Category: Kenya

Not Enough Eyes

Not Enough Eyes

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

ManderaKenya’s an eye-for-an-eye policy against terrorists is doomed from the start and will only make matters worse.

This weekend poor Kenya suffered still another horrific terrorist attack in its far northeast near the Somalia border.

A commercial bus carrying about 60 people from the town of Mandera to Nairobi was hardly 30 miles from the Somalia border when terrorists apprehended it then murdered almost half those inside who were unable to demonstrate that they were Muslim.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility.

This makes 135 similar incidents (although most were far fewer fatalities) so far this year. Almost all of these have been in the very remote northeast corner of the country, although there have been a couple attacks in Nairobi’s Somali suburbs as well.

In my opinion security in the country is definitely improving, although it’s hard to demonstrate this after such an attack as this.

But particularly in Nairobi people are actually relaxing and feeling considerably safer.

“Al-Shabaab can no longer attack in cities like Nairobi because of enhanced security measures,” wrote a former high military official in Kenya’s main newspaper this weekend.

But that same expert went on to demand a change in current government policy and security strategy, arguing for a much tougher stand including very quick and immediate retribution.

And that seems to be exactly what happened Sunday.

In response to the 28 persons killed and single bus destroyed by al-Shabaab, Kenyan officials claimed a raid across the border into Somalia killed more than 100 terrorists, destroyed four vehicles and an armed camp.

Kenya invaded Somali in October, 2011, completing the liberation of most of the country’s main urban areas about a year ago. That has led to the first globally recognized Somali government since 1994, although the government remains very fragile. The capital city of Mogadishu, however, is definitely returning to a semblance of normalcy for the first time in a generation.

Thanks to American drones, many of the al-Shabaab leaders have been killed as well, although new ones appear immediately.

The Kenyan response of tit-for-tat isn’t going to work. It hasn’t worked since the Jewish rebels of Masada were massacred by the Romans in 1 B.C. It isn’t working for Israelis, today.

Tit-for-tat escalates violence; it absolutely has never subdued it. Advocates point to short moments in history, as many contemporary Israeli leaders have done, but five or ten years of tense peace is hardly a demonstration of efficacy.

Ethnic and religious conflict must be seen for what it really is: an easy reflection of more meaningful differences, like those of wealth and opportunity, education and health. Whether it is northern Ireland or the Basque country lazy thinkers want to explain the difficulties by ethnicity or religion.

That’s completely wrong, utterly superficial.

If it weren’t wrong, then it means these conflicts must continue until one side is obliterated altogether. And that’s what drives many of their fighters, this belief that it’s do-or-die and nothing in between.

The real remedy is far more complicated and lengthy to implement. Of course, meanwhile, anxious citizens on the periphery of the actual conflict want quicker resolution.

Unfortunately, there is no quicker resolution, and believing there is only makes matters worse.

Seeing Is Believing

Seeing Is Believing

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

osborneMachariaGDP isn’t the only thing growing in Africa. Young Africans’ popculture is quickly overtaking America’s and Europe’s.

One of Nairobi’s most talented artists is Osborne Macharia. His K63 Studio is a sought after commercial enterprise by everything from chic weddings to fast cars.

I thought I’d leave you this week with some of his digitally enhanced photos, which evoke enormous reaction from me.

man-ipulation- Osborne Macharia
man-ipulation
– Osborne Macharia

The modern young progressive African guy is having trouble. His machoism is continually suppressed … by his peers, by his mentors and mostly, by himself.

Traditional African culture is as misogynistic as you can get. Polygamy doesn’t say it all, by a long shot. Whether a traditional family was rich or poor, the woman did all the work, and I’m not talking about house chores. She toiled the land, harvested the crops, sold the crops, distributed the crops … and raised the kids while submitting to the man’s every whim.

This generation of kids is several or more generations from that life style, but it’s still a much greater difference between their grandparents than ours, for example.

One of the residues of a progressive, educated man trying to fit into the modern world — or so it is widely believed — is that the man becomes too submissive and grows easily manipulated by every woman who gives him a glance!

Kwangare- Osborne Macharia
Kwangare
– Osborne Macharia
Income disparity in modern places like Nairobi is — I hate to admit it — greater than here at home. This is the real festering soul of Africa, not ebola or terrorism or even poverty per se — but the difference between men like Kwangare and those who cause Nairobi’s traffic jams wrecklessly driving their hundreds if not thousands of Mercedes every day.

I see it as a fundamental problem of successful capitalism overlaid rapidly developing cultures that are so out-of-control dynamic like in Kenya.

We’re in a state of affairs right now in places like Kenya where the disenfranchised and displaced are so suppressed that the country as a whole is just shrugging its shoulders and ignoring the inevitable. The poor sot who works all day for a dime then goes home to an 3-room apartment shared by his extended family, that in turn shares a bathroom with four other apartments … well, you get the picture.

Eventually resignation turns into desperation: exhaustion becomes revolution.

xNews- Osborne Macharia
xNews
– Osborne Macharia
Freedom of expression and freedom of the press in places like Kenya is being applied to an exaggerated fault, just like it is, here. The kids in Nairobi make fun of it all the time.

In America, today, we’re so inured to the ridiculous concept of objectivity that it no longer offends us that Anderson Cooper invites a “panel of experts” that includes a climate change denier … to be “fair and balanced.”

Well it happens too all the time in the Kenyan media, and Nairobi youth in particular see it as a caricature of substantive problem solving.

I can see in the bony neck and starved face of Osborne’s Gender Based Violence piece a continuation of the gender conundrums of the first piece above, Man-ipulation.

The woman in this picture is an amalgam of a peasant, a witch and a modern gal. Although the three reside in radically different places in Kenya’s rainbow culture, although their education differs widely, they are still equally suppressed and abused.

Gender Based Violence-Osborne Macharia
Gender Based Violence
-Osborne Macharia

And like our own situation recently to the fore in the NFL, it’s deeply engrained and horribly facilitated by the so-called modern cultural kingpins.

This brilliant piece was commissioned by Oxfam, one of Europe’s largest aid organizations.

I would have liked Osborne to have moved even beyond Man-ipulation and Gender Based Violence and deal with the most egregious of all gender-based discrimination in Africa, that against the LGBT community.

