Tribesmen Flee Western Kenya as Politicos Fight for Dominance

After more than four decades in power, the country’s post-presidential election violence has driven thousands of Kikuyus away from businesses and farms in the western part of the country and into churches and police stations where they wait for evacuation to the country’s central highlands.

Though the attacks came after an 11th hour presidential victory for incumbent — and Kikuyu tribe member — Mwai Kibaki, Kikuyu believe that rival tribes have used the presidential elections to drive them away from their land.

“Land is very important to us,” said Anthony Kirunga, a Kikuyu living in Nakuru. “It’s not our fault that other people are jealous.”

US Makes Overtures to Sharif in Bid for Stability

Pervez Musharraf has been headed out of power for months now but now, even the US State Department has begun to look for other options in the war against Muslim extremism. Ironically, that search has led to conservative, right wing crusader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

The US “recognizes that, very likely if there is going to be a viable and acceptable leader of the opposition in the near future, it’s going to be Nawaz Sharif,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former Pakistan analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that Benazir Bhutto had been the State Department’s top choice to bring democracy to Pakistan and eliminate the threat radical extremists pose to security in the region. Since her assassination, the State Department has had to expand its list of viable allies.

In a report broadcast on Voice of America today, Amit Pandya of the Washington-based Henry L. Stimson Center said that Musharraf may lose his hold on Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. 

“Because he is someone who enjoys little legitimacy and little popular support, it is going to be very difficult for him to respond in any particularly strong way that would contribute to the stability of the country,” he said.

Sharif, leader of the second largest political faction in Pakistan and a vocal critic of Musharraf, doesn’t have that problem.

Sharif has built a massive base of support among Pakistani voters as a conservative Islamic leader. His long exile in Saudi Arabia — negotiated after then -General Pervez Musharraf orchestrated a military coup in October 1999 — has made him a folk hero among Pakistanis who view Musharraf as a tyrant.

Though the US has made contact with Sharif’s party since Bhutto’s assassination, officials in the State Department have not revealed whether or not Sharif will be willing to cooperate with the US in its fight against terrorism. Sharif has reportedly built a strong relationship with the Saudi Royal Family and his party’s attempt to establish a legal system based entirely on the Koran before the October 1999 coup may not sit well with the US government.

Sharif may not be the perfect candidate to advance US interests but there is a sense that he may be a lesser evil.

He “may have very good relations with the [Saudi] royal family,” Weinbaum said.  But “one thing for sure, he wouldn’t be taking his orders from Iran.”

Musharraf Moblilzes the Army for February 18th Elections

Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, promised to hold elections on February 18 today in a televised announcement.  Though Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party and husband of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has agreed to participate in the elections, the country’s second-largest party, the Muslim League, called for the dissolution of the Musharraf government to ensure free and fair elections.

“It is time President Musharraf and the Chief Election Commissioner resign and make way for a neutral caretaker government of national unity that will hold the elections,” said Muslim League spokesman Ahsan Iqbal.

The Hindu’s  Nirupama Subramanian reported that the Muslim League will participate in the elections even if a neutral, caretaker government is not established.

Musharraf said that the army and a paramilitary group called the Pakistan Rangers would be deployed to maintain order during the elections. He added that the military will remain deployed after elections to “deal with ‘agitationists and troublemakers.’”

Muslim League to Protest Musharraf’s Election Delay

Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf has delayed that country’s general elections until February. The exact date will be announced this coming Wednesday.

Cynics in Pakistan and among the West’s diplomatic corps have said that the decision had been made to allow the fervor surrounding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to die down and prevent an outpouring of sympathy voting that would put the Pakistan People’s Party in power.

“The Pakistan Peoples Party will win seats, and we will defeat the Q League hands down,” said Shahbaz Sharif, former chief minister of the country’s Punjab province under his brother, Nawaz Sharif. “Even if they try to rig, we will win. The atmosphere has changed against them. The courage to rig has diminished.”

Former prime minister and leader of Pakistan’s Muslim League, Nawaz Sharif, said that the league would stage continuous protests until the election takes place.

Spokesmen for the Pakistan People’s Party have said that their party will also protest the delay.

Though Musharraf has managed to retain power in Pakistan, his administration has met growing criticism from angry citizens. A program of continuous protests by the two largest political parties in Pakistan threatens to further erode Musharraf’s chance for re-election, even due to extenuating circumstances following Benazir Bhutto’s death.

“Six weeks is just about the outer limit before the frustration really hurts Musharraf,” said a member of the president’s Pakistan Muslim League.

