Kenya Topples Into Post-Election Chaos

KIAMBAA,Kenya-Daniel Kibigo said he was there, hiding in the burned cornfields nearby, as the mob gleefully stuffed mattresses in front of the church’s doors and set them on fire. He watched women try to claw their way out of the church windows as if they were drowning as the building burned all the way down, with up to 50 people inside.“We couldn’t do anything; there were too many,” he said of the crowd that descended on the church in the paroxysm of ethnic violence that has gripped Kenya since its deeply flawed elections last week.On Wednesday, Mr. Kibigo slowly picked through the embers, looking for whatever was left — a dented trunk here, a bicycle burned beyond recognition there, a pair of Nike children’s shoes 6 inches long.“The violence will end,” said Mr. Kibigo, a brick mason, “when the politicians want to end it.”But on Wednesday, the politicians seemed as far apart as ever. Western diplomats, who have been putting enormous pressure on Kenya’s government and opposition leaders to negotiate and bring an end to the bloodletting that has killed more than 300 people in the past three days, said the two sides remained locked in a standoff.“The government is not backing down, and neither is the opposition,” said one Western diplomat on Wednesday, speaking anonymously because negotiations were still under way. “It doesn’t look good.”Within the span of a week, one of the most developed, promising countries in Africa has turned into a starter kit for disaster.Tribal militias are roaming the countryside with rusty machetes, neighborhoods are pulling apart, and Kenya’s economy, one of the biggest on the continent, is unraveling-with fuel shortages rippling across East Africa because the roads in Kenya, a regional hub, are too dangerous to use. Roadblocks set up by armed men, something synonymous with anarchic Somalia, have cropped up across the country, in towns on the savannah and in the cramped slums.Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, who was declared the victor by a narrow margin on Sunday despite widespread evidence of ballot rigging, has rejected the opposition’s offers for outside mediation.“Are we in a civil war? Is this Somalia? Is this Darfur?” said Alfred Mutua, Mr. Kibaki’s spokesman. “Our problem is with some hooligans. And we can take care of it."As for the opposition, its most recent proposal was a joint government for three months and then a new election, which the government roundly rejected.Adding to the incendiary atmosphere, Raila Odinga, the opposition figure who said he was robbed of the presidency, has vowed to go ahead with a million-person rally in the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday. The government has said the rally is illegal, and busloads of police officers in helmets and padded suits have begun to muster downtown. “We want to appeal directly to the people,” Mr. Odinga said on Wednesday. Many Kenyans are worried the rally will turn into an enormous brawl.The Bush administration said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was calling both sides to urge them to do everything they could to end the violence, and the United Nations issued a statement on Wednesday saying that Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, was “concerned with the deteriorating humanitarian situation, as large numbers of people have been displaced by the violence.”The Red Cross estimates that nearly 100,000 people have fled their homes. Some have even crossed into Uganda.Kenya historically has been a country that accepts refugees, not creates them.The fighting is especially brutal in the Rift Valley, which is ethnically divided between tribes that support the president and tribes that back the opposition.In Kiambaa, a village in the Rift Valley about a five-hour drive from Nairobi, the tensions boil down to Kalenjin, the biggest tribe in this area, and Luo, the tribe of Mr. Odinga, versus Kikuyu, Mr. Kibaki’s tribe.It was Kikuyus who were burned to death on Tuesday in the Kenya Assemblies of God church. The church was simple, made of mud and sticks, and about the size of a tennis court.Over the weekend, several hundred Kikuyus sought refuge here. The election was on Thursday, and serious trouble started on Saturday, when the first signs of ballot rigging emerged. Members of the Luo and other tribes across Kenya, who had been encouraged by many pre-election polls to believe that Mr. Odinga would win the presidency, began to riot and lash out at Kikuyus as the news spread that Kikuyu government officials had turned in dubious election results.

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