many people would have gone to Juba or Malakal for the security, but because I come from this area and I was born from here, I said, 'I'm going to my land. I'm going to contribute something for them in terms of medical services.'
"Many people have asked: 'Why did you come back? Why did you come here when you had everything in back in Canada? You had the luxury life there.' I tell them that luxury is not everything -- that something is missing. Your life should be a God-purposed life. It should be significant so you can do something for your people.' "
Such strong convictions are inspiring people in not only Akobo, but in Canada.
Two faith communities -- Maranatha Christian Reformed Church in Calgary, and Clearview Christian Reformed Church in Oakville, Ont., both of which Tut Pur attended during his five years in Canada -- are financially supporting him and his work.
They are arranging through Samaritan's Purse to provide funds to restore war-damaged hospital buildings and buy equipment.
Tut Pur and the other doctors will submit project proposals to Samaritan's Purse, which will assess them and monitor the progress of approved project to ensure the donations are invested appropriately.
"We are making a big difference here and, with the help of my friends in Canada, we can make much, much more difference," Tut Pur says.
John Clayton, Samaritan's Purse Canada's projects director, hopes other churches in Canada will come alongside Duop and the other recently returned doctors in Sudan to support them.
"The long-term partnership these two churches have with Michael can be a model for similar partnerships involving other churches and other Sudanese-Canadian physicians," says Clayton. "It can enable church congregations in Canada to have a very real and lasting impact on some of the world's most needy people."
Clayton is in southern Sudan to visit Duop, Tut Pur and the other physicians -- assessing the impact they are having, and what they need to have even more impact. He joined them Saturday at a special graduation ceremony and banquet organized by Samaritan's Purse and funded by the government of Southern Sudan.
The fact the physicians' return home has been "recognized by the highest levels of the South Sudan government" is very gratifying for Samaritan's Purse, says Clayton, noting the organization has invested more than $1 million in the program. "It's a pleasure to see the fruits of this partnership."
A significant portion of the $1 million has come from Calgary's Arthur Child Foundation. One of its trustees, Lorne Jacobson, is with Clayton to monitor how the foundation's money is being spent.
"It's really neat to see this working the way it (foreign aid) should work, with indigenous people helping themselves," Jacobson said.
"We get countless requests for funds every year, and this one (equipping the doctors to return home and help their people) really made sense to us. Samaritan's Purse has really delivered on what they said they would."
Also in southern Sudan to assess the special program's initial impact, and to explore possible teaching partnerships between hospitals here and the University of Calgary, is Ruth Parent from the U of C's medical school.
It was Parent, and the medical school's Dr. Rod Crutcher, who recruited dozens of medical specialists to teach the Sudanese back in 2006. Most of the specialists volunteered their time to do so.
During the Sudanese doctors' nine-month period at the university, Parent became friends with many of them -- including the kind-hearted Duop.
"I'm so, so happy for Daniel," she said, while watching him treat patients.
"He's doing what he wants to do. He's fulfilling his dream. That we at the University of Calgary and at Samaritan's Purse played a part in making that happen -- it's truly wonderful."
Jeff Adams is director of Samaritan's Purse Canada's communications and creative services department
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Jeff Adams
For the Calgary Herald
Monday, May 19, 2008
Every time Dr. Daniel Madit Duop saves the lives of another mother and her newborn baby by performing an emergency caesarean section, the former Calgarian says it helps to briefly restore life to his own mom. She died during childbirth in 1983, only months after civil war began in their Sudanese homeland.
"It brings back my mother in some way," Duop says with a sad smile, choking back tears. "It relieves some of the pain."
That pain dates back almost 25 years to when he, his siblings, mother and father were escaping marauding government soldiers from the north. The terrified family was among hundreds of thousands of people in southern Sudan -- including the famous nation's "lost boys" -- whose only hope was to walk to refugee camps in neighbouring Ethiopia.
During their desperate journey, Duop's pregnant mother went into labour. She struggled for two agonizing days amidst the chaos of war to deliver her child before both mother and baby died.
In response to this tragedy, the then 13-year-old Duop vowed to learn whatever was necessary to ensure he could help other women and babies avoid similar tragedies.
He got his opportunity to learn when the rebel army sent him and about 600 young Sudanese to Cuba to become educated as their nation's next generation of leaders.
Duop studied medicine. But when the war dragged on, he couldn't return home -- ending up in Canada as a refugee whose foreign-acquired medical training wasn't recognized.
After years of working at a meat-packing plant in High River, Duop obtained help from Samaritan's Purse Canada to fulfil his long-awaited mission.
The Christian international relief and development agency, inspired by Duop's courage and vision, enrolled him and several of his medical school classmates also living in Canada in a special nine-month refresher-upgrading program organized in partnership with the University of Calgary's medical school. Then Samaritan's Purse help arrange residencies for them at several Kenyan hospitals.
