10th anniversary of East African embassy bombings

This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine, Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

Yesterday, there were commemorations in East Africa to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

My father was driving me to the bank that morning when US National Public Radio broke the story of the bombings. I remember being worried because I knew a friend of mine and her mother were visiting Kenya at the time. Apparently, they had been in the embassy for some reason left something like half an hour before the attacks. She said they were so close that they heard the explosion from their taxi but had no idea what it was until later on.

This was effectively the first al-Qaeda attack on US interests; though it's important to remember that of the hundreds who died, almost all were Africans. US President Bill Clinton responded by flexing American military muscle and bombing an aspirin factory in Sudan. It was yet another example of US military action abroad being based puffed up machismo and the desire to 'do something' rather than rational decision making and the desire to do something that actually made sense.

Some regional press accounts on the anniversary...

-The East African Standard had some first hand accounts of what happened in Nairobi on that day.


-The Kenyan Nation has a photo essay.

-The Nation also mentions how the present Kenyan government has promised more vigilance in dealing with potential terrorism.

-Tanzania's Daily News has an account of the ceremony in Dar es Salaam.

Things fall apart

This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel, Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

There's one thing that's become eminently clear during the last few days: neither Mwai Kibaki nor Raila Odinga deserved to serve as dogcatcher, let alone president of the Republic of Kenya.

Over 300 people have been killed in post-election violence. And the toll mounts daily.

Odinga and his party accused Kibaki, the incumbent, of stealing the election. Kibaki's light-speed inauguration to pre-empt legal challenges only gave further credence to the accusations that his 'victory' was a fraud.

Odinga and his followers were little better. Odinga chose to inflame the already volatile situation by comparing the election to the rape of Kenyans. Meanwhile, his supporters did something far worse: they torched a church where dozens of suspected Kibaki supporters had taken shelter. 30 people were killed in the blaze.

The massacre brought back eerie memories of the genocide in nearby Rwanda, where such atrocities were frequent.

The two parties traded charges of genocide.

Certainly, the election should be re-run. As National Public Radio noted:

The head of the country's electoral commission, Samuel Kivuitu, said he had been pressured by both sides to announce the results quickly - and perhaps wrongly. The country's oldest newspaper, The Standard, on Wednesday quoted Kivuitu as saying, "I do not know whether Kibaki won the election."

But that is no excuse for plunging the country toward the abyss.

The ethnic communities have lived in peace with each other for decades. Intermarriages are common. The only time there's ever been any problems have been during elections. They've been repeatedly betrayed by their misleaders.

Nearly every country that borders Kenya (Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia) has suffered through brutal civil war and/or genocide in the last quarter century. Despite these cautionary lessons, Kibaki and Odinga seem far too eager to risk this horror in order to get/keep the intoxicating drug called power.

And sadly, far too many of their fellow citizens seem willing to kill and die for these 'men' who have shown beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are traitors to the Kenyan nation.