http://allafrica.com/stories/20080118091 6.html

Barack Obama has had a major impact on the recent disputed Kenyan election. He spoke in support of Orange Democratic Movement opposition leader Raila Odinga when in Kenya in 2006. The two men met last fall when Odinga visited America as each was preparing an "insurgency" campaign in their respective countries. In a recent BBC interview, Raila Odinga, averred that he and Obama were "old friends who spoke often on the telephone". Odinga also said that he and Obama were cousins, a claim that the Obama campaign was unwilling to acknowledge,(given Odinga's current difficulties) but did not deny.

Former Clinton aides currently working for Obama were the "mutual acquaintances" who directed Dick Morris to Kenya to advise the Odinga campaign in November of 2007, shortly after Odinga visited with Obama in America. Morris was an extremely divisive factor in the Kenyan elections, as a foreigner, a white man, and the creator of an antagonistic "have vs. have nots" campaign platform for Odinga's ODM. He also suggested the current campaign of civil disobedience to protest the election result, including a "Million Person March", a la Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

When things got out of hand following the election, Obama called Odinga repeatedly, but Mwai Kibaki, the leader of the Government would not return his calls as he perceives Obama to be biased toward his Luo relative Odinga in the conflict. Obama is featured prominently in ODM campaign posters, slogans, and songs in Kenya, and the plaintive phrase "A Luo will become President in America before a Luo will become President in Kenya" is often heard.

Now, according to the above dispatch from Africa, it appears that the tribal rupture in Kenya, percipitated by the election, could spread to other countries. Some 700 people have died in Kenya as a result of the agitation since the beginning of 2008, and around 300,000 have been displaced from their homes. Human Rights monitors and Church leaders in Western Kenya have both suggested that the slaughter was organized by members of the ODM, and the Kenyan government has vowed to prosecute those guilty of the crimes.