Bush in Africa and More

President Bush and Mrs. Bush are in Africa this weekend (a six-day sojourn), with the intent to visit the countries of Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda and Tanzania. It's the president's second trip to the continent; let’s hope that he’ll skip the dancing. Among the objectives of trip are to highlight the US projects which aim to conquer AIDS and malaria and to scout out a site for the headquarters of the newly-created Africa Command. The only government which has offered to host the new command is that of Liberia.

Kenya had been on the itinerary but the president purposely avoided countries with unstable governments and, therefore, that leg of the trip was canceled for obvious reasons. Instead, the president sent Condoleezza Rice to Kenya. The SOS will arrive on Monday but will only be there for a few hours--just enough time to convey the president’s call for an end to the violence and his endorsement of a power-sharing agreement; basically to cosign on Kofi Annan’s efforts to convince Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga to take that option.

Maenwhile, the people long for normalcy:

"Why are [Kibaki, Odinga and Annan] not hitting the main issue so we can have a normal life in Kenya?" 35-year old taxi driver Dan Omondi told The Associated Press in the western city of Kisumu, which has seen some of the worst of the ethnic violence sparked by the political dispute. "When you are hungry you need food, not appetizers."

But others recognize that it isn't up to the Big Wigs to give life--real life--to the citizens. It never was.

In the case of Kenya, blame at this point would serve no useful purpose. Hundreds have died and thousands are displaced. We must focus on resolving the crisis. The U.S. and other Western countries have suggested direct face-to-face negotiations between Odinga and Kibaki. This Western approach NEVER worked in Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, and AU Chairman, John Kufuor and others have all suggest Government of National Unity (GNU) but that NEVER worked anywhere in Africa – not even South Africa after apartheid was dismantled. It is time for a NEW APPROACH – an African approach.

It starts by recognizing that the crisis is now beyond the capabilities of Odinga and Kibaki to resolve. When two elephants, it is the grass that gets hurt, says an African proverb. [SNIP]

The crisis in Kenya now is for ALL Kenyans to resolve. A sovereign national conference must be convened with representatives drawn from all sections of Kenyan society: political parties, religious bodies, tribal groups, professional groups, student groups, etc.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer's press briefing while enroute to the continent. First there's an overview of Global Peace Operations Initiative.

I think that it's important to know that our -- that we have a major initiative that's intended to build the capacity of Africans, themselves, to respond to conflict. That's the Global Peace Operations Initiative. It's called GPOI. And that was an initiative that the President pushed the administration to develop. It started in 2005. It provides $660 million over five years to train 75,000 peacekeepers worldwide, with a focus on Africa. To date, we've trained about 39,000 Africans in peacekeeping, and also equip them. And of the Africans deployed around the world in peacekeeping operations -- of which the majority are, again, Africa -- 80 percent have been trained by the United States. So we think that this is a major contribution to conflict resolution on the continent.

Then the situation in Kenya is addressed.

Q Do you feel like President Kibaki feels too comfortable in his U.S. support, his support from Washington, and that might make him less likely to make compromises that he might otherwise?

AMBASSADOR FRAZER: I think that both President Kibaki and Raila Odinga appreciate the strong support that the United States has provided to Kenya, and they see the United States as key to helping them to resolve this crisis. And so I think that both have heard our message that it will not be business as usual, and that any individuals who are seen as obstructing the effort towards a peace process, a power sharing agreement, as the President stated, will be subject to possible further sanction by the U.S. We've talked about a visa ban, but there are other issues and ways in which we can try to encourage them to negotiate in good faith.

Q Do you have a concern there's an impression -- perhaps a misimpression -- that the President is not engaged in solving conflict?

AMBASSADOR FRAZER: I think that there's some people who don't know what the true record is. And especially when you're in Washington, we need to step outside of the politics and look at the record.

And, finally, here are some excerpts from another excellent and very sad article on the origins of the Kenya conflict and the lastest effects: Balkanization.

Luos have gone back to Luo land, Kikuyus to Kikuyu land, Kambas to Kamba land and Kisiis to Kisii land. Even some of the packed slums in the capital, Nairobi, have split along ethnic lines.

The bloodletting across the country that has killed more than 1,000 people since the election seems to have subsided in the past week. But the trucks piled high with mattresses, furniture, blankets and children keep chugging across the countryside, an endless convoy of frightened people who in their desperation are redrawing the map of Kenya. [SNIP]

Whatever deal is struck will have to address the growing de facto segregation, since a resettlement of the country may further entrench the political and ethnic divisions that have recently erupted. Shattered trust is much harder to rebuild than smashed huts, and many people say they will never go back to where they fled.

“How can we, when it was our friends who did this to us?” said Joseph Ndungu, a shopkeeper in the Rift Valley, who said that men he used to play soccer with burned down his shop. [SNIP]

The roots of the problem go deeper than the disputed election, in which the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.

At the heart is a tangle of long-festering political, economic and land issues. Part of the trouble is the winner-take-all system in Kenya, which happens in much of Africa, where leaders often favor members of their own ethnic group and in the process alienate large swaths of the population. Many people in Kenya saw this coming even before independence in 1963.

“We were worried about the smaller tribes getting dominated by the bigger ones,” said Joseph Martin Shikuku, a 75-year-old opposition figure. “And you know what? That’s exactly what happened.”

The Kenya Crisis