Kenya: back from the brink?

Here's the Register's editorial on the tentative and tenuous truce in Kenya. The troubles there demonstrate that democracy is not always a good way to bring stability to a country. It also shows just how deep the roots of ethnic and tribal identity go. Almost everybody thought Kenya was reasonably stable and something of a success story. But the dominance of the Kikuyu over the Luo and other tribes, with roots in the colonial era, turned out to be much more widely resented than almost anybody realized. When the Kikuyu president stole an election, the place erupted in violence, and now hundreds of thousands of people have moved to tribal areas (some of whom have never actually lived there) to get away from it.

There's no core U.S. interest in Kenya, and U.S. activity has been pretty minimal. People of good will hope the truce holds and there's a modicum of reconciliation, but it will be up to Kenyans to figure it out.

Kenya tribalism keeps violence going

Unfortunately, the Register's editorial last week on the mostly tribal-inspired violence in Kenya is still relevant. We lament that the most primitive of self-identification, tribalism, still has such power -- and it's hardly confined to Kenya. Plenty of U.S. politicians and movements encourage tribal-like feelings among Americans. How to encourage more people to see themselves primnarily as free individuals, with their tribe, ethnicity, etc. interesting facts but not necessarily dispositive?

Aside from one statement early on, Barack Obama has said little or nothing about Kenya. His father was a member of the Luo tribe, the tribe that has considered itself dissed by the Kikuyu, who have held political and business power since independence and before. He strikes me as being close to an individual first, his heritage and experience being so mixed, but I wonder if the violence is affecting him and what he thinks about it.

Political violence in Kenya

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the recent political violence in Kenya. It is to some extent true that there's an ethnic/tribal aspect to the violence in that mostly members of the long-dominant Kikuyu tribe have been targeted, but it is more accurate to call it political violence. What one article I read call "political entrepreneurs" are often skilled at stirring up identity crises and identity politics among people who have lived side by side and, as in Kenya, intermarried without uncommon tension. But when somebody wants to hang onto or seize political power (by democratic means in Kenya) they stir up latent identity/tribal feelings. It's happened recently in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, former Czechoslovakia, Iraq, Pakistan and too many otherplaces to count. I'm not saying that without the struggle for state power different races and ethnic groups would get along without any tension, but the friction would be notably less.