How Peace Came To Kenya
Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor, August 6, 2008
NAIROBI, Kenya - In January, one of Africa's most stable democracies was violently ripping itself apart. How was it saved? In a four-part special report, the key players tell what happened.
Part 1, 'Africa's elders seize a leading role', and Part 2, 'For Kenya, a month of attacks, then quick progress', appear here. Part 3 and 4 available on csmonitor.com
PART 1: Africa's elders seize a leading role
Kenya's peace talks have barely begun. But the atmosphere in the Orchid Room of the Serena Hotel is already toxic.
"You stole the election," shouts William Ruto, a fiery, big-framed politician.
"We didn't steal it," shoots back the Kenyan government's negotiating team leader, Martha Karua. She's the Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady," of Kenyan politics. She's not giving an inch.
In fact, Ms. Karua will be the most intractable of those seated at the table over the coming days and weeks. "We won it fair and square." says Karua.
But there's another African woman present, an authority figure beyond reproach, who brusquely cuts Karua off: "If that is the case, then why the violence?"
Graça Machel, the wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela, presses the point home. "Why the swearing-in ceremony at the State House at night? You have to acknowledge that you have a problem."
A problem, indeed.
One of Africa's most stable democracies was ripping itself apart. In the month following Kenya's closely contested presidential elections, more than 700 people had died in the ethnic-political conflict. The media were starting to compare the spreading violence to the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.
Just days before the peace talks began, Ms. Machel had personally visited camps for refugees of the violence in the Rift Valley, where a church had been deliberately torched with some 30 women and children inside. After hearing one grandmother's tale of tragedy, Machel and the woman hugged and cried, their foreheads touching.
So, when Machel addresses all the Kenyan negotiators on Jan. 29, her voice now rising with emotion, the room falls silent.
"Your country is bleeding," she tells them. "You need to act."
• • •
In the next five weeks, led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a team of African statesmen and women, known as The Panel of Eminent African Personalities, they achieve what few thought was possible: a cessation of fighting and a power-sharing deal to put Kenya back together again.
Machel's presence, along with Mr. Annan, and former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa, would provide important ballast. Machel and Annan are part of The Elders, a dozen experienced leaders from around the world, set up in 2007 by Mr. Mandela and others to address global problems.
At a time when Kenya's angry "young turks" were whipping up the emotions that fed violence, these African elders had the calming influence of a stern grandparent, in front of whom one doesn't misbehave.
"I came in at a time when there was so much mistrust," recalls Annan in an interview later. "The two blocks had dug in. One felt they had won the elections fair and square, the other maintained 'you stole it.' "
"With that sort of attitude, getting them to come together, and getting them to begin to think of coming together, and ... thinking in terms that we are all Kenyans and we are one Kenya, and we need to work together to put it back together, was not an easy task," he says with a large dose of understatement.
Today, five months later, an uneasy alliance is holding. Even Annan predicted it would take at least a year to get a fully operational government of national unity, especially given the ugly underlying issues of class, ethnicity, and wealth which had set off the crisis. But the fact that Kenya has a government at all shows that international pressure and African-led mediation can work, say experts.
To understand how peace came to Kenya, the Monitor conducted interviews with many of the key Kenyan players on both mediation teams, along with the African statesmen who steered it toward success. This story is based on their memories of the events inside the negotiation room, along with Monitor reporting of the violence that continued to brew outside – a daily reminder to everyone in Kenya of the potential costs of failure.
By the time Annan and his team arrived on Jan. 22, it was not clear how much of Kenya would be left to save. Starting on Saturday evening Dec. 29, when President Mwai Kibaki was declared victor by the Electoral Commission of Kenya and sworn into office an hour later, violence had spread swiftly across areas where the opposition's support was strongest.
Hardest hit was the Rift Valley, the country's breadbasket, where people of all ethnicities came to farm the lands that the white British colonialists had treasured. The violence was brutal, ethnic, and personal. Young men – urged on by inflammatory FM radio stations broadcasting in the Kalenjin language – rampaged from village to village, carrying iron rods, machetes, axes, and even bows with poisoned arrows. Their targets were members of the dominant Kikuyu tribe, President Kibaki's ethnic group. Some were given warnings to leave, others were slaughtered in their homes – or in their church.
