Protests Bring New Violence in Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya Jan. 17th. (NY Times) — Opposition protests resumed in Kenya on Wednesday, and as many people here feared, violence erupted across the country once again. The worst clashes were in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city and an opposition stronghold, where mobs of furious young men hurled stones at police officers, who responded by charging into the crowds and firing their guns. One of Kenya’s television stations broadcast images of a police officer in Kisumu shooting an unarmed protester who was dancing in the street and making faces at security agents. After the protester fell to the ground, the officer ran up to him and kicked him several times. Witnesses said the protester later died. “There’s been war since the morning,” said Eric Otieno, a mechanic in Kisumu. “The police are whipping women, children, everyone. We were just trying to demonstrate peacefully.” Eric Kiraithe, a spokesman for the Kenyan police, said the only people wounded by police officers were hooligans destroying property and robbing people. “What we are seeing are teams of young men trying to commit crimes,” Mr. Kiraithe said. “You cannot call this a demonstration.”

Opposition leaders have vowed to carry on protests for two more days, and it seems that Kenya’s security forces, which have deemed all protests illegal, are cracking down harshly. On Wednesday afternoon, police officers in padded suits sealed off downtown Nairobi, the capital, and ordered everyone out, sending wave after wave of bewildered office workers trudging down the roads leading to the suburbs. Fourteen of Kenya’s leading donors, including the United States, issued a statement this week warning the Kenyan government that they were reviewing foreign aid in light of the crisis. The United States gives the country more than $600 million in aid each year. It seems that Kenya has been unable to get back to normal after a flawed election on Dec. 27 ignited unrest and violence that has already claimed more than 600 lives. Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, a top opposition leader, but several election observers said the government rigged the tallying of the results to give the president a slim, 11th-hour victory. American diplomats in Kenya recently finished their own analysis of the voting results and concluded that the election was so flawed it was impossible to tell who really won.

Outraged opposition supporters have attacked members of the president’s ethnic group, with many people killed by machete-wielding mobs. Most of the ethnic violence has diminished, though it has left more than 200,000 people displaced. On Wednesday, many protesters said that they would continue to wreak havoc until Mr. Kibaki stepped down. Judging by the amount of live ammunition and tear gas that was fired at demonstrators or near them, police officials seem increasingly determined to show that they will not back down. Opposition leaders are not budging either. “Nothing will stop us from mounting these rallies,” Mr. Odinga said. Kenya’s economy, which powers trade and industry across a large part of eastern Africa, is taking a beating from all this. Tourists, drawn by wildlife and white-sand beaches, are canceling trips in droves, leaving some of the biggest hotels in the country only 20 percent occupied, which could lead to layoffs. On Wednesday morning, protesters fought with the police in the streets of Mombasa, Kenya’s biggest port and a main artery to the rest of East Africa. Witnesses said that hundreds of demonstrators, many of them Muslims, tried to block traffic circles in the city center but that police officers in riot gear chased them away with tear gas.

Previous unrest in Mombasa seriously disrupted food and fuel supplies, forcing several neighboring countries, like Uganda and Rwanda, to ration gasoline. Many Muslims in Kenya support the opposition because they believe that the Kenyan government, a close American ally, has persecuted members of their religion during counterterrorism operations. Many Kenyans are getting tired of the violence and disruptions and the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the country. They had hoped that tensions would now decrease because the opposition had demonstrated that it could influence the government through its numbers in Parliament and did not necessarily need to take its grievances to the streets. On Tuesday night, the opposition party, which won more seats in Parliament than the president’s party in the December elections, used its muscle to install one of its own members as speaker, which could mean serious gridlock in Kenya’s government for the foreseeable future.
By Jeffrey Gettleman
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Is Latin America Heading for an Arms Race?

Recent increases in defense spending by Brazil and Venezuela are attracting observers' attention.
São Paulo, Brazil, Jan. 16th. - Increased defense spending by Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador, coupled with significant arms purchases by Chile and Colombia, may mark the start of an arms race in South America – a region that hasn't seen a major war between nations in decades. "There is a real risk of it escalating and it could become very dangerous," says Michael Shifter, the vice president of policy at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. Concern has grown in the wake of recent purchases by Venezuela and Brazil. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, flush with oil money, has spent freely on attack and transport helicopters, Russian fighter planes, and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles.

In neighboring Brazil, which, with half of Latin America's landmass and population, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently asked Congress to allocate 10.13 billion reais ($5.6 billion) – a 53 percent increase – for its 2008 military budget. Those increases came after Chile invested significant sums earlier in the decade. Colombia has received hundreds of millions of dollars in US drug-war aid for military purchases. And now Ecuador is also spending more on weapons. "I think that it is done in different places for different motivations," says Mr. Shifter, who testified before the US Congress last year on the implications of Venezuela's increased military spending. "[Mr.] Chávez is using this as part of mobilizing the country and thinking of a possible attack from the US. In Chile, it is much more about giving the armed forces what they want. Colombia spends because a lot of the [US] aid comes in the form of military equipment." The problem, continues Shifter, is that "there is tremendous mistrust between countries ... if you don't know what your neighbors' intentions are, then it is natural is to build up as much as you can to prepare for any contingency."

Some South American nations worry about Chávez's ambitions and do not want him to gain a significant military edge. "Brazil won't say it, but Chávez's build up is what has made it invest in its military," says Reserve Col. Geraldo Lesbat Cavagnari, coordinator of the Strategic Studies Group at Unicamp university in São Paulo. Brazil and Venezuela already vie for political supremacy in South America with Chávez bringing together the radical leftists under his socialist banner and President Lula leading a more measured coalition of social democrats. At this point, the two leaders are friends and the two nations have no border quarrels or historical feuds that could flare up. But there are tensions between Venezuela and Colombia over gas-rich territorial waters and border areas where Colombia's FARC guerrillas are active. And Veneuzela has made claims on the western part of Guyana. But few people believe Chávez is buying weapons in order to attack a neighbor. He has warned opponents of his Bolivian ally Evo Morales that "rifle and machine guns will thunder" if they try to topple President Morales but Venezuela still does not have a military machine capable of shock and awe, analysts said. In addition, its army is one-third the size of Brazil's, and distinctly less experienced and battle hardened than neighboring Colombia's. Any attempts to settle territorial claims on western Guyana would give both the US and Britain, a former colonial power, reasons to enter the fray.

Yet the thought of an unpredictable leader with modern weaponry concerns some of the continent's moderates. Moreover, many analysts say the region cannot afford to devote large amounts of money to weaponry. Poverty is still a major problem in most South American countries and that – along with infrastructure, justice, and education – is seen as a more worthy priority than submarines or fighter planes. "An arms race on our continent will oblige us to depart from the path of giving priority to investments in social programs," says Jose Sarney, a Brazilian senator and a fierce critic of Chávez. "Having a military power on the continent is dangerous for both Brazil and... Latin America." Nevertheless, no one wants to get left behind, especially Brazil. Investment in modern weaponry, analysts agree, is long overdue for South America's biggest nation. Years of neglect have left much of Brazil's war machine obsolete or in disrepair. Meanwhile, its priorities have changed from worrying about Argentina in the south to protecting its jungle frontiers on the north and west and its territorial waters that are home to sizeable new finds of oil and gas.

