The half-day sightseeing trip in Nairobi promises to visit an orphanage and school, a bead factor and a typical Kibera house before the piece de resistance: the biogas center: “a fantastic view over Kibera and picture-point. You can see that also human waste is not wasted here.”

This is disgusting. Tourism at its worst and most exploitive, revealing the basest inclinations of ourselves and reenforcing ridiculous notions that poverty doesn’t exist at home.

Kibera is the largest of Nairobi’s 7 or 8 slums, which slip around the city in endless tin and fumes. Not even the Kenyan government census can estimate the size, but the best guesses I’ve seen put the slums at several million people compared to the residents in the city at around 3½ million. The slums are a dissimulating fraction of greater Nairobi and would be an incessant inferno in the developed world.

But in Africa they maintain an unusual tranquility. To be sure crime is endemic (see the film, Nairobi Half Life) and ethnic feuds that plague Kenya from top to bottom can produce particularly vicious moments here, but unlike slums in the developed world there is no boiling cauldron of the poor ready to murder the rich.

Nairobi slums are often stepping stones from poverty, completely unlike the imprisonment of slums in the developed world. Emigrants from impoverished rural areas without proper education or training live for a few years in the slums and develop the minimal skills needed to work in the modern world.

Then they move up and out. Not yet has Kibera fashioned a whole class of people forever imprisoned like the old Harlem or Cabrini Green in the U.S., or the Cape Verde barreos of Lisbon. Kibera will indeed become another Cabrini Green if something isn’t done this generation. But for the moment, the slums are relatively too young to have become a blighted institution.

Nevertheless, they look the same. And the nuance I argue above is not something that can be seen on a short visit. But slum tourists don’t come looking for hope.

What do they come looking for? Why does a tourist pay to come here?

I’ve asked myself the same question time and again. It’s identical with the wish to “see a village.” That quoted remark, of course, is an euphemism for seeing dirty bomas with mud huts and animal excrement. Fortunately, by the way, such villages are rare to find, anymore, at least along East Africa’s normal tourist circuit. What has replaced them are sedentary replications intended to make money from tourists.

Why do tourists pay to see them, even though they are clearly not authentic?

Even though outstanding African economic growth and potential is in fact a topic often found on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, I still hear from parents, “I want my children to see the way the other side lives.” Or “I think it’s important we see how fortunate we are.”

You don’t have to come to Africa to “see how the other side lives.” In some places like southwest Wisconsin near where I live, or the Ozarks or Appalachia, or the residual slums of our urban cities, real poverty and its resultant despair and destruction is no less than Kibera’s.

America’s “Kiberas” are not as widespread or large as Kenya’s, that’s true. But this is not a fortune of chance. It’s the result of a human civilization that wants to give everyone a modicum of happiness, that cherishes human rights.

That’s what America was mostly about, and it’s now what the world is mostly about. Kibera’s existence is our failing, just as Cabrini Green was and Appalachia still is.

Poverty is so complicated that it easily befuddles, and I think that’s part of the tourists’ desire to see Kibera or “a village.” They want to simplify the complicated. They don’t want to see poverty as something relative, but clearly defined and for sure, Kibera is.

But there is the same, absolutely identical misery, disease and angst in the unemployed, castaway homeless veteran on the streets of New York as any child walking the mud paths of Kibera.

Kibera, or the imagined dirty African village, or the homeless veteran need not exist. In a world where you and I assumed our basic human responsibility to our neighbor, there would be no Kibera.

So I believe the single-most important reason tourists want to “experience poverty” in Africa is to believe the same identical thing doesn’t exist at home. Or isn’t as bad. Or isn’t as extensive.

If one child is poor; if one veteran is homeless, it’s wrong.

And finally — possibly even worse — the delusional tourist wants to find a smiling child who is dying, so that they can believe that poor is OK, that homeless can also be happy, that death smiles.

It’s OK to live in a multi-million dollar mansion and it’s OK to dab yourself with Chanel. But it’s not OK to live a world that allows Kiberas to exist. Kibera’s existence is our fault; the collective fault of an unjust world order. The children of Kibera can just as easily be the children of Trenton.

It’s not OK to go through life with the fantasy that Africa is besmirched and cursed and that Kiberas exist only in Nairobi and Shaker Heights exist only in Cleveland.

And it’s not OK to think that poor is OK, anywhere. There is no happiness in being poor or homeless, whether in Kibera or 49th Street.

Don’t come to Africa to validate your own fantasies.

"Gorilla Taxes": original construct by pborgbarthet at worth1000.com

The first mountain gorilla trek I brokered was in June, 1979. At the time Dian Fossey reigned on Karisoke volcano with no aplomb and great madness. But science had arrived and the population count was reliably put at 285.

That is a dangerously low number for any life form.

Last week a consortium of field biologists announced the current mountain gorilla count is right around 800. “Right around” is the euphemistic scientific phrase that means “we can’t get an exact count in The DRC Congo because there’s a war there.”

Nevertheless, the number is fabulous. The population of this awesome beast is not going extinct, at least not right now. And really the sole reason is tourism.

Mountain gorillas live in two places near to one another: Bwindi Forest almost entirely within Uganda, and the much larger Virunga Mountains (which is actually the highland forests connecting seven dormant volcanoes) which is mostly in Rwanda but a bit in Uganda and a bit more also in The DRC Congo.

Bwindi is separated from the Virungas by a 50 kilometer long forest corridor that gorillas likely could use to migrate, although little field science has confirmed this.

Three years ago when guiding a prominent American zoo group I experienced first-hand how a large portion of Bwindi “tourism” works: illegally. It had been often reported before, but this was my first personal experience. Years before, when Uganda tourism was not yet mature, I had a similar experience with my daughter that was actually far more dangerous. This zoo experience was not dangerous, it was simply corrupt.

I knew what we were doing from the getgo. Most tourists do not. A blog I found posted by an enthusiastic traveler last March is a perfect example of a tourist who doesn’t realize she’s engaging in the black market, and it’s a perfect blow-by-blow description of just such an experience.

I’m not want to extol the virtues of capitalism, but the dynamic is a perfect indicator in this case. In Rwanda’s Parc de Volcans, where mountain gorilla trekking has merged art, science and commerce to near perfection, the cost of seeing a mountain gorilla for an hour is $750. In Uganda’s Bwindi, permits are currently going for under $350.

