Charity warns of drought-sparked tribal violence in Kenya

A scorching drought that threatens millions across east Africa may spark major tribal clashes in Kenya as competition for water and pasture turns violent, a prominent global charity warned Monday.
"The escalating food crisis in Kenya is threatening to plunge the affected region into a level of conflict that hasn't been seen for almost a decade," Oxfam International said.
"The drought and food crisis in Kenya is so severe that it is leading to nomadic cattle herders fighting over resources," the British-based group said.
Clashes between nomadic pastoralists in Kenya's drought-afflicted north and raids from livestock-dependent herdsmen in southern Sudan and Ethiopia have already occurred and will intensify unless aid is urgently boosted, it said.
"The knock-on impact of the (food) crisis risks sparking conflict on a scale that Kenya hasn't seen for almost a decade," Oxfam said. "We now have a very small window in which to stop this crisis turning into a catastrophe."
"The implications of failing to step up the aid effort now will not just be starvation, it could also bring large scale conflict to the region," he said. "It's not too late to avert the worst of this, but it soon will be."
Already last month, nomads from neighbouring Ethiopia and Sudan staged a raid in north-western Kenya, killing at least 38 people, and violence involving Kenya's Turkana and Uganda's Karamajong tribes has also been reported.
In north-eastern Kenya, where at least 40 people have died of drought-related malnutrition and associated illness since December, hundreds of thousands of livestock have perished and theft of goats and cattle have soared, Oxfam said.
Inter-clan violence in the area is not uncommon but the drought has raised the stakes and the prevalence of automatic weapons in the hands of tribal warriors who once used spears and other crude arms has made raids more lethal.
"The number of weapons in the area is making such encounters increasingly lethal as nomadic communities now have to travel hundreds of kilometers (miles) in search of pasture," Oxfam said.
The Kenyan government has declared the drought a national disaster and says up to four million people are at risk of famine in the worst-affected areas.
The United Nations and international relief agencies put the figure at 2.5 million but are expected to raise that number by at least one million when they release a new needs assessment this week, officials say.
At the weekend, thousands of Kenyans turned up with food donations for a benefit concert in Nairobi modelled on the 1984 "Live Aid" concert for the victims of famine in Ethiopia, organisers said.
The four-hour, all-Kenyan event at Nairobi's Nyayo National Stadium on Sunday involved more than 20 local musicians and bands and drew more than 6,000 people and donations of more than 2,000 tonnes of food, they said.
The entry fee was the equivalent of a dollar or a packet of maizemeal flour and the audience was mostly composed of Kenyan youth, who danced energetically and sang along to their favourite songs.
"It was great to see young people come together donating their time and money and we thank God for this," said Maloba Wesonga, a local clergyman who opened the benefit with a prayer for those affected by the drought.
More than six million people in four east African countries - Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti - are on the brink of starvation, the United Nations says.