"There are very real security concerns that are being neglected," says Martin Joyce, the South America defense analyst for Jane's. "One is the Amazon region where drug traffickers are operating with impunity. Secondly, we are also seeing an increased presence of Colombian guerrillas, and that requires mobility and that is why we see helicopters and military airlift high on the priority list. Then there is the new oil reserves. Part of the reason for the procurement of a nuclear submarine is because they said they need to protect those resources. Venezuela comes fairly low down the list."
By Andrew Downie | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
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Zimbabwe Opposition to March for Free, Fair Poll

HARARE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's main opposition said on Wednesday it planned a protest next week against a crumbling economy and to press for a new constitution it says will guarantee that elections scheduled for March are free and fair. "Our march will be dubbed the freedom walk and is intended to highlight the suffering and plight of Zimbabweans, our demand for a new constitution before the elections and most importantly an even electoral field," said Tendai Biti, the secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Biti told journalists the opposition had notified the police of the protest march, which has been set for Jan. 23. An MDC executive told Reuters that police concerns over security and disruption to traffic in central Harare had been addressed in a meeting. "It was a very cordial meeting and we overcame the two concerns which they had. We will march and they will provide (a) security escort," said Morgan Komichi, an executive in the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC who attended the meeting. "They (police) were trying to show us that they are now a reformed police which supports and not disrupts peaceful marches," said Komichi. But Zimbabweans have tended to shy away from demonstrations mainly over fear of a heavy handed state response. Tsvangirai said earlier this month the party might boycott the elections unless President Robert Mugabe's government implemented a new constitution. Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC have been in South African-mediated talks on revamping the constitution since June in an effort to end political and economic turmoil in the southern African country, and ensure future election results are accepted by all parties. The talks are part of a Southern African Development Community (SADC) effort after Tsvangirai and dozens of MDC leaders were reportedly beaten in custody last March after an aborted rally against Mugabe and his government. The events drew strong international criticism against Mugabe, 84 next month and Zimbabwe's sole leader since independence from Britain in 1980, and heightened calls for him to adopt democratic reforms or step down. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called on the authorities to allow the protest to go forward, telling reporters "the opposition ... should be allowed to peacefully express their views." STICKING POINT The MDC and ZANU-PF have agreed on a new draft constitution but there is a deadlock over when it should be adopted. The MDC wants it implemented before national presidential and parliamentary elections while ZANU-PF wants it after the vote. Biti said the march would test ZANU-PF's commitment to democratic reforms after agreeing at the talks to ease tough security, media and electoral laws. The laws, which were passed by parliament last year, are still to be signed by Mugabe. "We have to test the sincerity of ZANU-PF but this (march) is without prejudice to the SADC dialogue, which we remain committed to. We are cautiously optimistic that an outcome may come soon," Biti said. Critics say Mugabe has in the past used state security agents to harshly quell protests against his government but analysts say tension continues to swell among a population ravaged by rising poverty and lately shortages of cash. "The MDC's biggest challenge is to mobilise despondent Zimbabweans to join the march even if police allow it. People are tired, they have lost hope and are fearful given the regime's past response to demonstrations," said John Makumbe, a political commentator critical of Mugabe's rule.
By MacDonald Dzirutwe

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Kenya Opposition Plans More Protests

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 16th., (NY Times) — Kenya was in partial lockdown mode on Wednesday as opposition supporters pressed ahead with plans to hold protests across the country. Demonstrators clashed with police in the streets of Mombasa, Kenya's biggest port and a main artery to the rest of East Africa. Witnesses said that hundreds of demonstrators, many of them Muslims, tried to block roundabouts in the city center but that police officers in riot gear chased them away with tear gas. Previous unrest in Mombasa has seriously disrupted food and fuel supplies, leading several neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda to ration gasoline. Many Muslims in Kenya support the opposition because they feel that the Kenyan government, a close American ally, has cracked down harshly on members of their community.

In Nairobi, Kenya's capital, the streets were quiet Wednesday morning. A heavy rain that fell overnight and continued into the morning seemed to dampen spirits and diminish energy for another round of street clashes. Police officers were clumped at strategic intersections across the city, but few demonstrators had gathered before noon. Many businesses were closed, though streets were open and public buses were operating normally. The last time the opposition held major rallies, fighting broke out in Nairobi's slums, with several people hacked to death and many businesses burned. Gangs of protesters with backpacks full of rocks terrorized certain neighborhoods. But there was little evidence of that on Wednesday. Kenya has remained on edge since a flawed election on Dec. 27 ignited unrest and violence across the country, claiming more than 600 lives. Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, a top opposition leader, but several election observers said the government rigged the tallying of the results to give the president a slim, 11th-hour victory. American diplomats in Kenya have done their own analysis of poll results and concluded that the election was so flawed that it was impossible to tell who really won. Outraged opposition supporters attacked members of the president's ethnic group, with many people killed by machete-wielding mobs. More than 200,000 people have been displaced.

On Tuesday, the opposition scored its first political victory since the election, by choosing one of its own members to be the speaker of Kenya's parliament, an influential position. The opposition party won more parliament seats than the government in the December elections and used its muscle to vote in the speaker in an acrimonious, theatrical parliament session on Tuesday night. Opposition supporters celebrated afterward across the country. Many Kenyans now hope that tensions will decrease because the opposition has demonstrated that it can affect the government through its numbers in Parliament and does not need to take its grievances to the streets.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
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Dodging the Ballot: Stolen Votes Test Africa’s Faith in Democracy

January 14th. Financial Times - For a brief moment, Kenyans seemed to have summoned the collective muscle necessary to hold their rulers to account. Across the country on December 27, they assembled peacefully and in record numbers to vote. As results came in from a parliamentary contest that ran alongside presidential polls, it transpired that a generation schooled in the post-colonial politics of patronage and graft was being shown the door. There were the makings of a watershed for Africa. Alongside the eviction from parliament of nearly half the cabinet, an incumbent leader, Mwai Kibaki, looked set to be ousted and a second consecutive constitutional transfer of power – unprecedented on the continent – seemed imminent. If there were grounds to doubt that a new government would fare better at meeting demands for social justice, these were tempered by a surge of confidence among Kenyans that if incoming ministers failed, they too could be removed peacefully.

But it was not to be. In the event, questions about the veracity of a quarter of a million or so ballots that delivered Mr Kibaki an unexpected second term as president got in the way. Kenya has since been pitched into its most serious crisis since independence from Britain in 1963, disrupting a narrative that sees Africa overcoming tyranny and conflict and moving steadily towards more accountable forms of rule. “I fear the Afro-pessimists are going to have a field day,” says Andrew Rugasira, an entrepreneur from neighbouring Uganda, recognising that Kenya’s fall will reverberate far beyond its borders. On cue, there have been rumblings about whether a continent still riven by ethnic discord and beset with development challenges is ready for democracy after all – or, at least, whether the cost in blood is worth paying. China has been quick off the mark, with the People’s Daily, mouthpiece for the ruling Communist party, suggesting on Monday that “western-style democracy simply isn’t suited to African conditions, but rather carries with it the root of disaster”. In theory, the dynamic of elections in Africa should be changing. Economic growth averaging nearly 6 per cent in recent years has started to produce a better-educated and vocal middle class in many countries, while rapid urbanisation has begun to erode traditional ties to tribe and clan among a huge underclass.