It happens usually with “walk-in” tourists or tourists who have booked too late for a legitimate permit. Real gorilla permits are controlled in Uganda in a very nepotistic way: a mix of officials playing strictly by the rules and demanding full nonrefundable payment at the time of reserving, or by holding a few residual permits in reserve that are allocated to relatives and friends in the tourist industry.

This means that if you book your trek through a reputable local ground handler far enough in advance, you’re probably playing by the rules. In my case three years ago, my choice of a “reputable operator” was flawed.

For a number of years I had relied on a small but extremely dignified man who had deep connections with the Ugandan government which gave me singular but above-board benefits. He had a heart attack only weeks before we arrived, long after we had fully paid him, and his tourist company fell into the control of his far less reputable nephew.

What the disreputable operators do is bribe soldiers or rangers to “guide” tourists to gorilla families that are not yet fully habituated, so to gorilla families that are not yet “on the list” to be visited. At a serious discount to the official permit price.

There are eight habituated gorilla families in Bwindi and nine (soon ten) in Rwanda’s Parc de volcans. With a maximum of 6-8 tourists allowed per family visit, that caps legal permits at right around 125 daily. The demand is far greater than this. It also means that only a fraction of the mountain gorillas alive today are a part of habituated groups. Most are wild animals ripe for exploitation.

Legitimate permits are usually sold out a year in advance. Walk-in tourists usually don’t have the funds, they are generally savvy on the internet, and they know that someone in Kampala will sell them a permit for much less. That wasn’t my unique situation of course, three years ago, but it’s the case most of the time.

There is danger in any black market, and in this one it’s physical as well as the risk that you won’t see gorillas at all. The physical danger comes from approaching a powerful wild animal before it wants you to. “Charging” very rarely happens with habituated gorillas, but you’ll note in the blog I’ve chosen above that this was central to her tourist experience. It’s not a good thing.

But missing the experience altogether is as great a risk. The chance of not encountering a gorilla family on a legitimate non-black market experience is today next to nil. But trekking to non-habituated families usually means it’s much longer, more difficult and easily aborted if weather turns bad. It also means the so-called “guide” probably knows how to shoot better than commune with a gorilla.

Ugandan society at large is much more corrupt than Rwanda, and the shenanigans in Bwindi is pretty typical of the whole range of Ugandan society from permits required to starting a business to parading in public.

The iron fist government in Rwanda, for which I have an equal tome of criticism of a different kind, is insurance that black marketeering of gorilla permits there won’t happen.

Nuff said? Almost, but there’s more. I can’t figure out if the Ugandan official response to the black marketeering was good or bad. That government response was to lower the official permit price to what the black market was commanding, $350.

(In my personal experience three years ago with eight other people, I discovered that the “guide” was given only $150 per person. We had of course paid $500 – the official rate at the time – so there was quite a profit in the capitalist chain that one morning.)

Lowering the price to the black market level is creative, but my assumption is that the black marketers will simply go lower still. Whatever the case, official Uganda is now considering raising the official price back to $500. This remains $250 below the Rwandan level.

What we have happening with mountain gorilla trekking in Uganda is a dangerously unregulated market, because official Ugandan control of Bwindi has been lost to racketeers and corrupt rangers. And I don’t think official fiddling with the price will stop it.

The free-for-all capitalism of Bwindi has led to all sorts of tourist attractions linked directly to less and less good science and wildlife management. Gorillas regularly wander into tourist lodge areas there, for example, something the Rwandans understand is neither good or safe.

Yet the fact is that the mountain gorilla population in Bwindi seems to be increasing faster than in the Virungas. Is ecology linked to an unfettered free market?

According to Uganda’s Minister of tourism, “’This result confirms beyond reasonable doubt that Uganda’s conservation efforts are paying off.”

Or something else.

Almost all wildlife tourism featuring wild tigers is in India. (A much smaller industry remains in Nepal, and even smaller in Russia.) Although there is a variety of larger mammals in India’s game reserves, tigers are by far the main attraction for foreign tourists. The decision could doom Indian wildlife tourism to its own extinction.

The Supreme Court’s simple decision on July 24 which “banned all tourism activities in the core areas of tiger reserves” followed an April 3 court directive to individual Indian states for wildlife management plans to protect tigers in face of a rapid decline.

The Court was reacting to the fact most of the States had not submitted any such plans. But the likelihood that the decision could be reversed if the States get their acts together is very small.

Few plans were submitted because nobody knows what to do. There is a decline in big cats worldwide that has miffed researchers. Nobody knows how to stem the decline. Nevertheless, the court will revisit its decision on August 22. Most of us do not expect it to reverse this decision.

In Africa as in India more big cats are being documented as having been poached, or more correctly, killed by owners of stock being molested by the big cats. Clever use of modern poisons lacing meat placed out as bait is the principal tool.

But the rapid decline (in East Africa, the lion population is down to around 9,000 from 30,000 twenty years ago) cannot be attributed to poaching alone.

My own feeling is that the increased urbanization of the developing world combined with confusing but rapid global warming changes is clobbering the top of the wilderness food chain. Ranchers poisoning lions to save their cattle is a symptom of this.

In India the issue is even more confused since a tiger skin is worth so much more on the black market than a lion skin. A male tiger can be more than twice the size of a female lion, its fur is much thicker and arguably more colorful. Though the motivation for a tiger killer might be to save his cows, once killed he has acquired a very valuable item easily black marketed for an extraordinary price.

The actual numbers of larger wild mammals in India as in Africa is actually increasing as wildlife management improves and the remaining habitat for them is better protected. But even though the food source is theoretically then increased for the larger cats, their overall habitat may be more stressed as more animals are squeezed into smaller areas.

This can lead to increased territorial fighting and a more rapid transmission of disease. Recently, for example, it was discovered in East Africa by researcher Craig Parker that some of the lion deaths there were attributed to a disease that was sweeping through the buffalo populations. Lions hunted buffalo and acquired the disease themselves.

India’s corrupt and complicated political system leaves open the possibility the court decision will not be fully implemented or at least not very quickly. Tourists also need to be very alert, now, as officials and business owners in some of India’s 600 so-called wild tiger reserves scramble to maintain business.

Ranthambore is one of the most important reserves, with 52 known wild tigers. There were indications recently that officials were going to move older tigers out of its central reserve into a buffer area that they would enclose, large enough that tourists wouldn’t realize when driving into it that it wasn’t the unfenced and open park.

India’s position has worldwide ramifications. The percentage decline and rate of decline of lions in East Africa is not quite as severe as tigers in India, but it’s severe. And what about polar bears in North America? Or walruses? Or even bears in certain parts of Alaska?

