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KENYA: Clashes, tension "routine" in troubled Molo

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:13:01 GMT

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

In Kenya’s Rift Valley town of Molo, about 200km from Nairobi, displacement by conflict has become a recurrent feature of life, and not only at election times.

Some of the destitute families sheltering in makeshift camps in church and government compounds in Molo told IRIN that this was the fifth time that they had been chased from their homes in the last two decades.

“In Molo, this has been a routine. Elections are only one of the trigger events. We have other things that trigger clashes, like a lady has been raped by a certain community or a certain community were drinking in a bar and one person decides to beat the other until they kill them, and it becomes a community thing.

“These things have been happening with small trigger events and then they flare up. It’s only this time round the problem is bigger because it was a national problem and not a Molo problem,” said the Molo coordinator for the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), Msallam Ahmed.

Hard-hit Rift Valley Province

In the latest cycle, violence began in the Rift Valley almost a month before Kenya’s December 27 elections as minority communities, mainly Kikuyus and Kisiis, started being hounded out of their houses by rival ethnic groups.

Rift Valley Province had been most affected by the post-election violence with more than 400 people killed, 250,000 displaced and 80,000 houses torched, according to Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner Hassan Noor Hassan.

In Molo district alone, there were 60 sites hosting the displaced, 16 in Molo town itself.

One of the camps was in the grounds of a government office, the Pyrethrum Board. The first 20 displaced people arrived here on 20 December, a week before the elections. By early February, it was home to 415 people.

As sacks of maize were unloaded for distribution, a volunteer teacher wielding a stick tried to entertain a scruffy crowd of about 50 children sitting in the dirt. A fight broke out between two boys and the mob surged after one of them. Ahmed intervened and grabbed hold of the fleeing child.

“These children have seen mob justice. They get scared,” he said, hugging the tearful boy.

Parents “get angry fast”

He said the greatest need in the camps was to get displaced children back to school, particularly because they were traumatised by their experiences and the atmosphere was tense.

“Children are beaten by their own parents because of small mistakes they make, sometimes because of the trauma of their parents, the psychological state they are in. They get angry fast and beat their children terribly,” he said.

Humanitarian workers had set up a group to give psychosocial support to children. Ahmed also wanted to see paralegal services being provided in the camps to tackle cases of abuse.

Humanitarian role for local groups

Ahmed also wanted to see local organisations, such as youth and women’s groups, doing more to help with emergency relief efforts.

“We have small, local organisations that can do very well. The problem is they are shying away because they are seeing big organisations coming up and they feel their role might not be needed but their role is needed,” said Ahmed.

“We need a big number of these smaller groups to come up and help. . . They have the expertise of the local community. It makes the work easier. We’re using youth groups who are already experts in the theatre field to reach out with skits. That is a support. It doesn’t have to be in cash,” he explained.

Beth Wanjiku – living in Molo since 1963

The story of 72-year-old widow Beth Wanjiku was typical, showing how far back the roots of the ethnic conflict in Molo district go.

As a young married woman, Wanjiku moved to Kumbi, 10 km from Molo, with her husband soon after independence in 1963. She and her husband bought a two-acre plot in Kumbi, as part of the government settlement scheme which returned land sold by departing colonial settlers to landless Africans.

As Kikuyus, her family were periodically targeted as outsiders in the Rift Valley. Eight of her 12 children had been killed during the 1992 and 1997 clashes related to Kenya’s first two multiparty elections. Her husband, also badly injured during the 1997 ethnic clashes, had died two years ago. Since then, she had been living alone on her farm.

Speaking to IRIN in the Kikuyu language, she recalled how a gang of 200 young men, armed with bows and arrows, machetes and sticks, came to her house at around 8pm one night in early December. They pushed her down on the floor, kicking and beating her. They then chased her out of her house and stole her six cows and cash worth about $120.

It was a cold night. She covered her head with her jacket and tried to sleep in the fields, she said. The next morning, she slowly made her way to Molo with her walking stick.

Wanjiku said she was too scared to return home but had no idea where she would go when the camp closed. One of her children was still alive, a 35-year-old man, but he too had been displaced during the recent violence and was living in another internally displaced people’s (IDP) camp in Molo.

Root causes

Visiting Wanjiku’s camp, John Holmes, the United Nations’ most senior humanitarian official and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said the historical roots of the conflict must be addressed.

“There are hatreds there, which have been there for some time. They’re not new. They’re related to land. They’re related to divisions of the past. I think it requires an enormous effort to bring the elders of these groups together to say everybody loses when this happens…It’s not easy. It’s a long-term process. But I don’t think we should regard it as impossible,” he said.

Political leaders remain in mediated talks to seek a political solution to the crisis in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Holmes said this in itself would not solve the problem.

“No one can guarantee that a political deal in Nairobi will solve all these problems. Clearly it won’t. There’s some very hard, deep work that needs to be done on reconciling communities with each other so that we don’t go back through this cycle again. That’s no easy task,” he said.

Source: IRIN

KENYA: Inefficient peace committees frustrate reconciliation in clash areas

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:49:53 GMT

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Mother-of-four Ann Wacu is afraid to return to her home in Kenya's New Molo District, where inter-ethnic violence has killed dozens and displaced thousands of people since September.

"I don't want to go back because all our property was destroyed or looted; this happens every five years when we have general elections," the 24-year-old said. "The attackers have even injured the police officer who was guarding us after we left our homes. He is now admitted to the district hospital here in Molo.”

“Who will guarantee my security if I go back? They tell us elders who are members of peace committees will help, but how can we be sure of their intentions?" she added.