Next door Uganda is ready to hang every gay, and very similar sentiments have been raised in Kenya’s own Parliament. There is a vibrant and courageous LGBT community in Nairobi. I’m sorry Osborne doesn’t see fit to represent them.

Hope in the Delta-Osborne Macharia
Hope in the Delta
-Osborne Macharia
Hope in The Delta could be from any of a multitude of different places in ecologically stressed Africa, from the Kalahari desert to the oil rich jungles of Nigeria.

In these places the aboriginal peoples are mostly ignored, as they have been since colonial times. Their development is compromised by a constant struggle between modern resource extraction and traditional life-ways.

And you can guess who wins that battle.

I think that Osborne by depicting an old lady who has somehow found contentment if even amusement as she stares over her pillaged land has captured both the patience and quiet self-confidence of Africa’s forgotten aboriginals.

It’s a melancholy that’s so easily taken advantage of, but at the same time it’s a spirit that’s remarkably enduring.

Shake Not Stirred-Osborne Macharia
Shaken Not Stirred
-Osborne Macharia

Nothing very deep about this beautiful piece created to promote one of Nairobi’s very popular and increasingly important fashion shows.

This one featured super models from Nigeria and China.

So that’s one Osborne Macharia. Young, fantastically talented and courageously outspoken!

Enjoy your weekend. I hope you’ll be thinking about Africa when you do!

Time’s Up, Pat!

Time’s Up, Pat!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

RobertsomTimeUpIt’s funny, but it’s not. Yet is this a turning point? White, racist, evangelical attitudes especially towards Africans might really be changing.

For decades, now, we enlightened ones have snickered at the bad jokes and patently racist attitudes of The Right almost to exhaustion. When allies relented and began inviting “opposing viewpoints” onto pubic forums, many of us wondered if the schism was permanent.

The abhorrence of racism became the stuff of comic strips.

Tuesday night CNN’s Anderson Cooper extended comedy into sarcasm and lambasted racist tele-evangelist Pat Robertson like never before.

Robertson is the star of the Christian Broadcasting Network and he had just answered a question on the popular “700 Club” show about ebola. He warned would-be travelers to Africa against using towels there that will infect you with AIDS.

This isn’t a gaff, it’s a simple reflection of a quintessential racist belief that black is evil.

It was hardly Robertson’s first time at it. Last year he actually claimed that gays in San Francisco wear evil little pointed rings so that when you shake their hand they can infect you with AIDS, which he called “their stuff.”

Apparently the attention to the ebola controversy breaks the threshold of cartoon tolerance of racism. Robertson’s network apologized for this remark the next day, although he never has.

No apology was ever made for the gay ring remark.

What struck me as particularly important this time was how Africa reacted. Like many of us before, Africans tend to shrug off racist attitudes as something held by bumptious uncles. Inured to the point of frustration, the general viewpoint has been that most of these attitudes will die out with the current generation.

In fact Robertson’s remarks got little attention in the African media until Cooper flayed them.

Now, for the third straight day running, it’s the most popular story in the Kenyan media.

Take that link above and scroll down to the local comments. Here are a few of my favorites:

“You can contract the sometimes incurable disease of ignorance if you listen to the likes of 700 club.” – Melissa Wainaina

“Sorry, dear Kenyans, but that’s America (USA). They don’t know there anything about other countries.” – Hanna

“Can one get aids from Towels in America? … This is ignorance and racist mixed into a potent mix.” – cbertmann

The irony is that Pat Robertson probably has a larger following per capita in Kenya than in the U.S. “What is more sad is that this guy has a huge following in Kenya,’ Shazam3535 reminded readers.

That’s because Kenyans are far more religious than Americans. Kenyans are also, in my opinion, far more tribal and therefore actually more racist than Americans, although their racism is black-on-black more than black-on-white.

Racism is racism, though, and it’s heartening reading these comments to recognize what might be a new awareness that religious evangelism provokes if not causes racism.

Are the times really changing?

Tired World Invites Strongmen

Tired World Invites Strongmen

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

faitacompliKenya’s battle with the World Court is the perfect example of how global institutions are losing relevancy in an increasingly conservative world.

Around the world and especially in Africa societies are becoming conservative and authoritarian. Oligarchies are consolidating power. Minorities are growing submissive. Particularly in Africa this means the Strongman reemerges.

Uhuru Kenyatta is such. Very much like his father, Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president for 15 years until his death, Uhuru has masterfully consolidated his power to the point that he is almost invincible.

Kenyatta isn’t quite yet the benevolent dictator like his father, but I imagine after the next election he will be. Afterwards, subsequent elections will be fairly meaningless or simple window dressing.

The reason this is happening is for the same reason it started this way at Independence. Turmoil is considered more expensive and damaging than the increased opportunity that might be unleashed by movements like the Arab Spring.

Kenya under the current Kenyatta has prospered by the geopolitical metrics of economy that seem to govern the world. The World Bank projects 4.7% growth this year, and increasing growth in the years ahead.

While this is down from a few years ago, it’s impressive when you consider the challenge of the Somali War. As that successfully fought war continues positively the literally hundreds of thousands of successful Somali businesspeople in Kenya return to Somali causing a drain on growth… for good reasons.

Kenya’s education and health care policies are among the most progressive in Africa. Womens rights are more progressive in Kenya than almost anywhere elsewhere in Africa except South Africa, and were it not for the highest people in the current administration (e.g., Uhuru Kenyatta) the LGBT community would likely be facing as horrific oppression as it does in neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda.

But Human Rights Watch, like me, equivocates Kenya’s appearance of progressiveness with its patent immoralities and lack of democratization.

The Kenyan government under Kenyatta has systematically undermined the World Court’s prosecution of Kenyatta and his Vice-President. The evidence that existed two years ago, collected by the World Court, was damning: Kenyatta was guilty of crimes against humanity. It was eventually how he came to power.

But since he’s been in power the dozen or so witnesses, many of them in witness protection programs in Europe, recanted or disappeared. Pressure on their families back home seems to have been the reason.

So now, there is no evidence. Without evidence, there’s no case.

