Gangs of Nairobi

"Those are them," whispered one Taliban member named Moses, pointing at a group of armed men down the street manning a fruit stand. He believed they were Mungiki. Earlier that morning two non-Taliban Luo had been killed walking across an adjacent neighborhood called Stage 2930. Moses believed the killers were Mungiki disguised as policemen. Without the protection of the Taliban, Moses said, the Luo are in danger. Moses claimed to have seen four people butchered and said he had had to use his own panga machete in self-defense on three of the last four nights. As the incursions and counterattacks have increased in this desperately poor section of Nairobi, many have been left without food or water. Food prices have skyrocketed. Three small potatoes stacked on a vendor's mat used to cost less than a nickel; today they are an unaffordable 50 shillings, about 55 cents. Moses said he thought the violence elsewhere in Kenya among similar groups of armed men was simply a long-suppressed desire for revenge. " If you are Luo, they chop you," he said ruefully. "So what do you think we do?"

Fears about the Mungiki seem well founded. In an interview with NEWSWEEK last summer, Hezekiah Ndura Waruinge, co-founder and former national coordinator of the sect—it's name means multitude in Kikuyu—said the sect had changed drastically from its original conception as freedom fighters modeled on the Mau Mau rebels who fought for independence from Kenya's British colonizers. "Mungiki no longer exists," warned Waruinge, adding that the new gangs are dangerous because "there is no more central control. There is no leadership to negotiate with, just a bunch of rogue groups taking money from the highest bidder." While much of the Mungiki's ritual and history is shrouded in secrecy, their attacks have tended to follow distinct patterns. Prior to attacking they make a bonfire and roll their pantlegs up to alert fellow members in the area. They believe that women should be circumcised—and sometimes force the procedure on them. In other cases Mungiki behead and circumcise their victims, usually scattering body parts in different public locations. No outsiders know what all their initiation rituals are for certain, but some are said to involve drinking or bathing in blood.

With postelection Kenya becoming increasingly volatile, many residents fear a brutal boost to Mungiki power. Many Luo slum residents, like 29-year-old Rachel—who was afraid to give her surname—are planning to flee Mathare. "We don't even talk in our own language because of Mungiki," Rachel says. "We can't sleep here, so we are staying with a relative in a Taliban area." Many others, seen filling up the backs of old pickup trucks and steering their belongings on wooden carts, are following suit, heading toward the displacement camps that are growing in number outside churches, police stations, and military bases. Hustling out toward a safer haven on Sunday afternoon, Louis Etiyang sported thick bandages on his head and machete gashes on his arms. On Dec. 30 he was walking alone through a Kikuyu area when someone shouted "Luo!" and a group attacked him. "If a KTN [Kenyan Television Network] truck had not passed, I'm dead."

The conflict has pitted tribes, voting blocs and even best friends against one another. The majority Kikuyu and the Kamba tribes are together. Kenya's third- and fourth-largest tribes, the Kalenjin and the Luo, as well as a hodgepodge of many of the country's 40-odd tribes, have also forged an alliance. "Everything is different now. It's all tribes and partisans," said Rogers Wanyonyii, a 35-year-old teller at a currency exchange bureau who was hovering near a group of Luo men clutching makeshift weapons outside a barricaded restaurant in Taliban stronghold Area 4-A. "What I see isn't Kenya; it's like war." Given the tensions between the Taliban and the Mungiki, that war isn't likely to end anytime soon.

With Alexandra Polier

© 2008