In a tiny, airless room in the wrong part of downtown Nairobi, three men spend their days sitting on a single mattress behind curtains, iron bars and a door they have arranged to have padlocked on the outside. One, 29-year-old Ahmed, says the trio is hiding from Kenya’s antiterrorism police, though he adds that their only crime is being Somali. For months now, police have been rounding up what the U.N. says will be an eventual 100,000 Somali refugees in Eastleigh — the dirt-road, Somali-dominated neighborhood in the east of the Kenyan capital — and trucking them to camps in remote North Eastern province. Those camps, maintained by foreign aid groups, were originally set up to shelter hundreds of thousands fleeing war and famine in Somalia. Kenya is now, in effect, using them for the mass internment of Somalis — whether or not the strategy is legal.
The campaign is a reprisal for scores of small bombings that have killed 32 in Nairobi over the past 17 months — bombings that are suspected to have been carried out by sympathizers of the Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab, in whose pursuit Kenya invaded Somalia in October 2011. “The conditions in the camps are harsh,” says Ahmed. Still, he adds, as the repression in Nairobi rises ahead of the March 4 general elections, he and his friends may eventually have no choice but the camps. “There are going to be two Kenyan gangs fighting over the elections,” he says, “and we’ll become the victims again.”
(MORE: Countering al-Shabab: How the War on Terrorism Is Being Fought in East Africa)
On March 4, Kenyans will choose a new President, parliament and provincial authorities in a general election under a reformed constitution. One might expect a vote to offer change and improvement — or at least the promise of it. But whether you talk to activists or bartenders, few expect the poll to fix a thing. Of the eight candidates standing to replace President Mwai Kibaki, two — current Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta — are neck and neck and expected to win a combined 90% share of the vote. But both candidates are deeply flawed, and neither seems up to the task of steering one of Africa’s most important countries.
As Prime Minister, Odinga failed to address the deep tribal divisions that led to deadly riots after the last election in December 2007, when the vote was rigged and Kibaki’s ruling Kikuyu cabal held on to power. Kenyatta, meanwhile, is one of four Kenyans wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for allegedly inciting that violence. The two candidates’ campaign platforms are notable mainly for their detachment from reality. The National Alliance, Kenyatta’s party, promises unity, transparency, security and growth, “giving youths wings to fly.” Odinga’s Coalition for Reforms and Democracy has promised a six-point rise in economic growth to 10% by next year, universal pensions and national health-insurance plans, Internet in every school and investment of 10% of GDP in infrastructure. In an interview with TIME, Odinga all but admits that his manifesto is pie in the sky. “It is meant to inspire the people, like a call to duty,” he says. “If we dedicate ourselves, put energy into work, we will really be able to transform this society.”
Odinga correctly identifies “corruption, tribalism, nepotism” as the defining features of Kenyan politics. He fails, however, to even acknowledge the threat of Kenya’s deepening Christian-Muslim divide. In Nairobi, responding to police abuses and Kenyan gangs, Somalis have begun to form self-defense militias. The state response to the jihadist threat has been brutal, including harassment, beatings and summary executions. In Mombasa last year, one U.S.-sanctioned terrorist suspect was assassinated by unknown gunmen in broad daylight. At least three other terrorist suspects have been summarily killed by police, and four more are missing.
Kenya also faces a mosaic of unaddressed — and often politically fomented — tribal divides. In eastern Kenya’s Tana River County, three of the politicians standing for governor are under investigation for inciting a string of retaliatory ethnic massacres that began in August and have left over 150 dead. In October, pitched battles in the western city of Kisumu between two new and rival political militias — American Marine (which supports Odinga) and China Squad (Kenyatta) — and later with police, left eight dead.
(PHOTOS: Kenya’s 2008 Post-Election Violence)
All these groups find fertile recruitment among Kenya’s millions of young and unemployed, who expect little from their reliably corrupt political leaders. In a leaked 2010 diplomatic cable, then U.S. ambassador Michael Ranneberger warned that “rampant” corruption in Kenya could provoke violence worse than the country saw in 2007. That same year he told the American Chamber of Commerce that Kenya lost a third of its GDP to corruption every year. If accurate, that would add up to $50 billion stolen over the past five years.
Ruth Nyambura, 24, a onetime adviser to the only female presidential candidate, Martha Karua, is disgusted by the lack of meaningful debate at the elections. Without an election of substance, she worries, Kenyans will fall back on tribal loyalties at the polling booth. She fears what will happen next. “I sit and think, God, a Congo or Rwanda situation? What are the kids going to eat?”
Yussuf Hassan, 59, should be out on the streets defending his seat as a member of parliament for the Kamukunji constituency in Eastleigh. Instead, he sits in a wheelchair in a hospital room, exposed metal pins holding his shattered shins together. In December, he narrowly escaped what he believes was an assassination attempt when he was injured in a bombing that killed five outside a radical mosque in Eastleigh. A Kenyan-born ethnic Somali, Hassan joined politics in the hope of fostering change after a career as a journalist and later U.N. spokesperson for Afghanistan. Nearly three months after the attack, police have yet to interview him. But as bad as the violence has become, Hassan believes it could be fixed with measures that address Kenya’s chronic joblessness — youth unemployment currently sits at 75%. “A huge and significant population is restless,” he says. “Violence begets violence.”
Nyambura sees a more fundamental malaise. “There is something absolutely wrong with the moral and social fabric of this nation.” The best Kenya can hope for is to avoid the last election’s violence. “If it’s peaceful, we’ll have bought time,” she says. “[Maybe] by 2018 we’ll have some real progress.” That’s a long time for Kenyans to hold their breath.
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