Yesterday, Kenyatta returned jubilant from The Hague. It’s likely the last time he will go there.

While ICC prosecutors are arguing for various censures of the Kenyan government for its lack of cooperation, other Heads of State in Africa are rallying behind Kenyatta. If the ICC fails to relent, Africa as a whole might leave the ICC.

The many global institutions like the ICC which appeared last century to guarantee the human rights of all global citizens now seem almost irrelevant.

Within Kenya police power has exploded exponentially. Summary arrests and neglect of existing laws protecting the innocent like habeas corpus are routinely ignored. More and more there seems to be only a single authority: Uhuru Kenyatta.

And yet that seems to be what if we dare generalize the “Kenyan public” wants, even those who are theoretically in the opposition.

Stability, however unequal, rules the day.

I think it’s public fatigue. War fatigue, election fatigue, countless fatigues that were so promising only a few years ago but proved futile by today. The world, for whatever underlying reasons, is moving away from freedom in order to avoid conflict.

Of course it’s true here at home, too, as well as Kenya. By the way, yesterday China became the world’s largest economy.

When Wrong is Right

When Wrong is Right

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

whenwrongisrightImagine Ray Rice walking into court followed by Eli and Peyton, Adrian Peterson, a few veterans like Mike Ditka and then a couple hundred high rolling NFL fans.

He’d be saying, “Some people think I did something wrong. Maybe I did. But I had to,” or maybe not ‘I had to’, rather “They understand why I did.”

And that understanding spans the gamut from being cuckoo to especially stressed. And in any case, it’s acceptable because, gdi, we need that guy playing the game!

And … he wouldn’t have done it, if he didn’t have to.

And since that “have to” spans the same gamut from being cuckoo to especially stressed, we get in a loop that we can’t get out of.

This is exactly what’s happening with the President of Kenya.

Next week President Uhuru Kenyatta will leave the Nairobi airport surrounded by probably hundreds if not thousands of cheering supporters for The Netherlands, where he’s on trial for crimes against humanity.

Whether World Court officials will allow his entourage to enter the vaulted halls of the ICC with him, he will be accompanied to the portals by at least four other Heads of State, maybe more, and by more than 100 elected Kenyan members of Parliament.

The facts in Kenyatta’s trial have come out in the press, mostly, since important witness after important witness has been so intimated that they’ve dropped out or disappeared. So now the spent prosecutors at the World Court have little facts left to present.

The facts as most of us believe them but which have not been able to justly be presented in court are pretty simple. The national election of 2007 was close. The current head of Kenya’s opposition from its second largest tribe, Raila Odinga, was neck and neck with the then president of Kenya running for reelection, Mwai Kibaki. Kibaki was a Kikuyu, the largest tribe and the tribe of Kenyatta.

Kibaki was old, Kenyatta was young. Kenyatta’s father, Jomo Kenyatta, is the “Father of Kenya” and its first president.

Widespread violence followed the election and the country was brought to its knees. Almost 1500 people were killed in horrific violence and a quarter million displaced, of which dozens of thousands remain so today.

There were absolute differences in ideology clashing, but the violence was tribal.

The settlement forced on Kenya by Britain and the United States was brilliant. Kibaki and Odinga shared power for almost five years. During that time a new and fabulous constitution was adopted.

The settlement required Kenya to determine the cause of the violence and prosecute those responsible. The settlement went further: Kenya had a certain window of time to attain this justice, and if it failed, then the World Court in The Hague would step in to do the task.

Kenya failed. Parliament tried several times to create courts and procedures for this most important attempt at national justice in its history, but at the end of the day, an invitation was sent to the World Court.

The World Court did not really want to do this. No indictment for crimes against humanity had been issued before the court was invited by Kenyans to start searching. Normally, the court issues indictments, as it did in Liberia for example, in response to individual petitioners. There were no individual petitioners with individual grievances from Kenya. The Kenyan Parliament invited The Court to take over, and it said, OK.

When it finished its several years of investigations, fully supported on the ground in Kenya by Kenyans, indictments were issued.

One was against the country’s current Vice President. The other was against Uhuru Kenyatta.

We know from leaked testimony and tapes that Uhuru Kenyatta, then a powerful political leader and Member of Parliament, organized and managed partisans in widespread murder and thuggery of the rival tribe.

This is against the law. It’s a crime against humanity.

But Kenya is doing pretty well, right now. Like all the rest of the world, the happiness and prosperity is happening mostly at the top, but the social fabric is peaceful. An unexpected war in Somalia, thrust upon it mostly by British, French and American interests, is not easy, but Kenya is handling it pretty well.

Skyscrapers are popping up all over. Roads are being built faster and better than in the U.S. Business was booming and is now humming along pretty well.

Even President Obama sat with Uhuru in the White House.

Like Rice, maybe he did do it. But take Rice or Uhuru out of the spotlight, out of their circles of power, and what happens? The team loses, and we just can’t afford that.

Risky Business

Risky Business

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

hangedKenya’s first execution in 27 years was ordered yesterday of a 41-year old male nurse for a failed abortion that led to a young woman’s death.

The judge said he had taken into consideration the fact that two lives were lost:

“He has killed two people; a foetus and a mother. The only sentence available in law is the death penalty,” Judge Ombija ruled.

Outsiders don’t realize how incredibly pro-Life the vast majority of law in the developing world is. What is even more ironic, though, is that while developing world law is crystal clear on the issue, these laws are rarely enforced.

Islamic ruled countries generally leave the consequences of a revealed abortion to the family. Those consequences are often crueler if the cultural edict is carried out. The widely interpreted Koranic punishment for adultery is being stoned to death, and generally any woman who seeks an abortion in the Muslim world is considered adulterous.

But it remains unknown and likely vastly underestimated the number of abortions in the Muslim world that are simply swept under the carpet.

In the non-sectarian ruled countries like Kenya abortion is just as illegal, but there are countless numbers of abortions, anyway. Authorities normally don’t enforce the law. Yesterday’s sentence, after all, is the first ever given.

“Our analysis indicates that an estimated 464,690 induced abortions occurred in Kenya in 2012,” Kenya’s own Ministry of Health reported last year. Each one of those if adjudicated would result in a death sentence.

