Potentially naive question re tribal conflicts like Kenya's

[dmallind]

I'm not an expert in African studies by any stretch so bear with me.

We keep hearing about Kikuyus and Luo killing each other, with some of the better news sources like NPR and BBC doing a decent enough job of explaining why the various factions and tribal units have devloped animosity after a longish period of relative calm when Kenya was held out as a model for African nations. I get the proximal issues as well as most vagiely interested outsiders are likely to, but one thing is never explained.

How do they know who's who?

I know Kenya to contain many aspects of modern industrialized economies. Nairobi is a large cosmopolitan city, and many conglomerates have a presence there with substantial population mixing and mobility. I know there are many many rural areas too where my question may make less sense, where people know about each other's grandfather's grandfather and where a family name identifies clan/tribal ties instantly, but the violence has not been exclusive to these rural areas.

To come up with a parallel more in my experience, I know the Northern Irish paramilitary groups targetted pubs and other gathering sites based on neighborhood, assuming that traditionally Catholics lived along this street and Protestants along that one. However this often caught their "own" side in the attacks as there were a reasonable pecentage of Northern Irish who lived outside their "traditional" neighborhoods. Obviously such attacks also victimized nonpartisans, nonbelievers, and those sympathetic to the "other" side. Not all NI Protestants were/are Loyalists and not all Catholics were/are Republicans.

I'm assuming Kenya has similar crossfire issues but I'm wondering if there is a more definitive identifying characteristic of a Luo etc. Are names tribally based? What happens when tribal members then intermarry - or is that rarer than I would suspect? Are physical features tribally distinctive to non-outsiders? Or is this really a NI parallel and attacks are based on traditionally tribal neighborhoods? It seems like in even vaguely modernized economies there would be little chance to make clear distinctions on this basis, but again ignorance is admitted freely here.

[Haole Girl]

1. Good question

Here is some reading for you:

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2008/01/kenya_playing_t.html

http://www.newtactics.org/en/blog/sarah-ingebritsen/tribal-politics-kenya-analysis-political-unrest-and-previous-tactics

[dmallind]

3. Thanks much

I confess I had not considered the linguistic angle. Again I'm thinking more of the cosmopolitan urbanized Kenyans, and had assumed that, much like in India, there is a lingua franca spoken by all of that class. However I am sure accents and dialect remain giveaways, since a Maharashtran can always spot a Kashmiri even when both speak Hindi. Still I have to wonder why even the most ardent partisan would burn a church or school etc without ascertaining wheteher the inhabitants really are his "enemies".

[Haole Girl]

2. Here is an answer for you:

http://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080129005510AAWeQkO

The Kikuyu are the majority, and the two groups have differences. They both speak different languages (Kikuyu has a Bantu language, Luo has one of the Nile-based languages). Also, they have different customs and their names are different.

They can tell each other apart easily.

[Aristus]

4. Tribal differences are ultimately irrelevant and used simply as a justification for slaughter.

Perceived ethnic differences have been used since time out of mind to set a people apart for abuse and persecution. A trait shared by people of all colors, religions and nationalities throughout history. It's a way of asserting one's presumed superiority.

[dmallind]

5. I was thinking that may be true here

but then I still ask myself - why is that basis which is chosen for such horrific campaigns so often? What is it about clannism or tribalism that provides such a useful excuse and criterion for the nutcases who have the needs you mention?

[Aristus]

6. In the case of Kenya, or any African country that is a former European colony, really,

tribal conflicts most often arise as a result of competition for scarce resources (water, grazing land, farmland, and so on). While one can understand the natural desire to come out ahead in a competition to secure water and other things for one's tribe or clan, nothing beyond sheer, devilish bloodlust can explain genocidal massacres like Darfur and Rwanda.