Raila Odinga, the charismatic, left-leaning prime minister of Kenya who claims to be first cousin to Barack Obama, owes much to the Illinois senator. Arguably, he would not occupy that high office but for Obama’s support in Kenyan elections.
Arguably too, had Odinga been more successful in those elections, Kenya would now be on a fast track toward becoming a radical Islamic state and a haven for al-Qaida activists. Odinga did not win the presidential elections last December, and only after weeks of murder and mayhem was a truce negotiated that promoted Odinga to the newly created office as prime minister.
Odinga says his mother was a sister of Obama’s father. For his part, Obama has neither confirmed nor denied the relationship. The elder Obama belonged to the Luo tribe, the same tribe Odinga hails from, and their ancestral villages are close to each other.
Regardless of their biological DNA, however, they clearly share political DNA. Obama made arrangements for Odinga (then an opposition politician in a bureaucratic slot) to attend the 2004 Democratic Convention. It was Odinga who announced Obama’s planned visit to Kenya in 2006 and Odinga who told the Kenyan press that he had proposed the trip to his American cousin.
Even in 2006, the junior senator from Illinois enjoyed rock-star popularity in Kenya. He was the local boy who had achieved breathtaking success in America: the only African-American in the U.S. Senate. Word was already out that this son of a Kenyan father might even run for president.
When Obama arrived, thousands of Kenyans lined the streets and mobbed the parks where he spoke, so much so that US Marines (in civilian clothes) from the embassy were assigned to his security detail. The setting was described by one Kenyan daily, The Nation, as “Obama-mania” and “a magnet for politicians”.
Raila Odinga enjoyed the benefits of this magnetism. For much of the trip, Odinga was at Obama’s side, sharing the platform with him, sometimes even addressing the crowds from the same microphone. When they went to Saiya district, Obama surprisingly did not visit his own father’s grave as had been expected; instead, he went to the mausoleum for Odinga’s father, an icon of the Kenyan independence movement.
For Odinga it was a PR triumph of the first order. The rock star’s glitter rubbed off on his putative cousin by the bucket.
Nor did Obama limit his role to boosting Odinga’s image. The senator also criticized the incumbent Kenyan president. Mike Flannery, political editor for CBS2 in Nairobi, reported that Obama had accused the Kibaki government (Odinga’s opponent) of corruption “almost every day since he arrived.”
The political temperature grew hotter than the Nairobi summer. Dr. Alfred Matua, a government spokesman, accused Odinga of “using Obama as his stooge, as his puppet.” Matua added, “Sen. Obama has to look critically at where he’s receiving advice from.”
Although there were personal elements to the Obama visit, e.g., his return to his ancestral village, he was in Kenya as the representative of the U.S. government. The fact that he was attacking the government of Mwai Kibaki, a stalwart U.S. ally in the war on terror, carried implications far beyond Obama’s support of a Luo tribesman.
Muslims constitute 10 percent of the Kenyan population and are concentrated largely in the northeast and along the coast. Many Kenyans were killed or wounded when al-Qaida bombed the American embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Al-Qaida struck again in 2002 when terrorists killed 13 people at a Mombasa resort and fired a Stinger missile at an airliner leaving Nairobi. More recently 35,000 refugees have fled from radical Islamists in adjacent Somalia into Kenya. President Kibaki’s vigorous prosecution of terrorists has met with vigorous objection from some elements of the Muslim community.
A year after Obama’s visit and just before winning his own party’s nomination for president, Odinga met with a radical Muslim group (the National Muslim Leaders Forum, NAMLEF) and entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Aug. 27, 2007. The fact that he and NAMLEF had signed an agreement was reported. The text of the MOU, however, was not revealed.
Soon, however, a copy of the document was circulating on the Internet: NAMLEF would “instruct all Muslims of their duty” to support Odinga for the presidency and Odinga, if elected, would implement a program that included:
(1) Amending the Constitution to recognize Shariah as “the only true law sanctioned“ by the Quran in “Muslim-declared regions”;
(2) Establishing Shariah courts throughout the country;
(3) Requiring every primary school to conduct daily madrassa classes;
(4) Empowering the Council of Muslim Elders to “oversee” all religious activities in the coast region with the right to disapprove “cults and other evil practices”;
(5) Banning the sale of alcoholic beverages and other prohibited beverages everywhere that Muslims constituted 40 percent or more of the population;
(6) Banning women’s clothing deemed offensive to Muslims in Muslim-majority sections of the country, applying the dress code to both Muslims and non-Muslims;
(7) Making the northeast and coastal regions of the country autonomous; and
(8) Disbanding the anti-terror police and issuing ID cards to all Muslims (regardless of immigrant status) in the Northeast and prohibiting extradition of “any Muslim residing in Kenya whether citizen, visitor, or relative.”
Such a program would have created a sanctuary for al-Qaida near the Horn of Africa and established a Taliban-like state in at least parts of Kenya.
Public demand that Odinga and NAMLEF disclose the MOU’s terms were met with silence. Then, The Nation reported on Nov. 5, Odinga denied signing any agreement with the Muslims, reminding his church audience that he too was a Christian.
By Nov. 7 a group of young Muslims denounced Odinga for denying the MOU, saying that he had effectively called certain sheiks liars.
By Nov. 8, Odinga acknowledged an agreement with Muslims but still declined to reveal its terms. Then various other Muslim groups joined in the dialogue, challenging NAMLEF’s authority to represent them.
By Nov. 14 Odinga announced he would release the MOU to public review. Finally, on Nov. 28 he provided the text of a document (the “real MOU”, he said) to the media. The MOU that had circulated on the Internet was a fake, he said. The new MOU contained nothing about Shariah law or madrassas, but it still raised eyebrows.
The fear inspired by the “Internet” MOU also inspired a heavy turnout of anti-Odinga voters, and he lost the late-December election to Kibaki. Odinga cried fraud, and Kenya was plunged into weeks of machete murders. Thousands were killed and 300,000 left homeless.
Kofi Annan was brought in to broker a truce. Ultimately both sides agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with Kibaki retaining the presidency and Odinga becoming prime minister. It is only a truce, however. Odinga has not taken his eyes off the goal. Neither has al-Qaida.
Mignon Evans is an attorney and former CIA officer.
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