In India at least the highest court has decided that tourism contributes to tiger decline, or at least impedes tiger conservation.

To protect wild animals, should tourists be banned from seeing them?

A few days earlier in neighboring Tanzania, bandits held at gunpoint all 40 tourists in a downmarket camp just outside the Serengeti, robbed them then killed the assistant manager and one Dutch tourist.

Also recently an Australian tourist was killed in a robbery attempt in Phuket, an American was shot during a robbery in a Belgian airport, a Belgian tourist was found killed in Nepal, an Israeli tourist was shot dead at the Israeli/Egyptian border, and backpackers were assaulted and knifed while hiking a famous North Island track in New Zealand.

These and 93 more tourist attacks are documented on the new website, touristkilled.com, under the rubric “Most Recent 100 Events.”

The site is updated every 10 minutes.

I don’t mean to minimize the significance of the two events last week in East Africa, but I want to point out in today’s world travel to virtually any place carries risk. Would you have worried about trekking in New Zealand before?

All countries provide travel advice. The U.S. site is seriously flawed, heavily restricted by Congressional funding and politics. I believe the best site in the world is the British site, and really the only one you need to refer to.

Mostly restricted by Congressional bickering, and heavily influenced by politics (neither Egypt or Israel is as safe as the U.S. claims for tourist right now) the U.S. site is limited to either actual or expected terrorist incidents, or to warnings that our embassies or counsels in certain places can no longer assist Americans for one reason or another (such as having been booted out of the country).

The British site on the other hand is not restricted by Parliament or politics. And it broadens the definition of “tourist safety” to include such things as disease outbreaks or strikes.

In 2009 the British Foreign Office ranked 73 countries most visited by British tourists in order of their likely safety should you choose to visit them, scored mostly by the percentage of tourists who died as a tourist.

Albania, Belarus, Hungary, Singapore, Ireland, Latvia, Slovenia, Belgium, Sweden and Austria were the safest countries in the world in that order. (By the way, the U.S. was 13th out of 73 ranked.)

The deadliest ten countries were Botswana, Burma, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Namibia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Thailand, Qatar and Uganda, in that order, and all of these received their bad rating because of violent acts against tourists or terrorism. A remarkable 1 in every 833 British tourists to Botswana in 2009 was killed.

Kenya and Tanzania were not among them, although Kenya was close.

But I dare suggest that travelers dissuaded from visiting East Africa were unlikely to have considered that a vacation in Botswana, Namibia or Thailand would have been more dangerous.

One of the reasons I think that Botswana and Namibia rank so high in Africa, is that more and more travelers are visiting these countries in self-drive vehicles. This, in fact, is the source of the violent acts against those tourists in 2009.

By the way, the FCO ceased simple compilations in 2009 of the “Best Ten” and “Worst Ten” believing it was misleading. The most recent report for 2011 will take you a bit longer to analyze, and with more data (such as arrests, deaths in hospitals from natural causes, drug violations, etc.) it’s not as clear as before 2010.

And I have to admit that I agree with the FCO. Scoring safety based on such few parameters as robberies and murders would leave my city of Chicago as the worst place in the world to visit, and I highly recommend you get there this July for the annual Blues Festival.

But I felt given the current stories out of East Africa this week, deaths from violent acts in tourist spots, we needed this perspective.

Violence against tourism is on the increase. This is because the world economic situation is on the decrease. The two have always been correlated; it’s common sense. The second most important reason for tourist incidents is the political and social stability of the region.

Those two reasons you should consider when planning your vacation. But just as I hope you’ll visit Chicago this July, they should not be the only reasons. Understanding the threats, traveling with guides and friends who know where to go and where not to go, exponentially increases the safety of your voyage.

The incident last week in Tanzania was isolated. Traveling to Zanzibar in Tanzania requires some caution, now, as a result of widespread religious riots there last month, but elsewhere it’s safe, certainly on the tourist circuit and certainly if you know where you shouldn’t go. The camp attacked last week is not a well policed camp and is on private land, not secured by national park rangers.

I continue to believe that Kenya requires special vigilance. It’s important to note that the incident last week was at a sports bar that while frequented by some tourists was mostly attended by local Kenyans. This is identical to the blasts in Uganda nearly two years ago, which was when al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda in Somalia) began to lose grip there.

Shabaab threatened these attacks and has continued to carry them out quite regularly, now mostly in Kenya as Kenya takes the lead in routing the terrorists from Somalia.

This coordinated terrorism has been augmented by banditry and other common crime including kidnaping exacerbated by the world economic downturn.

Vigilance is required is you rent a car in Orlando. Much more vigilance is required if you take an East African safari.

It’s always been that way.

Two months of a statistic does not a trend make, but what is critical is that Africa was the only sector to decline. Even volatile areas like the Middle East increased (19%).

Travel is a fickle thing, and a leading indicator of the economy. 2009 was a robust travel year by statistical analysis, but that was because 2008 was so dismal. 2010 was what we call a correction year, but that was rudely uncorrected by increasing instability of Europe. So these statistics are hard to analyze.

Since most travelers to Africa from the U.S. come through Europe, Europe’s situation constantly effects African travel from North America. This year saw an increase in European instability. I believe Africa would be in the black if it weren’t for Europe.

But not by much, and certainly not as high as the 19% increase to the Middle East or the winner, Central America, with nearly a 25% increase. My conclusion is that Africa is definitely under performing most world tourism sectors after all outside considerations (like Europe’s economic health) are factored out.

It’s likely that Africa will end 2012 with overall tourism down about 10% from 2011.

Why?

Africa has had some bad press this past year, particularly from East Africa with widely reported droughts and wars, an unsettled Sudan, and intense civil turbulence in Uganda. Some of this is set to turn around if the March election in Kenya goes off quietly, and if Somalia continues to improve.

And because we aren’t looking at a huge fluctuation I think at least some of the decline in African tourism can be explained by what I call the ping-pong effect. In volatile economic times we tend to see a back-and-forth, year-to-year, in travel statistics. If Year 1 is better, Year 2 tends to be worse, and so forth.

Moreover, American travel is trendy, particularly to exotic destinations like Africa. So if 2011 relative to 2010 is better for Indonesia, it will likely be worse for Greenland. Because Africa was the lone winner (excluding the MidEast) in 2011, it may be the lone loser in 2012. Does this mean it will bounce back for 2013?

(The Middle East’s linear progression over the last decade bucks this analysis and is specifically linked to the rapid growth in MidEast airlines like Qatar Airlines and Emirates Air, and to the rapid development of their main cities. Excising the MidEast from long-range statistical analysis, and the ping-pong effect holds true.)