The Kenyan Ministry report also concludes that the mortality rate of these attempted abortions is so high that it is a significant factor in Kenya’s escalating health care costs.

Many other reports circulating in Kenya indicate one of the reasons there are so many abortion attempts is because contraception is either too expensive or frowned upon by cultural and religious leaders.

Kenya law is clear: abortions are illegal. Legislative attempts to change this, including by women activists who lobbied hard to make abortion legal in Kenya’s revised Constitution of 2007, were all soundly defeated by Parliament.

It was, however, a “perfect storm” for 41-year old nurse, Jackson Namunya Tali, who will now become known as either the first or the only abortion provider to have been sentenced to death.

Tali operated one of probably dozens if not hundreds of abortion clinics in shady areas of Nairobi where police rarely appear. He is a fully trained nurse whose pay under the national health system is likely 1/100th of what he earned at his clinic.

He was much more compassionate than most abortion providers who dump their patients out the front door as fast as they can once the procedure is over.

The particular patient in question had complications, and Tali tried to deal with them for more than a week before he personally tried to race the her to the hospital in his own car. She died enroute, and instead of then abandoning her, he himself called the police.

Clearly the man was empathetic, hardly the criminal type that the vast majority of less well trained and less sensitive abortion providers in Kenya are. He seemed generally distressed that his efforts with this woman failed.

His empathy led to his sentence.

This was not big news in Kenya. In fact the major media outlets didn’t even carry it. And the few comments that appeared in the digital world were mostly in support of the judge.

Dangerous Plays

Dangerous Plays

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

stupidtouristwithlionAs access to Africa’s wildernesses develops and improves, visitors are becoming less respectful and careful. This puts everything in jeopardy.

The photo above of a self-drive tourist in Kenya’s Maasai Mara game reserve last Sunday “posing” in front of a pair of lions was taken by a film crew at some distance from the tourist. Presumably the tourist didn’t notice the film crew.

The series of photos was first published in London’s Daily Mail. Click here for the full sequence.

The tourist spots the lions, which seem to be about 15-20 meters away. He stops the car then exits the passenger’s side (right side) which is the opposite side to the lions.

He then races around the car to place himself between the car and the lions, leans back with a thumb’s up obviously posing for another person in the car who probably takes a picture. He then runs back around the car and gets back in.

The photos capture no reaction from the lions other than an occasional glance at the tourist.

These are certainly wild lions, and why they didn’t react is impossible to say. They appear to be a mating pair as it is unlikely to see only one male and one female alone together.

Lion mating is pretty routine: It lasts about three days during which time the pair often can’t be roused by anything, not even hunger. But not always, and it’s impossible when first encountering them to determine at what stage in the three-day mating process they are.

I’ve encountered a mating pair when the male charged our vehicle. There is often a vicious fight between males for the right to mate prior to the mating commencing, so it was possible we arrived just as that altercation had ended.

I’ve also seen mating lion break apart to join a kill. Once again such an anecdotal encounter could be nothing more than having happened to arrive just at the end of the mating process.

I don’t think it’s possible to conclude why these lions were so passive in this case. I suppose an equally cogent argument to my own anecdotal experience is the clear fact that more and more tourists are seen by lions, now. Generations of lions in places like Kenya’s Maasai Mara are becoming more used to people and learn that they aren’t threatening.

That, of course, is a degradation of the wilderness but one that I can hardly oppose. Without tourists — at least in Kenya — there would be little wilderness left.

We are at an interesting crossroads in the development of African wilderness for tourism. As so clearly illustrated in this example, wilderness is taking on the characteristics of a theme park, one that definitely has elements of danger in the experience which seem precisely to be one of the main attractions.

And at least in this case flirting with that danger is apparently one of the selling points.

There are dozens of stories of tourists going too far and paying the price. Just google “tourist killed by lion” or “tourist killed by buffalo” for a tidy wrap-up.

Many of these tragedies aren’t quite as wanton stupidity as evidenced in the photo above, but many are.

What concerns me most is that as more and more of these incidents occur, lions and other wildlife will grow more and more accustomed to man and his peculiarities. This seriously jeopardizes their own wild behavior.

There are many people in Africa who consider lion in the same regards as Montana ranchers consider wolf. A tamer lion is much easier to kill.

And there will be more and more tourists injuries and deaths as well. These two ends of the stick will burn right through to the middle, and tourist parks like Kenya’s Maasai Mara will either have to become far more restrictive or will simply be sold to wheat farmers, or both.

The result is that there will be less wilderness for us all to enjoy.

Shelter in Place

Shelter in Place

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

index“The War on Terror,” Version 163 announced by Obama last week, is taking a significant toll on American tourism and business in East Africa.

This weekend the U.S. embassy in Kampala issued the most serious warning in their lexicon of warnings, “shelter in place,” one step before evacuation:

“All U.S. citizens are advised to stay at home or proceed to a safe location. Shelter-in-place and await further guidance. Follow U.S. Embassy Kampala on Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates.”

The warning was issued Saturday and rescinded Sunday, after Ugandan authorities claimed to have foiled a terrorist attack Saturday night.

Then all day Sunday Ugandan military and police went through Kampala ransacking houses and shooting people. This, by the way, is how the Ugandan military works: shoot first, ask later.

It is the same philosophy that gave rise to terrorism in the first place.

It doesn’t work.

Uganda is neither a place to visit or live, right now, and it hasn’t been for some time. That isn’t because of an increased threat of terrorism, but because of the government’s increased militarism.

That seems to be in fashion with U.S. authorities right now.

Kenya is doing a much better job. Security outside the border region is improving, although security along the coast and Somali border is not.

Beheading, by the way, has been a modis homocide among terrorist groups for the last several decades. Recently another Kenyan border village experienced one.

What’s new, of course, is the beheading of westerners. The roughly thousand beheadings of Africans and Arabs didn’t draw any serious attention. But my goodness, we’ve now had three innocent westerners brutally beheaded! Time for action.

Until now terrorists felt that the potential ransom for a westerner was more valuable than the potential public reaction.

They’ve realized now that the PR value of a few beheadings is worth zillions more than a couple hundred million dollars.

