"Mediation" seems kind of appalling, actually. An election that would have tossed out a corrupt and sickening regime was hijacked & stolen by said regime (something, I suppose, that the US is familiar with), which has since whipped up ethnic violence to keep itself in power, much to the harm of the country and its citizens.

But one really doesn't want to mediate with corrupt thugs, one wishes for the rule of law and government for of and by the people. I wish Rice & Annan were perhaps negotiating/threatening to achieve a legal regime change, not just trying to make peace between disputing parties. It reminds me of schools attempting to mediate between two kids in conflict, when it really isn't conflict per se, but cruel and vicious bullying.

what are Kofi and Condi or anyone supposed to do about it?

This sh*t is personal - a Masai husband beats his Kikuyu wife because of an election? Women assaulted on a wide scale by their friends and neighbors - how are the words of a foreigner gonna change any of this? These people hate each other for no good reason - reasons only known to them.

This analogy isn't the best because I'm in no way comparing the seriousness of gang rape to silly sports team rivalries - but imagine if during the worst of British soccer hooliganism - Kofi and Condi (or their 80's equivalents) had called for the soccer fans to cool it or offered their services as mediators.

They would've been told to go screw themselves. Its not their problem to solve.

Raila Odinga claims to be Barack Obama's COUSIN! No joke! Look it up.

Make sure you toss in a general purpose blurb about evil Israel too. I'm sure that will fix everything, Koffi. Honestly, the LW who said "What can Koffi Annan do?" Yes precisely right. They can and will do nothing. And moreover, not to be too cynical about it, why should they? In the big scheme of things, even in that part of Africa, what is 1500 dead and a few thousand gang rapes? I heard there was a Palestinian goat the other day that died. There must be an immediate and world wide condemnation of the evil illegal apartheid racist zionist entity. Now that's something the UN is good at, so let them do that. But Sudan (Darfur), Rwanda (a million dead in a hundred days), Chad (a new civil war erupted 2 weeks ago), Congo (4 million, that's 4,000,000 dead since 1992, Somalia (isn't even a country anymore), Uganda (350,000+ dead in tribal violence in a decade) are better left to their own devices according to the UN.

And let's not forget Rwanda. This all smells of the same fish.

This is exactly what happens when politicians run for office on the platform of supporting their own ethnic group to the detriment of the other ethnic groups that make up the country. What was once a unified and peaceful country is now approaching civil war.

One of the most wonderful aspects of the US is the concept of intermarriage. You may claim to be a hyphenated American (Irish-American, Italian-American, etc.) but the chances are that, if you are more than a few generations away from immigrant ancestors, you are the product of "the melting pot." Even religion has become intertwined in families. We may joke about ethnic differences, but most of us understand that we are, first of all, Americans.

As long as individuals put tribal loyalties or religious loyalties ahead of national loyalty there is a danger of something similar happening. In Iraq, it's Sunni vs. Sh'ia. In Afghanistan, loyalty is to the tribe. In many African nations it's tribe vs tribe. It's time people looked at one another simply as "people." Countries will continue to devolve into chaos when separatist loyalties transcend national loyalties. Governments or political/religious groups that emphasize "differentness" are merely looking for ways to gain power--they don't care at all about the people who will be harmed, deserve no respect, and should be rendered powerless.