IF (and it’s a big IF) there are no disruptive events like Kenya’s scheduled March election and South Africa’s rumbling strikes, and provided the aftermaths of the Arab springs continue on relatively positive directions, African tourism should improve in 2013.

So keeping in mind those big IF’s, I project the following growth in American tourists to these African sectors for 2013 relative to 2012:

North Africa: +12%
West Africa: +6%
East Africa (excluding Uganda): +8%
South Africa: +10%

This is tricky stuff, folks. Weather, politics, European economies and even the outbreak of whooping cough in Washington State can effect the fickle flights of U.S. travelers. But we all need a baseline, and above is mine.

I obtained with pride a Conde Nast ecotourism award in 2004 for my client, Hoopoe Safaris of Tanzania. But in the decade since then my own ideas about ecotourism and NGO involvement in African conservation have changed.

There are two issues, here. The first is that “ecotourism” is no longer a legitimate marker for good tourism practices in Africa. The second is that wildlife NGOs have grown increasingly callous of the priorities of local populations. So the two are related. Both discount the preeminent interests of local people in the areas where they work.

The common thread that I’ve watch develop over the last decade is that western-driven “charity” or “aid” or “consultation” or “community based tourism” has grown increasingly detached from the people who theoretically will benefit from those efforts.

Even if there aren’t contextual conflicts, disputes about goals or methodology, the ignoring of the local populations’ interests spawns conflict. Imagine what you might feel if a Chinese NGO came into your suburban neighborhood and began research then implementation of plans to cultivate an herbal remedy … like garlic mustard… in the city parks. You would at least expect participation in the discussion, and you would become infuriated if you weren’t consulted.

In the last decade African populations have increased substantially, and their educational levels have grown exponentially. Most of Africa is well linked to the outside world through increased internet and cell phone access. This empowers the local communities to better scrutinize their so-called foreign benefactors.

ECOTOURISM IS A SHAM
The academic community has always been skeptical of ecotourism. A 2007 Harvard study of Tanzania ecotourism concluded that while most such projects seemed legitimate, there was a substantial percentage that weren’t. An analysis by Ohio State University in 2011 of Tanzania ecotourism was much more damning. The report actually named (accused) specific Tanzanian operators that were scamming tourists with the ploy of arguing their products were ecotouristic when they were anything but.

The above studies, and many more referenced within them, are convincing documents that ecotourism if not an outright scam is a very poorly formed idea. The initial theories might be good, but implementation seems impossible. And the Ohio State study in particular described why self-appointed certification authorities weren’t working, either, so that the notion of creating some universal standard is mute.

The UN initially thought otherwise. It promoted ecotourism but has since backed away from the idea. Almost a year ago exactly I posted several blogs citing the growing skepticism with ecotourism throughout the world. Nothing has changed; ecotourism as commonly applied in the marketing of travel is neither honest or good.

Khadija Sharife in the Africa Report summed it perfectly last week in the post’s title, “The Drunken Logic of Ecotourism.”

WILDLIFE NGO ARROGANCE
But in the year since I and many, many others pointed out the disservice that using the marketing ploy, “ecotourism,” does to local peoples, another foreign fixture of African life has emerged as equally unfair and misleading: wildlife NGOs.

It will be harder to convince you of this, I know. The loyalty that the world’s great animal savior organizations command is legend. It’s one thing to suggest that a tour company is scamming you while not serving the local populations well. It’s another to make this claim against the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) or the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF).

WWF’s long involvement in Africa stands mostly as a fabulous contribution to baseline research and good management of threatened and endangered species. But as with the morphing of the idea of ecotourism into a marketing scam, it could be that WWF’s longevity of success gave it an unwarranted sense of propriety.

Its most serious conflict is in the Rufiji delta, the outskirts of the great Selous game reserve in Tanzania, which has come under increasing scrutiny because of its enormous hydroelectric potential. A much greater controversy actually than the WWF one I describe below is the World Bank’s program for a hydroelectric dam that could seriously disrupt The Selous and Rufiji delta basin.

But the World Bank’s mission to help developing countries grow can quite plausibly include draining a game reserve for additional electricity. Discussions are heated and ongoing, and everyone accepts one important debate is who should make the decision? Professionals weighing the overall value to Tanzanian society, or local people immediately impacted?

Quite unlike the World Bank, WWF skipped this important debate when it began programs to inhibit rice farming on the outskirts of The Selous. Local rice farmers were obviously the first to be impacted, but they were allowed no input into the decisions regarding the project.

The project mission was always suspect to me, but the rapid implementation without adequate consultation with the local population reeks of arrogance. The entire project has now collapsed into all sorts of criminal and unethical consequences. Eight WWF employees have resigned, plus the Tanzania country director, Stephen Mariki.

WWF should be complemented for trying to right the wrong, but the culture that led to their presumption of determining the life ways of local Tanzanian people is the real problem. And that will be a much harder thing to remedy than just abandoning one project. An overhaul in staff is a good start.

The current most egregious wildlife NGO controversy, however, is on no path to reconciliation because the organization, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), continues to defend its position.

AWF encapsulates its overall mission in the phrase “heartlands.” Over the last several decades AWF created heartland areas throughout sub-Saharan Africa in which to concentrate its research and assistance. An essential purpose is to create wildlife corridors between established nationally gazetted protected wildlife areas like national parks to increase the potential for biodiversity.

Noble. The problem for some time has been to create these corridors, land must be acquired from private holders. This may have something to do with AWF’s decision to form a close partnership with the Nature Conservancy in 2007.

But what happens when farmers or other landholders don’t want to sell? AWF’s response has been high-handed and infuriated local communities.

In and around their large Manyara ranch holding in Tanzania, AWF negotiated versions of eminent domain with the Tanzanian government that caused enormous friction locally. And now in Kenya their acquisition of land (which they subsequently tried to deed over to a new Kenyan Laikipia National Park) is on track to totally cripple all their good efforts in East Africa.

AWF insists it has been playing by the rules. But two thousand Samburu people don’t care if they were playing by the rules or not; they insist with credibility that they have been displaced against their will.

Unlike WWF, AWF seems to be digging in its heels for a fight that will emasculate it. And if it goes down as I expect it will, so will the reputation and memories of good work that wildlife NGOs have been undertaking for decades in Africa.

Why is AWF resisting an acceptable settlement? AWF is a much younger organization than WWF, and its donor base is much smaller than WWF, much less publicly than individually endowed.

