Sir, Your editorial about Kenya’s looming disaster (Jan 30 ) thundered. But it was rather short on what more the international community can do, beside the considerable and surprisingly cohesive effort now being put in. Your call for more outspoken, robust and denunciatory diplomacy from outside leaders would have been more appropriately made and acted upon some years ago. The reference to “ancient tribal passions” is crude and misleading: whatever they are, they are certainly less antique than, say, the same passions in the British islands and, so far, still less lethal.
Kenya is now in the hands of leaders who are losing reason and authority. The purported government has the main responsibility to pull the country together, but seems reckless. The “President” and his chief “ministers” shout defiance to their domestic and foreign critics, identify loyalty by ethnicity, and anathematise those who put their public duty above that crude obedience.
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Those threats are particularly fierce against civil society. They are intensified against those who are supposed to share on social grounds the interests of the Kibaki mafia. Two useful things can be done: to isolate, with targeted sanctions, those leaders who have visibly abused the law; and to put the spotlight on those independent figures still trying to promote sanity and order despite the threats against them. The latter demands a readiness to plan safe havens, particularly in this country, for when the gerontocrats in office turn on them.
Sir Edward Clay
British High Commissioner to Kenya, 2001-2005