Word: kibaki
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...terrorism, a bulwark against its volatile, jihadi-infested neighbor Somalia. Terrorists have occasionally slipped across Kenya's border, as in 1998, when al-Qaeda simultaneously bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, another neighbor. In 2007 the Bush Administration gave the government of President Mwai Kibaki about $1 billion in military and other aid. And there are special-operations soldiers based in Kenya at Manda Bay, on the coast just south of Somalia. The instability in Kenya has so alarmed the Administration that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reached out for help to an unlikely ally: Democratic presidential contender...
...psychology of the bloodletting that has killed more than 500 Kenyans and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes may remain a mystery. Other questions are easier to answer. The immediate cause? A civilian coup by Kibaki, following a close race with challenger Odinga in the Dec. 27 general election. Three days after the vote, on live television, paramilitary police stormed the Kenyatta International Conference Center, where the vote was being counted and Odinga had a substantial lead. Minutes later, the head of the election commission declared Kibaki the winner. Kibaki was sworn in later the same day. That...
They did. Starting on New Year's Eve, tens of thousands of Kalenjin and Luo tribesmen tore through the Kikuyu sections of Kibera, mirroring violence across the country. Few seemed to care whether Kibaki and his tribe would fight back. "If there's civil war, it is the Kikuyus who will lose," says Titus Odiambo, a Luo fish trader. "It's their buildings that will burn. We don't have anything at stake." Some Kikuyu gangs struck back, but tens of thousands simply fled to the central highlands, where they are the majority tribe...
...spread through the building and, according to reports at the time, between 30 and 50 people were burned alive before the fire burst through the doors and the rest were able to escape. The Kikuyu, the biggest of Kenya's 42 tribes, became targets after the Kikuyu President Mwai Kibaki was sworn in for a second term in what overwhelming evidence suggests was a rigged election. For Kenya's other tribes, angry at what they regard as corrupt Kikuyu dominance of the country's politics and business, this was an outrage. Particularly angered were the Luo - the third largest...
Fueling particular anger is how corruption reserves much of Kenya's riches for the Kikuyu elite, and condemns millions to poverty. Despite an economy that grew at 6.2% last year, 55% of Kenya's 36 million population live on less than $2 a day. Though Kibaki was elected on an anti-corruption ticket in 2002, he proved a disappointment: graft and cronyism have thrived and his anti-corruption tsar John Githongo fled to London in 2005. Githongo never explained why he left Kenya. He reportedly had begun to doubt the government's commitment to tackling corruption and had received death...