Kenya No end to the problem
Nov 16th 2006 NAIROBI From The Economist print edition
Ever more reasons to worry about endemic corruption
THERE are few people left, even in Kenya, who dispute the fact that the country is one of the most corrupt in the world. Guesses about how much senior officials pinch from the public coffers range from $1 billion a year and up. But if that aspect of the country's corruption problem is well known, it is now doing other kinds of damage. For a rotten Kenya has also become an international security concern.
That was the message of Kim Howells, a Foreign Office minister from Britain, the former colonial master, on a visit to the country last week. In unusually frank terms, Mr Howells argued that because everyone, from Mombasa dockers to senior government officials, can be bought off, Kenya is “wide open” for drug cartels and terrorists. The cartels move large quantities of cocaine and heroin through Kenya and the drug money washing through Kenya's political bloodstream is making it even harder for honest ministers and civil servants to do their job.
Terrorism is another concern. Intelligence sources suggest that a few jihadists among the Somali Islamists in Mogadishu may be readying suicide attacks against targets in Kenya. Corruption certainly makes it easier for them to move between the two countries. Small bribes at remote border posts and larger bribes at Kenya's domestic airports are enough to make Somalis invisible to Kenya's security services. Corruption at the highest levels provides cover for stealing down the line. Some of the proceeds go on country club memberships and luxury cars. But far more is spent on political campaigns: rallies, paying off tribal elders, gangs to intimidate opposition supporters, and sometimes the voters themselves.
The present government was elected on an anti-corruption platform, but has done little to fulfil its promises. From the start, it borrowed money from many of the same individuals as the previous regime, and set about paying off debts with similar dodgy schemes. A few of these were laid bare by John Githongo, a government-appointed investigator who had to flee the country when his findings got too close to the top. His revelations did prompt two ministers to resign, but this week they were both reinstated. Some of the $300m or so involved in the scams has been returned to the treasury.
Donor countries are confining their aid to ever more strictly audited projects. Sir Edward Clay, an outspoken former British high commissioner to Kenya, says donors should be using their own laws more effectively against corrupt African officials. “Corruption is too far down the development agenda,” says Sir Edward. Kenya has made some progress. Mr Githongo and other brave whistle-blowers, after all, are Kenyans speaking for Kenya. But too many of them have had to flee abroad. Nor is there a single conviction in sight.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Mearsheimer and Walt on the Israel lobby
There is some debate in academic circles of American support for Israel.
This is in contrast to the US political scene where support of Israel is sacrosanct and Hamas and Hezbollah are invariably labeled as terrorist without any acknowledgement of the fact that both organizations are democratically elected and have been the targets of massive Israeli terror.
This is an excerpt from a front page story that ran in the New York Time on November 13 about Israel and America.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/world/middleeast/13israel.html
But Mr. Zelikow's close ties to Ms. Rice are well known, and the furor over his comments was amplified because they appeared to some to echo criticisms published in March in The London Review of Books by two American scholars, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_chicago/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
They suggested that from the White House to Capitol Hill, Israel's interests have been confused with America's, that Israel is more of a security burden than an asset and that the "Israel lobby" in America, including Jewish policy makers, have an undue influence over American foreign policy. In late August, appearing in front of an Islamic group in Washington, Mr.
Mearsheimer extended the argument to say that American support of the war in Lebanon had been another example of Israeli interests trumping American ones.
The essay argued that without the Israel lobby the United States would not have gone to war in Iraq and implied that the same forces could drag the United States into another military confrontation on Israel's behalf, with Iran. It urged more American pressure to solve the Palestinian question as the best cure for regional instability.
Some Israelis worried that the implicit charge of dual loyalty would be underlined by the trial of two former officials of the prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, on charges of receiving classified information about Iran and other issues from a Defense Department official and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. The trial is scheduled to begin early next year.
Mr. Walt, in an interview, argued that the first President Bush had worked to restrain Israel, and that Mr. Clinton worked to attain diplomatic concessions to achieve a peace. But when this Bush administration took office, "they first had no use for the Mideast, then took a more balanced position, calling for a two-state solution, and then were completely won over by Israel's argument that it is simply fighting terrorism."
This is in contrast to the US political scene where support of Israel is sacrosanct and Hamas and Hezbollah are invariably labeled as terrorist without any acknowledgement of the fact that both organizations are democratically elected and have been the targets of massive Israeli terror.
