The steady deterioration of political and inter- community conditions in Kenya is reaching alarming proportions over a month after Mwai Kibaki returned to power in flawed and disputed presidential elections. At least 850 people have died and 250,000 have been driven or have fled from their homes. Looting and vandalism have drastically disrupted the country's comparatively well-developed industrial and transport systems, putting 400,000 out of work. Food inflation tops 40 per cent, tourism is collapsing and Kenya's role as a regional economic hub in East Africa is unravelling fast.
It is vital that the talks now under way to resolve the political impasse be brought rapidly to a conclusion if a much more ugly scenario is to be avoided. The situation is indeed "threatening to escalate to catastrophic levels", as UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon told the African Union summit in Addis Ababa yesterday. The summit will necessarily be dominated by this crisis. Other African leaders, especially neighbouring Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Sudan, cannot afford to let it deteriorate further. The systematic pattern of ethnic cleansing pitting different tribal groups against one another in mixed communities brings a sinister new dimension, as does the murder of two opposition politicians this week.
Underlying the communal tension are long-standing and unresolved conflicts over land, wealth, inequality and power in Kenya since it became independent from the British 44 years ago. Violence has been particularly intense in the rich and fertile Rift Valley, where the best land was distributed to Kikuyu farmers by Kenya's first president Jomo Kenyatta when British settlers left. Ever since then the relative wealth and status enjoyed by Kikuyus under successive presidents have been resented by other tribal groups, alongside growing social inequalities. The disparities were strongly reinforced in Mr Kibaki's first presidential term, during a period of rapid economic growth. Opposition groups hoped to reverse those trends by winning December's elections. Their frustration over the flawed presidential result which they insist was fraudulent boiled over when Mr Kibaki was sworn in; it was all the more intense because they clearly won the parallel parliamentary elections.
This crisis started politically and must be so resolved. Mr Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga have been very reluctant to meet and have only just agreed to intensive talks under former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Increasingly events are going out of their control, determined by local cycles of violent revenge. That can probably only be stopped now by a powersharing arrangement based on a compromise agreement about new elections, a constitutional overhaul and a commitment to land reform and economic regeneration. Such an agreement must be reached by Kenyan leaders themselves, with the help of other Africans and sympathetic pressure from the international community.