We’re now playing into their game exactly as they wish us to.

That’s why they’re winning.

Dominoes in Reverse

Dominoes in Reverse

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

kismayoforisisCome on, America! You’re not all dimwits! Obama’s announced policy against ISIS is comparable to what he did in Somali, and it worked. And it was wrong.

We’ve apparently been successful knocking down a bunch of dominoes around the world. I guess Obama thinks it’s time to pull a few of them back up for future consideration.

Now so far I’ve probably assisted raising new funds for the Society of Dimwits. But you’ve got to understand as we race pell-mell into war, again.

OBLstatementTake a look at the statement to the right and guess who said it. Read this blog through to the end to find out, but try to guess, first.

I was watching my favorites on MSNBC parse the Obama speech for analogies with past African policy in Yemen and Somalia, and they got the facts terribly incomplete. It’s astounding that three years after the Kenyan invasion of Somalia, nobody knows about it.

Before the Kenyan invasion on October 18, 2011, U.S. special forces and even regular forces had been spotted on the ground in Mombasa and Lamu, two of Kenya’s coastal cities near Somalia.

French naval forces had penetrated the unofficial stay-away limit from the Somali shore.

A week after the invasion, 90 U.S. soldiers were cheered by Ugandan crowds as they entered Kampala on their search for the terrorist, Josef Kony.

Drones – relatively new and untested back then – were flying all over the African heavens.

We knew something was up, and it was. Later we’d learn about all the equipment and training that the British and Obama had given until-then a useless Kenyan army.

Obama had chased the meanest of the Afghan and Iraqi warlords and terrorists into Yemen and Somalia. They found greater purchase in Somalia than Yemen, where no real government had been in place for more than a decade.

So while the war in Yemen has never ended, it’s much less international than in Somalia. The war and the terrorists in Yemen are almost all Yemeni. Not so in Somalia. They came from Afghanistan and Iraq, mostly.

Someone made a decision in late September, early October, 2011, to deploy everything possible short of the perceived “boots on the ground” against the fugitive terrorists from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s now three years later. What’s the score?

The Kenyan Army took less than a year to get rid of the terrorists who were, in fact, controlling most of Somalia. As I wrote on October 12, 2012, ‘Mission Accomplished: Now What?’.

From afar the score today is pretty much in America’s favor. More than two dozen terrorist leaders have been “eliminated.” Somalia while not yet fully pacified has its first functioning government in 21 years. (There’s even a dry cleaning store now open in Mogadishu.) Piracy in the Gulf is almost nonexistent.

And …

Kenya continues to occupy Somalia. It has suffered the most horrific three years of terrorist attacks on its own soil imaginable. Its economy, prior to October 2011 and in fact right through the Great Recession, which was robust, is now weak and possibly crumbling.

Somalia has a government, but its Parliament building is rather regularly destroyed by suicide bombers. There’s less piracy in the gulf off Somalia, but now a phenomenal increase in piracy in the gulf of west Africa.

The short-term strategy to make America safer, however slightly since our fear isn’t invasion but surprise suicide bombings, worked. And I expect it will work against ISIS despite all the naysaying.

Our policy, Obama’s policy in Iraq and Syria, will make America slightly safer at the immoral expense of making Iraq and Syria much, much less safe … and all for the short-term.

Exactly like the Horn of Africa, where our safety – incrementally better in my view – came at the horrible expense of the safety of our so-called “partners on the ground.”

And so once we complete the mission in Iraq and Syria, with the wars there incompletely finished, then we’ll have an even better score, and we’ll be able to start another war just like it in, oh say, Nigeria.

And after Nigeria, maybe Mynamar? How about Tibet at last? Why, my goodness, we could be remarkably SAFE with the rest of the entire world burning up!

Click Here for the answer to the question about who was quoted in the red box above.

So get it right, Rachel and Chrisses. The policy did work. And it’s wrong.

Provocative Rachel

Provocative Rachel

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

dontbeprovokedRachel Maddow’s misleading account of East Africa’s recent terrorist attacks contributes to America’s rearming against the War on Terror, despite her better intentions.

On her show Tuesday night, Rachel sort of concluded as I hope many others do that we should not overreact to the recent beheadings of two American journalists.

Her analysis that terror succeeds when it provokes is spot on. And the relatively simple act of murdering two people, however gruesome it was albeit they were journalists and Americans, is about as provocative as you can get.

But in elaborating on the “gruesome” and “provocative” Rachel fell down that slippery slope so American of defining a situation worse than it really is, of exaggeration. Fear does this. It moves you to overreact.

In describing the abject brutality of al-Shabaab, she recounted incompletely the bar bombing in Kampala in July, 2010, and followed that with a similarly misleading recounting of the Westgate Mall attack in September, 2013.

(Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for both attacks, although to this day it’s not completely clear the militant group held complete authority regarding Westgate. That tight knit group of terrorists who carried out the attack were mostly foreign and may have included the “White Widow”, no underling to Somali warlords who might aspire to be her boss.)

Rachel implied that both were indiscriminate if not random killings. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It doesn’t in any way justify them, but it does help to explain why they happened.

The first motivation for both is that the Ugandan and Kenyan armies viciously fought al-Shabaab. The Ugandans were the lead army in the UN so-called peace-keeping force that had been battling al-Shabaab for years in Somalia.

The Kenyan Army staged a much, much greater assault in October, 2011, a virtual invasion supplied, organized and probably managed from start to finish by America. The Kenya Army remains a significant occupier of Somalia.

The second specific motivation for the Kampala bombing was that it was in a bar of people watching the World Cup: recreation and alcohol. A bombing of that magnitude would have been far more devastating had it occurred in the central bus station or airport.

More to the point, however, it would have been far easier at the bus station or a dozen other places than in a security patrolled, modern sports bar.

The second specific motivation for the Westgate bombing was the decadence of a mall which on the Muslim holy day had something like a mini rock concert, and as with all the malls in Kenya, sold everything from liquor to ladies panties. Why Westgate in particular? Because it is the only mall of Kenya’s giant three owned by a Jew.

So it is not completely random, and as I said, that hardly makes it better or more justified. Rather I’m saying there’s method in this madness.

