Is Kenya trapped in tribal violence?

A few days ago, I left for Kenya to attend a training programme on the rule of law in post conflict recovery initiatives coordinated by the International Peace Centre located in the prestigious leafy suburb of Karen, in the west of Nairobi, Kenya.The organisers of the training reasoned, and rightly so, that the rule of law exists to protect certain fundamental human rights and yet, this is the very concept that is often disregarded in the event of conflict.Resource persons at the training were experts in international law and governance matters. Unfortunately, hundreds of miles away from this serene environment, tribal clashes were taking place in the Tana River Delta over water and grazing rights that pitted two tribes, the Orma and Pokomo.The Pokomo are farmers while their neighbours, the Orma, are pastoralists and animosity between the two tribes is historical.By Friday, last week, 150 lives including those of a dozen police officers had been lost in the skirmishes in less than a month.Villagers targeted in the recent wave of killings claim trained militia that included outsiders could be behind the raids with growing suspicions that politicians may have funded them.Before I left Nairobi there was talk that the Mombasa Republican Council, an outlawed Coast Province-based secessionist group, could have played a part in the attacks.The Pokomos are said to be sympathetic to the cause of the secessionist group while the Ormas and other pastoralist tribes are against it.“We were born into the conflict between Pokomos and Ormas,” Kadze Kazungu, a Pokomo, told reporters in front of his house smouldering debris of what was once his home in one of the affected villages in the Tana River Delta.“We have fought over land and water before. But whenever that occurs, elders from both tribes always find a way of resolving the issue,” he added.On Wednesday, last week, a Member of Parliament in the area, who is also the Livestock Assistant Minister Dadho Godhana was arrested over incitement of violence. He denied the charges and was released on bail but was immediately fired from his ministerial position. Kenyan participants I spoke to during the training suspected that there was political involvement and that arms must have been ferried in from Somalia that shares a common border with Kenya.“This is a massacre. This is not a resource-based conflict,” Abudallah Abubakar Aziz, a peace activist attending the training, told me.“This time, it must be politics. Bad politics,” he added.Victims of the clashes told television channels that attackers used sophisticated arms and claimed that though they knew some of the attackers, they did not know the majority of them.The killings constitute the single worst incident of violence in the country since 2007, when a wave of post-election violence fought along ethnic lines, led to the deaths of 1,200 people.Three powerful politicians, including Eldoret North legislator William Ruto, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, former head of civil service and cabinet secretary, Francis Muthaura, and radio presenter Joshua arap Sang have been indicted by the Hague-base International Criminal Court in connection with the 2007/8 violence.Tribal clashes in Kenya baffle many; it is public knowledge that the average Kenyan is comparatively better informed than the majority of citizens in other East African Community countries. This is occasioned by the fact that the country has been at peace with itself and its neighbours for long. The first time Kenya was involved in a foreign conflict is the recent incursion into Somalia to pursue the Al Shaabab militia that had threatened its security. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior lawyer at the State Law Office, said, “With the advent of political pluralism in 2002, ethnicity and money gained much currency in our national polity. Constituencies are in form of political blocks.”“Tribal animosity has been with us but became violent when politics became tribal,” he added.“Besides, here extreme luxury rubs shoulders with extreme poverty. In this country, we have over 1,000 private jets but another big percentage of citizenry live under extreme poverty,” he told me as we drove from Lavington, a rich neighborhood dotted with villas to the Kibera slum where residents draw drinking water from an open stream.“Here everyone has a tribe. Even wazungu (Kenyan whites) have one; they are called the Kenyan cowboys,” Achieng Osogo, a young woman volunteering for a democracy action group told me with regret, adding that her friend has had her engagement ring broken over tribal matters.From the face of it, Kenyans may need to crush ethnicity once and for all.

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Is Kenya trapped in tribal violence?