Pakistan's newspaper of record, Dawn, perhaps inhibited by the Musharraf administration, tribal interests in North Waziristan, or terrorists, or all three and perhaps unknown others, credits "Our Correspondent" for its report, which starts this way:
"Militants retrieved and buried on Wednesday the bodies of 12 foreigners who had been killed in a missile attack on a residential compound in the Khushali Toorikhel area of North Waziristan on Monday night" [1].
I intend no criticism of Dawn as regards keeping safe the identity and person of its correspondent.
Reuters reports a possibly drone-launched U.S. missile striking an al Qaeda safehouse in North Waziristan on Monday. [1]
In addition to the story resembling a 2006 winter event reported by BBC News [5], the latest seems to have a run-up to it, with Voice of America reporting on the topic January, Dawn running AP coverage on the 29th, and USA Today and Reuters, top blogged citations for "U.S. strike Pakistan", continuing to raise the curtain.
In his classic on reporting war, The First Casualty, Phillip Knightly draws on Senator Hiram Johnson's epigrammatic statement of 1917, "The first casualty when war comes is truth" [6], for his professional skeptic's view of the matter from the "Charge of the Light Brigade" to the end of America's Vietnam era.
The same may apply here.
Elements repeated:
1. Denial of strike confirmation by both Pakistani and U.S. officials to this point;
2. On-the-ground reports of a white airplane flying over the area of the incident;
3. Resident claims that casualties were all civilian;
3a. Resident claims that armed men surrounded "a" or "the" burning house, preventing immediate inspection or / and, later, funeral attendance (suggesting casualties were other than local).
It seems no one who isn't the press seems to like the press in any of the world's conflict zones, but this is one of those days where it would behoove state governments, tribes, and Al Qaeda to provide safe passage to journalists and let them report freely and at length the facts as they find them and from whatever position in the conflict.
Censorship and propaganda both produce universal mistrust of governments and media alike, and neither serve the promotion of freedom, if that is of interest to any given reader, or integrity, which should be of keen interest to political and religious leaders alike.
No reliable reportage: no reliable image of any sort of trustworthy reality for anyone, and that probably including defense intelligence entities all around.
"What you fear is a downward spiral of violence, of attacks and counter-attacks, and counter-counter-attacks on a tribal and ethnic basis which then becomes very hard to stop," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told reporters in Brussels." [4]
What fascinates me and should horrify you: having reduced complex economic, political, and social conditions to "my people vs. your people," Kenya has entered warfare's payback stage: counter-attack by Kikuyu youths whose "people" (the skein of so many millions of unknown relations whose lives up to know have been defined by other than ancestral blood) against, symbolically--except the bodies are real enough--those who first set out across the Rift Valley with machetes and matches.
Even from my one favored source, Reuters, the story would seem a hard one to tell with some other spin, say as an abberation in global politics or as "overplayed" and encouraged by media coverage.
Incumbent neglect and opposition ambition have turned a set of economic and social challenges common around the globe into tribal warfare that would be immune to political administrative process were it not for the adult and moderate people of Kenya themselves who are able to perceive what the manner of democratic politics has done to their country and through media, music, and personal action work harder than the street to save their beloved country.
"Dozens of riot police kept the groups apart as they threw rocks at each other outside the Lake Naivasha Country Club." [1]
The observation appears midway down the filing by Tim Cocks and David Lewis, but it's in keeping with all I've read and seen (in media) of war over the past year: one may wonder whether oddness helps define war as much as violence.
Things get displaced in wars.
Old neighbors throw rocks at one another.
The country club, which course and clubhouse must have brought in some money, starts to look a pretty good place for a battle.
This is the best, most succinct paragraph I have yet to read on the origins of the conflict:
"The violence since Kenya's Dec. 27 election now has a momentum of its own, with cycles of killing and revenge linked to land and wealth disputes tied to British colonial policy that politicians have revived during most of Kenya's elections."
Most of the world, when it has a choice, wants its politicians to "work things out", bring in trade (economic development), and allay disease and hunger.
By way of comparison, Kenyans seems to have perhaps accepted a long course of social neglect (of urban and rural poverty) by the incumbent Administration and increased ethnic baiting (in the United States, the near similar process would be called racist) by the opposition.
Today's reported violence seems to differ from last week's in its adding to the invention of an excuse for conflict and mob mayhem institutional discipline on the opposition's part and the taking of defensive measures all around.
Last week, no one really knew who was killing whom.
I in 2006 and then Anne and I here in 2008 really enjoy movies, so much so that a week rarely passes without firing up the "home theater" (a standard JVC television and an Onkyo driven 7.1 "surround sound" speaker system enjoyed quite from the comforts of a big ol' brown leather sofa) and catching something usually pretty good.