This is an excerpt from a front page story that ran in the New York Time on November 13 about Israel and America.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/world/middleeast/13israel.html
But Mr. Zelikow's close ties to Ms. Rice are well known, and the furor over his comments was amplified because they appeared to some to echo criticisms published in March in The London Review of Books by two American scholars, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_chicago/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
They suggested that from the White House to Capitol Hill, Israel's interests have been confused with America's, that Israel is more of a security burden than an asset and that the "Israel lobby" in America, including Jewish policy makers, have an undue influence over American foreign policy. In late August, appearing in front of an Islamic group in Washington, Mr.
Mearsheimer extended the argument to say that American support of the war in Lebanon had been another example of Israeli interests trumping American ones.
The essay argued that without the Israel lobby the United States would not have gone to war in Iraq and implied that the same forces could drag the United States into another military confrontation on Israel's behalf, with Iran. It urged more American pressure to solve the Palestinian question as the best cure for regional instability.
Some Israelis worried that the implicit charge of dual loyalty would be underlined by the trial of two former officials of the prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, on charges of receiving classified information about Iran and other issues from a Defense Department official and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. The trial is scheduled to begin early next year.
Mr. Walt, in an interview, argued that the first President Bush had worked to restrain Israel, and that Mr. Clinton worked to attain diplomatic concessions to achieve a peace. But when this Bush administration took office, "they first had no use for the Mideast, then took a more balanced position, calling for a two-state solution, and then were completely won over by Israel's argument that it is simply fighting terrorism."
Friday, November 10, 2006
Chased by Gang Violence, Residents flee Mathare
Chased by Gang Violence, Residents Flee Kenyan Slum
November 10, 2006
Nairobi Journal
Chased by Gang Violence, Residents Flee Kenyan Slum
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 9 — In the past five days, more than 10 people have been killed and 600 homes burned to the ground in an unusual burst of violence between Nairobi gangs.
The fighting has emptied out an entire slum in central Nairobi, and on Thursday, women fleeing with mattresses on their backs slogged through the streets, while men with hammers knocked down the metal shanties that used to be their homes, selling their very walls for scrap.
The bloodshed began with a bootlegging dispute, but it has been fueled by ethnic rivalry. The epicenter is Mathare, a cluster of slums with approximately 500,000 people, crammed between downtown Nairobi and an affluent neighborhood where many ambassadors live. Mathare is a landscape of rust — thousands of shacks squeezed together with rusted metal roofs and rusted metal sides, and the occasional rusted metal bridge between. Even the mud here, where not a blade of grass grows, is rust red.
The area is notorious as a pocket of anarchy in a relatively orderly city, a place where street gangs levy taxes and teenage boys with machetes and dreadlocks shake down people at checkpoints. Most days, the police are nowhere to be found. Residents say it has been like this for years.
“You pay security, you pay electricity, you pay for toilets and what do you get?” said Morris Odek, a father of three. “Nothing.”
On Sunday, violence erupted between the gangs fighting for control of this impoverished turf. One gang is the Mungiki, a secretive, quasi-religious sect whose members cut out their enemies’ navels and worship a leader who says he came from a ball of shining stars. The other is a band of vigilantes who call themselves the Taliban, even though they are Christian and have nothing to do with the original Taliban group that imposed a harsh brand of Islam in Afghanistan.
“They just wanted a name that sounded tough,” said George Wambugu, a youth counselor for a soccer league in Mathare. The Mungiki and the Taliban have clashed before, but not like this. According to residents, the Mungiki tried to impose a higher tax on brewers of chang’aa, an outlawed homemade liquor with a kick stronger than that of vodka.
The brewers resisted and enlisted the help of the Taliban to fight back. That led to a cycle of street rumbles, shanty burnings and reprisal killings. Most victims were hacked to death with machetes, though some apparently were shot.
Like so many of Africa’s conflicts, this one has an ethnic dimension, with most Mungiki from the Kikuyu tribe, one of Kenya’s biggest, while the Taliban are primarily Luo, another prominent tribe.
“That’s why this won’t end,” said Daniel Opiyo, a shoe seller whose home was burned down. “It’s tribal, and it will go on and on.”
The police flooded into Mathare on Tuesday, but the killing continued. On Wednesday, the Kenyan government sent in soldiers with machine guns and declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
On Thursday, the soldiers prowled the muddy streets, seemingly grabbing at random the few young men left.
“See this guy,” one soldier said, laying a thick hand on a boy with a string of beads around his neck. “Mungiki.”
After the boy explained that he was Borana, a tribe from northern Kenya, he was let go. Other boys, though, were marched through the streets with their hands tied behind their backs and tears in their eyes.