A gang of youths set ablaze the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church in Eldoret on Jan. 1. At least 30 people were inside, taking shelter from the tribal clashes. Kenya's leading newspaper, the Daily Nation, reported that the country is on "the verge of a complete meltdown."
Over the next three weeks the death toll would rise to 650.
Annan's arrival doesn't stop the violence right away. But the lifelong diplomat wastes little time. Within two days, he convinces the two sides to negotiate with each other with no preconditions. On the evening of Jan. 24, on national TV, millions of Kenyans see the two opponents, President Kibaki and Raila Odinga, shaking hands and sipping tea.
Over the next two days, as Kibaki and Mr. Odinga assemble their mediation teams, Annan and his team hop into Kenyan military helicopters and tour the Rift Valley's worst affected areas to assess the humanitarian needs. A spasm of violence over the weekend – including 60 murders and the assassination of a newly elected ODM legislator Melitus Mugabe Were – prompts Annan to send the mediators home to calm their grieving communities.
• • •
For his part, Mr. Odinga, the opposition leader, chooses a team of four fiery politicians, led by William Ruto. Only one among them, James Orengo, is an attorney, but the other three represent a cross section of the opposition movement's main power bases, mostly from the Rift Valley. While the ODM party had been confrontational on the streets, in the mediation board room, they would show a more professional side, referring to their counterparts as "my learned friend" or "the honorable gentleman."
President Kibaki, on the other hand, loads his team with lawyers, chief among them his justice minister, Martha Karua. His team would defend the election results based on the Constitution, the rule of law.
The members of each team know their opponents intimately. The relations between these two sides are so entangled that one member of the president's team, Mutula Kilonzo, would take time out from the peace talks to argue a civil case in court for one of the opposition team members, Sally Kosgei.
Together, these eight men and women were Kenya's brightest and most ambitious. And over the next five weeks, their debates on arcane points of constitutional law would form the sophisticated counterpoint to the images of vicious street fighting that were redefining Kenya in the eyes of world.
PART 2: For Kenya, a month of attacks, then quick progress
In the first few days following the Dec. 27 election, many Kenyans didn't realize – or didn't accept – that they had a problem. Horrific ethnic violence – Kalenjins and Luos attacking Kikuyus – flared in the Rift Valley and western Nyanza provinces. But many African academics, aid workers, and politicians in Nairobi predicted that the "disturbances" would last for just a few days, like a teakettle letting off steam.
Ensconced in the State House – the official presidential residence – President Mwai Kibaki continued to insist that the Dec. 27 elections were legitimate and he'd been reelected. International observers called the elections "flawed." The opposition, holed up in their own headquarters (ominously dubbed "the Pentagon"), continued to cry foul, and to urge for peaceful mass action. As each side claimed victory, the country burned.
"I don't know whether this was a fight over principles. This was a fight over power," recalls Martha Karua, a hard-liner in Mr. Kibaki's cabinet. "The election commission clearly declared Kibaki to be the winner, and the loser refused to accept the result, and refused to accept the internationally accepted method for resolving the dispute: going to court."
In the initial aftermath of the elections, no one was talking to former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. His role as chief mediator was the result of three weeks of concerted, behind-the-scenes effort by Kenyan diplomats, businessmen, and civil activists, as well as substantial pressure from the international community.
• • •
In his room at the Serena Hotel, a few days after the Dec. 27 elections, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa is packing his bags to leave. He has spent the past two weeks in Kenya as head of the Commonwealth Group election monitoring mission. The group has reported persistent vote irregularities, casting doubt on the election results. But his work as an electoral observer is done. Mr. Mkapa, with some sadness, is heading home.
Then, there's a knock on his hotel door. It's Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a retired Kenyan general, and Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat, a Kenyan career diplomat, both of whom helped mediate an end to Sudan's 20-year civil war.
"You are not leaving," General Sumbeiywo tells Mkapa. "Now that we have got this problem, you will not leave. You have to get in touch with our leaders" to agree to international mediation.
"We held him hostage in this hotel," Sumbeiywo recalls, with a chuckle. He had no doubt that Kenya needed international intervention to resolve the political impasse. It would start with Mkapa. "What mattered to us was that we wanted to stop the mayhem and we wanted people to talk," he says.
