This agreement made with Muslim leaders undermines the secular nature of Kenya and opens a Pandora’s box of chaos and conflict similar to what happened in Nigeria and Sudan.

"This is not a stand-alone incident; rather, it is part of strategy to Islamize Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa, through the introduction of Sharia law."

The area is multi-ethnic but traditionally dominated by the Kalenjin tribe. It suffered ethnic violence in 1992 and 1997 when hundreds of people — mainly Kikuyus — were killed and thousands more displaced in land clashes.

The Red Cross video showed hundreds of people at Eldoret airport, which lies 20km from the town itself, who had been there "for the last few days, surrounded by 3,000 people from one ethnic group," he added.

I thought I knew everything about Kenyan politics; at least enough to believe that there existed parameters enclosing the possible and the impossible. Imagine my surprise then when I heard that there are Muslims for Raila...

...What surprised me, what seemed to me entirely fatuous, even incredible was the notion that a sizable number of Kenyan Muslims should believe their political fortunes set to enjoy an improvement under a Raila Odinga government. There are many reasons why this position is inconsistent with reason, and I will try to lay them out. They are based on the whole on the American war on terror, a euphemism for a war on Islam- clothed in some quarters as a clash of civilisations, and the ODM leader's closeness with the American establishment.

First off, the ODM candidate has repeatedly boasted about his close links with the American political establishment. Even the idlest observer of our politics will have noticed that Raila Odinga is particularly chummy with the Americans. For lack of evidence, I will not go into the allegations of a deal for the establishment of Africom's headquarters in Kenya at the minute, but even disregarding that there is every reason to fear your enemy's friend...

...But that is not the end of the ODM leader's obsession with the Americans. Like I said before, he boasts in his celebrated biography about his links with the American establishment, including invitations to attend Democratic party conventions. For those uninitiated in these things, the United States is really a one party state with very little difference between the two parties. The media may obsess with painting George W Bush as evil, but these measures started long before his presidency. President Clinton and Madeline Albright were for example instrumental in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. Perhaps more incriminating than the deaths themselves was the callous fashion in which these deaths were regarded by that administration.

Even more recently, new kid on the block and a close friend of Raila's, Barack Obama has come out clearly to state that he would invade Pakistan if General Musharaf was overthrown. This was so extreme a sentiment that even the normally hawkish Hillary Clinton saw fit to ask Obama to calm down. And Obama is not a nobody; the Illinois Senator sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Yes, these are the friends the ODM keep.

Ordinary Kenyans are not the only ones who see Obama as a messiah. Kenyan politicians are already using his popularity as political capital. Raila Odinga, a Luo opposition leader and one of the top contenders for the 2007 Kenyan presidential elections, tried to portray Obama's 2006 trip to Kenya as a personal endorsement. His supporters have created T-shirts and posters with cleverly computer-altered images that show Obama and Odinga standing side by side, arms around each other. This, too, has gotten some Kenyans excited.

"In 2009, we might see a Luo president in Kenya, a Luo president in the USA, and a Luo ambassador in Washington, D.C. — current ambassador Ogego," one Kenyan suggested recently on Africa Op-Ed, an online forum. "If there was time you had to learn Luo, it's now," he added. Such a possibility is imagined as potential salvation for a tribe that has been marginalized — politically and economically — since independence more than 40 years ago.