Kenya Unraveling

Every dispatch from Nairobi for the past two weeks has gone from bad to worse. A summary of the situation:

Dec 30, 2007 - Allegations of election fraud intensify around the country as President Mwai Kibaki is sworn in. Violence begins to erupt in small pockets, and has an ethnic component from the beginning. President Kibaki is from the ruling elite, the Kikuyu tribe; the Kikuyu make up approximately 22% of the general population and have controlled the state in terms of politics, business, and other measures of socioeconomic power since the early 1960s.

Jan 1, 2008 - The UN and other nations question the validity of Kenya's elections; the UN calls for an investigation, which President Kibaki rejects. The Kenyan Red Cross reports that "over 100,000 people have been affected/displaced countrywide"; the New York Times notes that some now seek refuge in Uganda, a country that would have been considered far less stable and peaceful than Kenya only 2 weeks ago. On December 13th, the New York Times was reporting on Uganda's worries that the increasing violence and threat of war in Congo might push neighboring countries like Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi back into violence.

Jan 2, 2008 - Violence spreads and intensifies. At approximately noon on Tuesday January 1st, the estimate of the dead is at 100. By midnight on the 2nd, it has risen to 250. Kikuyu are fleeing their homes and gathering in and around police stations and churches. One church where hundreds of Kikuyu gathered in Kiambaa was set on fire with gasoline; although many escaped, 50 are reported to have died, and many more have suffered severe injuries. Women and children are said to make up the majority of the dead. Photographs of the violence also show clear evidence of police brutality against supporters of the opposition candidate, Mr. Odinga. The Luos, the tribe of Mr. Odinga, are said to be targeted by a fierce Kikuyu gang in the slums of Nairobi.

The news keeps going from bad to worse, and already Kenyans and observers have begun to talk about the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The violence already bears the characteristic signs of genocide. People are being pulled from cars and asked for identity cards; a name often indicates one's tribe. The Eldoret area to the west of Nairobi has been one of the hottest spots for violence; there, several people have been hacked to death with machetes, and four were beheaded on Monday, December 31st. These facts are important for several reasons:

1. There is increasing evidence that the attacks have broken down entirely on ethnic lines. People being asked for ID cards aren't targeted because of who they voted for or the shop they might own; they're being targeted because they come from the wrong tribe.
2. The use of machetes (pangas), so notorious in the Rwandan violence of 1994, sharply decreases the distance between victim and killer. The violence is intentional, highly visible, and becomes deeply personal for the killer; if the use of machetes in Rwanda is any indication, then this violence is much more likely spread and intensify than it would be if the method were less direct & short-range.
   
3. Beheading people carries more than the blunt significance of death; it dishonors the dead and mutilates the body in a way designed to carry a broader message to anyone who might identify with the victim. It is a promise of more violence to come.

According to Jeffrey Gettleman, a veteran reporter for the New York Times who has covered much of the violence in Iraq and other intense conflicts, Mr. Odinga's opposition party is planning to hold a million-person march on Thursday, which many predict will cause a "bloodbath."

Not all the indicators are negative, however. Kenya has been considered one of the most stable countries in Africa in large part because its tribal tensions have been diffused by the multitude of stakeholders in politics and the economy. There has been a high rate of intermarriage between tribes, and unlike countries with fewer, more polarized tribes, Kenya's diversity has been a stabilizing influence. And some reports have carried promising news about calls for peace by people in the slums of Nairobi.

There is the potential for this violence to slow down, but given that Mr. Odinga ran on a platform that promised to end Kikuyu favoritism, it may be that months of sharp rhetoric have convinced people that the divide between Kikuyu and non-Kikuyu is wider than they thought. If that's the case, then talk about stakeholders and peace may not bear up under the weight of this bloodshed. And with war heating up in the Congo and the potential for a destabilized Uganda, now is not the time for optimistic assumptions.

To view the most recent reports on the violence, I recommend the coverage by the BBC World News service, and the New York Times online.