Thousands of people have been streaming out of Mathare, creating a refugeelike crisis in the middle of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
On Thursday, as shiny Mercedes-Benzes drove by, along with packed minibuses heading downtown, a crowd of Mathare residents huddled outside a nearby air force base. Beds, tables and rolls of soggy clothing were piled around them. Because it is the rainy season, many people have been sleeping on wet ground. Residents said several babies had died of exposure.
“But nobody really cares,” said Angelina Okumba, a 52-year-old mother of 11 children.
Kenyan officials have tried to reassure residents that the fighting is finished.
“It’s time to go home,” said J. K. Ndegwa, a police commander. “There’s no problem here.”
On a smoldering hillside, children played among shattered teacups while their parents packed the last of their things. The smell of char stung the nose, and though it had been pouring all week, the fires still burned.
November 10, 2006
Nairobi Journal
Chased by Gang Violence, Residents Flee Kenyan Slum
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 9 — In the past five days, more than 10 people have been killed and 600 homes burned to the ground in an unusual burst of violence between Nairobi gangs.
The fighting has emptied out an entire slum in central Nairobi, and on Thursday, women fleeing with mattresses on their backs slogged through the streets, while men with hammers knocked down the metal shanties that used to be their homes, selling their very walls for scrap.
The bloodshed began with a bootlegging dispute, but it has been fueled by ethnic rivalry. The epicenter is Mathare, a cluster of slums with approximately 500,000 people, crammed between downtown Nairobi and an affluent neighborhood where many ambassadors live. Mathare is a landscape of rust — thousands of shacks squeezed together with rusted metal roofs and rusted metal sides, and the occasional rusted metal bridge between. Even the mud here, where not a blade of grass grows, is rust red.
The area is notorious as a pocket of anarchy in a relatively orderly city, a place where street gangs levy taxes and teenage boys with machetes and dreadlocks shake down people at checkpoints. Most days, the police are nowhere to be found. Residents say it has been like this for years.
“You pay security, you pay electricity, you pay for toilets and what do you get?” said Morris Odek, a father of three. “Nothing.”
On Sunday, violence erupted between the gangs fighting for control of this impoverished turf. One gang is the Mungiki, a secretive, quasi-religious sect whose members cut out their enemies’ navels and worship a leader who says he came from a ball of shining stars. The other is a band of vigilantes who call themselves the Taliban, even though they are Christian and have nothing to do with the original Taliban group that imposed a harsh brand of Islam in Afghanistan.
“They just wanted a name that sounded tough,” said George Wambugu, a youth counselor for a soccer league in Mathare. The Mungiki and the Taliban have clashed before, but not like this. According to residents, the Mungiki tried to impose a higher tax on brewers of chang’aa, an outlawed homemade liquor with a kick stronger than that of vodka.
The brewers resisted and enlisted the help of the Taliban to fight back. That led to a cycle of street rumbles, shanty burnings and reprisal killings. Most victims were hacked to death with machetes, though some apparently were shot.
Like so many of Africa’s conflicts, this one has an ethnic dimension, with most Mungiki from the Kikuyu tribe, one of Kenya’s biggest, while the Taliban are primarily Luo, another prominent tribe.
“That’s why this won’t end,” said Daniel Opiyo, a shoe seller whose home was burned down. “It’s tribal, and it will go on and on.”
The police flooded into Mathare on Tuesday, but the killing continued. On Wednesday, the Kenyan government sent in soldiers with machine guns and declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
On Thursday, the soldiers prowled the muddy streets, seemingly grabbing at random the few young men left.
“See this guy,” one soldier said, laying a thick hand on a boy with a string of beads around his neck. “Mungiki.”
After the boy explained that he was Borana, a tribe from northern Kenya, he was let go. Other boys, though, were marched through the streets with their hands tied behind their backs and tears in their eyes.
Thousands of people have been streaming out of Mathare, creating a refugeelike crisis in the middle of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
On Thursday, as shiny Mercedes-Benzes drove by, along with packed minibuses heading downtown, a crowd of Mathare residents huddled outside a nearby air force base. Beds, tables and rolls of soggy clothing were piled around them. Because it is the rainy season, many people have been sleeping on wet ground. Residents said several babies had died of exposure.
“But nobody really cares,” said Angelina Okumba, a 52-year-old mother of 11 children.
Kenyan officials have tried to reassure residents that the fighting is finished.
“It’s time to go home,” said J. K. Ndegwa, a police commander. “There’s no problem here.”
On a smoldering hillside, children played among shattered teacups while their parents packed the last of their things. The smell of char stung the nose, and though it had been pouring all week, the fires still burned.
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