The Kofi Annan-lead negotiations between PNU and ODM have made so little progress for the last couple of weeks that Annan, right, has announced a time-out. And while many have held their breath in hopeful anticipation that a political solution will be found, ever larger parts of the people are losing patience and are arming and organising themselves in tribal armies, ready to strike. (28-FEB-08)

This article has been written by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

The opposition had set today as their deadline for a negotiated solution. The demonstrations announced for yesterday were called off at the very last moment. Kofi Annan’s personal talks with Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga lead to the indefinite postponement of the protests. But the people won’t accept to wait much longer. Soon they will be on the streets, fighting it out with each other, regardless of what anyone tells them. To the BBC, Annan describes the situation as ‘very dangerous’.

That’s 1500 dead, says the police. That’s gross underreporting, says IMLU
If the riots reignite, they are commonly expected to claim many more lives than they have so far. At the moment, the death toll, according to the police, is approximately 1500. But the human rights organisation Independent medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), who has been carrying out post mortems on many of the victims in various parts of the country, reminds that there is a severe problem of under-reporting. Many victims are buried without ever reaching a morgue or being registered as dead anywhere. Meanwhile, the number of internally displaced keeps rising. Earlier estimates at about 300.000 should probably be doubled.

From looters to rebels – now with a cause
Over the last few days, the presence of riot police in the streets of Nairobi has increased significantly. Ongoing peace processes leading to a relative state of peace elsewhere in the region – including Uganda, Southern Sudan and Somalia – make for a surplus of light arms that is now flowing into Kenya. AK-47s are now easily available in the capital for no more than 40 USD, apparently in particular in Eastleigh, a predominantly Somali suburb. Young men, who in the first weeks of the riots were simply looting for individual gain, now feel that they are in it for a cause from being mobilised collectively into more organised militias.

From cattle rustling to killing of people
IMLU’s post-mortem investigations of victims confirm that in the rural areas, pangas and machetes, spears, bows and arrows are far more common. But even if the arsenal of weapons available in the rural areas might not be quite as lethal as the large number of guns that are now flowing into the bigger cities, it is more than effective enough for the majority of lives to have been claimed there, and in particular in the Rift Valley. And now, the armament and mobilisation processes going on at all sides of this ethnically rather complex conflict is at least as intense there as in Nairobi and other urban areas. Among the pastoral nomades of these provinces, fighting over cattle, access to grazing land etc. is nothing new. What is new, is that the skills and equipment accumulated for this purpose is being used for quite another, namely to kill people at a much larger scale. And no part of Kenya has been entirely spared.

-Kenyans, get your guns
Criminal gangs are also taking advantage of the situation, with the so-called Mungikis, otherwise ruling some of Nairobi’s bigger slums, catching most of the attention again for its alleged supervision to favoured groups only in how to form well organised militias, and provision of actual training of those. Adding to the intensification of the conflict at national level comes the message from neighbouring presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda that a military intervention is required. This, it seems, they say for two reasons, the most obvious being that their two countries are getting ever more adversely affected and that they want a quick end to the conflict so as to get their own countries back on track, the other that both have long records of reaching for the gun whenever in trouble. Prior to becoming presidents, they were both professional soldiers. As such, they know from experience that guns always speak with clarity and authority. More than any amount of talks, they trust their armies to get it right and keep it that way.