The Rift Valley has been the scene of some of the worst post-election violence in Kenya, resulting in the deaths of hundreds and displacement of thousands more. In a statement last week, Human Rights Watch accused opposition leaders of organizing the violence in the Rift Valley, especially around the town of Eldoret. "We have evidence that ODM [Opposition Democratic Movement] politicians and local leaders actively fomented some post-election violence," said Georgette Gagnon, the organization's acting Africa director. Frazer blamed ethnic groups supporting both the opposition – such as the Luo and Kalenjin – and the government – the Kikuyu – for the violence. "The first wave of violence, it was primarily in the Rift Valley, and it was Kalenjin pushing out Kikuyu. But that may now be spreading to Kikuyus pushing out the Luos and Kalenjin," she said. Most experts and observers have commented that the attacks in the Rift Valley have been well-organized, while violence in other parts of Kenya has seemed more spontaneous. The concern over violence spiraling out of control in the Rift Valley puts more pressure on President Mwai Kibaki, opposition leader Raila Odinga and their political allies to reach an agreement to end the political standoff that ensued after Kenya’s disputed presidential election in December. "The election was not one that inspired confidence in the Kenyan people and, therefore, there needs to be a political arrangement, a political solution between the major opposition candidate and the president," Rice said Tuesday. The State Department has been calling for a power-sharing agreement because diplomats believe it would be very difficult to determine who won the elections. The ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, contributing from Nairobi to a recent Washington panel discussion, dismissed a recount. Documents had gone missing or been altered, he said, and a new election would be a "huge trauma". http://allafrica.com/stories/200801310575.html
It's a disaster, it's an incredible mess. 'Tis a tragic and ugly tale, indeed. An outright disaster. And, of course, there's always the U.S. to make it worse: "The election was not one that inspired confidence in the Kenyan people and, therefore, there needs to be a political arrangement, a political solution between the major opposition candidate and the president." (U.S. Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice) I mean, there's nothing like blaming the people at large for being defrauded. Good one, Condi. • • • On a more serious note, though, the situation is deteriorating, and for some reason many of the world's foremost political leaders seem to think that the typical process of much talk and little action will have some kind of atypical effect. I was slow to come 'round on the story in large part because when the violence first flared up, I really did think it would be over after a couple of days of rioting. Whoops. My bad. Even with regular updates coming across my RSS— • "Kenya: A Fight to the Death?" (Jan. 3) • "Kenya Protests Leave 22 Dead" (Jan. 18) • "Kenyans Beaten, Hacked to Death" (Jan. 21) • "Ethnic Clashes Spread in Kenya" (Jan. 29) • "A New Burst of Killings in Kenya" (Jan. 29) • "Tribe Vanishes From Kenyan City" (Jan. 30) • "Can Kenya Avert a Bloodbath?" (Jan. 30)—it has taken weeks for the reality to set in. Those several links are from just one feed (Time.com). The BBC has asked the obvious question, one that has, admittedly been hinted after in recent weeks: "Could Kenya become Rwanda?" And the situation is harrowing. GuardianUnlimited reports: And the AP's Katharine Houreld informs: In the meantime, the "Rwanda" discussion is a curious one. Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, explained to the BBC: Dowden also said that land taken by the British during the colonial period would have come from Luo or Kalenjin ethnic groups, but was given over to Kikuyu after independence. We should, he says, "Think Bosnia, think Kosovo, don't think Rwanda". The politics may well be a mere catalyst. Dowden explained that, "The election released these feelings of deep frustration which go back a long way." Nor, said Dowden, have wee seen the worst of it. And that is easy to believe: And while Dowden's distinctions most likely reflect important issues, the truth of the matter is that for most it doesn't really matter what we call it, or which horrible chapter of history it is more like. Bosnia? Rwanda? Right now the death toll is said to be around 750-800, and is most likely higher. But how high will it run before this is all over? Estimates put Kenya's population just under 37,000,000. A repeat of Rwanda, in which casualty estimates push as high as 937,000, equivalent to 2.5% of Kenya's population. Estimates from Bosnia range between 100,000 and a quarter-million, a "mere" fraction of a percent compared to the Kenyan population. In either case, though, it's a sickening prospect. As if wars with bullets and laser-guided bombs aren't horrifying enough, it is difficult to conceive of hundreds of thousands being hacked to pieces with machetes, bludgeoned to death with golf clubs, or burned alive. But what can the international community do? It is obvious that asking nicely that people stop hacking one another to pieces won't work. And the international community hasn't the best record in African conflicts. The U.S. might be responsible for 47% of the world's defense spending, but on the one hand the scuttlebutt is that we can't afford to deploy any more troops abroad without hurting our armed forces, while to the other I just don't know if the world really wants more American troops rumbling around the world. But who has the troops? And are they willing? How long will it take to get there? And, perhaps more importantly, have they a clue what to do when they get there? To consider Dowden's assessment, what concessions could the Kibaki government possibly make that would have an effect? And would those concessions hold over the long run? _____________________ Notes: Kennedy, Brian. "Kenya: U.S. Govt Sends Mixed Messages on Crisis". allAfrica.com. January 31, 2008. See http://allafrica.com/stories/200801310575.html Rice, Xan. "Using golf clubs, rocks and machetes, neighbour turns on neighbour in Kenya". GuardianUnlimited. January 30, 2008. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/kenya/story/0,,2248971,00.html Hourend, Katharine. "Tribe Vanishes From Kenyan City". Time.com. January 30, 2008. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1708389,00.html ————— "Ethnic Clashes Spread in Kenya". Time.com. January 29, 2008. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1707739,00.html BBC News. "Could Kenya become Rwanda?" January 30, 2008. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7217462.stm Asiimwe, Arthur. "Rwanda census puts genocide death toll at 937,000". Reuters AlertNet. April 4, 2004. See http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/108117321274.htm GrayFalcon. "Bosnia Death Toll Revealed!" November 30, 2004. See http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/11/bosnia-death-toll-revealed.html
A similar argument was made during the Rwandan genocide. Everyone said something should be done, but no one was willing to do anything about it. And the ultimate death toll in Rwanda was well over 1.5 million, when one considers the conflicts that occurred after the RPF gained power after the genocide and Western intervention. Can we, as an international society, stomach another Rwanda? Can it be nipped in the bud to prevent another such genocide? Or will we sit idly by, demanding something be done, yet refusing to volunteer any services, expecting others to do something? At present, the situation appears to be heading in the same way as Rwanda. The tragic thing with Rwanda is that it never needed to have occurred. It could have been stopped right from the start if the UN had been able to convince the US, the French and the Belgians that an extra 3,000 or so troops be sent to UNIMAR. But they refused and instead did nothing except get their own out of the country. Romeo Dallaire explains in his book the shame he felt when Belgian soldiers arrived to remove the expats, telling him that they were only interested in getting the 'whites out' after he asked them to help get the Tutsi's out and to help him stop the genocide, while thousands of Tutsis begged for help. Within a few days, those Tutsi's were slaughtered, many of who were embassy staff of many Western countries that were simply ignoring them. The similarities between the current events in Kenya and what happened leading up to the genocide in Rwanda is frighteningly real. We failed in Rwanda and I am guessing we will fail again. I do not want to bring race into it, but if this were happening in Europe for example, then the world would race to act. But it is Africa and no one can really bring themselves to give a damn about a few million black people. That is what happened with Rwanda and it is happening again. In short, we will never learn from our mistakes.
Whats the problem in Kenya, actually? Is it ethnic war? Artificial divisions? My own knowledge of the background of this conflict is limited.
Indeed. But I'm serious. I just don't know what solution to propose. I think we're going to try. Something about the brutality of it seems more visceral, and that helps scare the bejeezus out of people, too. I mean, think about it: Bombs and bullets? Iraq? No problem. Flaying the skin off one another's still living bones? Nepal? Ah, let 'em settle it themselves. Hacking one another to death with machetes? Beating each others skulls in with golf clubs and the kitchen sink? Setting one another on fire? Somewhere in Africa? Hell, let's wring our hands, watch all the people die, then talk about how bad it is to let such things happen. There is something disproportionate about our perspective. We can stomach our soldiers being shot. We don't think it's fair to bomb them with IEDs. We're horrified at beheadings. Nobody seems to want to be in the middle of an African conflict. Hell, in Uganda they were eating Pygmies. There really is something about that. Nobody wants to fight children, and nobody wants to imagine what will happen to our MIAs in a place where they're eating Pygmies or burning one another alive or hacking one another to pieces. Africa scares the hell out of the West. Racism is one thing, but people are just superstitious and stupid and scared senseless. • • • Property fight, ethnic divisions, political alliances, and old grievances. Near as I can tell, at least.
They're not our mistakes. In the West we don't resort to hacking each other to death with machetes when an election outcome is disputed. Sub-Saharan Africans have never evolved beyond very unsophisticated tribal societies. As a result, we will always be expected to pick up the bill for the intervening gap. Our frustrations emanate from our shallow and unrealistic contemporary notion of 'equality'. To draw an analogy from computing, we believe progress is simply a case of applying software updates to human cultures, the a priori assumption being that the hardware architecture and the OS is the same in all humans. Would a computer engineer attempt to apply software updates to a system when he cannot be 100% sure of the architecture or OS? He could apply them, but it's unlikely they would work. Eventually, they may cause the system to crash. We are overloading an earlier architecture with a system it was never 'designed' to handle. I'm about half way through Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa by Washington Post journalist Keith B. Richburg. Richburg describes in detail the breakdown of the nation state in Africa, even in regions not torn by civil war or economic strife: (1) Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa; Keith B. Richburg, Harcourt Press, 1998, p93.
