On the 10th anniversary of the embassy bombings in Kenya, the government has vowed greater vigilance on the issue of terrorism. Radical Islamist terrorism is likely to be an increasing factor in East African life in the foreseeable future, and it is wise for Kenya to take the issue more seriously, though this heightened awareness should be part of a larger strategic approach to security issues.
The Christian Science Monitor has embarked on a vitally important four-part series on how Kenya stepped back from the brink of catastrophe in the wake of its hotly contested elections in January. The country, which appeared to be a shining example of the successes of liberal democracy in Africa, found itself on the precipice when post-election violence overwhelmed the country. The CSM shows not only the roots of the problem, but also uses first-person accounts to show how Africans, and especially leading elders, played a vital role in avoiding disaster.
The hard work of building peace continues, but Kenya may well provide a model for dealing with conflict. Hopefully, of course, the lessons from Kenya will be applicable without the descent into near-anarchy. The obvious example of a country that will be in need of similar healing will be Zimbabwe, though the dynamic in Zim has been more prolonged than Kenya’s and thus the problems more entrenched, the antagonists less likely to be conciliatory.
(Alongside the articles the CSM provides good multi-media resources and other useful materials, such as an annotated list of the key players in brokering peace and a timeline of events since the 27 December election.)
Well before 9/11 the terrorist bombings in Niarobi and Dar es Salaam gave indications as to the severity of the threat that the then obscure organization al Qaeda posed to the west and its allies. One of the masterminds behind those attacks, Fazul Abdullah, has proven elusive. But Kenyan authorities have arrested members of a family believed to have harbored Abdullah.
Although the targets of the 1998 US Embassy bombings were putatively Americans, the vast majority of victims were Africans. Hopefully those responsible will be brought to justice, using legitimate, legal means, under local control. That the Bush administration has mismanaged the question of terrorism does not invalidate the struggle against it. That struggle will require the help of allies in Africa and elsewhere and will reqire an understanding that al Qaeda is serious in its intent.
Even as Kenya moves forward from the political violence that set the country alight at the beginning of the year after the fiercely contested netional elections, there are still hundreds of people who were displaced as a result of the violence living in camps around Nairobi. Chaos that takes just days or weeks to flare and abate can take months and years to overcome.
How does a country reconcile itself after horrific paroxysms of violence? Numerous countries have had to deal with precisely this dilemma. South Africa, through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), did so most famously and most extensively. And the TRC process has served as a model, an inspiration, and as a template for several other countries that have followed with processes of their own to reconcile the past with the present and with a hoped-for future, though the process was also fraught with imperfections and faced sometimes intense criticism from across the political spectrum.
Zimbabwe will almost surely have to go through a comparable process, whether in a matter of weeks and months or years. And today Kenya is trying to deal with its relatively brief but still nightmarish political violence of a few months ago. President Mwai Kibaki has declared categorically that his coalition government will not provide blanket amnesty for the perpetrators of post-election violence, once again putting him at odds with his erstwhile rival and uncomfortable supposed government coalition partner Raila Odinga. Kenya’s violence did not endure like that in most of the countries that have gone through formal reconciliation processes, but the chaos that exploded nationwide nonetheless reveals fissures in Kenyan society that runs deeper than the mere electoral divide that provided the proximate causes of violence. At some point Kenya is going to have to address those divisions in something other than a patchwork manner.
Kenya’s Standard reports on how environmental issues, high-level politics and ethnic concerns are merging to create another potential flashpoint in that country’s tenuous recovery process. The Mau Forest involves a complex interplay of tensions related to conservation and the country’s (indeed the region’s) environmental health, the prospects for putatively ethnic clashes over land, and tensions between local control and national governmental power.
One issue you never thought about, and neither did I, is the fact that after the post-election violence in Kenya there are a lot of new weapons. I wish I had something more clever to say than: How very frustrating.
Yet anything more clever would involve gun control policies that would seem uniliateral, or punishment policies that would seem draconian, or political policies that would seem fatuous.
Writing about Africa isn’t always fun.
There is lots of news and not much time for analysis, so enjoy these links on a range of issues:
At Pambazuka News Chido Makunike looks at the Complexities of Zimbabwe with special emphasis on the various political participants and their needs and desires. A little less elegantly — which is not to say any less accuratel — Binyavanga Wainaina at the Mail & Guardian compares Robert Mugabe to a haemorrhoid, arguing, “He is not Aids, cancer, leukemia or malaria — those things that can kill you.” While Wainaina’s larger argument stands, the fact remains that Mugabe can, of course, “kill you,” especially if you are the opposition. One assumes that the coming weeks, and possibly months, will not be without their Mugabe-backed killings.
IRIN reveals how Botswana has shut down cross-border fuel sales to Zimbabwe and also has a story on how Amnesty International’s report on human rights abuses in Somalia barely “scratch the surface.” the latter story might provide another example of how Zimbabwe’s neighbors are, however belatedly, increasingly fed up with Mugabe’s regime. Meanwhile the Somali government, or what amounts to the Somali government, predictably denies the report even as most civil society groups argue that the report is insufficient in revealing the true extent of the Somali crisis. My money is on the civil society groups being correct.
In Kenya many refugees are afraid to return home, fearing that violence may resume. Cautious optimism aside, for those who were caught up in the post-election maelstrom the healing process will almost inevitably be slow and may never be complete.
Finally, in this grab-bag of not-so-cheery news, it appears that more than a third of anti-malarial drugs tested in six cities across sub-Saharan Africa failed quality tests. Malaria does not draw the attention that AIDS (rightly) gets in Africa, and yet it is every bit as pervasive and deadly.
Is Kenya starting to heal? Thousands of Kenyans displaced by the post-election violence are beginning to return home, which is a sign that people are moderately confident that resuming their lives is safe, or at least safer than it was in the wake of the disputed election.
The Kenya situation embodies what may well prove to be an example of the sort of crises Africans may face in years to come: While devastating, the post-election chaos did not devolve into a permanent state of war. Perhaps this marks progress of a sort in the post-colonial era. One wonders if Zimbabwe might not experience the same throes after Mugabe goes (whenever that may be). Counter Kenya with, say, Somalia or the pretty much constant state of affairs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kenyan runner Robert Cheruiyot’s victory in Monday’s Boston Marathon may represent one of those moments when sport can serve to unite rather than divide. At least that is the hope among Kenyans, where the country’s world class distance runners are heroes to millions.