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.”

That jealousy has festered since Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu and Kenya’s first president distributed much of the country’s best farmland among members of his own tribe after Kenya’s independence in 1964. The Kikuyu tribe has since moved into positions of political and economic power and members of other tribes resent perceived government favoritism toward Kikuyu.

“We hate these people,” said Robert Tutuny a Kalenjin farmer in the western part of the country.

Opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, promised to end Kikuyu dominance and fairly distribute the country’s wealth among people of all tribes. Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement had been favored to win a majority of seats in the country’s parliament. But incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, surged ahead in the last hours of voting to retain the presidency.

Millions of Kenyans accused the president of having rigged the election. But, in western Kenya — where Kikuyu are the minority — others went out to exact revenge on any Kikuyu they knew.

Mobs of Kalenjin tribesmen descended on Kikuyu farms in western Kenya killing dozens of people with knives, clubs and primitive weapons. Almost 500 people have been killed. More than 200,000 have been displaced.

Western diplomats have persuaded Odinga to call off anti-government protests scheduled for this week. At the same time, President Kibaki has requested outside mediation from Ghanaian president, John M. Kuffuor — a close friend and president of the African Union. Kibaki has even invited Odinga to become a part of his government. But, Odinga has made it clear that he will never accept Kibaki’s legitimacy.

“I was the one who won the election and should instead be offering the same,” Odinga said.

As the two most powerful men in Kenya continued to haggle over the presidency, Grace Mukuna, wife of Kikuyu farmer Jeremiah Mukuna, 75, waited to see if her husband, who was attacked as he sat on his porch last Sunday, will come out of his coma.

She has decided to join other refugees as they flee to the central highlands.

“I will never come back,” she said.

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.”

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.’”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

The decision to make the 19-year-old co-ed the leader of Pakistan’s largest political party had been made at a “crucial meeting” on January 29, in which both Zardari’s father, 51-year-old former agriculture minister and convicted felon who spent 8 years in a Pakistani prison for corruption and Fahim were present.

Bilawal Zardari will serve in an undefined “ceremonial” role until he has finished college. Sources in Pakistan expect Zardari’s father to run the country in his place.

”My mother always said democracy is the best revenge,” said the younger Zardari in a news conference.

As the Pakistan People’s Party was reconstituted around Bilawal Zardari, the Pakistani government has been in negotiations with all political parties to postpone the election. The Hindu reported that Pervez Musarraf’s government will postpone elections “in principle.”

Zardari, a self-described “fitness freak” whose hobbies include Tae Kwon Do and target shooting, has spent his childhood in exile between Dubai and London. Previous to his election, he served as student council vice-president at the Rashid School for Boys in Dubai.

The Hindu asked Bilawal Zardari whether or not he would pursue a political career in an interview 4 years ago. Zardari said, “We will see, I don’t know. I would like to help the people of Pakistan, so I will decide when I finish my studies.”

Zardari supporters thronged the streets after the announcement, chanting ”Benazir, princess of heaven” and ”Bilawal, move ahead. We are with you.”

Earlier today, Asif Zardari announced that his family have taken the surname “Bhutto.”

Zardari and the Pakistan People’s Party have tried to convince their supporters that they have found a viable democratic leader in Bilawal, but many believe that this political move will force Pakistan further away from democracy.

“There is no democracy outside of the party,” wrote a blogger on Chapati Mystery. “No reason for it to exist within.”

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.

“We ain’t Irish, baby” laughed Anna Marie Scott, the Highland Irish Inn’s bartender. “The owner and his kids are, but that’s it.”

Two elderly couples sipped bourbon under a washed-out photo of owner Marty Brown as the sun began to set. Brown, an Irish immigrant, has owned the bar for decades. He has become almost invisible there except for his photograph.

“He comes in from 6am to 8am and then he’s gone,” Scott said.
“He’s a really nice guy and you don’t find too many nice Irishmen, you know what I mean?”

An older African-American man everyone called Eddie, cocked his hat and stared at a glass of Jim Beam through the web of his fingers. He had just played the lottery and lost

“I would have had five thousand dollars if it’d come up straight,” he complained to no one in particular. “Five thousand’s not a lot but it sure would’ve made me feel good.”

The heavily made-up woman who sat next to him sipped a vodka tonic careful not to waste a drop. She avoided eye contact with Eddie and chose to stare at the flat screen television across the bar where Steve Martin’s “The Jerk” played in silence.

“Hey Eddie,” croaked a man seated near the leaky sink in the back of the bar. “You ever heard of the bird of paradise?”

The woman watching television stopped to look back at the man. Ice melted and clinked in her glass.

The man got up from his barstool and took a swig of brown liquid before he placed his hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“It means that all good things will come to you in life,” he said. “I
I hope you get all the best in life, man.”

He and Eddie shared a silent smile before the door swung open and rattled the photos, white balloons and tinsel that passed for Christmas decorations. An African-American man in paint-covered jeans too short for his long legs pulled a hand through his massive gray afro.