Nature Conservancy is itself a less publicly endowed organization limited to wealthy landowners mostly in Illinois. It could be that these two closely held NGOs feel less vulnerable to public opinion than a more globally funded organization like WWF.

Both these situations — ecotourism as a sham and wildlife NGOs indifferent to local community needs — represent not just outside interference but patent indifference to the preeminent rights of local people. And because that indifference has been so arrogant – dare one say “racist”? – it led these otherwise exemplary organizations into believing they could discount local community interests.

Africa is developing so rapidly I can see incidents of polite refusal, so to speak, of tourist projects and foreign wildlife programs that are put to bed rather easily. The recent controversy in the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) involving the translocation of rhino is a good example of “local populations” politely indicting foreign organizations trying to tell them what to do.

But in heated political arenas, this politeness will be lost. WWF had to back down altogether, fire staff and refund grants. AWF should do the same. When sensibilities are exchanged for political control, foreign tour companies and foreign wildlife NGOs have no hope of prevailing.

Beware, guys. A lot of good has come from your work in the last half century. Don’t blow it.

1A: KENYA INVADES SOMALIA
On October 18 Kenya invaded Somalia, where 4-5,000 of its troops remain today. Provoked by several kidnapings and other fighting in and around the rapidly growing refugee camp of Dadaab, the impression given at the time was that Kenyans had “just had enough” of al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorism group in The Horn which at the time controlled approximately the southern third of Somalia. Later on, however, it became apparent that the invasion had been in the works for some time.

At the beginning of the invasion the Kenyan command announced its objective was the port city of Kismayo. To date that hasn’t happened. Aided by American drones and intelligence, and by French intelligence and naval warships, an assessment was made early on that the battle for Kismayo would be much harder than the Kenyans first assumed, and the strategy was reduced to laying siege.

That continues and remarkably, might be working. Call it what you will, but the Kenyan restraint managed to gain the support of a number of other African nations, and Kenya is now theoretically but a part of the larger African Union peacekeeping force which has been in Somali for 8 years. Moreover, the capital of Mogadishu has been pretty much secured, a task the previous peace keepers had been unable to do for 8 years.

The invasion costs Kenya dearly. The Kenyan shilling has lost about a third of its value, there are food shortages nationwide, about a half dozen terrorist attacks in retribution have occurred killing and wounding scores of people (2 in Nairobi city) and tourism – its principal source of foreign reserves – lingers around a third of what it would otherwise be had there be no invasion.

At first I considered this was just another failed “war against terrorism” albeit in this case the avowed terrorists controlled the country right next door. Moreover, I saw it as basically a proxy war by France and the U.S., which it may indeed be. But the Kenyan military restraint and the near unanimous support for the war at home, as well as the accumulation of individually marginal battle successes and outside support now coming to Kenya in assistance, all makes me wonder if once again Africans have shown us how to do it right.

That’s what makes this such an important story. The possibility that conventional military reaction to guerilla terrorism has learned a way to succeed, essentially displacing the great powers – the U.S. primarily – as the world’s best military strategists. There is as much hope in this statement as evidence, but both exist, and that alone raises this story to the top.

You may also wish to review Top al-Shabaab Leader Killed and Somali Professionals Flee as Refugees.

1B: TWEVOLUTION CHANGES EGYPT
The Egyptian uprising, unlike its Tunisian predecessor, ensured that no African government was immune to revolution, perhaps no government in the world. I called it Twevolution because especially in Egypt the moment-by-moment activities of the mass was definitely managed by Twitter.

And the particular connection to Kenya was fabulous, because the software that powered the Twitter, Facebook and other similar revolution managing tools came originally from Kenya.

Similar of course to Tunisia was the platform for any “software instructions” – the power of the people! And this in the face of the most unimaginable odds if you’re rating the brute physical force of the regime in power.

Egypt fell rather quickly and the aftermath was remarkably peaceful. Compared to the original demonstrations, later civil disobedience whether it was against the Coptics or the military, was actually quite small. So I found it particularly fascinating how world travelers reacted. Whereas tourist murders, kidnapings and muggings were common for the many years that Egypt experienced millions of visitors annually, tourists balked at coming now that such political acts against tourists no longer occurred, because the instigators were now a part of the political process! This despite incredible deals.

We wait with baited breath for the outcome in Syria, but less visible countries like Botswana and Malawi also experienced their own Twevolution. And I listed 11 dictators that I expected would ultimately fall because of the Egyptian revolution.

Like any major revolution, the path has been bumpy, the future not easily predicted. But I’m certain, for example, that the hard and often brutal tactics of the military who currently assumes the reins of state will ultimately be vindicated. And certainly this tumultuous African revolution if not the outright cause was an important factor in our own protests, like Occupy Wall Street.

3: NEW COUNTRY OF SOUTH SUDAN
The free election and emergence of South Sudan as Africa’s 54th country would have been the year’s top story if all that revolution hadn’t started further north! In the making for more than ten years, a remarkably successful diplomatic coup for the United States, this new western ally rich with natural resources was gingerly excised from of the west’s most notorious foes, The Sudan.

Even as Sudan’s president was being indicted for war crimes in Darfur, he ostensibly participated in the creation of this new entity. But because of the drama up north, the final act of the ultimate referendum in the South which set up the new republic produced no more news noise than a snap of the fingers.

Regrettably, with so much of the world’s attention focused elsewhere, the new country was hassled violently by its former parent to the north. We can only hope that this new country will forge a more humane path than its parent, and my greatest concern for Africa right now is that global attention to reigning in the brutal regime of the north will be directed elsewhere.

4: UGANDA FALTERS
Twevolution essentially effected every country in Africa in some way. Uganda’s strongman, Yoweri Museveni, looked in the early part of the last decade like he was in for life. Much was made about his attachment to American politicians on the right, and this right after he was Bill Clinton’s Africa doll child.

But even before Twevolution – or perhaps because of the same dynamics that first erupted in Tunisia and Egypt – Museveni’s opponents grew bold and his vicious suppression of their attempts to legitimately oust him from power ended with the most flawed election seen in East Africa since Independence.

But unlike in neighboring Kenya where a similar 2007 election caused nationwide turmoil and an ultimate power sharing agreement, Museveni simply jailed anyone who opposed him. At first this seemed to work but several months later the opposition resurfaced and it became apparent that the country was at a crossroads. Submit to the strongman or fight him.