Before violence broke out, Wacu had a home and farm, earning a living from selling her vegetables at the local market. Now, she is seeking refuge in a church compound in Molo town, along with hundreds of other internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The New Molo District, recently carved out of the larger Nakuru District, has been the scene of periodic violence since 1992. Fighting has intensified during general election years – held in 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007 - and in 2005, when the national referendum on the country's constitution was held.

The district has an estimated population of 600,000 and is divided into two constituencies, Molo and Kuresoi. Kuresoi has 10 administrative divisions while Molo has six. Kuresoi is the constituency most affected by the clashes, which pit three communities – the Kalenjin, Kikuyu and Kisii - against one another.

This year’s violence, in the run up to the 27 December elections, has mostly affected the Kuresoi divisions Keringet, Kuresoi, Kamara and Olenguruone. Neighbours turn against their neighbours, burning homes and looting property, in what political observers say is incitement by politicians who promise them the land of those who flee.

"The constituency has not fully recovered from the 1992 clashes, hence the constant eruption of violence every time elections approach," Mohamud Salim, the New Molo district commissioner, said. "As a result of the tension between the communities, opportunists have taken advantage of the fluid situation to fuel hostilities."

An issue that cropped up many times during a recent visit by a delegation of UN officials to Molo and the Mount Elgon region, another clash-torn area in Western Province, was the role of local peace committees.

In Mount Elgon, where fighting that erupted in late September is between two clans of the dominant Sabaot community, civic, religious and local authority leaders have questioned the make-up of the peace committees and whether or not they were operational before the conflict.

At a meeting between local leaders and the UN delegation on 10 December, chaired by District Commissioner Birik Mohamed, leader after leader urged Mohamed to help revive and restructure the peace committees, which they believed could play a pivotal role in pacifying the warring groups.

The committees were an initiative of the Kenyan government to boost conflict resolution and peace-building efforts in the two regions, where fighting has caused the displacement of 15,000 people in Molo and 45,000 in Mount Elgon.

"These committees are supposed to hold monthly meetings, chaired by the district officer, to assess the situation on the ground and make recommendations. Unfortunately these committees are dormant in some areas," Salim said on 11 December during a meeting with the UN delegation in Molo.

"The displacement that has continued in Molo is not only because of fighting; there is a need to address the issue of fear, people are afraid to go back to their farms. If the anxiety among the people is removed, then the security situation would improve," the Rev David arap Metet, the peace committee chairman for Keringet division, said. "Peace committees are in a position to help remove this fear, if they pursue peace-building seriously."

Meanwhile, Laurence Achami, the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission coordinator for Kuresoi, said peace committees need logistical support to be effective.

Jeanine Cooper, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Kenya, who led the delegation to Molo and Mount Elgon, said: "There doesn't seem to be cohesion to make peace-building last.”

She said the UN was planning a joint programme on conflict and displacement for the two regions that would help reduce the tension and assist the displaced.

"The security efforts to restore law and order may seem to be harsh and unpopular but there doesn’t seem to be any alternative; we must have short-term and long-term interventions in place if we hope to end the violence. We hope to design a programme in the next few weeks to tackle these, the needs of the displaced in the short term and the structures for peace-building and conflict resolution in the long term," she added.

Source: IRIN

KENYA: "Revenge attacks and rumours" fuelling hostilities in Molo

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:15:08 GMT

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Revenge attacks, rumours, inaccurate media reports and provocative public statements by politicians have fuelled hostilities in Kenya's New Molo district, where clashes have displaced thousands of people and caused dozens of deaths, according to a government official.

"As a result of the tension among the three communities in the district, opportunists have taken advantage of the fluidity of the situation to fuel hostilities," Mohamud Salim, the district commissioner, told a UN delegation in Molo town.

"The problem now is that many people have fled their homes," he said. "We do not have an exact number of the displaced as we are still collecting the data but many of the IDPs [internally displaced persons] are now in at least 20 sites in and around Molo town."

Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) estimates that at least 3,000 families, or 15,000 people, have been displaced in the violence. At least 500 IDPs have sought refuge at a church compound, a few metres from the DC's office.

“I fled my home more than a week ago together with my husband and four children. We slept in the open the first night at Keringet police station,” Ann Wacu, 24, said. She is one of the IDPs at the Apostolic Church compound.

Clashes erupted in the district in late September, following accusations and counter-accusations among the three communities, the Kalenjin, Kikuyu and Kisii. Since then, at least 24 people have been killed, hundreds of houses burnt and thousands of people displaced.

Salim said the problems facing the IDPs included poor sanitation, lack of adequate shelter and food.

Political observers trace the tension and suspicion among the three communities to 1992, also an election year, when politicians incited the groups against each another, promising them the land of their neighbours, who they attacked before fleeing.

"I don't call them tribal clashes because these people have co-existed together peacefully for a long time," Salim said. "The current tension is due to the tribal mentality that took root in 1992 and has made the communities lose trust and respect amongst one another. When someone commits a crime, that person should be dealt with as an individual, not the tribe."

KRCS, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF-Spain) and local government officials are providing relief aid to the displaced, most of whom have fled to urban areas in the district.

In a bid to reduce the violence, public meetings with local leaders have been held while security has been beefed up with an increase in the number of police in the district.

Jeanine Cooper, head of the Kenya office of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who led the inter-agency mission to Molo, said the purpose of the visit was to support efforts towards conflict-resolution and peace-building on the ground.

"Insecurity is a product of violence and fear, so even when you don’t have violence, the same displacement of people could occur because of fear," she said. "As the UN, we'll put together a joint programme on conflict and displacement for the areas affected by conflict in the country and this trip will guide what we do in the programme.”

She said the situation in Molo required both short-term solutions, such as emergency response to the IDPs' needs, and long-term interventions, such as peace-building and civilian protection.

"We hope to design a programme in the next few weeks to tackle the short-term needs as well as put in place plans for the long-term interventions," she said.

Source: IRIN