Yet Kenya’s election has exposed the country’s ethnic divisions, confirming that Africans still tend to vote for who they are rather than what they believe in. Meanwhile, the manipulation of the vote count has borne out another familiar trait: that, regardless of the consequences, African leaders rarely miss an opportunity to cling to power. “Democracy is not working in Africa,” says Nasir el-Rufai, a former Nigerian government minister who helped spearhead economic reform under former president Olusegun Obasanjo. “It is either those with money who determine the result or those in power who decide who wins.” In Nigeria’s elections last year, it was a combination of both. A day that should have been celebrated as the first transfer from one elected civilian administration to another in a history littered with military coups was marred by every kind of electoral fraud in the book. Even in South Africa, still a model for much of the continent, there are concerns about the enduring dominance of the African National Congress. With the Democratic Republic of Congo teetering on the edge of renewed conflict only 18 months after the United Nations ploughed $500m into the country’s elections, it is possible to argue that most of the main poles of economic development in Africa are, as Mr el-Rufai puts it, “democratic basket-cases”.

The consequences for Nigeria – home to one in five Africans – may yet be severe. But there was no immediate eruption as a result of last year’s rigging. This appears to have contributed to complacency in international circles over Kenya, where politicians had mobilised along ethnic lines, the race was much tighter and popular expectations were considerably higher. “One of the issues which is raised by Kenya is whether these countries can afford to have a true electoral system at this point or whether the risks are too great,” says Marina Ottoway, an expert on democratic transitions in Africa and the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I am not saying we should never push for elections,” she continues, “but the outcome can be a real setback and it is disturbing that a lot of western organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, assume that it is always the right thing to do.” Weighed against this line is Africa’s history of murderous despots. Moreover, those countries that have been convulsed by violence as a result of faulty polls have often been those whose institutions have been most weakened beforehand by the ravages of personalised rule.

Twenty years ago only a handful of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries could be considered democratic. But as the cold war was ending, pro-democracy movements and opposition groups were pushing the boundaries of political freedom in the one-party states predominant across the continent. At the same time, Britain, France and America were loosening ties with client dictatorships and encouraging multilateral lenders to make multi-party politics a condition of continued aid. Evoking Harold Macmillan’s famous speech 30 years earlier, when independence dawned for Britain’s African colonies, François Mitterrand, the late French president, recognised in 1990 that a “wind of change” was blowing. The political transitions that resulted have ranged from the miraculous, in South Africa in 1994, to the apocalyptic. Nearly 10 per cent of the combined populations of the tiny former kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi have been killed in the struggle for political supremacy between the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups, underlining the danger across the continent of politics that draw on identity rather than ideology. But these extreme events can now be seen in the context of hundreds of elections that have taken place. In many cases, voting has simply added trappings to a modernised form of one-party rule, where incumbent regimes use patronage, the control of electoral machinery and oppression to maintain a perpetual grip on power – until war breaks out. Inflows of foreign aid, meanwhile, have inadvertently compounded a lack of accountability. Donors mostly promote democracy, but when they contribute as much as 60 per cent of national budgets, they tend to want to call the shots. Nor have greater political freedoms translated into economic development and greater social justice. Where there has been a resurgence of economic growth, as in Kenya, this has often sharpened inequalities, raising the stakes at election time as well as the potential for violence. “High economic growth can actually be politically destructive. It eats away at the social fabric when it is perceived that only one group is benefiting,” says John Githongo, Kenya’s former anti-corruption chief, who exiled himself in the UK three years ago.

Yet in a handful of the most promising cases in Africa, elections have not only delivered political change and improving leadership, they have also become routine. Electoral commissions have evolved as independent institutions capable, if not of enforcing results, at least of resisting manipulation, while political parties have begun to trade across ethnic boundaries. Technology has also helped. The proliferation of mobile phones has combined with aggressive reporting in the media, notably on independent radio stations, and the advent of the internet to make it more difficult to rig, while increasing scrutiny of what officials do once they are elected. Ghana is one example. “I think politicians [in Ghana] are constantly aware of the next election even a week after they have won. Whatever they do in government they know that the day when they will have to account for their actions will come,” says Elizabeth Ohene, an education minister in Ghana’s cabinet. Alongside Ghana, Benin, Senegal, Zambia and more recently, Sierra Leone, Kenya was until recently among a select group on the African mainland to have experienced the peaceful transfer of power from one political leadership to another. “The actual polling by the public seems to have gone pretty well,” says Gladwell Otieno, head of the Nairobi chapter of Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog. “There were some logistical problems that are to be expected. But people greatly wanted a change and were willing to queue for hours and hours to get it,” she continued.

When national results at the electoral commission differed widely from local counts, Kenya became an important test case for international diplomacy. Britain, the EU and US have all said they will not be going back to business as usual and are working on a set of measures aimed at forcing negotiations. Yet the record of donor governments in recent years suggests that realpolitik usually triumphs, especially when the country is economically important or of strategic importance in the US war on terror. Kenya is both. “Although they [donor governments] criticised the conduct of the Ethiopian elections in May 2005, those in Uganda in February 2006 and in Nigeria in April 2007, they have taken little concrete measures to show their disapproval in the end, all opting to work with the elected government rather than to isolate it,” a Citibank analysis of the Kenya polls concludes. Ms Ottoway argues that of the recent electoral transitions, the ones that stand out as successful involved carefully negotiated processes that took into account the fears of both minority and majority groups. South Africa is the prime example. Nigeria, for all its democratic failings, is another. In hindsight, the constitution left to elected civilians by the military in 1999, looks purpose-built to prevent the kind of ethnic strife that Kenya is experiencing. Political parties are obliged to build support across religious and ethnic lines, and there is an unwritten rule that the presidency circulates between the country’s three most powerful regions. Many African countries, however, have yet to tailor political systems inherited from former colonial powers to the needs of their own societies. It is no coincidence that the same group in Kenya that has, arguably, hijacked this year’s elections, also stymied efforts in 2004 at a national conference to create a new constitution devolving more authority to regions and limiting the powers of the presidency. While Kenya has had several elections, it therefore has yet to experience a transition to more equitable rule. Instead, the same elite has ended up sharing the spoils of office, even if sometimes it has worn different political colours. “Kenya’s ultimate tragedy would be that if, at the end of this terrible ordeal, nothing really changed,” says Michael Power, an Africa analyst at Investec, the investment bank.
By William Wallis
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Attack Seen As a Setback For the U.N. In Darfur

Incident Points to Peacekeepers' Lack of Resources, Critics Say

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13th. Washington Post -- A UN-Africa Union peacekeeping force faced the first major challenge to its authority in Sudan, this week, enduring more than 10 minutes of hostile fire from Sudanese forces without responding with a single shot. The assault Tuesday evening against a clearly marked supply convoy of more than 20 trucks and armored personnel vehicles left a Sudanese driver critically wounded and prompted a formal protest from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. It also gave the U.N.-backed force a humiliating defeat during the critical first weeks of its mission in Darfur. The United Nations' chief peacekeeping official, Jean-Marie Guehenno, vowed to "repel" future attacks against U.N. and African Union personnel. But other U.N. officials said the force's Nigerian commander, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, lacks the firepower to respond forcefully to a larger and better-equipped Sudanese military.

