Kenya killings planned at time of election

NY Times:

At first the violence seemed as spontaneous as it was shocking, with machete-wielding mobs hacking people to death and burning women and children alive in a country that was celebrated as one of Africa’s most stable.

But a closer look at what has unfolded in the past three weeks, since a deeply flawed election plunged Kenya into chaos, shows that some of the bloodletting that has left more than 650 people dead may have been premeditated and organized.

Leaflets calling for ethnic killings mysteriously appeared before the voting. Politicians with both the government and opposition parties gave speeches that stoked long-standing hatred among ethnic groups. And local tribal chiefs held meetings to plot attacks on rivals, according to some of them and their followers.

As soon as the election results were announced, handing a suspiciously thin margin of victory to Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki — whose policies of favoring his own ethnic group have marginalized about half the country — all the elements lined up for the violence to explode.

Thousands of young men swept the countryside, burning homes and attacking members of rival ethnic groups. The killings go on. On Friday, six bodies arrived at a morgue in the town of Narok, northwest of Nairobi, some with deep spear wounds. On a strip of white medical tape affixed to the victims’ foreheads was written their names, dates of death and the cause: “Post-elections violence.”

“It wasn’t like people just woke up and started fighting each other,” said Dan Juma, the acting deputy director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. “It was organized.”

What is not clear is if there was a systematic plan to start a nationwide ethnic war, and whether high-level political leaders played a role beyond possibly inciting violence through hate speech.

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Rono Kibet, one of the men, said elders in his community called a big meeting on Dec. 30. That was the night that Kenya’s election results were announced, giving Mr. Kibaki the victory over Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging. More than 2,000 young men gathered, Mr. Kibet said, and the elders urged them to kill Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group, and burn down their houses. The Kalenjin had fought them before.

“The community raised the money for the gasoline,” Mr. Kibet said.

He explained how the elders blessed the young men, who then split into teams of 50 to hunt down Kikuyus with bows and arrows. He did not feel bad about shooting them, he said.

“We attack people, we burn their homes and then we take their animals,” Mr. Kibet said matter-of-factly.

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Odinga describes himself as Obama's cousin because Obama's father is from the same tribe. It appears that his tribe was bent on killing if it did not get the election result. Although much more violent that Al Gore's reaction to losing Florida the Gore effect has gone international and it is not just the cold that attends his visits. He made it OK not to accept the results of elections and it has led to disruptions not only in this country but others which are less civil.