‘Civil war is inevitable’ said Elon Musk the other day, posting on X about the recent violent disorder in the UK.
But – as we saw in the mass, peaceful response to rumours that there would be attacks on refugee centres and immigration lawyers around the country – when ordinary people mobilise without violence, what might seem inevitable (to some people) can turn out very differently.
There’s a great example of this from Kenya in 2007-08.
It’s a story that’s largely unknown, mainly because disasters that are averted don’t make good copy. ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ – but if it doesn't, it gets buried. Or soon forgotten.
So I’m going to retell it here.
A contested result
The trouble started when the presidential election results were announced on 30 December 2007. The losing side claimed fraud – and violence erupted.
Soon there were well-orchestrated attacks and counter-attacks involving massacres, arson, looting, rape, evictions and dispossession, often with an ethnic element.
The police response added to the violence and deaths. In less than two months, more than 1,300 people were killed – almost half within the first two weeks – while more than 500,000 people were displaced from their homes.
Kenya seemed on the brink of disintegration.
The situation was turned around by the swift ‘bottom-up’ intervention of a citizen diplomacy group, the Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP), which paved the way for the official ‘top-down’ mediation, headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
This locally-led ‘bottom-up-top-down’ combination ended in an agreement between the rival political parties, which established a power-sharing Grand Coalition Government in February 2008.
Concerned Citizens for Peace
So who were the CCP and how were they able to be so effective?
At its heart were five individuals, all highly experienced in conflict management and peacebuilding.
Two were retired Kenyan Army generals, who had served as UN peacekeepers and advisors to various African peace processes. One was a former senior Kenyan diplomat, with high-level contacts. And two were Kenyan ‘peace professionals’ with extensive grassroots networks.
Seeing the void in national leadership, they quickly set up a base in a well-known Nairobi hotel and began to work publicly – and behind the scenes – to mobilise peace-minded citizens from across Kenyan society.
Included were media and business professionals; political analysts and writers; university vice-chancellors and student leaders; government officials, the police and the military; religious leaders and politicians. And, crucially, ‘ordinary people’.
The Open Forum
In the first month of the crisis, the CCP’s Open Forum became the place where Kenyans from all walks of life were invited to come together every day to reflect, analyse, strategise – and act.
Working committees were formed, while ‘Concern’ became a brand name used by other affiliates of CCP – Concerned Writers of Kenya, Concerned Women, Concerned Youth for Peace and so on.
Meanwhile, on a parallel track, the CCP leaders were facilitating quiet and confidential high-level diplomacy.
A web of preventive action
Taken together, the CCP formed a web of action to reduce, then end the violence.
For example, as one commentator later recounted:
One of the methods they used was to ask the sixty thousand members of a women’s organisation, who had cell phones, to look out of their windows and report what they saw.
The information started pouring in. They began to plot not only the hot spots of the violence but also the cold spots, since it was important to know where people were running to, so they could be protected.
They then began to develop strategies for each spot, with the help of trusted local leaders, to work out together how they could stop the killing without using force.
Almost miraculously, in less than three weeks, with the help of community, youth and church leaders, sports personalities, the police and the media, these strategies brought the violence under control.
The retired generals were also able to assure the CCP – and through it the wider populace – that the Kenyan army would not become involved in the conflict on either side, a stance that was possible thanks to earlier reforms that had professionalised and ensured an ethnic balance in the military.
Create an ‘enabling environment’
Without the CCP’s intervention, Kenya could have collapsed into civil war.
Their actions can be seen as how, at a time of crisis, there is a crucial need to create an ‘enabling environment’ that helps to prevent self-destruction, and that encourages everyone to focus on identifying and resolving the conflict’s underlying causes.
The total cost of the CCP’s actions was roughly $200,000, donated at short notice after urgent requests to international NGOs.
The violence in Kenya lost its economy an estimated $3.6 billion in the short-term and depressed GDP going forward. How much higher this would have been – not just for Kenya but the entire region – had the CPP not been formed and intervened is impossible to say.
Address the root causes
There's an important coda to this story, however.
Namely, that acting in a time of crisis is one thing. Fixing the underlying problems that led to it is another.
So, just as work continues to transform the conflicts that remain in Kenyan society, the fact that further violence did not materialise in the UK this week does not mean that the issues that fed it have gone away. They have to be addressed and resolved.
As I keep saying – we need a peace process. And we can all be involved.
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