Here's the list from the start of my Netflix subscription:
Full Metal Jacket 01/25/08 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 01/24/08 Key Largo 01/15/08 The Lives of Others 01/14/08 Is Paris Burning? 01/08/08 Anna Karenina 01/04/08 Casablanca 01/04/08 The Big Sleep 01/04/08 Requiem for a Heavyweight 12/18/07 Gone With the Wind: Collector's Edition: Disc 2 12/18/07 Gone with the Wind: Collector's Edition 12/18/07 Around the World in 80 Days: Special Edition 12/13/07 Around the World in 80 Days: Special Edition: Disc 2 12/13/07 The Shoes of the Fisherman 12/10/07 La Strada: Special Edition 11/30/07 The Blue Angel: Disc 1 (2-Disc Series) 11/21/07 The Blue Angel: Disc 2 (2-Disc Series) 11/20/07 Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring 11/19/07 The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo 11/06/07 Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge 10/22/07 The Man Who Would Be King 10/10/07 Born Into Brothels 10/10/07 The Seventh Seal 10/08/07 Samurai Trilogy 3: Duel at Ganryu Island 10/03/07 Kurosawa: A Documentary on the Acclaimed Director 10/03/07 Akira Kurosawa's Dreams 09/11/07 Rambo III: Ultimate Edition 09/06/07 Ran (Kurosawa) 08/23/07 Throne of Blood 08/23/07 The Wild One 07/18/07 Rashomon 07/18/07 Zorba the Greek: Bonus Material 07/12/07 Zorba the Greek 07/09/07 Seven Samurai 06/26/07 House of Sand and Fog 06/21/07 Bonnie and Clyde 06/13/07 Munich 06/06/07 Das Boot 06/01/07 Nosferatu the Vampyre 05/16/07 Splendor in the Grass 05/09/07 Diamonds of War: Africa's Blood Diamonds 04/19/07 Rebel Without a Cause 04/19/07 Nashville 04/03/07 On the Waterfront 04/03/07 To Kill a Mockingbird 03/27/07 Blood Diamond 03/27/07 Under Fire 03/23/07 Salvador 03/19/07 Heaven's Gate 03/14/07 The Last Waltz 03/12/07 Tess 02/27/07 Lord of War 02/27/07 Marie Antoinette 02/21/07 War Photographer 02/12/07 Short Cuts 02/07/07 No Direction Home: Bob Dylan: Disc 2 (2-Disc Series) 01/24/07 Taxi Driver 01/24/07 No Direction Home: Bob Dylan: Disc 1 (2-Disc Series) 01/24/07 Schindler's List 01/17/07 Apocalypse Now Redux 01/17/07 Schindler's List: Disc 2 01/17/07 Michael Collins 01/16/07 Gandhi 01/04/07 The Last Picture Show 01/04/07 Summer of '42 01/03/07 Raging Bull 12/27/06 Midnight Cowboy 12/27/06 The Sacrifice / Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky 12/26/06 Brokeback Mountain 12/19/06 Jarhead 12/13/06 The Constant Gardener 12/12/06 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 12/07/06 City of God 12/07/06 Amadeus 11/24/06 The Phantom of the Opera: Special Edition 11/20/06 Bukowski: Born into This 11/20/06 Memoirs of a Geisha 11/15/06 Capote 11/15/06
"We have vowed that for every Kikuyu killed in Eldoret, we shall kill two Kalenjins who are living in Nakuru town." [1]
Never mind who said it (but feel welcome to read the Reuters AlertNet filing by Andrew Cawthorne and Helen Nyambura-Mwaura): almost overnight, plain murder one has made the transition from hooliganism to an act of war and extended the invitation for tribal retribution without end.
For what?
Kenya's opposition claims long institutionalized discrimination and nepotism on the part of the country's Kikuyu tribe.
The Kikuyu would well note that a good many, if not most, suffer along with everyone else.
My formulation: neglect of social issues on the government's part + enormous ego and irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric on the opposition's = gang-level violence as a function of inspired public mistrust, loss of confidence in government, and fear.
Kenya may well get ugly as public policy issues that should revolve around administrative and legislative concerns with rural poverty and urban blight become instead separate personal matters involving families and, naturally enough, the universal want of justice and vengeance.
Instead of having worked issues in the boardrooms, courts, legislatures, and at the polls, Kenyans may now feel forced to address the same with fire and steel and the most limited public vision.
The longer opposition leader Raila Odinga and President Kibaki argue between themselves, the more concern for defense and security migrates away from government and its court and military systems. Such weakness may then inspire the rise of personalities less representative of the common national interest and inclined to pursuits in line with up to now fringe ideological or personal gains.
Whether out of Kenya or the Gaza Strip, there's a "root cause" for violence motivated by political rhetoric and propaganda.
It is irresponsible, mendacious, and vindictive language.
