Kenya

More mayhem than mediation

Jan 31st 2008 | NAIVASHA
From The Economist print edition

Kenya's warring politicians are only just beginning to talk to each other as ethnic violence threatens to slip out of control
Reuters

THE small propeller-driven plane piloted by Peter Szapary, an Austrian count turned Kenyan flower farmer, banked and flew low over the Rift Valley town of Naivasha. Some traffic was visible on the main road, the same rotten one that connects much of the interior of eastern Africa, including Uganda, with the sea. But in the town itself things were largely at a standstill. Several streets were controlled by crowds of Kikuyu youths armed with clubs, machetes, bows and arrows. Here and there, houses were burning. A few hundred youths were strung along the road outside the police station, where several thousand of Naivasha's Luos, whose heartland is some 200km (120 miles) farther west, had taken shelter. Mr Szapary landed his plane on a grass airstrip by Lake Naivasha and found out the whereabouts of his two Luo managers. One had taken shelter in the town prison, too scared to leave. The other had fled in a boat to an island in the lake; Mr Szapary later landed there and flew him back to Nairobi.

The Rift Valley has become a hub for much of the ethnic violence that has worsened sharply in the past fortnight. In Nakuru, north-west of Naivasha, at least 80 people have been killed. Now it is often a case of simple revenge, Kikuyus striking back against their Luo and Kalenjin tormentors who, in turn, did most of the killing immediately after the disputed election of December 27th. At least 1,000 have since died and 200,000 been driven from their homes. The cycle of bloodshed may be gathering its own momentum beyond the control of Kenya's political leaders.
But at least this week they started talking to each other. A former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who is the leading mediator, has persuaded the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, to enter into negotiations with Raila Odinga, a Luo, who leads the opposition Orange Democratic Movement. Both leaders have appointed teams of three representatives to resolve what Mr Annan calls their “immediate political issues” and break the impasse. He gave warning that it may take much longer, even a year, to forge a solid and comprehensive agreement.
Still, that is progress of sorts. Mr Kibaki's newly appointed ministers at first insisted there was nothing to negotiate. Yet the main difference remains. The opposition insists that Mr Kibaki stole the election and is an “illegal” president, whereas the government argues that Mr Kibaki won fairly, so the country should carry on as normal. Britain's minister for Africa, Lord Malloch-Brown, met both sides earlier this week and said he felt they were talking about separate crises and solutions.

Mr Annan has apparently ruled out a recount of the vote on the ground that Kenyans have lost confidence in their electoral commission. He also reckons a new election is unthinkable for a year or so. The Oranges are being urged to suppress their anger and soften their demands; even if they did, it remains unclear whether Mr Kibaki and his backers would sit alongside Mr Odinga in an interim government.
Should Mr Kibaki drag out the talks in the hope of bolstering his position without making any concession on the election or on any other issue, the European Union may seek “targeted” sanctions on Kenya. These would punish Mr Kibaki's more obdurate ministers and backers, while sparing poorer Kenyans from the effects of general trade and aid sanctions. The targeted version would include travel bans on specified individuals and their families, increased international oversight of prospective privatisations, and publicity to advertise new investigations into grand corruption by named ministers. More extreme measures would be to downgrade diplomatic relations and withdraw the considerable military support that Kenya gets from Britain and America, though Mr Kibaki has been warmly embraced in the past as an ally in the global “war on terror”.

In any event, the shooting dead, in separate incidents, of two Orange MPs, set off more spasms of lethal riots in the capital's slums and elsewhere. One was Mugabe Were, a Luhya who was popular in Nairobi; the other was David Too, a Kalenjin. In the Luos' provincial capital, Kisumu, more Kikuyus were butchered and “necklaced” with burning tyres by Luo youths.

Kenya is rife with rumour. Some say there are furious disagreements within Mr Kibaki's circle in State House. Others say he is poised to impose a state of emergency. Among Kikuyus, there is fearful talk of Luo militias loyal to Mr Odinga being trained in southern Sudan.

All sides realise that an escalation in violence from machetes to machineguns would be ruinous for all Kenyans. So far, the use of traditional weapons, including clubs and poisoned arrows, has caused the flight of several hundred thousand Kenyans who belonged to ethnic minorities in their places of abode—for instance, Luos in Central Province and Kikuyus in the west. Wholesale slaughter has yet to occur on the scale of Rwanda in 1994, but the prospect hovers in people's minds. Indeed, the fear spreading across the country may offer Mr Annan his best chance of success.
Diplomats have joined Kenyan business and church leaders in giving him their support. Though many believe Mr Kibaki is to blame for rigging the presidential vote, they have agreed not to press for immediate sanctions so as to give Mr Annan's negotiations a chance to succeed.

But if there is no breakthrough, Kenya could tear apart even more drastically along ethnic lines, with Mr Kibaki's Kikuyu-dominated government controlling the wealthy centre of the country up to Nakuru, north-west of Nairobi, while Mr Odinga's Orange opposition holds sway over the west and much of the north. Most of the Kalenjin people in the Rift Valley are hostile to Kikuyu political domination.

For many Kenyans this is both an appalling and, until recent events, incredible prospect. The country's largest newspaper, the Daily Nation, which had slightly favoured Mr Kibaki during the election campaign, has lost patience with him. An editorial declared that the government's “inertia and ineptitude” were “exposing base instincts and driving the country back to pre-colonial times”.

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