As he walked to the back of the bar, Anna-Marie began yelling.

“No, man! No!”

Everyone seated at the bar froze with shock.

“You need to get out, now!” she wailed.

The afro-man stopped in his tracks looking confused.

“Can’t I just use the bathroom?” he asked.

The man who spoke about the “bird of paradise” raised a gold-ringed hand and gestured to the door.

“The lady said that you have to leave,” he said. “Now go.”

The man with the afro lingered for a moment before he turned to leave. The little crowd laughed as the door slammed shut.

“He’s strung out on that crack,” Anna-Marie said pouring Eddie a drink. “The last time I let him use the bathroom he just messed it up so bad that now I only let my friends and people I know use it,” she said winking to the foursome at the bar.

Just then, the song “Tell It Like It Is” came on the jukebox.
The man with the ringed fingers reached out to the woman next to them. He held her close as they danced slow.

Michael Bell, a lifelong Philadelphia resident and special-ed teacher, uses his Summer vacation to travel. Give him a couple of beers and a little downtime and he’ll point to five out of seven continents on a map. He has a story for every one.

“Ah! India! ” he’ll say, laughing. “The people are great but, man! Those mosquitoes!”

He’ll talk about any trip, but Africa doesn’t come up much in conversation. Mike doesn’t hate Africa. He’s been to Egypt twice now, and talks about a Kenyan safari in the future, but tackling the “dark continent” doesn’t keep him up at night.

African billionaire Mo Ibraham thinks of the continent every day, so much so that he made his bank account into a political statement. The former head of Africa’s largest mobile phone company is giving $5 million dollars and and a $200,000 per year, lifetime payout to African leaders. One thing: they have to relinquish power in their respective countries to get the payout.

The Achievement in African Leadership Award, sponsored by Ibrahim’s eponymous foundation, pays more than five times the Nobel Prize. Five million to start and $200,000 a year makes it less likely that African dictators leaders will pull a “Sese-Soko”; drain the treasury and retire to France. The hefty price tag may also inspire troubled leaders like former-revolutionary-turned-alleged-despot Robert Mugabe to revisit his leadership philosophy in the comfort of a well-apportioned apartment in Harare.

Mugabe won’t get it, though. There are eight criteria for the awards including providing citizens with health options — read hospitals — educational support and effective public safety during their administrations. But, at the end of the day, they’ve all got to transfer power to a democratically-elected successor and disappear.

In an interview with Emily Flynn Vencat in this weeks Newsweek, Ibrahim diffused criticisms that the award pays African leaders to reconsider becoming despots to fund their retirement.

“Our guys should have a life after office,” Ibrahim said in the interview. “They should be role models, with the resources to use their experience to help society.”

Former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan has landed on his feet with Ibrahim’s help. He’s chairing the committee that will choose this year’s winner.

No one can really say whether or not $5 million-plus is enough. Between taxes and international aid a despot can lift billions out of a national treasury as Sese-Soko, Kabila and other leaders have done. But, Ibrahim says that he’s trying to promote idealism among young Africans, ostensibly so that they will one day say, “I want to be president.”

He’s got billions behind him and a lot of good will. It’d be a shame to gamble with so little and loose so much.

On July 7, 2005, Sergeant First Class Jeffrey E. Mittman was conducting operations in his Humvee when an improvised explosive device (IED) blew up. The explosion launched a projectile though the windshield. The object sheared off Mittman’s nose and lips, knocked out all of his teeth and blinded him. Mittman was sent back to the United States in a coma. After more than two years of facial reconstruction surgery, Mittman found himself in completely different surroundings. He was led to Manhattan’s posh Metropolitan Club where he told his story to Henry Kissinger, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters and Ted Sorensen.

“My sacrifice,” he said, “was not that great.

Sargent Mittman was introduced by VA Secretary and former RNC chairman R. James Nicholson.

With Mittman seated two feet away from the podium, Secretary Nicholson said that there are fewer casualties in the current war than in any previous conflict.

“One in four combatants died in every US war,” Secretary Nicholson said. “In Iraq one out of 17 did: it’s a testament to our efficiency and medicine.”

Doctors were able to save Mittman’s life and since being Injured, he had devoted himself to advocacy on behalf of visually impaired people.

“I promised myself that I would be a positive influence on society,” he said.

Secretary Nicholas said that there are now 20,000 vision-impaired veterans in the US. Dr. Tara A. Cortes, chairman and CEO of Lighthouse International, an organization that advocates for the visually impaired, said that war injuries like Mittman’s are driving vision loss in the US to epidemic levels.

Mittman is able to see 12 to 18 inches through the use of his iStick, a vision-enhancing tool located in his laptop, and navigate with a special GPS that is attached to his PDA.

Secretary Nicholson said that both tools are now available to all vets through the Department of Veterans affairs.