Warning that violence in Kenya could spiral out of control, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced plans to visit the country, where more than 800 people have already lost their lives in intensifying ethnic clashes triggered by the aftermath of recent elections. Speaking to reporters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Mr. Ban called on the Kenyan people to “stop the killings and end the violence now, before it is too late.”

Rebels in Chad are advancing from the east of the country towards the capital, N'Djamena, after seizing a strategic central town, officials say. Armed forces have gone to intercept a column of 300 rebel vehicles, advancing along the main road to the capital.

HURINET-Uganda is concerned that blatant acts of impunity and violations of human rights by the state have persisted at the on set of 2008. Ugandans continue to be denied their inalienable right to enjoy basic civil and political rights. Further HURINET-U is concerned about the plunder and bloodletting in neighboring Kenya following the disputed presidential elections that were held in December 2007.

Somalia's interior minister Muse Nor Amin said on Wednesday that the allied Somali-Ethiopian forces have left some of their key bases inside the capital, Mogadishu by a government order facilitate the displaced people to return to their homes in the city. Speaking in a press conference in Baidao, the country's southwest city, Mr. Nor has described the withdrawal by the troops as a road map of bringing people's freedom back and ending the military presence in civilian areas.

In a question and answer letter, Ali Mazrui and David Ohito grapple with the question of whether Kenya is heading toward a civil war.

Dear Prof Mazrui,

The latest wave of violence is threatening the country. In Nakuru the problem of ethic violence has emerged. Kikuyus are being attacked over land issues as historical injustices become the new phase of protest.

Kibaki insists he was duly elected and sworn in and any election dispute should go to court as spelled out in the Constitution.

Raila Odinga insists he is not going to a court full of Kibaki's appointees. The formula to a peaceful resolution remains elusive. what is your take on this?

I agree with your predictions that many African Heads of States may have saved their countries from civil war.

In Your opinion how far do you think will the International community wait before serious intervention other than mere statements? Is it good to impose sanctions economic, travel bans to Kenya?

Are there any options the West, US, EU, UK, and even Asia can take to help save Kenya from being a failed state?

Kofi Annan watched and acted too little too late as Rwanda degenerated into genocide. There was little international intervention. He himself later said he acted too slow too late while he was UN Secretary General. Is history repeating itself here? Can Kofi Annan recommend faster options to salvage Kenya?

Would you consider giving your proposals to Kofi Annan for a way forward and what would those options for a solution be?

Give any remarks that would help hold Kenya together without degenerating into genocide or civil strife.

Thank you.

David Ohito

Dear Ndugu Ohito:

In answer to your questions, I have lived long enough to know how civil wars begin in developing countries. I never expected there would be a civil war in Northern Uganda which would last twenty years, and unleash untold suffering and brutality. It has still not fully ended.

When the Sudanese civil war was ending in the South, who would have predicted another civil war in Darfur? Ethiopia has had a variety of civil conflicts, the latest involving ethnic Somalis in the Ogaden. The brutalities of the Sierra Leonean civil war took everybody by surprise.

Can such a bloody breakdown happen in Kenya? I am beginning to be truly fearful. What was once unthinkable is no longer inconceivable. While north of the Sahara the triggers of conflict are often religious, south of the Sahara they tend to combine ethnicity, power rivalry and economic deprivation.

As soon as casualties of a conflict reach a thousand dead, several thousand injured and at least a hundred thousand displaced, speedy action is needed to contain the explosion. A mini-civil war could be in the making. Kenyans and the international community cannot afford to be complacent.

Representatives of the African Union, the European Union, the United States, religious bodies, former African Heads of State, and Kofi Annan have approached the two sides of the Kenya conflict in terms of persuasion and the quest for a compromise. We now need more pressure and threats from the international community.

Initially the threats should be targeted at the elite, rather than the general population. Withholding economic aid would hurt the wider population, but suspending Kenya's membership of the African Union and the Commonwealth would deprive us of credentials to sit at the summit meetings, or meetings of foreign ministers, of such international organizations. Specific members of both the government and the opposition could be deprived of Visas to the western world if they are identified as extremists against the search for solutions.

Many members of the Kenyan elite also have Bank accounts abroad. The international community could threaten to freeze such bank accounts if there is no effort to solve the Kenya crisis.

Normally, the international community does not try to intervene in Africa until the problem is truly catastrophic. That has been the situation in Congo-Kinshasa, in Rwanda, Darfur and in Somalia. Kenya is a situation of trying to prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. There is still time - but not a lot of time to avert an explosion.

Kofi Annan is trying his best, but he needs help in the form of massive political pressure on both sides. If mediation is not working, it may be time to threaten specific international sanctions, beginning with elite-focused threats of consequences.

What is at stake is not just the political stability of Kenya. It is also the economic viability of Eastern Africa as a whole. Kenya's economy has vibrations of region-wide consequences. How can we avert a region-wide catastrophe?

