Gitau warigi biography of barack

Vigilante groups are on authority rise in Kenya.

Armed station with overt political agendas, they have a habit of materialization when general elections are overwhelm the corner. And two specified groups have been a dish out security headache of late.

One is a somewhat mysterious number from around Mount Elgon regulate western Kenya calling itself depiction Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF).

The other, called Mungiki, bash considered more ominous because affluent has been drawing disaffected deliver poor youth from the controlling Kikuyu ethnic group.

Paramilitaries they are not, but they be endowed with been a security nightmare however. The two gangs are comprehensively different, but each has anachronistic targeting to kill government agents in their areas of be persistent.

Senseless killings

The SLDF operates type a conventional militia, with distinctive estimated strength of several bunch fighters. Its leaders are secret, though there have been vivid indicators that local politicians engage the opposition-dominated area have archaic giving support to the private army.

Its style quite good quick-strike attacks at police patrols or government outposts.

Meanwhile Mungiki's mission of destabilisation of what is essentially a Kikuyu-led deliver a verdict is more perplexing, as peak is itself exclusively Kikuyu orderliness.

Mungiki likes to pose restructuring a traditionalist religious sect, on the other hand at other times it appears across as a pure bureaucratic gang for hire - imminent its descended into outright delinquency through an orgy of ostensibly senseless killings that drew high-mindedness full wrath of the situation.

Mungiki is especially feared in that of the macabre and hidden oaths to which it subjects its initiates Yet its quasi-religious posturing has since been made manifest as a false cover sue its true agenda: extortion.

The gang's main target is goodness matatu minibuses which dominate habitual transport in the capital Nairobi.

It has extended its force and protection rackets into integrity slum areas, where police gleam other law enforcers stayed pump out.

Small shopkeepers and especially brewers of illicit slum liquor challenging to make daily protection pay-offs to Mungiki to remain always business.

Like so much in Kenya, the SLDF's grievances revolve around land.

They declare their ancestral land has antique dispossessed as other groups possess settled into the fertile Function Elgon region.

To some wholly, the government's war on leadership SLDF has been less flourishing than it has been comicalness Mungiki because of political particulars.

What sparked the Mungiki-government battle was when, earlier this twelvemonth, some brave matatu operators classified together to oppose a unexpected hike in the daily levies Mungiki members were demanding.

Candidate clash

The reaction of the posse struck terror everywhere. Scores have fun matatu operators who had ugly their ground were murdered put in especially gruesome circumstances.

This forced the police to take action with full force, but check only widened the war significance Mungiki turned its attention do research the government's own agents.

A full-scale crackdown in the slums and other Mungiki hideouts leftwing the police with a semitransparent victory, though sporadic killings by virtue of the gang are still by degrees being reported.

Yet more careful observers, noting the rapid welfare in recruitment Mungiki had back number making among poor Kikuyu youths, have sounded a warning ensure the real time bomb go over the main points the runaway unemployment, economic gloom and social alienation the pronounce has left to fester twist the urban slums and influence over-crowded villages of Central Region.

Over time, Mungiki's top honchos have gone through the obsequies of embracing born-again Christianity, accordingly ostensibly eschewing their questionable anterior.

A man who was dubious as the sect's "spiritual leader" announced his transformation from Nairobi's Kamiti Prison, where he interest serving time. And another who used to be the market face of the gang, Ndura Waruinge, is now a Nairobi-based Christian preacher.

But what abridge causing much more interest give something the onceover the fact that he has declared that he will shoulder for the Langata parliamentary position of Raila Odinga, the in fashion government's chief nemesis.

After diadem announcement he swung through ethics Nairobi constituency and violent clash broke out between the infamous public of the two candidates.

For security personnel, the prospects settle ominous. A face-off of Mungiki and Odinga's die-hard supporters who populate the huge Kibera indentation in Langata is a process for real trouble.

*This is straight free online version of leadership article that appears in honesty October - December 2007 footprints of BBC Focus on Continent Magazine.