Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/africa/30kenya.html
January 30, 2008
Opposition Politician Is Killed in Kenya
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN [Kenya] [eastern Africa just below horn] [shared border with Somalia where a lot of jihadis and islamist activities as well as anarchy] [all sides, including Pentagon’s relativel new Africa Command have used Kenya as staging area] [very volatile with democracy slowly making inroads] [recent elections] [mounting violence and chaos] [both UN and US have sent envoys] [******]
NAIROBI, Kenya — Mugabe Were, a freshman parliamentarian, could have been one of the keys to unlocking Kenya’s crisis but on Tuesday he was shot dead in his driveway.
Mr. Were, 39, was an opposition politician who had resisted his party’s often belligerent talk. He had married a woman of another ethnic group, built a footbridge in a slum with his own money and sponsored teenage mothers to go to college. As Kenya slid into chaos this past month after a disputed election, he shuttled between leaders of different ethnic groups and was actually organizing a peace march the night before he died.
“Whoever did this,” said Elizabeth Mwangi, a friend, “has killed the dreams of many.”
The details of his death are still sketchy, but the killing appears not to have been a robbery but an intended hit.
The news of his killing spread fast and violently, with opposition supporters rioting across Nairobi, the capital, intensifying the clashes of the past weeks.
In the widespread troubles that have erupted in the country since the election in December, Kenyans are now literally ripping their country apart, uprooting miles of railroad tracks, chopping down telephone poles, burning government offices and looting schools.
Militias from opposing ethnic groups are battling in several towns and Kenyan army helicopters fired rubber bullets at crowds on Tuesday to disperse them. There have been reports of forced circumcisions and beheadings.
The economy is paralyzed, more than 800 people have been killed and many Kenyans fear their country is tumbling toward disaster.
According to Mr. Were’s guard and family members, he had just pulled up to his gate around midnight and was waiting in his Mercedes for the gate to open when another car drew alongside him.
“I heard a beep,” said Mr. Were’s wife, Agnes. “And then two loud shots. I ran out and saw my husband bleeding and people were yelling to me, “He’s still breathing, he’s still breathing.” But when I got him to the hospital, he was dead.”
Mr. Were, whose campaign posters show him smiling with street children, had been shot in the heart and in the eye.
His guard said two men dragged him out of the car, shot him and drove off, without taking a thing. Family members said he had been followed by suspicious cars several weeks before.
Opposition supporters immediately deemed the killing a political assassination, intended to intimidate Kenya’s opposition movement, which is challenging the election in December that Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, narrowly won. Police officials say they are investigating the death closely and are ruling nothing out.
A huge crowd formed in front of Mr. Were’s ranch house on Tuesday morning and built roadblocks of burning tires and heavy stones. It was the first time that rioters had reached an affluent neighborhood in Nairobi, and it was not just rowdy unemployed youth from the slums who were taking part. Bespectacled men in suits lit fires in the street.
“This is how we express our outrage,” explained Evans Muremi, a social worker, who stacked burning tires while wearing a jacket and tie.
Kenya has long been a violent place. Mob justice was a feature of life here even before the disputed vote, with crowds routinely stoning to death suspected robbers. The same is true for ethnic tensions, which have always existed in Kenya but have never exploded as widely as they have in the past weeks. [***]
Most of the deaths in the past month have been the result of ethnically driven clashes, which seem to be provoking a spiraling cycle of revenge.
The crisis is also laying bare the shortcomings of Kenya’s poorly-paid security forces, who often respond either too harshly or too feebly. Nearly two weeks ago, they shot an unarmed demonstrator at point-blank range in front of rolling TV cameras. On Tuesday, they drove past a crowd of young men pulling down a telephone pole in front of Mr. Were’s house and did nothing.
There is also a crisis of leadership. Kenya’s top politicians are arguing about who is to blame for the violence more than they are working together to stop it.
Mr. Kibaki, who was considered aloof even before the election, has made few public appearances since his country began to unravel.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kibaki was scheduled to begin formal negotiations with his rival, Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, who says the elections were rigged.
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, has been in Kenya for a week trying to bring the two sides together. So far, neither has budged.
Both Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga claim to have won the election, and Mr. Odinga is demanding a re-run. Mr. Kibaki has refused, and despite talk of a power-sharing arrangement Mr. Kibaki has already moved ahead and given the most important cabinet positions to political allies.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company