The incident marked a setback to U.S.-backed efforts to end nearly five years of violence in Darfur through the deployment of more than 26,000 peacekeepers, mostly Africans. The mission replaced 7,000 African Union peacekeepers who had largely retreated to their barracks amid armed attacks. So far the new force has about 9,000 peacekeepers, most of whom are African Union troops who simply replaced their green berets with blue U.N. berets. The United States, the United Nations and other key powers had reason to believe an attack such as Tuesday's was coming. In September, an armed group assaulted an African Union base, killing 10 soldiers near the town of Haskanita. Since then, U.N. leaders have warned of the risk of failure from entering the Darfur conflict without adequate resources to repel an attack. But requests for vital equipment -- including 24 transport and attack helicopters -- have gone unanswered. "If in this particular situation we had helicopters capable of flying at night and quickly reinforcing a convoy under attack, of course we would have been in a completely different situation," Guehenno said. "We would have been in a position to deter."

Sudan, meanwhile, has imposed technical hurdles for the mission, including the recent rejection of a unit of Nordic engineers, according to U.N. officials. The Sudanese authorities continue to haggle over the force's right to wear the U.N. blue helmets, recruit non-African troops and travel in Darfur without government approval. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has accused the Sudanese government of "dragging its feet" in an attempt to ensure that the U.N.-backed force remains incapable of protecting civilians in Darfur. But Khalilzad also conceded that inadequately equipping the force has placed the credibility of the United Nations and its political patrons, including the United States, at stake. "We need to take stock of this and consider steps that incentivize the government of Sudan to cooperate," he said.

Former Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi conducted a major review of U.N. peacekeeping in 2000, in which he concluded that peacekeepers should not enter war zones without consent from key belligerents or without a political settlement that the United Nations could implement. Where the United Nations does serve, he added, it must equip its troops to respond to armed "spoilers." Those lessons have yielded some success in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo and Haiti, where the United Nations recovered from setbacks by engaging in offensive military operations to put down challenges from rebels and armed gangs. But in Darfur, an ill-prepared peacekeeping force has entered a live battle zone involving combatants from the Sudanese army, neighboring Chad and a major Darfurian rebel group. Guehenno said: "There is a combination of factors that may lead to the greatest risk to the United Nations since the 1990s. We have a war ongoing, maybe low intensity, but a war ongoing, especially in West Darfur."

Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, initially denied that Sudan played a role in the attack, saying it was carried out by the Chadian government and local Darfurian rebels. "There is a big lie here," he said. "We have no relationship at all whatever with that attack." But U.N. officials said a Sudanese commander has admitted that his force fired on the U.N. convoy. Sudan's Defense Ministry acknowledged Thursday that its troops carried out the attack, but it said the U.N.-backed force shared responsibility for the "mistake" because it had failed to alert Sudanese authorities that it was traveling in the area. The United Nations maintains that it provided adequate notice.
by Colm Lynch
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Monk's Words Stir the Spirit of Myanmar's Resistance

SAGAING, Myanmar, Jan 14th. Los Angeles Times -- In one of his most talked-about lectures, Buddhist monk Ashin Nyanissara tells the legend of a king who ruled more than 2,500 years ago. The king believed that spitting on a hermit brought him good fortune. At first, it worked like a charm, but before long his realm was annihilated under a rain of fire, spears and knives. Today's audiences easily find the hidden message: The assault by Myanmar's military government on monks leading protests last fall looks like a modern version of the ancient monarch's abuse. And they hope the ruling generals will suffer the same fate. In the recent crackdown, many monks were beaten and defrocked in prison. Human rights activists say several monks were among the 31 people the United Nations says were killed by the government.

It was a traumatic wound to a mainly Buddhist society, one that forced a lot of soul searching among people who practice one of the oldest forms of the religion, which emphasizes critical thought and reasoning over blind faith. The stern-faced Nyanissara, a 70-year-old monk in owlish glasses and a maroon robe, is able to stare down generals with chests full of medals by stepping carefully through the minefield that makes free speech lethal here. Shielding himself with allegory, he crisscrosses the country giving lectures that draw on history and legend to remind people that rotten regimes have fallen before. As the generals try to crush the last remnants of resistance, he is cautiously keeping the fire alive. But he knows it isn't the first time in 45 years of military rule that the government has attacked monks who challenged its absolute authority. In at least four previous crackdowns, dating back to 1965, the military rounded up thousands of monks, killing some, defrocking others, while closing monasteries and seizing property.

Each time, the brutal repression outraged many people, but in the end they felt powerless to do anything about it, the crises passed, and the generals continued to oppress with an iron fist. It's the nature of any government's leaders to "strongly test their political power. They don't want to lose it," he said in a recent interview at the International Buddhist Academy, which he founded in this riverside town whose forested hills the faithful believe Buddha walked on his path to enlightenment. "But in any faith, when politics and religion come into competition, religious leaders always defeat anything. Religion is the leader. Jesus Christ was killed, but which was more powerful? Religion or politics?" The institute sits in a valley beneath the Sagaing Hills, where hundreds of golden spires, called stupas, rise like spiritual beacons from monasteries and pagodas that dot the hillsides, 12 miles southwest of Mandalay.

The first monks to demonstrate against the government last year took to the streets in Pakokku, 60 miles southwest of Sagaing. Still trapped in the latest cycle of political turmoil, many of Myanmar's people are looking to Nyanissara for more than spiritual guidance. At midday recently, he had just returned from addressing hundreds of the faithful in a village pagoda and was hurrying to leave for an afternoon lecture, a daily routine that keeps him constantly on the move to meet the demand for his wisdom. Barefoot in a corridor of the university where student monks and nuns are trained for missionary work, the monk ran a disposable razor over his tonsured head and down across his face and neck, removing the faintest midday stubble as he spoke. Then, flanked by young aides and walking as straight and sure-footed as a man half his age, the monk got into his black sport utility vehicle, which sped on a 110-mile journey to his next stop.

Nyanissara draws large, rapt audiences wherever he goes, whether they are poor villagers crowded into small monasteries or city residents sitting in orderly rows on a side street. On a recent night, a few thousand people filled a street in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, sitting quietly as they waited for the monk to arrive. When he emerged from his SUV, people bowed their heads to the ground as he made his way to a stage, where he sat cross-legged on a gilded chair as big as a throne.In large public gatherings such as these, when the generals' spies lurk in the audience and listen for any hint of trouble, his lectures are often built around the same lesson: Cruel rulers create bad karma. And they will suffer for what they have done. That's a moral not easily shrugged off by a government whose leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, is intensely superstitious: He consults astrologers to make important decisions. The ruling generals also churn out propaganda images portraying themselves as devoted Buddhists, receiving the blessing of sympathetic monks. If their faith is true, they know their actions will determine their next life in reincarnation's endless cycle of death and rebirth. "They have to be afraid they'll be coming back as cockroaches," wisecracked one Western envoy.

Several of Nyanissara's lectures have been burned onto DVDs, with titles such as "Last Days of Empire." The generals have arrested people caught selling them, but they are still widely available across Myanmar, also known as Burma. "The DVDs are very popular," the Western diplomat said. "A lot of people have mentioned watching them, or knowing of them." To most people here, the pain of seeing monks beaten up in the streets is more than just an insult to religious faith. To many, it's as if the military had harmed their own family, and the anger does not ease quickly. Almost any Buddhist with a son has watched with pride as his head is shaved to make him a novice monk in an initiation ceremony called shin-pyu, a moment as life-defining as a baptism, christening or bar mitzvah. It is a religious duty for Buddhist boys to become novice monks from age 7, and most in Myanmar answer the calling, Nyanissara said.