A lot can be done. A couple of thousand peacekeepers can be placed on the ground to ensure some form of order is restored. Demand another election and have that election closely monitored so that one side cannot cheat, as has occurred in their last election, which has led to this current state of drama. That could be a start. Of course we are. We have no vested interest in Africa. We have also not learned from our past mistakes in Africa. Will there be another genocide in Africa, while the West sits back and laments after the fact? Yes. We are most probably on the brink of another genocide and again, we will each look to each other to do something and make many suggestions about how to stop it, but do nothing ourselves. After all, the lives of our soldiers are too important to contemplate protecting and preventing a human rights catastrophe in a place like Africa. They should not be involved in any form of conflict that does not benefit their country in any way. For example: And that is the prevailing attitude amongst many in the West. We haven't learnt from the horror that was Rwanda and it will continue to happen again and again. Have an instance of electoral fraud of that magnitude in a Western country and you'll see for yourself just how vicious the West can be. And no, you are right, we do not use machetes. Our weapons of choice are guns and bombs. Much more civilised. And they are very much our mistakes. We made the Africa of today. With past colonial rule, the stripping of their natural resources and then dumping them to flounder, while demanding they adopt our form of democracy. They do, and quite often. Prime example is Vista. Sub-Saharan Africa have been prevented from 'evolving' in their own style, instead being shut out of the world markets, being forced and encouraged to go into huge amounts of debt. I could go on, but I think you are getting my drift. Instead of giving them a chance to develop and grow, we have stifled them in every single manner possible. Then when things get really bad, we hum and haw about intervening to prevent the human tragedy that ultimately follows, we ram in, patch up what we think is wrong, ignoring the pleas from those who are there and know what is wrong, take one side and then leave.. The result is we usually end up supporting the despotic regime that has helped drive the countries into the dust, turn our backs on those who are the human tragedy and pat ourselves on the back on a job well done. And for once in this life time, I have to agree with you. We place demands upon them that simply cannot be met. And when it fails, we wring our hands and say 'oh the horror'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire (2004) Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, Arrow Books. p498-499.
A free market doesn't shut out any business which supplies goods at a competitive price. Creating and running those businesses requires intelligence and enterprise. Sub-Saharan Africans have demonstrated neither. And I know what you mean by 'evolving in their own style' - they should be kept like children. When will we grow tired of this burden?
History is discouraging, I confess I would not disagree. But I really do wonder about the bureaucracy. It's no reason to not try, but the practical part of me is resigned to a big, bloody, African clusterf@ck. I admit I'm simply not up to finding a reference on it, but didn't Rwanda escalate after the Belgians lost a couple of peacekeepers and the whole UN operation buckled? (Okay, I'll look it up later.) Even if peacekeepers get to Kenya in time, how quickly will the operation cave in if things go awry?
The genocide was already well on the way when the Belgians were killed. They were killed by the Hutu Government's supporting forces as they tried to hold onto the airport. They were held hostage, then tortured and killed. The hatred the Hutus had for the Belgians ran deep. Belgium then decided to pull out the rest of its peacekeepers and all citizens, as did the French and all other foreign nationals. From what I understand, the surviving Belgian soldiers were pulled out under their own protest. They were there on the ground and knew a genocide was taking place and felt ashamed that their Government could react this way to a former colony. The Belgians who latter arrived to evacuate their own nationals were only interested in pulling out the 'whites', with little to no respect for their fellow soldiers who had given their lives and recognised the horror that was occurring. Lets face it, the UN's reaction to Africa and genocide in Africa will always be paltry. The Western and Asian countries that sit in the Security Council have no vested interest in Africa. A couple of million blacks dying is just that.. a couple of million blacks dying. Lets hope that because Kofi is seeing to the situation in Kenya, the media might embarrass the West into preventing another genocide, that this time, the senior members of the Security Council will not stymie all attempts to help any UN watchers on the ground in Kenya, like they did with Rwanda. Yes of course DeepThought. Those blacks can know nothing like the whites do. They can only hope to emanate the superior whites in developing stable and just systems of Government so they do not become warring nations. Oh wait.. hang on.. Hmmm..Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The West has shut them out of the world market, this is after they depleted their natural resources and left the continent in ruins. But hey, it's never our fault, is it? We'll just put it down to their being too stupid and too black to know better and be just like us.
