Recent reports that militia groups - armed, funded, trained and supported by leading politicians - are growing in strength in Kenya is a major blow to the country’s political stability. During the December 2007 and January 2008 election violence, ethnic militias terrorized opponents in the Rift Valley. Rift Valley province is really the open sore of Kenyan history and politics, the site of disputed land claims since colonial times, as first foreign whites and then Kikuyus settled on territory that many Kalenjins consider their homeland.

What comes next is the question. Will Raila Odinga and his allies back down for now, and wait for an election mandate in 2012, which has eluded them over the past few election cycles? What happens if Kibaki - old and frail - is no longer able to rule? Will Uhuru Kenyatta take the reins of the (increasingly fragile) Kikuyu-Kamba coalition?

As someone who has visited Kenya many times over the past 12 years, and has written a number of articles on economic and political development in the country, I’m saddened to see what looks like the most serious threat of organized armed violence Kenya has seen since the 1982 coup attempt against Moi (or perhaps the land clashes of 1991). But not entirely surprised. Politicians have played the ethnic card, often violently, in Kenya since the country’s early days, perhaps as a legacy of British divide and rule policies and the toxic remains of the Mau Mau War.

Are Kenyans willing to trust their democratic institutions, and try to work through them to achieve their political goals? Or will competing ethnic militias further divide an already scarred society, and destroy Kenya’s promise? I don’t mean to sound alarmist, and my hope is that another compromise will be found between the two coalition groupings. But the flow of arms into militia groups is truly ominous.

Recent news reports from Sierra Leone, a country where I’ve worked since 2004, aren’t looking good. Youth unemployment is sky high, at 60 percent. And these aren’t just any old youth. Many are former soldiers in the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) or the Sierra Leone Army (SLA), groups that terrorized civilians during the country’s brutal 1991-2002 civil war. The fear is that, without some gainful employment, these youth will be a cause of instability and even a return to war in the country.

This isn’t some idle concern.  In work of mine with Shanker Satyanath and Ernest Sergenti of NYU, we showed that economic downturns in sub-Saharan Africa often lead to war the next year, and the effects are huge: a five percentage point drop in economic growth is associated with nearly a doubling of armed conflict risk. I elaborate on these issues more in my recent book Economics Gangsters with Ray Fisman (Princeton University Press 2008) and my forthcoming book Africa’s Turn? (MIT Press), the book that serves as the inspiration for this blog.

This is a photo of me in Makeni town, Sierra Leone, in front of a sign that states that the war is finally over. I hope that sign is still hanging when I next return to Sierra Leone.

A violent day in African politics: President Vieira of Guinea Bissau was assassinated today, only months after a near fatal attack.  The country has long been home ground to economic gangsters - including drug traffickers and rapacious army leaders. I wonder whether violent attacks of this kind, as well as coups, civil wars, and election clashes will only become more widespread in the next year or two given the deteriorating economic conditions in many African countries, as the global crisis hits home.