But, frustration aside, it may take more than six weeks to quell the violence that has consumed Pakistan in the wake of the Bhutto assassination.

Already, 11 districts in Bhutto’s home province have been burned to the ground and violence in the major cities has resulted in 59 deaths and 89 injuries.

Musharraf is expected to announce the date of the February election in a televised statement this Wednesday. Meanwhile, both parties have begun to plot their next action.

“We do not want to move in isolation,” Pakistan People’s Party executive committee member, Reza Rabbani. “We would talk to other opposition parties on a course of action.”

Anti-Zardari Faction May Split People’s Party

Nineteen-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has become the titular leader of the Pakistan People’s Party but his position may become worthless if opponents of his father and co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, opt out.

Though there has been no announcement of a formal split, politicians on the ground fear that a sizable and vocal anti-Zardari contingent may not accept Zardari’s leadership, despite his use of the Bhutto name to keep detractors loyal to the party.

“He’s the dauphin,” said an unnamed US State Department official in today’s New York Times.

Zardari, called “Mr. Ten Percent” in reference to kickbacks he received from government projects overseen during Benazir Bhutto’s first term as prime minister, has assumed day-to-day leadership of the party while his son finishes college at Oxford University. For the foreseeable future, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, will fulfill a ceremonial role in the party

“He may be our chairman,” Zardari said in an interview Sunday as he cut his son off in mid sentence. “But he is my son and he is of tender age.”

Zardari’s critics have questioned his interest in politics given his role as a “middle man” in his wife’s cabinet.

“In the past he was not the least interested in governance, but in deals,” said political analyst Talat Massoud, former Defense Secretary in Benzair Bhutto’s first administration.

Pakistani politics may only be the latest deal for Zardari but he now has one tool that not even Musharraf can counter — a living Bhutto.

“In this country, symbols matter,” Zardari said.

Pakistani TV Releases Photos of Bhutto Assassins

PTI, a Pakistani broadcaster, has released photos of two men suspected of having assassinated Benazir Bhutto.

Benazir Bhutto with suspected assassins (bottom)

A young man in glasses is shown with a handgun at Bhutto’s back. The gunman was photographed standing next to a man whom authorities believe to have been the suicide bomber.

On Friday, Interior ministry spokesman Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema, said that Bhutto had been killed by a blow to the head and had not been killed by gunfire. However, new footage broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 shows what one firearms expert said had been the exact moment of Bhutto’s assassination.

Bhutto’s husband and co-chairman of her Pakistan People’s Party, Asif Ali Bhutto Zardari, refused to have the slain political leader’s body autopsied. He has asked the United Nations and the British government to conduct an independent investigation into the assassination.

“I’ve lived here long enough to know how and where an autopsy would have been conducted,” Bhutto Zardari said.

Bhutto’s Son to Lead Party From England

Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party announced today that her son, 19-year-old Oxford University student, Bilawal Zardari, has become the titular head of the party. Zardari’s father, Asif Zardari and Bhutto confidant Makhdoom Amin Fahim have been named co-chairmen.

Renters Endure Squalor in Sub-prime Fallout

Harry, a broker at Senator Realty, was horrified when he walked into the two-story house occupied by Queens resident, Anne Perez and two other families

“Nothing was up to code when we got the apartment,” Harry said. “The previous owner had divided a one-family house into three apartments. They’d taken the boiler out of the basement and put three of them in the kitchens, next to the stoves. They could have blown up the whole block.”

Irish Watering Hole Fades to Black

Highland Avenue reeked of red curries, sugar-crusted gulab jamun desserts and frosted Asian fruit drinks called lassis served in shallow white styrofoam cups but by three in the afternoon, the smell of 99 proof whiskey had sunk into the street in front of the Highland Irish Inn.

A pair of pockmarked doors marred by years of fights, angry outbursts and layers of brown paint separated a population of turban-clad, sari-wearing, Bengali-speaking immigrants from the four elderly African-Americans who have created a time capsule of 1970’s New York in blackface.

GOP Pols Build Asian Bloc in Queens

Traffic along Union Turnpike, which cut Kew Gardens and Kew Gardens Hills into two, virtually indistinguishable neighborhoods buzzed quietly while shop owners and passersby baked in the afternoon sunlight. With less than a week before the November 6th elections, the North and South sides of the turnpike, lined by Chinese restaurants, take-out sushi joints, storefront tax services and liquor stores were as they had always been: colorless; bland; and now, strangely devoid of red, white and blue posters riddled with the stars, stripes, perfectly-coiffed hairdos and capped teeth that have become hallmarks of the American political campaign.