Kenyan land clashes, however bloody, require a Kenyan solution. This is another post-colonial aftershock that outsiders can't keep from complicating. There are still a lot of shallow thinkers like DeepThought corrupting any military move. Supporting Kofi (who is doing excellent work) and sending lots more non-military aid (especially food), are the best that we can do from outside this tragedy today. bells: "We'll just put it down to their being too stupid and too black to know better and be just like us." Sarcasm noted- How is it that we are prone to so much more indignance about mass-murders with machetes, as opposed to "developed nations" exhibiting the very same behavior using high-tech weaponry? Are we really supposed to believe that rifles and bombs are more humane? I suspect our wars would be less protracted and bloody if they were all fought with machetes.
I agree. But when we begin to see the start of ethnic cleansing and genocide, then it is time for intervention. The way I see it is this. If those on the ground in Kenya begin to fear of another genocide, then they should have the support of the world community in attempting to stop it, whatever it may take. If it means member states having to send a couple of hundred troops each, then so be it. There also needs to be a rethink of unarmed UN troops in such situations. If there is threat to innocent civilians, then peacekeepers should be allowed to protect them by any means necessary. If that means shooting at machete wielding gangs hell bent on killing, then so be it. I think we have learnt enough lessons in the past to not be in a position where we repeat the same mistakes again. At least I would hope so. Because if we have not, then we will be seen by future generations to be idiots. There is something to be said for seeing someone begging for their lives as they are slowly hacked to death, seeing pieces of their flesh be sliced off their body. The images of Rwanda are still raw in my mind and it was those images that set me on the path in life I ended up taking. I feel equally appalled at the use of any weapon in the hands of murderers. I doubt it. Modern warfare, and the use of bombs primarily, mean that many wounds are cauterised, meaning there is not that much bleeding as having someone hack the limbs off another and keep hacking until all the blood has drained from their body. Would it be less protracted? Maybe. But the rage and the hysteria that leads to the machete and close warfare of the past have shown that it simply does not die down after a while. It is left to simmer and boil, until it one day erupts to the surface and the cycle begins all over again.
Just talked to our contact in Uganda yesterday. They are afraid that the Kenyan situation could spill over to them. Already Kenyan mobs are attacking Ugandan goods that is being transported between the port and Uganda. The problem seems to be that the government of Kenya did not expect the situation that was simmering for a while. At what point a shouting match turn in to a fist fight? The Kenyan and even the Ugandan government does not have a good handle on the issues at the ethnic level. And it boils down to the economy!
It boils down to unfinished business, that is nobody else's. National sovereignty must sometimes include the latitude to murder each other without foreign interference. While there is a great deal that can be done in providing emergency assistance with basic needs from outside, we're fresh out of world cops with the necessary moral authority and international backing to solve tribal land clashes. We can hate this carnage, and still send in water and not fire; let it burn out. There are too many similar fires smouldering and burning all over the planet to rationally or even equitably and ethically consider making more international military moves to stomp them all out- that only gets the world community dangerously fixated, and sends a lot of embers flying.
I disagree. I am a firm believer in human rights and each individual has a right to protection from outside forces in situations where acts of genocide are taking place. Letting it burn out can and has, in the past, resulted in whole ethnic groups being systematically wiped out. If we do not step in to stop such carnage, hiding behind 'it's their war, let them do to each other as they will', then we might as well just set fire to any human rights laws we happen to be party to. Hell, just burn the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There comes a time when as a human community, we have to step in. And in the past we have been quite selective in how and where we have done so. Personally, I think it is more than high time we learnt from our mistakes and did what we signed up to do when we ratified the Declaration. Otherwise, we give despotic regimes and any other tyrant out there an open invitation to simply slaughter any groups within their boundaries as they please. If it looks like a genocide is on the way in Kenya, then as a world community, we have a responsibility to intervene to protect the human rights of those being targeted in the slaughter.
This would be a great idea in moving towards human freedom. The declaration is nothing more than a tool for American economic and military dominance of poor nations.
Bells is right too. Even you, Deep Thought when you can get past your "White Man's Burden". Every vicious crime really should be stopped, but there's no cavalry to come riding in, in this show- it may just be a pure horror-flick right to the end. In this situation, it seems like just about everyone else is has reason (as "being right" is described in some languages) except the killers. But sometimes it happens in a bloody riot that the cops are just too dirty to call, or are already occupied, or occupying- and that's just the messed-up situation the world is in right now. We can't fix everything. We could always try something new, of course: If we hauled and airdropped in, with no strings, troops, weapons, or whatever attached- a hurricane of food, and a tsunami of basic emergency necessities of every kind (except weapons) the tribal machetes might just get set aside, while a period of eating, resting, thinking, healing,... and even talking might naturally ensue. Maybe that wouldn't work either, but it seems worth a try.
How about stop supplying weapons to conflict ridden countries? Stop funding local militias? Would that work in Kenya, do you think? http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20545 What about programs to eradicate poverty? Helping build sustainable economies?
