whats happening in N. Eastern?

Decades of neglect by successive Kenyan regimes, Kenyatta’s, Moi’s and now Kibaki’s means that nobody in authority really knows what is going on in Northern Kenya today. When relief workers have to move with teams of police armed to the teeth to survive, when gunmen break into schools and shoot CHILDREN in the head point blank, when anyone unknown is cut down brutally in broad daylight we have to questions just how much authority the Kenyan government has in North Eastern province? Remember when Moi closed the border with Somali in response to attacks by Somali militia? After a few days basic provisions, such as petrol were running out as it became increasingly obvious that most of the basic goods for North Eastern came from Somali not the other way round. What is behind this week’s atrocities? Ethnic tension? Environmental tension? Historical tension? Is all this talk of an independent Oromo with land taken from Kenya and Ethiopia just talk or is someone out there actively trying? Sending battalions of majeshi into the area is the equivalent of sweeping rubbish under the carpet. We have to look for the root causes and be brave enough to tackle them. This neglect of North Eastern has to stop.

As an aside, when Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace prize many questioned the logic of giving a peace prize to an environmentalist. With people killing each other over water not only in Kenya but across the globe, with massive illegal logging cartels threatening millions of peoples way of life in the Amazon, with the one of the root causes of the ongoing conflict in Congo being the mining of diamonds, the link between the environment and peace because crystal clear don’t you think?