There will be blood if Kenya stays no country for Luo men

KISUMU, Kenya — Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, Robert, 16, had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That's when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police rescued him. Doctors did some repair work and say he will recover physically, but as he sat in a church shelter for the displaced here in Kisumu in Western Kenya, he seethed with hostility that may never heal.

"When I see Kikuyu shops that have been burned down," he told me, "I feel good inside."

Never again will Robert be friendly with Kikuyu or have anything to do with them; he is now a symbol of the primeval tribal tensions that threaten Kenya's future.

The prime villain is President Mwai Kibaki, who would have been hailed as a hero if he had obeyed the will of the people in the December election. Instead, he — and a cast of thugs around him — appear to have stolen the election, starting a spiral of tribal violence that has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 300,000. Kibaki's intransigence risks the collapse of his country, possibly even civil war.

The man who probably had the election stolen from him, Raila Odinga, is a Luo, as was Barack Obama's Kenyan father. Many Kenyans grimly note that a Luo may become president of the United States before being permitted to become president of Kenya.

Many Kenyans also say that the United States has been a part of the problem. In our desire for stability, we acquiesced in election irregularities in such countries as Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signaling that Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election.

The United States cozied up to Kibaki and initially congratulated him on his "victory."

Since then, the United States has come around and played a helpful role in nudging Kibaki to make concessions, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Kenya on Monday usefully added pressure.

More broadly, the United States has pursued policies in Africa that are akin to our policies in Pakistan, and Kibaki is one of our African Musharrafs. In the interest of short-term stability, we acquiesce in despotic behavior that eventually creates instability. Granted, these are tough balances to strike. But look at Kenya or Pakistan today, and it's clear that we got the balance wrong.

Flying over northern Kenya to Eldoret, you see smoke still rising from some of the countless Kikuyu farms that have been burned to the ground. And here in Kisumu, the arriving Luo tell horrific stories.

"My wife was burned to death with our two children, aged 5 and 1 ½," said a dazed Nicholas Ochieng. "Now I have no wife, no children, no house, no job. I have nothing."

Mary Odhiambo, an aid worker tending to the new arrivals, said one shellshocked woman arrived on a bus still clutching her husband's head, wrapped in newspapers, after a mob had hacked it off and mockingly presented it to her.

"We have people coming in from Kikuyu areas, and they swear that before they die, they have to kill a Kikuyu," Odhiambo said.

If Kibaki does not back down, Kenya will completely blow up. Kofi Annan is working heroically to broker a compromise, and a power-sharing agreement is possible in which Kibaki remains president for a couple of years and Odinga serves as prime minister.

But so far, Kibaki hasn't been willing to make necessary concessions.

"If the talks collapse, there will be an explosion countrywide," Odinga said, adding: "It will be bloodier than before."

Nicholas D. Kristof is a regular columnist for The New York Times.