Raila Odinga with Kenya's opposition Orange Democratic Movement called the recent “alleged” political killings by the ruling government there “genocide on a grand scale.” Various reports out of Kenya have children piling up in morgues and I remember hearing reports from local priests this week (Tuesday maybe?) of children setting churches ablaze with scores of people trapped inside and stalking the capital of Nairobi with machetes. The BBC had reports this morning of people being “machete-ed” to death. Now, I’m not going to sit here in my office with my dog laying beside me and pretend I’ve seen it all, but there is nothing more frightening that a drug-crazed teenage boy juiced up on aggression and god knows what else circling a hut with a machete looking to get his rocks off. But I digress
Apparently, Odinga feels the same way, though, telling journalists “what we have just seen defies description” (he's referring to the children's bodies piled up I’m assuming from the church blaze earlier this week). This comes as Odinga was preparing for a large rally against the apparent vote fraud by incumbent President Mwai Kibaki. I was following this during the weekend. Friday, Odinga had a huge lead, by Saturday it was down slightly, but on Sunday the Election Committee in Kenya called it in Kibaki's favor, so who knows what's going on with that. So, anyhow, Odinga was preparing for this huge protest, but decided against it in the face of roving police on horseback intimidating gathered citizens and firing live rounds over everyone's heads. “There are fewer protesters here than there are guards,” said one journalist. Now Odinga hopes to reassemble in Friday in protest of the election results.
Washington is paying lip-service to the issue by sending Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer to put pressure on officials to stop the escalating conflict. Oooh! Say it isn't so! Not the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs! Now, I realize there are loads of these guys and some of them have some damn impressive backgrounds, but lip-service is lip-service regardless of its originating kisser. I don't want to put too much credibility into cries of genocide in Kenya, which until recently served as a model for African development, but I also have my International Diplomatic brackets all drawn up for January madness waiting for someone in Brussels or New York to start up with the “never again” speeches. We have someone crying genocide while observing dead babies piling up in the morgue, widespread condemnation of the election results and a whole lot of blather. Someone! Please , send a team in there and let's get this resolved before the fit hits the shan.
Ya know, I was talking to a colleague once on several things here. One is this theory that this sort of thing is natural for an emerging nation. The United States did it to the Indians, the French did it to themselves, Germany gave it a go and on and on. We will see a Sudan on par with, say, oh, Lebanon in a decade? I can live with that. Another question raised here is the notion of child soldiers. On one hand, it's pretty vile how these warlords conscript these kids with heroin and all that (ever see Blood Diamond?), but one also has to consider these kids are getting married at 11, so an “adult” in Africa for all intents and purposes is a 14-year-old kid. But still, that doesn't make seeing one of them wandering around wielding a machete any less frightening, and I suppose that level of exploitation and terror is exactly the point.