Rachel then described the failed Navy Seals operation two weeks after the Westgate Mall attack which attempted to take out one of the leaders of al-Shabaab. We got him with a later drone attack, and Rachel then pointed out how easily he was replaced.

I’ve written a lot about Westgate and terrorism. It’s hard to exaggerate the brutality of ISIS, yet we do. We do by failing to compare it with all the other homicides and murders and unnatural deaths and lack of simple human rights right in our own backyard.

We all exaggerate, as Rachel did, by considering the most horrible of acts random. They are, in fact, rarely random. If subtle, the world’s terrorists are very methodical. Their horrific acts, including suicide bombings, are cleverly and carefully designed to entrap us.

Exaggeration is knee-jerk. It leads us into wars. We take the bait of provocation.

Unfortunately, we’ve learned to if not forget, to file distantly away in an instant afterwards the senseless murder of a kid in Ferguson or the senseless murder of an employee in a gun range in Nevada.

Perhaps we nurture such forgetfulness so that we can retrieve the events later on, in calmer moments, when we are fitter to analyze them better, to determine less emotionally if new actions are called for.

So we should now do with the senseless murders of two journalists.

Bloody Red Cross

Bloody Red Cross

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

redcrosscallsformilitaryWhen the Kenyan Red Cross demands military action, you know the world has changed.

It’s been a rough week for the purveyor of humanitarian relief. First there was the kerfuffle in The Ukraine where Vladimir told the white crosses to move it or lose it. Then yesterday a Red Cross ambulance in northern Kenya was attacked and destroyed, its occupants barely escaping with their lives.

It didn’t take Kenyan Red Cross officials long to then demand that President Kenyatta send in the army.

“It is now time to act,” Abbas Gullet, secretary-general of the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), told IRIN yesterday.

Gullet was referring to a June 25 pledge by the Kenyan president to send in the Army if the tribal groups in this part of northeastern Kenya didn’t stop fighting.

They didn’t stop fighting.

What’s happening in around this far northern city of Mandera in Kenya is exactly what’s happening in many places in the world, like Pakistan and Myanmar, when hostile ethnic groups get their hands on heavy weapons.

How do they get the weapons?

Don’t make me laugh. Watch Nicholas Cage in Lord of War. It’s cheaper and easier to buy an AK47 in Mandera, Kenya, than it is to buy a sack of potatoes.

And after you’ve killed enough merchants and collected enough coins, just hop over the Somali or Ethiopian border for the Labor Day Sale of grenade launchers.

Soon everyone is killing everyone. Kill or get killed.

Those groups most successful attract the attention of stronger military powers. They make the first compromises of their lives, to join forces however temporarily with other similar groups, and they become the new terrorist threat in the region.

From time immemorial ethnic rivalries existed worldwide and were violent. Development and education ameliorates the hatred and bloodshed subsides when productive work develops.

Global warming, which especially in this part of northeastern Kenya adjacent Somali means more and worse droughts, followed by sudden and terrible floods, makes things worse.

Slow development is often worse than no development at all. People’s hopes are raised then dashed.

This is northern Kenya in a nutshell. It is much of the rest of the world, too.

“Our mission is to work with vigor and compassion … to prevent and alleviate human suffering and save lives of the most vulnerable,” the Kenyan Red Cross charter says.

So… stand your ground boys, then fire!!

The War Comes Home

The War Comes Home

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

pusuealshabaabWith the Kenyan military vehemently dening it, many local residents report that Kenyan military aircraft dropped bombs in mainland forests near Lamu last Sunday. There were similar reports about a month ago.

In late June militants attacked two coastal villages on the mainland opposite Lamu, massacred almost 100 people, stole stores of corn and other food and disappeared into the thick jungly forests a few miles further inland.

The Kenyan military responded and it was presumed this one-off event had been resolved. But it appears now that the militants are entrenched, and that the war in Somalia has moved onto Kenyan soil.

When the military first responded on Kenyan soil about a month ago, the general in charge announced an operation to ferret out the remaining al-Shabaab terrorists who are presumed responsible for a number of Lamu area attacks in the last year.

I guess it didn’t work.

This strikes yet another blow to Kenya’s struggling tourist industry, and it’s a shame, because the issues are grossly misunderstood and the situation poorly reported.

The relationship between Kenya and the U.S. has suffered recently because of America’s strong travel advice to its citizens against visitnig Kenya, and because of the White House’s cold shoulder attitude towards Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, who is on trial for crimes against humanity in The Hague.

Last week, though, at the African/U.S. Summit there were signs that the relationship is improving. The entire situation is steeped in irony, because it is precisely the Obama administration which recruited, armed and trained the Kenyan army to go into Somalia in the first place.

Although American foreign policy has often snaked around to bite itself, the irony doesn’t just end there. The Kenyan military operations have made America much safer, Kenya probably less safe.

Lamu is an island city in far north Kenya, only 60 miles from Somalia. While most of the Kenya/Somalia border is desert and wasteland with few people, Lamu is a thriving coastal city with more than 100,000 people.

It has a deep history that goes back to the 13th century, was a favorite retreat of early colonials, and is just a few miles from the mainland coast of extraordinary, pristine beaches. It’s set to become Africa’s largest deep water port within the next ten years, as it’s the perfect terminus for oil and gas pipelines coming out of the new oil fields now being developed in the deserts to the west and north.

Over the years some of Kenya’s most exclusive beach resorts and boutique hideaways have been built in this area, several of which have recently gone out of business.

Because of Lamu’s proximity to Somalia, it’s suffered a number of attacks including headliner tourist kidnapings and murders by Somali terrorists.

The thick mainland forests just off the shore are undeveloped and very jungly, providing excellent refuge for fugitives and terrorists. This is where a number of local resident said the Kenyan military was shelling and/or dropping bombs last Sunday.

The Kenyan mission in Somali is doing well. Kenyan military – armed and trained by Americans – essentially ousted al-Shabaab earlier this year. The great port city of Kismayo is now a functioning, non-terrorist city.

The trouble is that we’ve turned the clock back 20 years to before al-Shabaab, but right after Black Hawk Down, when Somalia imploded leaving only scores of warlords running the place yet fighting one another united rarely to fight outsiders.