Meanwhile, tourism sunk into near oblivion. And by mid-May I was predicting that Museveni was the new Mugabe and had successfully oppressed his country to his regime. But as it turned out it was a hiatus not a surrender and a month later demonstrations began, twice as strong as before. And it was sad, because they went on and on and on, and hundreds if not thousands of people were injured and jailed.

Finally towards the end of August a major demonstration seemed to alter the balance. And if it did so it was because Museveni simply wouldn’t believe what was happening.

I wish I could tell you the story continued to a happy ending, but it hasn’t, at least not yet. There is an uneasy calm in Ugandan society, one buoyed to some extent by a new voice in legislators that dares to criticize Museveni, that has begun a number of inquiries and with media that has even dared to suggest Museveni will be impeached. The U.S. deployment of 100 green berets in the country enroute the Central African Republic in October essentially seems to have actually raised Museveni’s popularity. So Uganda falters, and how it falls – either way – will dramatically alter the East African landscape for decades.

5: GLOBAL WARMING
This is a global phenomena, of course, but it is the developing world like so much of Africa which suffers the most and is least capable of dealing with it. The year began with incessant reporting by western media of droughts, then floods, in a confused misunderstanding of what global warming means.

It means both, just as in temperate climates it means colder and hotter. With statistics that questions the very name “Developed World,” America is reported to still have a third of its citizens disputing that global warming is even happening, and an even greater percentage who accept it is happening but believe man is not responsible either for it occurring or trying to change it. Even as clear and obvious events happen all around them.

Global warming is pretty simple to understand, so doubters’ only recourse is to make it much more confusing than it really is. And the most important reason that we must get everyone to understand and accept global warming, is we then must accept global responsibilities for doing something about it. I was incensed, for example, about how so much of the media described the droughts in Africa as fate when in fact they are a direct result of the developed world’s high carbon emissions.

And the news continued in a depressing way with the very bad (proponents call it “compromised”) outcome of the Durban climate talks. My take was that even the countries most effected, the developed world, were basically bought off from making a bigger stink.

Environmentalists will argue, understandably, that this is really the biggest story and will remain so until we all fry. The problem is that our lives are measured in the nano seconds of video games, and until we can embrace a long view of humanity and that our most fundamental role is to keep the world alive for those who come after us, it won’t even make the top ten for too much longer.

6: COLTAN WARS IMPEDED
This is a remarkable story that so little attention has been given. An obscure part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act essentially halved if not ultimately will end the wars in the eastern Congo which have been going on for decades.

These wars are very much like the fractional wars in Somalia before al-Shabaab began to consolidate its power, there. Numerous militias, certain ones predominant, but a series of fiefdoms up and down the eastern Congo. You can’t survive in this deepest jungle of interior Africa without money, and that money came from the sale of this area’s rich rare earth metals.

Tantalum, coltran more commonly said, is needed by virtually every cell phone, computer and communication device used today. And there are mines in the U.S. and Australia and elsewhere, but the deal came from the warlords in the eastern Congo. And Playbox masters, Sony, and computer wizards, Intel, bought illegally from these warlords because the price was right.

And that price funded guns, rape, pillaging and the destruction of the jungle. The Consumer Protection Agency, set up by the Dodd-Frank Act, now forbids these giants of technology from doing business in the U.S. unless they can prove they aren’t buying Coltran from the warlords. Done. War if not right now, soon over.

7: ELEPHANTS AND CITES
The semi-decade meeting of CITES occurred this March in Doha, Qatar, and the big fight of interest to me was over elephants. The two basic opposing positions on whether to downlist elephants from an endangered species hasn’t changed: those opposed to taking elephants off the list so that their body parts (ivory) could be traded believed that poaching was at bay, and that at least it was at bay in their country. South Africa has led this flank for years and has a compelling argument, since poaching of elephants is controlled in the south and the stockpiling of ivory, incapable of being sold, lessens the funds that might otherwise be available for wider conservation.

The east and most western countries like the U.S. and U.K. argue that while this may be true in the south, it isn’t at all true elsewhere on the continent, and that once a market is legal no matter from where, poaching will increase geometrically especially in the east where it is more difficult to control. I concur with this argument, although it is weakened by the fact that elephants are overpopulated in the east, now, and that there are no good strategic plans to do something about the increasing human/elephant conflicts, there.

But while the arguments didn’t change, the proponents themselves did. In a dramatic retreat from its East African colleagues, Tanzania sided with the south, and that put enormous strain on the negotiations. When evidence emerged that Tanzania was about the worst country in all of Africa to manage its poaching and that officials there were likely involved, the tide returned to normal and the convention voted to continue keeping elephants listed as an endangered species.

8: RHINO POACHING REACHES EXTREME LEVELS
For the first time in history, an animal product (ground rhino horn) became more expensive on illicit markets than gold.

Rhino, unlike elephant, is not doing well in the wild. It’s doing wonderfully in captivity and right next to the wild in many private reserves, but in the wild it’s too easy a take. This year’s elevation of the value of rhino horn resulted in unexpectedly high poaching, and some of it very high profile.

9: SERENGETI HIGHWAY STOPPED
This story isn’t all good, but mostly, because the Serengeti Highway project was shelved and that’s the important part. And to be sure, the success of stopping this untenable project was aided by a group called Serengeti Watch.

But after some extremely good and aggressive work, Serengeti Watch started to behave like Congress, more interested in keeping itself in place than doing the work it was intended to do. The first indication of this came when a Tanzanian government report in February, which on careful reading suggested the government was having second thoughts about the project, was identified but for some reason not carefully analyzed by Watch.

So while the highway is at least for the time being dead, Serengeti Watch which based on its original genesis should be as well, isn’t.

10: KENYAN TRANSFORMATION AND WORLD COURT
The ongoing and now seemingly endless transformation of Kenyan society and politics provoked by the widespread election violence of 2007, and which has led to a marvelous new constitution, is an ongoing top ten story for this year for sure. But more specifically, the acceptance of this new Kenyan society of the validity of the World Court has elevated the power of that controversial institution well beyond anyone’s expectations here in the west.

Following last year’s publication by the court of the principal accused of the crimes against humanity that fired the 2007 violence, it was widely expected that Kenya would simply ignore it. Not so. Politicians and current government officials of the highest profile, including the son of the founder of Kenya, dutifully traveled to The Hague to voluntarily participate in the global judicial process that ultimately has the power to incarcerate them.

The outcome, of course, remains to be seen and no telling what they’ll do if actually convicted. It’s very hard to imagine them all getting on an airplane in Nairobi to walk into a cell in Rotterdam.