Just as Buddha left his own family to seek enlightenment, they live in a monastery for a few weeks, during which they are allowed to have only eight possessions: a robe, a belt, footwear, a razor, an umbrella, a glass for water, a begging bowl and a filter to make sure no living thing slips into their food to be eaten. "They learn morality and how to pay respect to their elders, and Buddhist monks too," said U Kondala, abbot of a monastery with a library of 16th century copies of Buddha's laws and philosophy, handwritten on palm fronds folded like Chinese fans. "After understanding the ways of the Buddha, they are more polite and clever, and consider the welfare of other people." Novices return to normal life with a profound respect for monks who were their teachers. When thousands joined protest marches last fall, their chants gave comfort to people who had known them since childhood. "All of the monks who came out of the monasteries into the streets only recited verses from the teachings of the Buddha," Kondala said. "The people are suffering, they are getting poorer and poorer, so the monks wanted to protect them against any danger." Nyanissara said the region surrounding Sagaing is now home to one out of every 10 of Myanmar's 400,000 monks, robed legions that listen carefully to his lectures to see the right path ahead. "It's a very big army," the monk said, and he laughed a little. But he wasn't smiling.
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Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

New Your Times: Jan. 13th. - Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling worrying stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.” Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving. About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.
By Deborah Sontag & Lizette Alvarez

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Comment from Mozlink: It is tragic to read of these events and I am left thinking again of what going to war has done to these young men, most of whom as teenagers just a few years ago, had their own expansive dreams for their lives. Then they encountered war, killing, death, body bags, hatred, prejudice, racism, torture, Abu Grave and disorder. And everything changed and would never be the same again. How easy it is to hide such a stark reality behind the ideals of patriotism, nationalism, the war on terror, support our troops, the military etc.
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African Union Asks Annan to Broker Truce in Kenya

Nairobi, Jan. 1oth. (Int Herald Tribune) - With no sign of a breakthrough in the Kenyan political crisis, it appeared that a high-profile mediator may be flying in to help: Kofi Annan. The African Union announced Thursday that Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, was taking over the role played by John Kufuor, the chairman of the African Union who is president of Ghana. Kufuor spent two days in Kenya trying to broker a truce between the government and opposition leaders to end the crisis, which erupted after flawed elections last month and has so far claimed hundreds of lives. Kufuor failed to get the two sides to even meet, but he insisted all was not lost. "Both sides agreed there should be an end to the violence," he said, "and they also agreed there should be dialogue." Annan will lead a panel of African dignitaries who will arrive in the coming days to try to bring the two sides together, Kufuor said. There was no immediate comment from Annan about the new role.

Many diplomats here are pessimistic that a solution will be found anytime soon because neither President Mwai Kibaki nor Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, is budging. Both claim to have won the presidential election on Dec. 27. Western observers have said there is widespread evidence that the president's party interfered with the vote tallying process and rigged the results to stay in power. Kibaki has moved ahead with unilaterally naming cabinet members, something that opposition leaders called a "slap in the face" and that American officials called disappointing. On Thursday, opposition leaders said Kibaki refused to sign an agreement that had been approved by the World Bank and that recommended a transitional government and an investigation into the election results. World Bank officials in Kenya did not return phone calls. Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, said that the document had been prepared by World Bank officials and that the president rejected it because it was "meant to favor certain groups."

Both the government and opposition leaders, who have blamed one another for the surprise burst of bloodletting in the relatively stable country, are now also pointing fingers over the lack of progress in negotiations. "The government had offered dialogue which was to be facilitated by President John Kufuor, but Orange Democratic Movement leaders have not been responsive," a government statement said, referring to Odinga's political movement. Salim Lone, a spokesman for Odinga, said that "the government was obviously never serious about negotiations. To tell you the truth, we're getting discouraged," Lone said.

Tensions are still running high in some places in Kenya. On Thursday, the police tear-gassed dozens of women protesting in Nairobi, the capital. They shouted, "Kibaki is a thief!" and "Shame on you!" On Wednesday, Kibaki toured a charred swath of western Kenya where ethnic fighting has killed more than 150 people and driven tens of thousands from their homes. Most victims were Kikuyus, the ethnic group of the president, who have been killed by mobs in the past two weeks. As the president stood at a podium in a place called Burnt Forest, where many homes have indeed been burned, smoke curled up from more houses that had just been set on fire.
by Jeffrey Gettleman
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Sudan Apologizes for Shooting at UN

KHARTOUM, Jan 10, (AP) - Sudan acknowledged Thursday that its troops shot at a United Nations convoy in Darfur, reversing an initial denial, but it in part blamed the peacekeepers saying they should have notified Khartoum of their movements. The Sudanese government has demanded that the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force give it prior notification for all its movements and not move at night, conditions the United Nations has rejected. U.N. officials have accused Khartoum of trying to limit the abilities of the force or hold up its full deployment with a series of bureaucratic obstacles, including such conditions. The attack Monday night in West Darfur damaged an armored personnel carrier, destroyed a fuel tanker truck and severely injured a Sudanese driver. The U.N. has lodged a complaint with Khartoum and said "the government of Sudan has to provide unequivocal guarantees that there will be no recurrence of such activities by its forces."

Sudan's military spokesman and its ambassador to the United Nations initially denied the army had opened fire. But the military retracted the statements Thursday, saying the shoot-out did take place. It apologized for the error, which it said occurred because the U.N. force, known as UNAMID, had not given forward notice it was sending a convoy through this volatile zone of western Darfur near the border with Chad. "The Western Sudan military command has provided an apology to the representative of UNAMID in the region and that the apology was accepted, in recognition of the dual mistake committed," the state-run SUNA news agency said. Sudan's Defense Minister Abdel-Rahim Mohamed Hussein told the independent daily Al-Sahafa the army first fired warning shots at the U.N. convoy. "Those shots were ignored and that's when the soldiers opened fire, wounding the driver and damaging a troop carrier and a truck," Hussein said.

The U.N. mission began on Jan. 1 and now stands at around 9,000 peacekeepers. It is supposed to grow to 26,000 and aims at finally deploying a robust force to stop the chaos. More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have fled to refugee camps since 2003 when ethnic African rebels took arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of discrimination. Sudan denies multiple allegations of war crimes in the region.
by MOHAMED OSMAN
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Fighting in Congo Rekindles Ethnic Hatreds

MUSHAKE Congo, Jan 10th. (NY Times) — Andre Simwerayi looked on with satisfaction as the army blasted rockets over a verdant hillside, pummeling what officers said were the positions of forces loyal to a renegade Congolese Tutsi general. "If the bombs don’t do the job, we are ready with machetes to finish it ourselves,” said Mr. Simwerayi, 31, a street tough standing nearby in a tattered trench coat. "We must crush the inyenzi,” he spat, using a word made notorious by the genocide against Tutsi in neighboring Rwando more than a decade ago. It means cockroaches. The recent clashes in eastern Congo between the army and the troops of the dissident general have exacted a grievous toll on a region ravaged by a decade of war. Around 400,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, thousands of women have been raped and hundreds of children have been press-ganged into militias, the United Nations says, raising alarm among diplomats the world over.