Al-Shabaab, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, had managed a semblance of stability throughout Somali by whipping the warlords into shape, extorting them or in many cases, integrating them into the larger jihadist structure.

Now absent al-Shabaab, they are reemerging as feisty and independent as ever, and armed to the teeth.

Al-Shabaab as such is a spent force. It’s very likely that the trouble in and around Lamu is al-Shabaab, because this is the likely place they would have run to from the Kenyan military occupation in places like Kismayo.

I don’t think it’s going to last. Although it flies in the face of similar situations around the world from Afghanistan to Cambodia, I think the Kenyan military is likely to get a hold on this situation pretty quickly.

There just aren’t that many al-Shabaab left. Jihadists are racing to the Mideast, Iraq and Syria. They’ve essentially lost Somalia and Kenya.

But if not?

Then it’s a terrible escalation of a cancerous conflict. I’ll keep my eyes on this closely.

Real World Blues

Real World Blues

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

obamasummitThe largest ever gathering of African leaders starts today in Washington at the invitation of President Obama. A year ago this would have been unthinkable.

A year ago Obama would not have arranged this summit; his advisors would have considered it bad politics. But Obama is no longer playing to the vicious racism that has stymied him from Day One.

A year ago President Uhuru Kenyatta would not have been invited: he remains on trial for crimes against humanity at the World Court (ICC). Kenyatta arrived in Washington for the summit yesterday. His court case has faltered and Kenya has prospered.

The guest list at the White House is filled with despots and authoritarians including Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang and Uganda’s Museveni. But with a little help from the White House, their most serious critics are also being heard.

A year ago the Heads of the African Union (AU) states would have rejected a meeting that included a parallel gathering of their most intense critics. The White House encouraged this activist gathering, but also deftly declined to participate and that seems to have satisfied the African Mighty. That’s a diplomatic dosey doe of the most successful sort.

Times are changing, Obama is changing, and I think America is recalibrating. No African leader embodies these changes better than Egypt’s President el-Sisi.

The White House did not invite el-Sisi, yet in my estimation whatever immoralities or crimes he’s committed in his coup against the legitimately elected Muslim Brotherhood Mursi as president last year pale in comparison to Obiang’s or Museveni’s reigns of terror.

But the White House was following a careful script. El-Sisi had been ousted from the AU. Obiang and Museveni remain in good standing with the AU, whether they should or not.

When el-Sisi was reinstated several months ago, the White House then issued an invitation and El-Sisi immediately declined, but with diplomatic nicety sent his Prime Minister and closest confidant, Ibrahim Mehleb.

The only other heads of state not invited have all been ousted by the AU: Zimbabwe, Sudan, Eritrea and the Central African Republic.

America’s recalibration is good and bad. Obama’s administration is reembracing the old diplomat Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik: In contemporary terms you don’t cheer change at the expense of certain stability.

The Arab Spring has proved mostly a failure. In the long view of multiple decades or centuries it may have inched human rights forward, but today human rights in places like Egypt and Morocco and Kenya is more suppressed than before the Arab Spring.

What has improved is social stability and economic growth, and that is the stuff that realpolitik responds to.

America’s obsession with freedom and democracy is very good … for America. But perhaps not right now for Africa, and that’s the paradigm manifest in today’s African summit.

In the last decade, American investment and trade with Africa which had been supreme, has fallen below that of Europe’s and China’s. “The summit agenda is heavily focused on business and trade,” the Guardian’s Washington correspondent says.

China may worry Obama more than any African despot. The Guardian continues:

“China’s trade with Africa rose to $200bn last year – largely made up of Beijing’s imports of oil and minerals, and export of electronics and textiles – more than double the US… Twenty years ago trade between China and Africa was just $6bn.”

The “U.S. Summit Seeks to Play Catch-Up in Africa,” the Washington bureau chief of IPS says.

Egypt is essentially stable, today. So is Kenya. One is governed by a military authority, the other by a man indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity.

But both countries are essential to U.S. security. Egypt’s current moderating role in the ongoing conflicts in the Mideast, and Kenya’s occupation of Somalia, represent irreplaceable components of American security.

The real world is not always a pretty one.

Arusha, Chicago & Kenya

Arusha, Chicago & Kenya

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

March And Vigil Remember Chicago Student Beaten To Death Near Community CtrCoastal Kenya, Chicago and Arusha suffered terrible acts of violence these past several days, and it leaves us wondering if it’s safe to walk out of the house.

The violence along Kenya’s coast just seems to get worse and worse. Although 28 of the 29 deaths this past weekend occurred outside established tourist areas, one fatality was a Russian tourist in Mombasa town who resisted an attempt to rob him of his wallet.

In Arusha, the hub for Tanzania’s famous tourist industry, a third violent attack this year happened Monday night when an IED was thrown into a popular Indian restaurant in the center of town.

No one was killed but eight people were hurt. The Verma Indian restaurant is attached to a popular city gym and is frequented by Arusha’s more affluent residents, including many foreigners.

In Chicago 16 people were killed and 80 others seriously wounded in gun battles that raged through the city’s south side for most of the weekend.

What are we to make of all this?

The Kenya violence is a continuation of the Muslim/Christian world war, a specific retribution by al-Shabaab for Kenyan occupation of Somalia.

Kenya has suffered three such attacks monthly for more than the last year alone. The Kenyan invasion, encouraged and outfitted by the Obama administration, has done much to pacify Somalia and reduce the terrorism threat to the United States, but at Kenya’s peril.

In Chicago the violence strikes me as a result of increasingly lax gun ownership restrictions. Chicago’s top cop said this to CNN. Of course why there is such anger and frustration that utilizes the available guns is the more profound question, and unlike Africa, it isn’t a Muslim/Christian war.

It’s more akin to a poor/rich war, which in fact could be the explanation for the Arusha bombing last night.

Tanzania has not participated in the war in Somalia, and so unlike Kenya and Uganda which have, Muslim groups have not claimed any responsibility for attacks seen on the Tanzanian mainland.

But the three attacks in Arusha over the past year have been political or religious. A prominent and popular Arusha politician and his wife were hurt at a political rally, and a Catholic church was bombed in a second attack.

