Gitau Warigi
11 May 2008
Nairobi — Two considerations are clashing as "Operation Rudi Nyumbani" got underway in the Rift Valley province last week. One is the real fear of Internally Displace People regarding security once they return. The other is the government's determination to have them re-settled on the same farms they were displaced from.
The neighbours' continued hostility, and the ambivalent posture of the local MPs, has heightened the fears of the returnees. The government's resolve not to be seen to reward the perpetrators of the January killings in turn has hardened its determination not to resettle the victims anywhere else but where they got evicted from.
The process started last week in Trans Nzoia more or less smoothly before moving down to Molo and Kuresoi. Problems however were encountered in Eldoret, which hosts the largest camp in the country. Some of the people camping there openly opposed calls to move out, citing insecurity.
The security worry is quite real. Though reports from the ground indicate armed police presence is now very noticeable in affected areas like in Molo and Burnt Forest, the presence is not uniform and depends on location. Most worried are those being re-settled in ethnically isolated enclaves like Lagwenda farm in Kuresoi or Kiambaa farm in Uasin Gishu.
The wariness about the resettlement being seen at the Eldoret camp arises from the fact that Uasin Gishu, where most of them were settled, experienced the worst violence by far. As such, they want firmer assurances from local leaders that all will be well when they go home.
But there is another impediment coming from the the returnees. It is about compensation. Most of them harbour expectations of financial compensation from the government. A belief has taken root among some of them that if they leave the camps now they will become ineligible for this hoped-for compensation.
Rift Valley PC Noor Hassan Noor has been complaining lately of "self-appointed" groups and NGOs who are reportedly fuelling the compensation expectations.
There are victims who lost houses worth millions of shillings, some already mortgaged. Still, there are others who lost more millions when thriving businessess got destroyed by arsonists. Above all there are the lives lost, whose price is incalculable.
It may very well turn out that adequately compensating all these categories each to their satisfaction will prove impossible. President Kibaki's announcement of the launching of a Sh29 billion fund for the displaced is partly meant as a pointer that the government cannot meet all those expectations alone.
There are also the IDPs living with relatives rather than in the camps. They don't want to be forgotten as their colleagues in the camps get re-settled. Also, there are those who did not have farms but were carrying out business in towns like Kapsabet or Londiani, or were employed in the flower farms of Naivasha. They too expect government assistance to re-start their lives.
There is the question of having more or less permanent police outposts at the flash points and whether this, in the long run, will help. There is also the urgent problem of lack of food in the farms, considering crops and granaries were destroyed and the returning IDPs have no money.
The government is promising food rations until the harvests are ready, but teething problems are being encountered in distribution.
This is more so since the IDPs will no longer be in one place such as they were in the camps. For instance returnees to Kiambogo Farm in Molo had to wait for two days before food rations finally reached them at the farm.
Shelter is the other critical need where the government is promising to assist with basic building materials such as iron-sheets. (For some reason, whenever these Rift Valley clashes occur, iron sheets are the main targets of looters).
According to an Eldoret-based IDP group calling itself Vine (which stands for Victims of Negative Ethnicity), the government has been promising that in the next eight months it will help the returnees in constructing new houses. The model agreed upon is a three-bedroomed unit plus a kitchen.
Each IDP whose house was destroyed is being allowed to return with a tent until they have put up liveable structures.
Those in secure areas are simply pitching their tents next to their destroyed homes as they start to rebuild their lives.
But even the IDPs themselves acknowledge that a beefed-up security presence alone will not bring permanent peace.
In the meantime, inter-ethnic suspicion and hatred linger. This may take generations to heal.
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