But the fighting is also rekindling the kind of ethnic hatred that previously dragged this region into the most deadly conflict since World War II. It began with the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994. Many of the genocide’s perpetrators fled into Congo, igniting regional conflicts that were fueled by the plunder of Congo’s minerals, lasted for nearly a decade and killed, by some estimates, as many as four million people through violence, disease and hunger. Now a new wave of anti-Tutsi sentiment is sweeping Congo, driven by deep anger over the renegade Tutsi general. Many see his rebellion as a proxy for Rwanda, to the east, whose army occupied vast parts of Congo during the most devastating chapter of the regional war and plundered millions of dollars’ worth of minerals from the country, according to many analysts, diplomats and human rights workers. The current battle is in many ways a throwback to the earliest and most difficult questions at the heart of the Congo war, and also a reflection of longstanding hostilities toward Tutsi, who are widely viewed here as being more Rwandan than Congolese. Many Congolese Tutsi see themselves as members of an especially vulnerable minority, one that has already suffered through genocide and whose position in Congo has always been precarious. But many other Congolese see Tutsi, many of whom have been in Congo for generations, as foreign interlopers with outsize economic and political influence.

At the center of this latest rebellion is the renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi with longstanding ties to the Tutsi-led Rwandan government. He has refused to integrate his men into Congo’s national army, as the other militias that fought in the sprawling civil war have done, arguing that Tutsi face unique perils that require his special protection. “Our enemies have the ideology of genocide,” General Nkunda said in December at his hide-out in lush eastern Congo. “We are fearing they will continue their genocide in Congo.” Like many of Congo’s historical figures, General Nkunda, a tall, rail-thin 40-year-old with angular features, has developed a cult of personality. He has a penchant for flamboyant accessories: in a recent interview he cradled a black cane topped by a silver eagle’s head. Other times he has worn a button that says “Rebels for Christ.” He likes to refer to himself in the third person. “Is Nkunda the problem?” he demanded. “Why? How can Nkunda be to blame? I am only trying to protect my people.” General Nkunda said Congo’s small Tutsi minority was vulnerable to attack by militias, particularly the remnants of the Hutu extremist forces that carried out the genocide in Rwanda. Many of the extremists still roam the jungles of eastern Congo, and he has demanded that this militia be disbanded and that Tutsi refugees who fled into Rwanda be allowed to return.

Many Congolese Tutsi share his fears. “We are always seen as outsiders, but we are Congolese,” said Sanvura Birida, who lives with her four children in a camp for displaced people in territory controlled by General Nkunda. “The government does not protect us.” But that feeling of vulnerability does not always mean people are being personally victimized. “In response to the cumulative deaths of fewer than 20 Tutsi over the past two years, Nkunda has launched offensives that have killed over 100 persons and displaced hundreds of thousands,” said a report published in October by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that seeks to prevent or resolve deadly conflicts. “While Nkunda has defended the Tutsi minority in North Kivu, he has become a potential danger to the community’s security as a whole.” Representatives of his militia and others involved in recent fighting were expected to participate in a peace conference called by the government and originally scheduled to begin Jan. 6. It has been delayed by logistical problems, according to Reuters.

In many ways, Congo’s Tutsi are a people apart, an unusual minority with influence but also problems beyond its size. These differences are reflected in a unique way of life. When the Congolese Army routed General Nkunda’s forces in one of the strategic towns they occupied in a recent, ultimately failed push, the army celebrated with stiff pulls of rotgut whiskey. But when General Nkunda’s men routed the army with a much smaller force a few days later, they toasted their victory with cups of milk from the most prized of Tutsi possessions, dairy cows. This reputation for sobriety and determination helps explain why Tutsi have been so successful in business, according to Tutsi community leaders in Goma, the regional capital. “When we were investing and working, the Congolese were listening to music and playing football,” said Modeste Makabuza Ngoga, a Tutsi who is one of Goma’s richest men, with investments in transportation, telecommunications, tin ore and the gasoline trade, among other things. “Are we to be blamed for that?”

But the history of the region tells a different story. Before the elections of 2006, the area was controlled by a Rwandan-backed rebel group turned political party, the Congolese Rally for Democracy. It helped Mr. Makabuza Ngoga and other Tutsi build fortunes through patronage of the state government and special deals to buy valuable agricultural land, according to analysts and Western diplomats in the region. Wealth also helps fuel the Tutsi sense of vulnerability. A power-sharing agreement that ended the war in 2003 enabled a party dominated by a handful of Tutsi to essentially control one quarter of the country, which is the size of Western Europe, and thus considerable wealth. But in the election, the first democratic vote in Congo in more than four decades, only one Tutsi from this region was elected to the National Assembly. Some of Goma’s wealthy Tutsi feel so unsafe that they sleep in Gisenyi, a town just inside the Rwandan border, a fact that reinforces the common perception that Congolese Tutsi are more Rwandan than Congolese. Rwanda’s history is a powerful touchstone for Congo’s Tutsi. Similar disparities — a small group controlling considerable wealth and influence, amid a powerful sense of grievance from the majority — helped create the conditions that led to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Like many African ethnic groups, the Tutsi were divided in the 19th century among the European colonies; in the case of the Tutsi, those areas became Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. In each of these places, they have at times been co-opted and cultivated as a favored elite by those in power.

That trend began with Mobuto Sese Seko, Congo’s longtime ruler, after independence and later included Laurent D. Kabila, who became president after rebelling in 1996 with backing from Rwanda and Uganda. These alliances allowed Tutsi to dominate the economy and political life of much of North Kivu Province here, with its tin mines, rich pastureland and transportation links to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. Large parts of the province’s best farming and grazing land is controlled by a handful of Tutsi owners, according to analysts and human rights workers. But at times allies of the Tutsi have turned on them, sometimes savagely. In 1983, facing pressure from other ethnic groups in the region, Mr. Mobutu revoked citizenship for residents who could not trace their roots in Congo to 1885, effectively turning thousands of Tutsi and Hutu into stateless people. A decade later, ethnic violence exploded in North Kivu. As many as 10,000 people were killed, and 250,000 Hutu and Tutsi fled. Until the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Congolese Hutu and Tutsi coexisted relatively peacefully and in many ways faced the same kinds of persecution from other ethnic groups that considered them outsiders. But when the Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide flooded into Congo, tensions rose between Congolese Hutu and Tutsi as well. These Hutu extremists made common cause with the Mobutu government. When Mr. Mobutu fell in 1997, Mr. Kabila took power, and an unknown number of Rwandan Hutu refugees were killed. Mr. Kabila broke with his Rwandan allies, who in 1998 sponsored another rebellion, this time led by Congolese Tutsi. Mr. Kabila joined forces with the Hutus behind the genocide, igniting a second civil war in Congo. Joseph Dunia Ruyenzi, a human rights activist in Goma, said that despite this history, Tutsi must put their trust in the fledgling democracy of Congo. “All Congolese must see themselves as Congolese first, and as having a stake in peace and prosperity,” he said. “Our only option is to be in this together.”
by Lydia Polgreen
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U.N. Official Fears For Darfur Force

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 10th. (LA Times) - The U.N. peacekeeping chief told the Security Council on Wednesday that a Sudanese attack this week on U.N.-led troops reinforces concerns that the force may be unable to protect itself or civilians in Darfur. The violence, along with foot-dragging by the Sudanese government and the lack of necessary helicopters and equipment, may doom the peacekeeping effort, Jean-Marie Guehenno told the council. "Without decisive progress on each of those three issues, we will indeed face dire consequences for the international efforts to help the Sudanese bring peace and stability to Darfur," Guehenno said.

