Ethnic Bloodshed Further Stains Kenya’s Image

The attackers came at night, brandishing clubs, machetes and bows. Peter Wachira heard them coming and tried to flee his farm, but not before he was shot in the thigh with an arrow and slashed in the head with a machete.

Wachira, a 30-year-old ethnic Kikuyu, blamed the assault on members of a rival group, the Kalenjins. “I heard them speak the language. . . . I think they attacked because we Kikuyus are hard-working, good farmers and businessmen,” he said from a hospital bed in Kenya’s Rift Valley province. “They want to chase us away so that they can inherit our farms. They cannot take them legally, so they use violence.”

In a nearby bed, Kipkoskei Kerich was nursing machete wounds on his head. He said he was hurt when Kikuyus ambushed a jitney, dragging out and assaulting the Kalenjins aboard. “I don’t know why they attacked me,” said the 45-year-old handyman. “We just bumped into them on the road.”

Since Jan. 10, more than 100 people have been killed and dozens of others injured in this picturesque province in battles between ethnic Kikuyus and Kalenjins.

The outbreak of violence has further threatened Kenya’s lucrative tourism industry, already reeling from weeks of unseasonable heavy rain and flooding; increased incidences of cholera, malaria and the hemorrhagic Rift Valley fever; and fallout from unrest on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast in August that left more than 60 dead.

Tourism, which brought in $465 million last year, is Kenya’s No. 2 source--after tea exports--of badly needed foreign exchange. Officials already estimate the industry has lost $300 million because of its troubles, and many worry that Kenya might be excluded next season from brochures of overseas tour operators. The Rift Valley, about 60 miles from the capital, Nairobi, is home to the Masai Mara game reserve--one of this country’s biggest tourist attractions.

There is also concern that the ethnic bloodshed will scare off foreign investors, imperiling negotiations, which began Monday, with the International Monetary Fund for resumption of a $205-million aid package.

Who and what are to blame for the latest problems? The government, opposition and local leaders are divided but have cited as causes political revenge, ethnic animosity and competition for land.

The violence comes just weeks after President Daniel Arap Moi won a fifth five-year term and his ruling Kenya African National Union held its slim parliamentary majority. Analysts say the situation in the Rift Valley has undermined his promise to leave a legacy of ethnic unity, economic growth and flourishing democracy.

Opposition and religious leaders have accused senior members of Moi’s party--most of whom, like Moi, are Kalenjins--of provoking violence to punish Kikuyus, this nation’s largest ethnic group, for voting against the regime. The Rift Valley has been a Moi stronghold, but Kikuyu support boosted lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party into parliament in the last election; Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu and Democratic Party leader who finished behind Moi, has challenged the president’s victory, asserting that the voting was not free and fair.

Josephat Maina Kinyanjui, 23, voted for the opposition and now believes that he has been punished for it. “I don’t see any other crime I have committed,” he said. His home was torched and he was slashed on the face and hand with a machete by, he says, Kalenjins from the neighborhood. “Now, I’m ready to battle it out with anyone else who attacks me,” he said.

Moi and his supporters in the Rift Valley blame the opposition for the bloodshed, which they say aims to overthrow the government. Moi recently asserted that his opponents are making good on their threat to make Kenya ungovernable--a charge vigorously denied by Kibaki, who noted that it makes no sense for his party to kill its own supporters.

As for the international community, it has reacted with outrage at the Moi regime’s seeming nonchalance, especially as reports circulate that government troops have idly watched assaults and destruction of property without intervening. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, visiting here in advance of President Clinton’s planned Africa tour in March, called on Moi over the weekend to do more to bring peace to the Rift Valley.

Hundreds of Kikuyus have been forced to flee because of clashes, which echo violence that erupted in the region before and after elections in 1992. Scores of frightened families have jammed churches and schools, carrying their meager belongings. Others have lined roads with mounds of produce that they have managed to salvage from their farms.

Still, “We are losing a lot,” said Hosea Njenga, 27, as he struggled to unload stacks of corn he had transported from his farm. “The attackers are now harvesting our maize.”

Like many victims, Njenga said he recognized his assailants--neighbors with whom he had drunk beer just days before. He had been warned that Kikuyus were being targeted for expulsion but had dismissed the threats.

Geoffrey G. Kariuki, who is an activist in the ruling party, noted that mistrust runs high in the Rift Valley. In his own district, he noted, 60 people were killed in recent raids but no one has been arrested. “Because of tribal hatred,” he said, the Kikuyus and Kalenjins “don’t trust the government. They don’t think the government will do anything to help them.”

He also argues that land disputes are feeding the ethnic feuding. After Kenya gained its independence in 1963, many Kikuyu farmers suddenly could buy land in the Rift Valley from white settlers, who had ousted the Kalenjin from their original pastoral communities in the area. There have been property disputes ever since.

And “now,” said Francois Grignon, a fellow at the Nairobi-based French Institute of Research in Africa, “there seems to be a growing trend by Kalenjin people that it is time for grabs, because it is the last five years of Moi. They feel, ‘We can do anything we want, and we won’t be punished.’ ”