In Kenya, opposition leader Raila Odinga chose willfully to launch three days of "protests" knowing each day would spark and see violence distilled out of an atmosphere bent on producing just such grief.
While the less articulate got into the business of hacking strangers apart with machete [3], Odinga seems to have been borrowing a page from Martin Luther King, a champion of nonviolent civil disobedience, to mouth the "judged by the content of their character" clause.
Where one cannot "play the race card", the tribal one will do, I guess.
Out of Gaza: children using their chests as placards to entreat Israel's mercy in its latest siege of the Hamas-controlled strip in response to unrelenting rocket attacks against its people, Jews and Arabs (20 percent of Israel's population) alike.
Are the children not told about the rockets launched against Israel?
Are they unaware of the peace brewing by Fatah's hand in the West Bank?
One may wonder too whether any child (or adult) in Gaza has sufficient freedom from intimidation to protest the protest, to refrain from the support of Hamas, to argue for the more secular position held by Fatah, which seems lately to have engaged in talks with Israel and the United States without apology, just across the rocky and sandy way, .
If disease, illiteracy, and war travel together, I'm sure language keeps them so.
In several of the world's conflict zones, whether children, functionally literate adults, or adults whose information menu has been intimidated or narrowed or both, language that passes blame to The Other Tribe or The Great Satan (and, always, The Jewish Lobby) finds little countermeasure in the established press.
Sideways (my ways) comments feel "iffy", but what can, may, should one do when others lie outright or through omission (and at great, cumbersome lengths as well)?
The live and reporting press may presume not to judge: it only purports to illustrate in words or through photography what it has witnessed.
Fair enough.
However one may ask any number of public interest groups, pundits, scholars: where are you?
Why do you let so much lethal rhetoric fly through the air without comment?
Worse, and back to Kenya's Raila Odinga who seems to want some kind of affirmative action justice to rise out of the pools of blood that may be associated with identification with his political stance: what do you think you're doing other than getting your people killed by sewing the seeds that encourage violence and producing the circumstances that let it breath like fire?
While one may understand Kenya's drift into division, one also may have expected the country's top politicians to have hammered out course corrections off the streets long before social issues had cooked themselves into the perfect tinder for war.
Of democracy, it has been said that "people get the leadership they deserve."
People, wherever you are, and this especially if your neighborhood has become host to violent conflict, you deserve much, much better.
It comes as no surprise that Kenya's seemingly model democracy and economy have given way to fighting in the streets. Reuters reports 620 dead and 250,000 displaced so far [1].
Although the lion's share of brutality has come out of the opposition camps, government police have in this past day fired tear gas into protesting crowds as well as opened fire on looters. Opposition leader Raila Odinga claims seven dead from government arms.
"Raila was placed under house arrest for seven months after being suspected of collaborating with the plotters of a failed coup attempt against President Daniel Arap Moi in 1982. Raila was charged with treason and was detained without trial for six years." [2]
Wikipedia's short biography signals where violence gets its spark.
The Human Rights Watch report on Kenya around 1992 tells more about where it has gotten its fuel. [3]
However, the blog Proud Kikuyu Woman provides quite another point of view: the Kikuyu tribe, no less one may suppose than Jews, America and other convenient scapegoats are just not the problem.
While Kenya wrestles with "tribalism" and its politicians with their own and each other's huge egos, solutions to the political, practical, and social challenges of the country will be found elsewhere, and specifically, frankly, in the development of programs developed on the impartial and equal distribution both of common misery and helpful privilege.
Between President Roosevelt's "New Deal" and Reagan's "Devolution" (as I like to call it), America, and not alone among democracies, produced its share of "help out" and "get equal" programs, from the Civilian Conservation Corps, which produced jobs for young men, including my father, during the Great Depression to the still boppin' SBA 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business fleet. Our politicians, however bloated their rhetoric, have often succeeded in essentially paying ahead of mob violence and violent revolution.
Of course, the U.S. has its own ground rules plus the extraordinary fortune of both having become a heterogeneous and mobile society, spreading both families and, one might say, less attached people of every inclination and origin across the continent, and then, with the affluence that comes of peace, of having also addressed its issues through multiple administrative, legal, and political processes.
We have some hideous problems--e.g., about 51,000 missing adults (but no indictment of the state in that) and 3 million homeless souls (for which state involvement should be better than it is)--but we seem also to have plenty to do in the way of endeavor than to explode (from which quarter?) into mob-drive mayhem, pillage, and rape.
Here's a toast: I raise my coffee cup to next generation of leadership in Kenya (Pakistan too) with hopes that those latent mid-40-somethings will see disease, hunger, education, housing, electric power, transportation, shipping, agriculture, natural resources conservation and preservation, and security as problems solvable by constituents bonded more by common good will than by parochial and personal vendetta.