On Monday night, an armed force in Darfur attacked a peacekeeping supply convoy of more than 20 vehicles marked with the United Nations logo. Guehenno said that the area commander for the Sudanese military confirmed responsibility for the attack shortly afterward by telephone. On Wednesday, however, Sudanese officials in the capital, Khartoum, and New York denied responsibility and said rebels backed by neighboring Chad had orchestrated the attack to put the government under pressure. "They were not the government," said U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem. "The rebels did that. No doubt about it." The attack was only the most immediate problem facing the new peacekeeping mission. The African Union forces switched their berets from AU green to U.N. blue on Dec. 31, signaling the beginning of a joint peacekeeping operation by the two organizations that ultimately is expected to include 27,000 personnel. So far, about 9,000 troops and police are in place to protect civilians threatened by conflict in an area larger than California. But Guehenno lamented that continued obstacles put up by Sudan make many countries reluctant to offer personnel and equipment.

The government has rejected non-African soldiers and said it won't allow a team of Scandinavian engineers to help build roads and airstrips, further delaying deployment. Khartoum still has not consented to night flights, supplied land and water for bases in some areas or provided visas, Guehenno said. The government insists that African personnel wear green berets and non-Africans wear blue to differentiate them, a demand the U.N. has ignored, saying it goes against the original agreement as well as the U.N. charter. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir after the attack, and the pair will meet in two weeks at an African Union summit in Ethiopia to iron out remaining technical and political obstacles to the force's deployment. Guehenno told the Security Council in December that it might be better to not deploy a U.N. force at all than to deploy one that was too vulnerable, recalling tragedies involving overwhelmed peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

But the people of Darfur have little choice, with more than 300,000 people newly displaced in 2007 and malnutrition rates rising, despite the decrease in attacks on civilians by government-backed militias that earlier in the decade drove more than 2 million people from their homes. Aid workers are also at risk, with 13 killed and 147 abducted last year. Rebels continue to clash with government soldiers and militias, as well as with other rebel groups, over wealth, power and land. Peace talks have made little headway in stopping the 4-year-old conflict. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, said the Bush administration considers the continuing conflict in Darfur to be "very important" and a challenge "to the credibility of the international community, the credibility of the U.N., the credibility of the Security Council. But we're not where we need to be," he said. "We need to take stock and see what adjustment needs to be made."
by Maggie Farley
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Kenyan Foes Agree to Meet on Vote Unrest

NAIROBI, Jan 8th. (Toronto Star) –Kenya's feuding political leaders stepped back from the brink yesterday, bowing to pressure for face-to-face negotiations as officials reassessed higher the severity of a week of bloody clashes that followed the release of disputed election results. As many as 500 people died in the spasms of ethnic and political violence that now have ebbed in all but three remote parts of Kenya, according to a new government tally released yesterday. Opposition sources said the numbers could be nearer to 1,000. President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose Orange Democratic Movement says the Dec. 27 election was stolen, are expected to meet as early as tomorrow for talks with African Union chair John Kufour, the president of Ghana. Calling the agreement for outside mediation "a major, major breakthrough," Odinga cancelled nationwide rallies planned for today, easing fears of renewed violence.

While the deadliest attacks have subsided, sporadic clashes continue in remote rural areas mostly west of the capital, many pitting Odinga's Luo and allied factions against Kibaki's Kikuyu, the largest of Kenya's mosaic of 42 tribes. The rival political camps have traded accusations that grassroots party provocateurs are behind much of the violence. "Mr. Kibaki must bear responsibility for the deaths we are seeing in our country today" because of blatant "rigging" of the elections, Odinga told Sky News. Government officials, meanwhile, said officials were investigating reports of "premeditated murder" involving opposition operatives suspected of orchestrating attacks on people who were forewarned they would pay if they voted for Kibaki. An official in neighbouring Uganda told The Associated Press yesterday 30 fleeing Kenyans were thrown into the border river Saturday by Kenyan attackers, and were presumed drowned. Two Ugandan truck drivers carrying the group said they were stopped at a roadblock mounted by vigilantes who identified the refugees as Kikuyus and threw them into the deep, swift-flowing Kipkaren River, said Himbaza Hashaka, a Ugandan border official. The drivers said none survived.

The pressure to bring the two sides together was led by U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer, who yesterday confirmed the election was rigged in her first public comments after three days of intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy. "Yes there was rigging," said Frazer, who declined to name which side took greater advantage. "I mean there were problems in the vote-counting process ... both the parties could have rigged." Frazer pointedly criticized Kenya's independent electoral commission, which after days of delay finally confirmed Kibaki's re-election, only to admit later it had been subjected to political pressure to award the victory. The collapse of confidence in the commission, which won praise for its independence in past votes, has prompted opposition leaders to insist that any recount or repeat election must include international oversight. Adding to the chaos, the Law Society of Kenya, accused electoral officials of "ineptitude," called Kibaki's swearing-in "null and void," and urged a fresh vote.

As diplomatic efforts continued, Nairobi shops and businesses reopened yesterday, bringing traffic gridlock back to the capital for the time since the crisis began. "This is the first sale I have made since Christmas," said shop clerk Elizabeth Otieno, 23, as she packaged a pair of pants for a Kenyan customer. "If we don't sell we don't eat. People are still worried. But it helps to see business coming back." Tourism, which together with the tea and coffee industries is Kenya's biggest earner, has been clobbered by the fallout with mass cancellations upwards of 60 per cent, according to government officials.
by Mitch Potter
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Kenyan City Is Gripped by Violence

KISUMU, Kenya Jan 6th. - Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, is Kenya’s third-largest city. Dozens of stores have been looted, torched and smashed by rioters and then picked clean by an army of glue-sniffing street children searching for whatever was left. The scorched Ukwala supermarket looks as if a bomb blew up inside it. The gates of Zamana Electronic are mangled. People here say this is just the beginning. “We will never surrender!” yelled a man who attended a rally for opposition leaders on Saturday. “We want guns, guns!” another man added. While much of Kenya is trying to get back to normal after a week of post-election violence that has claimed more than 300 lives nationwide, Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city, is still quivering with anger. Few places have been so thoroughly gutted by the turbulence as here.

With Kenya’s leaders still at an impasse despite the efforts of Jendayi E. Frazer, the American assistant secretary of state for Africa who met with both sides on Saturday, it looks as if the tensions will linger dangerously for some time. Kisumu is the stronghold of Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who said he had been cheated out of the presidency, and the town’s main street is named after his father, a local hero. The people here followed the election so closely that they remember the precise hour last weekend, on Saturday, when the vote count suddenly changed, and Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, went from trailing badly to winning with a suspiciously thin margin of victory. The town exploded, and a furious mob stormed up Oginga Odinga street. The biggest businesses are now in ashes. Fuel, food and cellphone credit are in short supply. And around 2,000 people from Mr. Kibaki’s tribe, the Kikuyu, are camped out at the police station, trying to escape a wave of revenge killings. “If I stay here, I’ll be lynched,” said Waweru Mburu, a Kikuyu, as he nervously waited outside a supermarket, one of the two open in this town of half a million people. His wife had been waiting for hours, trying to buy milk.