Mkapa agrees to stay. That decision would prove to be a crucial first step to bringing in Annan, and the ultimate peace deal.
Using his credentials both as a former African president and as an election observer, Mkapa starts making phone calls to the diplomatic corps in Nairobi, and briefs John Kufuor, the African Union chairman and president of Ghana.
After the first week, it becomes clearer that the violence will not just peter out on its own. International pressure mounts in earnest. Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice and David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, issue a joint statement appealing for an end to the violence. A parade of African leaders, including Desmond Tutu and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, arrive to urge dialogue. President Kufuor arrives, too. Although the press calls his trip a failure, Mr. Kufuor manages on Jan. 10 to persuade both parties to start political dialogue with the help of a "Panel of Eminent African Personalities" appointed by the African Union.
The panel will be chaired by Annan. He will be joined by the "hotel hostage," Tanzanian President Mkapa, and former South African first lady Graça Machel.
But on the same day, President Kibaki swears in his cabinet. He's reminding everyone that if he negotiates with the opposition, he will do so from a position of strength.
Annan, staying abreast of events from his home in Geneva, packs and heads to the airport on Jan. 15. But he falls ill before his plane leaves, is hospitalized, and diagnosed with the flu. Another set-back. In the week leading up to his eventual arrival on Jan. 22, Kenya's death toll climbs to 1,000. On Jan. 28, the day before Ms. Machel dresses down the negotiators, an opposition parliamentarian is gunned down in his home. The opposition says that it's a political assassination.
Yet even such provocations won't derail the mediators now.
• • •
It's Feb. 1, and the Orchid Room of Nairobi's Serena Hotel is understandably tense. On one side of the table sits Odinga's four-person mediation team, and on the other side sits the four-person team of President Kibaki. Annan is at the head of the table, with a table of experts behind him, passing him notes. Machel and Mkapa – who will aid Annan in the early days of the mediation – are there as well, interjecting their views to keep the two teams focused. A team of note-takers and a technical staffer loaned to Annan sit at the end of the table, opposite Annan.
The Orchid Room – since renamed the "Amani Room" because of its role in the Kenyan peace process (amani means peace in Swahili) – is perfectly suited for the kind of pressure-cooker discussions that will take place here for the next five weeks. At one end of the boardroom is a small, private, walled-in patio where the mediation teams can take their tea breaks. At the other end is a door to the hallway, inevitably crowded with reporters.
Ruto is fiddling with his cellphone, reading text messages from constituents and family members in the Rift Valley, telling him about the spread of violence around Eldoret. Members of the president's team are receiving messages too, as their political supporters urge them to stand firm. Some, victims of attacks, are pleading for fast results.
But it is this tension – a sense of responsibility for the fate of a nation – that provides Annan with his first opportunity for progress. He knows that both sides want the violence to stop.
The discussion is swift and professional. By 7 p.m., the two teams have an two-page agreement on what will be discussed: a call to stop the violence, broad steps to address the humanitarian and political crises, and a negotiation timetable.
"You had four lawyers in that room," recalls an Annan staffer who was present in the mediation, "so Mutula Kilonzo just drafted it in 20 minutes. He said, 'Is this what we have agreed?' and everyone said 'yes,' and that was it."
Annan makes sure the statement is photocopied and released to the media. He knows it's important to reassure the Kenyan public that progress not only is possible, but is happening.
After a weekend break, the two teams meet again on Monday, Feb. 4. This time, success comes even faster. By afternoon, the two teams draft an action plan and public statement for clearing out illegal roadblocks and allowing the passage of humanitarian assistance into the Rift Valley. The two teams even manage to agree to set up a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission to study the violence, and to hold public leaders accountable – including possibly members of the mediation teams themselves.
The one-two punch of these two agreements quells emotions, undermining the young gangs in the Rift Valley and in Nairobi's slums who are behind most of the ethnic attacks.
But this initial progress would also prove to be a false dawn. From this point on, these eight men and women are confronting the core issues that triggered the violence: How Kenyans divide power.
= see csmonitor.com for Part 3 and 4