Ethnic Violence in Rift Valley Is Tearing Kenya Apart
Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A Kikuyu-owned store in Nakuru was set on fire by Luos, after Kikuyus had burned down Luo homes and businesses.
Published: January 27, 2008
NAKURU, Kenya — Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, may seem calm, but anarchy reigns just two hours away
Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times
A Luo mother and daughter fleeing the fighting in Nakuru waited to be evacuated by the Kenyan Red Cross on Saturday.
Walter Astrada/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Violence in Nakuru is driving Luos west and Kikuyus east.
In Nakuru, furious mobs rule
the streets, burning homes, brutalizing people and expelling anyone not
in their ethnic group, all with complete impunity.
On Saturday,
hundreds of men prowled a section of the city with six-foot iron bars,
poisoned swords, clubs, knives and crude circumcision tools. Boys
carried gladiator-style shields and women strutted around with
sharpened sticks.
The police were nowhere to be found. Even the residents were shocked.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said David Macharia, a bus driver.
One
month after a deeply flawed election, Kenya is tearing itself apart
along ethnic lines, despite intense international pressure on its
leaders to compromise and stop the killings.
Nakuru, the biggest
town in the beautiful Rift Valley, is the scene of a mass migration now
moving in two directions. Luos are headed west, Kikuyus are headed
east, and packed buses with mattresses strapped on top pass one another
in the road, with the bewildered children of the two ethnic groups
staring out the windows at one another.
In the past 10 days,
dozens of people have been killed in Molo, Narok, Kipkelion, Kuresoi,
and now Nakuru, a tourist gateway which until a few days ago was
considered safe.
In many places, Kenya seems to be sliding back
toward the chaos that exploded Dec. 30, when election results were
announced and the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.
The
tinder was all there, even before the voting started. There were
historic grievances over land and deep-seated ethnic tensions, with
many ethnic groups resenting the Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s group, because
they have been the most prosperous for years.
The disputed
election essentially served as the spark, and opposition supporters
across Kenya vented their rage over many issues toward the Kikuyus and
other ethnic groups thought to have supported Mr. Kibaki.
In
the Rift Valley, local elders organized young men to raid Kikuyu areas
and kill people in a bid to drive the Kikuyus off their land. It
worked, for the most part, and over the past month, tens of thousands
of Kikuyus have fled.
More than 650 people, many of them
Kikuyus, have been killed. Many of the attackers are widely believed to
be members of the Luo and Kalenjin ethnic groups.
What is
happening now in Nakuru seems to be revenge. The city is surrounded by
spectacular scenery, with Lake Nakuru and its millions of flamingos
drawing throngs of tourists each year. The city has a mixed population,
like much of Kenya, split among several ethnic groups including
Kikuyus, Luos, Luhyas and Kalenjins.
On Thursday night, witnesses
and participants said, bands of Kikuyu men stormed into the streets
with machetes and homemade weapons and began attacking Luos and
Kalenjins.
Paul Karanja, a Kikuyu shopkeeper in Nakuru, explained
it this way: “We had been so patient. For weeks we had watched all the
buses and trucks taking people out of the Rift Valley, and we had seen
so many of our people lose everything they owned. Enough was enough.”
In
a Nakuru neighborhood called Free Area, hundreds of Kikuyu men burned
down homes and businesses belonging to Luos, Mr. Odinga’s ethnic group.
The Luos who refused to leave were badly beaten, and sometimes worse.
According to witnesses, a Kikuyu mob forcibly circumcised one Luo man
who later bled to death. Circumcision is an important rite of passage
for Kikuyus but is not widely practiced among Luos.
The Luos and
the Kalenjins, who have been aligned throughout the post-election
period, then counterattacked, resulting in a citywide melee with
hundreds wounded and as many as 50 people killed.
By Friday
night, the Kenyan military was deployed for the first time to
intervene. Local authorities also placed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on
Nakuru, another first.
Many people in Free Area, which is now almost totally Kikuyu, say it will be difficult to make peace.
“We’re
angry and they’re angry,” said John Maina, a stocky butcher, whose
weapon of choice on Saturday was a three-foot table leg with exposed
screws. “I don’t see us living together any time soon.”
That is
the reality across much of Kenya, and it seems to be nothing short of
so-called ethnic cleansing. Mobs in Eldoret, Kisumu, Kakamega, Burnt
Forest and countless other areas, including some of the biggest slums
in Nairobi, have driven out people from opposing ethnic groups. Many
neighborhoods that used to be mixed are now ethnically homogeneous.
Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, visited the Rift Valley on Saturday. He called it “nerve-racking.”
“We
saw people pushed from their homes and farms, grandmothers, children
and families uprooted,” said Mr. Annan, who is in Kenya trying to
broker negotiations between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga.
He called for the Kenyan government to investigate the attackers and increase security.
On
Saturday, Kenyan soldiers in Free Area escorted Luos back to their
smoldering homes and stood guard with their assault rifles as the
people sifted through the ruins and salvaged whatever they could before
leaving.
Many Luos said they had no choice but to go to far
western Kenya, the traditional Luo homeland, just as many Kikuyus who
have been displaced said they would resettle in the highlands east of
Nakuru, their traditional homeland.
Mr. Macharia, the bus driver,
who is Kikuyu, conceded that many Kikuyus were feeling vengeful. But he
said it does not mean they actually want to fight. “I saw it myself,”
he said. “The elders called ‘Charge!’ but not all the boys charged.”
Still,
enough did charge that the Luos who used to live in Free Area were not
taking any chances. On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people carrying
trunks on their heads and bags of blankets streamed toward a government
office that was protected by a few soldiers.
Nancy Aloo, a Luo, was guiding four frightened young children.
“God made all of us,” Ms. Aloo said. “We need his help.”
