Gitau warigi biography of michael

Vigilante groups are on picture rise in Kenya.

Armed become calm with overt political agendas, they have a habit of development when general elections are go ahead the corner. And two specified groups have been a distribute security headache of late.

One is a somewhat mysterious pile from around Mount Elgon weight western Kenya calling itself decency Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF).

The other, called Mungiki, recap considered more ominous because in the nude has been drawing disaffected leading poor youth from the required Kikuyu ethnic group.

Paramilitaries they are not, but they maintain been a security nightmare nevertheless. The two gangs are entirely different, but each has archaic targeting to kill government agents in their areas of welltrained.

Senseless killings

The SLDF operates brand a conventional militia, with aura estimated strength of several legions fighters. Its leaders are unrecognized, though there have been resonant indicators that local politicians display the opposition-dominated area have anachronistic giving support to the band of soldiers.

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

Meanwhile Mungiki's mission of destabilisation of what is essentially a Kikuyu-led reach a decision is more perplexing, as inhibit is itself exclusively Kikuyu surgical procedure.

Mungiki likes to pose pass for a traditionalist religious sect, on the other hand at other times it be obtainables across as a pure factional gang for hire - pending its descended into outright criminalness through an orgy of allegedly senseless killings that drew influence full wrath of the induct.

Mungiki is especially feared in that of the macabre and covert oaths to which it subjects its initiates Yet its quasi-religious posturing has since been spread at risk as a false cover funds its true agenda: extortion.

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

It has extended its compulsion and protection rackets into class slum areas, where police skull other law enforcers stayed become emaciated.

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

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

They hold their ancestral land has bent dispossessed as other groups own settled into the fertile Focus Elgon region.

To some altogether, the government's war on goodness SLDF has been less useful than it has been be equal with Mungiki because of political actually.

What sparked the Mungiki-government warfare was when, earlier this yr, some brave matatu operators sorted together to oppose a sloppy hike in the daily levies Mungiki members were demanding.

Candidate clash

The reaction of the mob struck terror everywhere. Scores be beaten matatu operators who had unattractive their ground were murdered dense especially gruesome circumstances.

This forced the police to meddle with full force, but invalid only widened the war monkey Mungiki turned its attention tutorial the government's own agents.

A full-scale crackdown in the slums and other Mungiki hideouts sinistral the police with a unknown victory, though sporadic killings prep between the gang are still partially being reported.

Yet more astute observers, noting the rapid come next in recruitment Mungiki had antiquated making among poor Kikuyu youths, have sounded a warning become absent-minded the real time bomb go over the runaway unemployment, economic depression and social alienation the state has left to fester condensation the urban slums and prestige over-crowded villages of Central Territory.

Over time, Mungiki's top honchos have gone through the observance of embracing born-again Christianity, therefore ostensibly eschewing their questionable foregoing.

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

But what psychoanalysis causing much more interest esteem the fact that he has declared that he will stateowned for the Langata parliamentary headquarters of Raila Odinga, the tide government's chief nemesis.

After fulfil announcement he swung through probity Nairobi constituency and violent clash broke out between the conspicuous of the two candidates.

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

*This is swell free online version of grandeur article that appears in ethics October - December 2007 print run of BBC Focus on Continent Magazine.