An Update on Kenya

This update on Kenya is brought to IRWatch by our from Senior Correspondent Carl M. (who is too lazy to set up his own Blogger account).

Today I attended a seminar on Kenya's political climate. It was "headlined" by one of the few female parliamentary candidates that ran in 07. She talked a lot about the post-election violence, as well as highlighting the problems facing women in the country's political arena.

She was, as you were, disgruntled by western media outlets labeling of the "tribal violence". Her stance on the issue was that it was, at it's core, political protests against corruption. Violence to this and other issues, such as land use, was encouraged, and even paid for by tribal elders. This lead to much of the violence being along tribal lines, but not for tribal differences, rather it was over land use issues that the government has failed to resolve.

There were numerous cases of "warring" tribes taking each other in from the violence.

Another speaker pointed out that half the deaths in Kenya were caused by police in response to the protests. Live rounds were regularly used by riot police the moment anti-government protests turned violent. I do not know the source of her numbers, but the scenario is quite believable.

Concerning technology in Africa, one of the main reasons the populace believed they were robbed of the election is the widespread use of texting. Landlines are fairly rare, but cell phones are apparently quite common. Local election results were posted at each polling place. This information was spread through texting, and it was widely held by the populace that the challenging candidate won by a large margin. When results were delayed and eventually announced in favor of the incumbent, the protests that eventually turned violent began.

An Addendum on NATO

I couldn't find a place to put this in my previous post (the Past and Future of NATO) on NATO that was going in my final thesis, but I found this interesting nonetheless. This is from Dr. Nile Gardiner of the Heritage foundation, and I have heard this slogan repeated on more than one occasion to berate NATO members who are not willing to get into the heavier fighting in Aghanistan.

"NATO is a war-fighting alliance, not a glorified peacekeeping group."
(The NATO Riga Summit: Time for Backbone in the Alliance)

Is it? Is it really? It started as a defensive organization, and since after the Cold War when it started actually intervening in conflicts, two of the three were definite peacekeeping missions. I really hate bumper sticker catch phrases because they rarely if ever have any basis in reality.

The Past and Future of NATO

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has little to do with international politics in East Asia, it would be amiss for a review of present day US-Russian relations not to mention NATO. Even aside from the aforementioned European missile defense, which NATO actually just approved (NATO Endorses European Missile Shield), Russia is frustrated by NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the United States is eager to gain more allies willing to commit troops to the war in Afghanistan. But why is Russia so frustrated by NATO's expansion, and why is the United States concerned with NATO membership when NATO is not the possible source for troops in Afghanistan?

In the late 1940s, NATO was created with the United States in Western Europe as a regional counterbalance to the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, it was a purely defensive alliance; throughout the Cold War it did not have a single military engagement. In fact it was not until three years after the fall of the Soviet Union, that NATO entered into its first armed conflict, in the final months of the conflict in Bosnia. In 1999, NATO was called upon again and quickly ended the war in Kosovo. In 2001, NATO agreed that the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States constituted an attack on a member nation, and in 2003 NATO took command of the war in Afghanistan. In addition, throughout the late 1990s, Eastern European countries were invited and began to become members of the alliance. Not coincidentally, tensions between NATO and the Russian Federation rose during this period as well.

But why does modern non-communist Russia so dislike NATO? A member of the Brookings Institution puts it this way: to Russia "NATO is a four letter word" (James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose p183). Russia feels this way because of a combination of factors: NATO was originally formed as opposing Russia, and has very recently become more militaristic, and is expanding into Russia's strategic back yard of Eastern Europe.

A true rethinking of the concepts behind NATO need to be considered. This is not to say that the United States should bow to Russia's concerns, but just recognize that the security interests of Russia and the United States are not mutually exclusive. Compromise on this issue could do a great deal to help the United States with its other issues of contention with Russia.