But in a real switcheroo this travel to The Hague has even been spun by those accused as something positive and in fact might have boosted their political standing at home. And however it effects the specific accused, or Kenya society’s orientation to them, the main story is how it has validated a global institution’s political authority.

The market for village visits is so strong that even today, when traditional villages just don’t exist, they are being reconstructed, and thousands of visitors return from Africa every day believing they have seen “an African village” in exactly the same way conservatives leave church each Sunday believing Satan is a Muslim.

In the early boom days of photography safari travel (1960s and 1970s) “visiting a village” was an absolutely essential ingredient of any trip and I admit having arranged hundreds. “The Invention of Human Zoos” is a brilliant exhibition in the new Quai Branly museum that helped me to understand why.

“Act I” of the exhibition chronicles the excitement and amazement of Europeans who “discovered” such new and different peoples around the world starting in the 15th century. This “otherness,” as the exhibit calls it, was a driving force for early exploration.

Brazilian Tupinambas prostrating before Henri II in Rouen in 1550, Siamese twins in the Court of Versailles in 1686, Inuits overdressed before Frederik II in Copenhagen in 1654, and the famous “Noble Savage” Omai that Captain Cook brought to England from Tahiti in 1774 were some of the first and most famous.

There was no community exhibitionism in these early moments. It was just exhilaration at finding something so different from yourself! I hope this at least partly explains myself as a young “explorer” anxious to show clients African villages in the early days.

Omai was real; Kenyan villages in the Northern Frontier were real in the 1970s.

As the age of exploration matured, “Act II” of the exhibit details how this surprise at “otherness” grows defensive. Surprise doesn’t last. The reality sets in that this “otherness” isn’t very pleasing, because it’s filled with misery. But what to do? Go out and civilize the world when we’ve got so many problems to deal with here at home?

So “otherness” becomes “wrong” or “bad” or “evil.”

Circuses, traveling villages and freak shows worldwide marketed this rationalization by “blurring the difference between the deformed and the foreign.” Soon “physical, psychological and geographical abnormalities” sold tickets.

By the 1980s and certainly 1990s Africa was developing as fast as information technology. Primitive people weren’t primitive, anymore. But primitive and “savage” and “diseased” and “deprived” were the “physical, psychological and geographical abnormalities” that could still get tourists to pay.

So easily predicted these “villages” suddenly existed right next to very swank tourist lodges and camps. “Maasai villages” which in their original form never existed longer than the rains which fell on them for a single season, suddenly were in place for decades.

“Act III” of the exhibit describes the Crystal Palace, Barnum and Bailey, Paris Folies Bergères and Berlin’s Panoptikum where visitors are thrilled by “acts of savageness” from supposed aboriginals, ‘lip-plate women’, Amazons, snake charmers, Japanese tightrope walkers and oriental belly dancers, all of whom were “made-up savages” – professional actors, not real individuals.

Exactly as in Africa, today.

One of the real catastrophes this produces in Africa is that real depravity is created where it would otherwise not exist. When traditional villages moved regularly, as most did and certainly the Maasai and Samburu always did in the early days, opportunities for disease were lessened.

Imagine today’s so-called “Maasai village” outside Samburu Lodge or Serena Lodge after one year, two years, five years and then ten years without adequate septic systems.

(The final “Act IV” is more oblique and less relevant to Africa, I think. The extreme circus and freak show begins to merge “otherness” with physical abnormality. Indeed, the rise of Felini may be an important phenomenon worth examining, but its relevance to visiting a village in Africa is slight.)

There is, however, an Act IV today in Africa.

There is this inexplicable, basest urge by travelers to Africa to see “primitive” and “depraved” and the market reigns with these reconstructed villages more than ever. If there weren’t tourists paying to see them, they wouldn’t be there.

Thousands of safari travelers, egged on even more by immoral tour companies, regularly “want to see a village.”

What do travelers really mean when they ask for that? What they mean is that they want to see poverty, disease and depravation. In a nutshell, suffering. First off, why the hell would you want to see something like that? To disabuse yourself that it might not be true?

Alas the danger with that generous presumption.

Any half educated idiot walking into one of these should be able to tell by the facility of languages the “chief” commands, the perfect and untattered costuming, rushed routine and proforma narratives, that this is a show, not a lifestyle.

So that at least subconsciously the visitor can return at least subconsciously unconvinced that suffering exists. Or has to. Or that he has any responsibility to end it.

I was absolutely incensed recently by the “Mad Travelers” Kevin Revolinsk’s “Visit to a Maasai Village”. It’s below disgusting; it’s despicable. Yet this is a popular guy, widely published and validated by much of the established media like the New York Times and National Geographic.

And I’m sure there are many more examples as Revolting as Revolinsk.

Don’t be fooled, traveler. The misery is there, beyond your imagination. But it doesn’t exist in the flies unnecessarily flitting on the poor little kid’s face, but with the internal pain of the mother who plasters a bit of cow dung on her child’s head just before the tourists arrive… because she can’t get a job in the city.

Let’s end Act IV.

WTD began nearly 20 years ago with a mania by tourist companies to be labeled “ecotourism” companies. This was the buzz word. The concept was simple and appealing especially to those of us working in Africa and other wildernesses of the world: tourist service providers promised in no way to compromise the environment, and in better cases, to actually contribute to renewing it.

But with time and increased use of the world’s wildernesses, too many visitors disrupted cheetah hunts, too much trash significantly altered species survival, too many boots unhinged Inca ruins.

From the start it was nothing mroe than a self-serving goal and nowhere as evidently as in Africa. What was particularly offensive about the concept from the getgo was that we had no choice. If we wanted the industry to thrive, we had to preserve its attractions.

The purpose of “ecotourism” was to fool the consumer into thinking it was a strategy of choice not necessity. And it favored the little guys, and that was always a warm and cozy feeling. It was a lot easier for a single standing property to change its sewer system into something greener, than a large chain of established companies. And true to form, the smaller company would then tout its accomplishment mostly by pointing out the deficiencies in its competitors.

But there was no way for the consumer to undertake due diligence. Several organizations tried to become certification organizations, but it never materialized and was evident from the beginning that they were just self-serving organizations looking for a cause.

A number of reputable media companies – mostly international magazines – gave awards, but despite some highly credentialed judges nominees were either received from biased consumers or from the companies themselves.

There has never been and never will be a good way to check the veracity of what an “ecotourism” company claims it is.