Duop completed his residency earlier this year and is now a much-needed doctor at a war-damaged hospital in the dusty city of Malakal
"We are all very grateful to have Daniel here," says Dr. Gabriel Gatwich, the hospital's director-general. "We are just getting out of a war, when almost everything collapsed. We are starting from zero. The schools have been destroyed. The hospitals have been destroyed. Everything was destroyed. But step by step, we are making changes."
Much of Duop's hospital work is in obstetrics and gynecology. He has already performed several life-saving caesarean sections -- a relatively common procedure in North America that would have almost certainly saved his own mother's life.
The quiet-spoken man with the scraggly goatee is becoming known as a skilled surgeon and physician -- so much so that four mothers have named their newborn babies "Doctor Daniel" in a heart-felt tribute to him.
Reminding Duop of this prompts an embarrassed laugh. He is equally embarrassed by repeated suggestions he is a hero for returning to help rebuild southern Sudan.
"I'm not a hero," Duop says, while making his daily hospital rounds. "This is my mission, and my mission is not yet finished. We have a lot of rebuilding to do."
Michael Tut Pur agrees. He is another of the 11 Sudan-born, Cuba-Calgary-Kenya- educated physicians who recently returned home and began working. Tut Pur has been assigned to a hospital in Akobo, only two kilometres from where he grew up.
"When I came back here, a lot of people didn't think that a medical doctor would come because of the hostilities and people killed in this area (Akobo changed hands between government and rebel forces several times during the civil war)," Tut Pur said, while examining a crying malnourished baby.
"Many people would have gone to Juba or Malakal for the security, but because I come from this area and I was born from here, I said, 'I'm going to my land. I'm going to contribute something for them in terms of medical services.'
"Many people have asked: 'Why did you come back? Why did you come here when you had everything in back in Canada? You had the luxury life there.' I tell them that luxury is not everything -- that something is missing. Your life should be a God-purposed life. It should be significant so you can do something for your people.' "
Such strong convictions are inspiring people in not only Akobo, but in Canada.
Two faith communities -- Maranatha Christian Reformed Church in Calgary, and Clearview Christian Reformed Church in Oakville, Ont., both of which Tut Pur attended during his five years in Canada -- are financially supporting him and his work.
They are arranging through Samaritan's Purse to provide funds to restore war-damaged hospital buildings and buy equipment.
Tut Pur and the other doctors will submit project proposals to Samaritan's Purse, which will assess them and monitor the progress of approved project to ensure the donations are invested appropriately.
"We are making a big difference here and, with the help of my friends in Canada, we can make much, much more difference," Tut Pur says.
John Clayton, Samaritan's Purse Canada's projects director, hopes other churches in Canada will come alongside Duop and the other recently returned doctors in Sudan to support them.
"The long-term partnership these two churches have with Michael can be a model for similar partnerships involving other churches and other Sudanese-Canadian physicians," says Clayton. "It can enable church congregations in Canada to have a very real and lasting impact on some of the world's most needy people."
Clayton is in southern Sudan to visit Duop, Tut Pur and the other physicians -- assessing the impact they are having, and what they need to have even more impact. He joined them Saturday at a special graduation ceremony and banquet organized by Samaritan's Purse and funded by the government of Southern Sudan.
The fact the physicians' return home has been "recognized by the highest levels of the South Sudan government" is very gratifying for Samaritan's Purse, says Clayton, noting the organization has invested more than $1 million in the program. "It's a pleasure to see the fruits of this partnership."
A significant portion of the $1 million has come from Calgary's Arthur Child Foundation. One of its trustees, Lorne Jacobson, is with Clayton to monitor how the foundation's money is being spent.
"It's really neat to see this working the way it (foreign aid) should work, with indigenous people helping themselves," Jacobson said.
"We get countless requests for funds every year, and this one (equipping the doctors to return home and help their people) really made sense to us. Samaritan's Purse has really delivered on what they said they would."
Also in southern Sudan to assess the special program's initial impact, and to explore possible teaching partnerships between hospitals here and the University of Calgary, is Ruth Parent from the U of C's medical school.
It was Parent, and the medical school's Dr. Rod Crutcher, who recruited dozens of medical specialists to teach the Sudanese back in 2006. Most of the specialists volunteered their time to do so.
During the Sudanese doctors' nine-month period at the university, Parent became friends with many of them -- including the kind-hearted Duop.
"I'm so, so happy for Daniel," she said, while watching him treat patients.
"He's doing what he wants to do. He's fulfilling his dream. That we at the University of Calgary and at Samaritan's Purse played a part in making that happen -- it's truly wonderful."
Jeff Adams is director of Samaritan's Purse Canada's communications and creative services department
© The Calgary Herald 2008