We are still far from a civil war. But our leaders should start discussing how to secure our borders against gun-running and importation of weapons. The border with Somalia especially needs to be secured, but without keeping out Somali refugees. Our leaders may also have to consider whether or not it is time to seek international help for peacekeeping in the Rift Valley. The situation is grave. Have we declared a state of emergency in the Rift Valley?

Yours sincerely,
Ali A. Mazrui

* Ali Mazrui is Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Binghamton University, State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, USA and Chancellor, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Thika and Nairobi Kenya.

* David Ohito? is a Senior Reporter?THE STANDARD?Nairobi, Kenya

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Despite a lingering landmine threat, families who years ago fled fighting in Senegal’s southern Casamance region are slowly trying to return to their home villages. But a lack of water – for drinking and for building homes – is keeping many away. With some villages abandoned for 15 years, wells have collapsed or are full of debris. Entire communities have been swallowed up in dense bush, and homes and other buildings which are mostly made of mud-brick have been wiped out.

A report issued by the outgoing AU Commission Chairman, Alpha Oumar Konare, said anti-government militias in the country had spread their tentacles to less violent places - Middle and Lower Juba. The militias are taking advantage of the transitional government's inability to deploy troops to all the regions. Its actions are calculated to destabilize the country and in the process weaken the government.

"We cannot stop life for the sake of two people who are not in agreement" said a twenty-three year old Kenyan woman in Nairobi. The two men in question - Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga - both claim to have been elected president in the national vote on 27 December 2007. The incumbent Kibaki was sworn into a second term of office, and Odinga publicly challenges the legitimacy of the vote count.

Fighters loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general, have signed a peace deal with the government of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and an armed tribal group. Joseph Kabila, the DRC president, attended the signing in Goma, the capital of eastern North Kivu province, which has suffered heavy fighting in recent months. The accord on Wednesday followed two weeks of negotiations.

Ethiopia has dismissed a "virtual" demarcation of its border with Eritrea, just a day after Asmara accepted the move by an independent boundary commission. The two nations have been deadlocked in a dispute over their 1,000km border since a 2002 decision by the Hague-based commission gave the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea.

A man accused of co-ordinating atrocities in Darfur has been named as a senior adviser to Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president. Washington says that Musa Hilal is the leader of the Janjawid Arab militia blamed for much of the violence in the western province. The UN has imposed a travel ban on him for his alleged role in the atrocities.

Heavy rain is forecast and floodwaters in Mozambique are likely to rise again, the international anti-poverty charity ActionAid has warned. Water levels in the Zambezi valley could rise above the peak they reached on 10 January, the agency said, and 200,000 people could be affected if the heavy rain forecast for Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique from 26 January materialises.

A month after its disputed presidential election, Kenya remains deeply divided and unstable. Politically motivated killings, hackings and gang rapes continue in the towns and in volatile country districts. The economy is faltering. The latest bigwig to attempt to mediate between the government of President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga is a former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who arrived in Nairobi on January 22nd.

On Jan. 7, military forces from the Sudanese government opened fire on a convoy of peacekeepers in Darfur. Although the government denies that the attack was intentional, it has thrown into question the capability of UNAMID, the joint U.N.-African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in the region, to keep the peace. "Right now, the mission is extremely vulnerable," says Sam Ibok, chief AU negotiator for Darfur told IPS.

The UN refugee agency has welcomed a peace agreement signed this week by rival warring groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but warned that the accord would not solve all the problems immediately. UNHCR attended the conference and witnessed the signing Wednesday in Goma, capital of the troubled North Kivu province. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres had earlier said in a message to the conference that the gathering "represents a big step in the search for a lasting peace."

Distrust of the Sudanese government due to a string of broken promises is the biggest obstacle to planned talks to end the five-year-old conflict, the top U.S. diplomat in Sudan said. U.S. Charge D'Affaires Alberto Fernandez said a political crisis over stalled implementation of Sudan's separate north-south peace deal and other unfulfilled commitments would directly affect Darfur peace talks due in the coming months.

The Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has stressed the “historic” importance of the war crimes trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor in signalling an end to impunity, even at the highest level. Mr. Taylor is facing 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law – including mass murder, mutilations, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers – for his role in the decade-long civil war that engulfed Sierra Leone, which borders Liberia. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

The number of people displaced by recent flooding in southern Africa has nearly doubled in less than a week from 70,000 to more than 120,000, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said. Unusually early torrential rains in the Zambezi river basin led to widespread flooding in Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe in recent weeks.

Secure access to land is a crucial factor in the eradication of hunger and poverty. Providing secure access to land is frequently not easy, and it is particularly complex in situations following violent conflicts. Getting the answer right can go directly to the matter of achieving sustainable peace. Addressing emergency humanitarian needs after a conflict requires finding places for people to live in the short-term under conditions that provide safety for them and which do not threaten the rights to land of others.

As Kenya counts the human and material cost of the political violence, hospitals are reporting an increase in reported rapes during the immediate post-election period, spurring the government and health organisations to find ways to treat these cases as well as protect the displaced from further incidents of sexual violence.