Trucks carrying Kikuyu and evacuees from another tribe, the Kisii, many of whom supported Mr. Kibaki, are jeered at as they pull out of town. Those doing the jeering are mostly Luo, like Mr. Odinga, who live here in great numbers. “Traitors!” some Luo shouted on Saturday as a truck passed. People on both sides said the tensions would not ease as long as Kenya’s political leaders refused to even speak to each other, which has been the situation since the election on Dec. 27. On Saturday, Mr. Kibaki indicated that he was ready to form “a government of national unity.” Mr. Odinga did not reject that outright but said he would not entertain any offers until the two sides sat down in the presence of foreign mediators. The government initially rebuffed outside help, but seems to have relented slightly and sent a diplomat to Ghana to discuss a role for the African Union, according to Reuters. Ms. Frazer met separately with Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga and urged them to work together to solve the crisis, which has dented Kenya’s image as one of the most stable countries in Africa and could cause permanent economic damage if peace is not restored soon.

It seems that momentum is growing toward negotiations. “There is slow progress being made,” said Salim Lone, a spokesman for Mr. Odinga. Kenyans are waiting. Some areas, like the capital, have quieted down considerably. In the Rift Valley, the area most torn by violence, fewer killings have been reported in the past few days, but tens of thousands of people are displaced and in need of food. In Kisumu, the killings have stopped, for the most part. But the banks are running out of money, few stores are open and the looting continues. There is some opportunism to all this. The rage that swept through town was selective, striking at electronics shops, cellphone kiosks and shoe stores but leaving the drapery dealer alone. On Saturday, Monica Awino tiptoed through the shattered interior of a Bata footwear store. Glass was everywhere. She used to work here and now is out of a job at the best time of year. No after-Christmas or back-to-school sales for her. “I’m angry at everybody,” she said. Up the street, Bernard Ndede, a high school English teacher, watched street children carefully sift through inches of rubble on the floor of a charred supermarket, as if they were urban archaeologists. He said he did not approve of the looting, but he understood the anger. “People woke up so early that day to vote for change,” he said, referring to election day and the millions of people who voted for Mr. Odinga. “They felt robbed.” For some, the disappointment was lethal. On Saturday, Albert Ojonyo, an insurance agent, went to the city morgue to pick up the body of his brother, Daniel. More than 40 people were killed here in election-related violence. Many bodies have not been identified and wait in a sweltering room under strips of red cloth with their feet poking out. Mr. Ojonyo said his brother, who was 27, had been shot in the head, most likely by police officers trying to quell the rioters. “Daniel felt very strongly about these elections,” he said. “Afterward, he was a very bitter boy.”
By Jeffrey Gettlemane
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The World's Most Dangerous Place

Nothing else has worked: it is time for Pakistan to try democracy
Jan 3rd 2008, Economist - The war against Islamist extremism and the terrorism it spawns is being fought on many fronts. But it may well be in Pakistan that it is won or lost. It is not only that the country's lawless frontier lands provide a refuge for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and that its jihad academies train suicide-bombers with global reach. Pakistan is also itself the world's second most populous Muslim nation, with a proud tradition of tolerance and moderation, now under threat from the extremists on its fringes. Until recently, the risk that Pakistan might be prey to Islamic fundamentalism of the sort its Taliban protégés enforced in Afghanistan until 2001 seemed laughable. It is still far-fetched. But after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister, nobody is laughing. This, after all, is a country that now has the bomb Miss Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, craved so passionately as prime minister in the 1970s.

There are many other reasons why the murder of Miss Bhutto (and some 20 other people unlucky enough to be near her) makes Pakistan seem a frightening place. That terrorists could strike in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani army, despite having advertised threats against Miss Bhutto, and despite the slaughter of some 150 people in Karachi on the day she returned from exile last October, suggests no one is safe. If, as many in Pakistan believe, the security services were themselves complicit, that is perhaps even scarier. It would make it even harder to deal with the country's many other fissures: the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims; the ethnic tensions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Pushtuns and “mohajir” immigrants from India; the insurgency in Baluchistan; and the spread of the “Pakistani Taliban” out of the border tribal areas into the heartlands. Miss Bhutto's murder has left her Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the country's biggest, at risk of disintegration. It is now in the hands of her unpopular widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, who by rights should be punting and partying with his classmates at Oxford, not risking his neck in politics. The election whose campaign killed Miss Bhutto was due on January 8th, but the Election Commission has delayed it by six weeks. The PPP will reap a big sympathy vote. But bereft of Miss Bhutto, the party—and the country—look desperately short of leaders of national stature. Other Bhutto clan-members are already sniping at her successors. The other big mainstream party, led by her rival Nawaz Sharif, another two-time prime minister, is also in disarray. Both parties have been weakened by their leaders' exiles, as well as by persecution at the hands of President Pervez Musharraf's military dictatorship. In truth, both Miss Bhutto and Mr Sharif were lousy prime ministers. But at least they had some semblance of a popular mandate. The systematic debilitation of their parties benefits the army, which has entrenched itself in the economic as well as the political system. But it also helps the Islamist parties—backed, as they are, by an army which has sometimes found them more congenial partners than the more popular mainstream parties. The unpopularity of the Musharraf regime, hostility towards America, and resentment at a war in neighbouring Afghanistan that many in Pakistan see as directed at both Islam and their ethnic-Pushtun kin, have also helped the Islamists.

So, ironically, America's support for Mr Musharraf, justified as necessary to combat extremism next door, has fostered extremism at home. Similarly, in the 1980s America backed General Zia ul Haq, a dictator and Islamic fundamentalist, as his intelligence services sponsored the mujahideen who eventually toppled the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. In the process, they helped create what Miss Bhutto called a “Frankenstein's monster”—of jihadist groups with sympathisers in the army and intelligence services. The clubbable, whisky-quaffing, poodle-cuddling Mr Musharraf is no fundamentalist. But the monster still stalks his security forces. Yet Pakistan's plight is not yet hopeless. Two things could still help arrest its slide into anarchy, improbable though both now seem. The first is a credible investigation into Miss Bhutto's murder and the security-service lapses (or connivance) that allowed it to happen. Mr Musharraf's willingness to let a couple of British policemen help the inquiry is unlikely to produce this. Every time a bomb goes off in Pakistan, people believe that one of the country's own spooks lit the fuse. Until there has been a convincing purge of the military-intelligence apparatus, Pakistan will never know true stability.

Second, there could be a fair election. This would expose the weakness of the Islamist parties. In the last general election in 2002, they won just one-tenth of the votes, despite outrageous rigging that favoured them. Even if they fared somewhat better this time, they would still, in the most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, be trounced by the mainstream parties. An elected government with popular support would be better placed to work with the moderate, secular, professional tendency in the army to tackle extremism and bring Pakistan's poor the economic development they need. Sadly, there seems little hope that the security forces will abandon the habit of a lifetime and allow truly fair elections. The delay in the voting—opposed by both main opposition parties—has been seen as part of its plan to rig the results. The violence that has scarred the country since Miss Bhutto's assassination may intensify. The army may be tempted to impose another state of emergency; or it may cling on to ensure that the election produces the result it wants—a weak and pliable coalition of the PPP and Mr Musharraf's loyalists.

For too long, Mr Musharraf has been allowed to pay lip-service to democratic forms, while the United States has winked at his blatant disdain for the substance. The justification has been the pre-eminent importance of “stability” in the world's most dangerous place. It is time to impress upon him and the generals still propping him up that democracy is not the alternative to stability. It is Pakistan's onlyhope.
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
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