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Revenge Killings Stoke a Violent Cycle in Kenya
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By Monday evening, tempers across western Kenya seemed to have cooled, though tensions remained high.
Police and Kenyan soldiers patrolled streets of major cities and towns in the region. In some areas, military helicopters swirled over the rusted tin-roofed neighborhoods where violence has tended to burst forth. Local authorities said they had the situation under control.
But many Kenyans fear that the situation is spiraling beyond the control of Kenya's deadlocked political leaders, who have vaguely called for peace in one breath, but blamed one another for the violence in the next.
With former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan in Nairobi for mediation, Odinga and Kibaki's teams on Monday prepared ground rules for negotiations that are widely thought to be Kenya's best hope for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
More than 800 people have been killed and at least 250,000 displaced since Odinga accused Kibaki of stealing the election. It is the East African nation's worst crisis since independence from Britain in 1963.
"Civil war is not too strong a word for the fears people have," said Salim Lone, a spokesman for Odinga.
The violence has struck the poorest settlements of Nairobi but has mostly remained concentrated in western Kenya.
There, members of the local Kalenjin and Luo tribes, loyal to Odinga, are apparently using the occasion to address long-standing land disputes with Kikuyus, who settled there in large numbers with the help of a Kikuyu-dominated government in the years after independence. Tribes in Kenya break down largely along ethnic lines.
For weeks, busloads and trucks packed with Kikuyus and heaped high with bundles have been exiting the Rift Valley area, headed to points east or all the way back to their traditional home province in central Kenya.
The process of tribal segregation has continued in recent days, only this time with Luos hitting the road, running from the Kikuyu gangs. In general, they are headed to Luo-dominated areas to the west.
On Monday, Lone said opposition leaders think the past days of reprisals against Luos were also well-organized, with Kikuyu attackers being transported from the western Nakuru, where the violence began Thursday, to Naivasha, where it continued Monday.
"We believe quite strongly that these gangs are organized," he said. "We are even more concerned that the violence is slowly coming to our capital city. Really, unless there is some clear sign through this mediation process that gives people hope, it is bound to get worse."
Special correspondent Alan Okombo in Kisumu contributed to this report.