Moreover, the cleaver that supposedly severs ecotourism companies from nonconformers just isn’t as neat as you might think. Just as smaller companies can reform their sewer systems faster, larger companies can produce more revenue and jobs faster: theoretically what successful ecotourism is supposed to achieve. This conundrum forces ideas into very specific and opposing sides; there isn’t a good compromise. If you’re for cleaner sewer systems, you’re against more jobs; if you’re for more jobs, you’re against cleaner sewer systems.

Greenies will argue otherwise, and their arguments may be cogent in a longer time view. But business is not wont to project too far into the future; in Africa we work on three-year rates of return. These arguments will be valid only when governments take specific action, essentially regulating and leveling the playing field. That hasn’t happened. There is no Tourism Protection Authority.

Recently the Peruvian government significantly increased tourist fees to its attractions like Machu-Picchu. The stated motive was to reduce tourism numbers to protect the sites of antiquity. But it’s not at all clear this is the true motive. Tourist numbers have been plummeting, train tracks have been covered in avalanches, and it could be that the world economy and global warming is the real advocate here.

And so, alas, ecotourism was on the wane well before the world recession. As early as 2004, hardly a decade after it became fashionable, science was documenting that much ecotourism was simple foolery, and in some cases outright counterproductive. Statistics began to show that ecotourism no longer had a marketing advantage. And that was good.

So by 2010 in a Yale University publication professor Geoffrey Wall simply and neatly explained that ecotourism was too hard to analyze, to soft to measure and basically that the concept was too deficient to be either realistic or useful.

I believe it was as ecotourism was losing stature that the next lofty concept was concocted: Community Based Tourism (CBT). The idea was that local communities that either legally owned or by proximity controlled areas of wilderness tourism should be manifestly involved, and that in their subsequent profit, they would become the best natural trustees of the environmental assets they controlled.

There is something terribly dishonest about this since behind the concept is the manifest need to vacate the ownership or legitimate control of any resource if the owners don’t act environmentally responsible. I think this is an interesting idea and well worth debate. But it was not presented as such, nor debated. It was a single-sided coin that always fell heads-up.

CBT in its best form was intended to convince owners to use their resource in a greener way. Thus Maasai herders would be influenced to build a lodge rather than a wheat farm. The great flaw in this best form was that tourism was never able to achieve the asset wealth that its alternative could. There are a couple exceptions, but in the vast vast majority, this was the case.

Ecotourism and CBT are empty, self-applying, self-rewarding concepts. In the real world, they can’t be evaluated, so they effectively can’t exist except in the minds of the scammers.

This doesn’t mean that to be green in anything – tourism included – isn’t noble and right. Or that to increasingly involve the locally community in projects that take place in their community isn’t a great idea for all parties involved.

What it means is that generally good ideas were hijacked and misshapen into supposed attributes that made one company theoretically better than another. And it worked at first. But with time, common sense prevailed.

There is one concept I feel is worthwhile that has emerged from this mess. “Fair Trading” is an United Nations concept that insists that a higher proportion of the revenues generated by a tourism service are retained by the local community and owners, as opposed to alien middlemen and distributors. This is refinement of CBT, a real metric applied to it.

Unfortunately, it has gained neither the traction nor recognition that ecotourism or CBT did in the beginning. That’s probably because it sounds too much like them.

But it’s definitely something you tourists should consider and ask about.

And that was the one good thing about “World Responsible Tourism Day.” It used the right words. And the Cape Town authorities were asked to usher it onto the world stage in London yesterday, where thank god at last, “ecotourism” and “community based tourism” were replaced by the simple, more general, more honest, good-feeling term, “Responsible.” Right on, Cape Town.

The Thursday afternoon killing of a safari vehicle driver in the Shaba Reserve, and the wounding of a Swiss tourist inside, has no clear motive. There is no clear evidence that it is linked to any retribution from those Kenya is fighting in neighboring Somalia.

The safari vehicle was on a routine game drive and was returning to the lodge when several gunmen opened fire. The driver accelerated the vehicle but there was a second batch of gunmen waiting and they pummeled the vehicle with additional gunfire.

The driver was killed, the vehicle rolled over, one tourist was hit by a bullet and one was uninjured. Kenyan Wildlife Service agents at Archer’s Post were first on the scene.

Nevertheless this is exactly the area that I warned was unsafe only a a month ago. Whether these were bandits or ideologue militias doesn’t really matter. Kenya’s rule of law is falling apart as all its resources are funneled to the conflict in Somalia.

Go back and read the hostile comments I suppose understandably left by Kenyans who read that article. But wouldn’t it have now been much better if all had taken heed, and the tourist was now not dead?

Definite links have been established, however, with additional kidnappings around the border area of foreign aid workers, and of a grenade attack on a church in Garissa, a major town not far from the Somali border.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan offensive seems stalled. This is my view, not the view expressed by the Kenyan military, which claims to be on track in its liberation of Kismayo.

The army, though, has not yet even taken Afmadow, a northern town distraction that Kenyans learned was being fortified by al-Shabaab militias, and which they announced they would first have to pacify before continuing the progress towards Kismayo.

In the course of last week, French fired from naval vessels into Kismayo and America launched drone attacks from a base in Ethiopia. Kenya claimed a number of small skirmish victories, but its army does not seem to be moving.

This could be because of new reports of how heavily fortified Kismayo has become. During an African leaders conference last week, Prime Minister Raila Odinga literally pleaded with the west for more assistance.

Meanwhile Kenyan society is growing increasingly anxious with the war.

“The worst case scenario,” writes blogger Abdi Sheikh, is that Kenya gets deeply embroiled in the “conflict for years and disenfranchise both Kenyan Somalis and Somali refugees living in Kenya.”

“Any major mistake will bring the conflict into Kenya,” he goes on, and “may also stir xenophobia against Somalis living in Kenya.”

That may already have happened. Additional police are seen regularly in the densely populated Somali suburb of Eastleigh in Nairobi. New government policies demanding Kenyan Somalis disarm themselves are likely only going to inflame the situation.

Several newspapers reprinted old publications of WikiLeaks documents of American embassy dispatches detailing al-Shabaab recruiting within Kenya.

One thing everyone seems to agree on, which I don’t think is quite as evident as presumed is that “Kenya has taken an action that is irreversible” (Abdi Sheikh). “It has sparked a war with a shadowy group that has no clear frontline. This means those responsible for military action must think carefully not to create new enemies or inflame the conflict further.”

And yet if it isn’t reversible, it may be doomed. Sheikh reminds us, “There has been no foreign military invasion that has ever been successful in Somalia.”