Monday’s attack in Arusha targeted what’s considered an expensive restaurant, owned by Indians, in one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods. Throughout the last several centuries Indians in Africa have often been the brunt of attacks against political systems that favor business and the rich.

This suggests three completely different motivations for the violence in Arusha over the last year.

In the end, the simplest explanation for all the attacks is that weapons are too easily available. The next level of explanation is that identifiable groups of people feel marginalized:

Muslims in Africa. Poor in Africa. Poor in Chicago.

Some believe this in insoluble: that there will always be poor feeling marginalized, that there will always be one or another religions that feel oppressed by other religions.

I disagree. There are not enough poor in Sweden or Denmark or many, many European countries for there to be a problem of rich vs. poor in those countries.

Recent progress in Ireland proves that enmity between religions isn’t eternal. And even when some friction continues, as in Quebec, it rarely if ever becomes violent.

But taking a vacation is different from social activism. I’ve said for some time, now, that I feel the danger to vacationers in Kenya has broken at least the threshold of perception of visitors’ safety, so I can’t recommend traveling there for most people.

But to Chicago or Arusha it’s simply a matter of knowing where and where not to go. Don’t visit Chicago’s south side. Don’t eat in a downtown Arusha restaurant. Those are fairly simple tools for staying as safe as one has ever been.

The point is that this violence so far has not been random: The perpetrators are motivated by ideology, and their footprints are clearly tracked.

Visitors are not the intended targets. Only in Kenya is the violence so widespread that visitors have in fact been victims and this specifically because the focus of much of Kenya’s tourism is the coast where the religious conflict is centered.

There is still good news and bad news, and this is the bad news, today.

On Safari: America from Afear

On Safari: America from Afear

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

whichismoreexplosiveI and Kenyans woke this morning to the news of a bloody terrorist attack near Lamu. But what worries us even even more is that the U.S. might restart the Iraqi war.

CNN’s “State of the Union” is the most widely watched American show in Kenya. It comes on live at Sunday dinner time.

So Kenyans who woke the next morning to actual terrorism watched with even greater horror as Sen. Lindsay Graham called for a virtual reverse jihad.

The U.S. Right spent Sunday warning of a “califate” that would be a super threat to the U.S., an ISIS that would rebomb the World Trade Center.

This is utter nonsense. Don’t take the bait, America. What is going on in Iraq is a civil war, not global jihad.

Nairobi’s leading newspaper in its leading editorial this morning claimed the resurgence of war in Iraq “serves as graphic testimony that Western military adventurism in the region not only failed to extinguish the flames of extremism, but might have added fuel to the fire.”

“Stepping into the bloodbath of Iraq would be madness,” was the headline in one of London’s leading Sunday newspapers.

Why are we more afraid of terrorism than driving over a bridge ready to collapse or dying of cancer?

As I wind up my three-day visit to Nairobi I realize how horribly warped American paranoia of terrorism is and yet how impossible it seems to remedy.

Terrorism is increasing. The Rand Corporation’s most recent report shows a 58% increase in significant jihadist groups, a doubling of fighters and a tripling of attacks.

Obama’s own government report, The Country Reports on Terrorism submitted to Congress on April 30 claims terrorist attacks increased by nearly 50% from 6,700 to 9,700 from 2012 to 2013, resulting in 18,000 murders and 33,000 serious injuries.

There’s no reason to doubt these numbers. And here are some more:

The number of homicides in the U.S. averages between 13 and 15,000/year, or roughly 80% the number of worldwide terrorist killings. The number of highway fatalities in the U.S. annually is nearly twice the fatalities caused by worldwide terrorism. The numbers of U.S. homicides or highway fatalities in relation to U.S. fatalities caused by terrorism doesn’t exist, because since the Boston Marathon bomber, there haven’t been any.

What are we afraid of? Or more specifically, why do we fear terrorism more than the highway or the gunman in the classroom?

Kenya has had an unfair share of terrorism fatalities, injuries and damaged economies, because it has been targeted by terrorist groups for its proxy war against al-Shabaab in Somalia, a war that it would not have chosen to do, nor been capable of doing, without serious pressure and military assistance from the west, primarily the U.S. and France.

So as Kenya’s rate of terrorist harm has increased dramatically in just the last few years, France’s and the U.S.’ has declined.

Yet there is a palpabale fear in the U.S. that this is not the case. That fear is the success of terrorism, making its victims’ communities feel threatened out of proportion to the facts.

Imagine if the trillion plus dollars spent on the wars of retribution and against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan had been directed instead to America’s leading cause of death, cancer and heart disease, both which average 25 times greater than the worldwide deaths from terrorism.

With that amount of money might we have already achieved a robot car whose driver, even if drunk, would be unable to cause an accident thereby reducing American fatalities, currently 2-3 times worldwide fatalities caused by terrorism?

Clearly it’s not the deaths that bother us. So it’s not the threat of fatalities that must bother us, it’s the challenge to our power. A relatively few deaths caused by terrorism create a proportionately greater fear and insecurity.

DUIs, suicides, cancer, school shootings … we’ve learned to live with and do not seem to threaten our way of life. We must learn to live with terrorism in the same way. As an actual threat, it’s actually much, much less.

Kenyans know this. The country is booming (except for tourism). Everything from Google to IBM to Caterpillar to GM is investing heavily here. The energy of its youth, the rapidly increasing level of education and the imaginative ways difficult problems are being solved is becoming a model for the world.

But the beautiful white sand beaches, among the finest in the world, and in the incomparable wilderness and big game are being abandoned by world travelers.

There has not been a tourist assault death here in more than two years, nor an injury; nor have any foreign investors been bumped off or maimed.

Those are pretty good numbers for any business person. But as explained above, numbers mean little when it comes to scaring people. Terrorism, the wanton killing for ideological reasons, scares people more than potholes on I-80.

So as irrational as it may be that you will choose to visit New York instead of Nairobi, where any way you run the numbers your chances of being killed or hurt are much greater, you’ll feel better doing it.

And that’s why terrorism is so successful. And that’s why it’s more important than ever that we start to educate ourselves to the priorities of need we truly have.

Before terrorism wins against us all.