Obama flies into political minefield on trip to Kenya

When Air Force One touches down in Nairobi today and US president Barack Obama springs down the steps to meet his counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, he will be walking into a geopolitical and diplomatic minefield worthy of TV drama House of Cards.

US media outlets have described the president's two-day visit to his father's homeland as "Obama's trip to terror hotbed", so security is already unprecedented. The political dangers though will be more subtle and will depend on how the White House team "finesses" his contact with Kenya's deputy president William Ruto.

The likelihood is that this visit would have taken place last year but Obama was wary of being photographed shaking hands with Kenyatta, a leader then facing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

Catalogue of horror

Those charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but Ruto’s case is currently going on in his absence in The Hague, where he has denied three counts of crimes against humanity – one each of murder, persecution, and “forcible transfer of population”.

Like Kenyatta’s before they were withdrawn, the charges relate to post-election violence between December 2007 and February 2008, a catalogue of horror in which more than 1,100 people were killed and 600,000 forced to flee their homes.

The inter-ethnic violence and corruption that led to that violence have their roots as far back as the declaration of the Kenyan state in 1964.

In 2013, a report by the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission of Kenya named Kenyatta's late father – founding president Jomo Kenyatta who was in office from 1963 to 1978 – as having led a government responsible for endemic human rights violations and cronyism in the allocation of land.

The report also alleged that the country's second and third presidents, Daniel Arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, led governments responsible for massacres, economic crimes and "grand corruption".

To this mix, add today’s questionable relationship between former sworn enemies Kenyatta, a member of the dominant Kikuyu tribe, and Ruto, a Kalenjin, locked in a coalition government they say is designed to “heal”, but which their critics maintain was cynically cobbled together to get them off the ICC hook.

Terrorist threat

No surprise then that the Kenyan media is focusing not on the terrorist threat of Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab – which was behind the Westgate mall attack in 2013 – but on whether Obama will shake Ruto’s hand.

What it comes down to is this: Kenyatta, unwilling to alienate Ruto and the Kalenjin, has said his deputy president will be in the receiving line to welcome Obama by shaking his hand.

Questioned by reporters, the president said: “The last time I checked, Ruto was a key member of the government, and this visit by Obama is about Kenyans and their leaders.”

If Obama shakes Ruto’s hand, there is one possible consequences. Critics of the ICC will take it as a sign that the US believes the Ruto case will go the way of the Kenyatta case, inflicting yet more damage on the beleaguered court.

Also, if Ruto is ultimately convicted – which, it must be said, is looking increasingly unlikely as key prosecution witnesses withdraw – the photographic evidence will be rolled out endlessly and become part of Obama’s African legacy.

Political ally

Still, the White House regards the US-educated Kenyatta (53) – who was listed by

Forbes

magazine in 2011 as the wealthiest man in Kenya – as a crucial geopolitical ally, and allies come at a cost.

There can be only one winner, says Kenyan political scientist Mutahi Ngunyi: “If I were Ruto, I would put on my best suit and my best smile . . . line up next to Uhuru and let Obama refuse to shake my hand. That way, Obama will be the loser and Ruto the winner.”