In Africa, Clinton Balances

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets Liberians as she arrives at the presidential palace in Monrovia on Thursday. Mrs. Clinton offered support for Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has faced calls to resign.
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Mrs. Clinton's seven-nation trip through Africa, which ends Friday, has been a balancing act between calling for good governance, while protecting U.S.-African economic ties. Those relationships are especially important now, as China, a U.S. economic competitor in Africa, has increasingly invested in the continent, offering loans, building roads and striking deals for commodities.

The US has neglected Africa for decades, only stepping in during times of crisis, and then in a rather perfunctory way -- although George W. Bush did provide a major contribution to fighting AIDS. Africa will become more valuable as a market and of greater strategic importance in the years ahead, dn it behooves the US to act.

Mrs. Clinton's Africa trip is the latest example of her push for so-called personalized diplomacy, which focuses as much on meeting businessmen and civil-society groups as heads of state and diplomats. In her speeches, the secretary underscored the Obama administration's commitment to "soft power" and using trade, technology and aid in addition to military power to protect American interests.

The shift in strategy may improve relations with African governments that chafe at Western criticism, but win less support from Africans themselves. Mrs. Clinton's trip comes as Africans have begun to question their leaders, even under oppressive regimes, more openly.

Cape Verde is a major US aid recipient.

The approach is a stark departure from that of the Bush administration, which in some cases openly challenged close allies. But the soft approach may cause problems of its own. Human-rights organizations could seize on the strategy as a waning of American resolve to exert influence. President Barack Obama's political critics could claim the approach places economic interests over moral obligations.

Such stentorian lecturing of waning political resolved does much to mollify the consciences of the lecturers, yet accomplishes little in practical terms. Moral obligations? To do what? Lecture? Pontificate? How about practical accomplishments?

Kenyan Town Strikes Back Against Its Tormenters

Residents of Karatina, Kenya, walked by bloody clubs on Tuesday, evidence of the town’s attack against members of a gang.














Just after dusk on Monday, the residents gathered, armed with clubs, machetes and traditional spears. They said they were sick of paying extortion taxes, sick of fearing for their girls and sick of living under the thumb of the Mungiki, an intensely secretive Kenyan group that is part street gang, part Mafia, with an added touch of the occult.





And so the people of Karatina decided to strike back. Under the cover of darkness, a mob of hundreds of young men who were paid by elders, according to several residents, swept across this lush green tea-growing area that seems more like a slice of Eden than a killing field and rounded up dozens of men suspected of being Mungiki members.

The mob pummeled the men suspected of being thugs, and this normally tranquil spot exploded into a melee of killings and counterkillings that left nearly 30 people dead. Witnesses said some victims were beaten beyond recognition. The evidence was on display on Tuesday. The mud roads were still sticky with blood, and children carefully tiptoed around the broken sticks tipped in red.

The Mungiki started in the 1980s as a self-defense force for the Kikuyu ethnic group, Kenya’s largest. Gang members modeled themselves after the Mau Mau, Kenya’s independence fighters who wore dreadlocks, took secret oaths and waged a hit-and-run guerrilla war against British colonizers.