A Letter to Kenya

U.S. Protest Over Kenyan ViolenceInternational diplomacy takes on many strange forms- not only are you requesting things from people with a different language, background, culture and set of priorities, but you are asking for things based on your own goals, not theirs, even if you do have their best interests in mind. Add onto that the fact that everyone has different ways of asking for things, and of granting or denying those requests and all of the sudden you’ve got a challenge bigger than you could ever have imagined- and that’s international diplomacy: to start.

Requests tend to be made in writing, often sent back and forth in letters and communication between undersecretaries well before the decision-makers think about it. Some are obvious and just need to go through the formal channels before they are approved and carried out. Some are ridiculous, like the man suing Bank of America for 1,784 billion, trillion dollars- I think he should probably get about half, but any more than that would be unreasonable.

U.S. President Barack Obama recently sent warning letters to 15 prominent Kenyan leaders- why? Because, according to the Obama administration, they are blocking political reform (!) I guess this is what Obama meant when he talked about negotiating first before threatening violence. The letters were sent to ministers, members of parliament and other top civil servants, according to the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

Letters were sent from Johnnie Carson [insert joke here], the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, warning the officials that the future of their relationship with Washington would depend on whether they supported reforms and opposed violence in Kenya.

So what did Kenya’s president do in response? Mwai Kibaki sent back his own protest letter. [I find it very interesting and revealing that Reuters refers to the “warning letters” from Washington and the “protest note” from Kibaki- letter vs. note- which sounds more important to you?]

"President Mwai Kibaki has written to President Barack Obama ... expressing displeasure and concern about letters written ... to some ministers, some members of parliament and some civil servants in their personal capacity on matters of Kenya's public policy," a statement from Kibaki's office said."The action by the U.S. government official is considered out of step with international protocols in the conduct of relations between friendly nations."

It is a kind of extraordinary threat to put down on paper with foreign government officials. The main source of the letters is post-2008 election violence. Kenyan authorities haven’t done anything about it- 1,300 people dead and 300,000 displaced.

Apparently there is a strong history of corruption in the Kenyan government- everything from finances to human rights abuses that Kenyans have been wanting reformed for years- in general, it’s a bad place to try and do business legally.

That may be the case, but is it really the right time to start trying to reform ANOTHER government? At this point, we have multiple wars going on and plenty of issues on the homefront- Mr. Obama, sir, we don’t need to stir anything up in any new countries. Even if they are acknowledged as the most corrupt in East Africa by Watchdog Transparency International.