By ANDREW MALONE

Last updated at 18:25 12 February 2008

The neighbours arrived after dusk. Armed with machetes, clubs and iron bars, they surrounded Monica Mutaba's house in a Kenyan slum. She was in bed with her husband and baby when the front door was kicked down.

Monica recognised some of her attackers as they burst in. They shopped at the same local market; their children played together. She had grown up with some of them.

But, as blood-lust gripped the former British colony this week, the mob was not going to let old friendships stand in the way.

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Realising she was in mortal danger, Monica grabbed her son and sprinted for the back door. As she ran out, she looked over her shoulder. Her husband had rushed at the men to try to protect her. But he had been overwhelmed and knocked to the floor.

The mob surrounded him. Chanting tribal oaths and yelling "Kikuyus out", the neighbours hacked at her husband with machetes. He put his arms up to try to protect himself from the blows. It was futile. There was blood everywhere.

Barefoot and wearing the nightdress she escaped in, Monica stood sobbing by the roadside with her baby on her back and told me how she watched as the mob poured petrol over her house and set it ablaze with her husband still inside.

"I hope he is still alive," she whispered, desperately clinging to hope. "This is my baby's father. These men were shouting about my tribe while they cut my husband with their weapons. There were more than 20 of them. They burned down our home and many of the other homes around us. I cannot go back now."

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Monica's "crime"? She's from the wrong tribe. Mwai Kibaki, the leader of the Kikuyu, was "re-elected" president last month in what is widely regarded as a rigged election, sparking scenes of violence throughout Kenya as rival tribes reacted with fury at the result.

More than 1,000 people have been killed as ethnic hatred sweeps a country previously regarded as a model African state. Until now, Kenya seemed to have been spared the bloodshed that scars much of the continent's post-colonial history. No longer.

The tension that has led to the fighting goes back to Britain's legacy in Kenya. When the British arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century, they took over large areas of fertile land, developing productive farms.

Then came the Mau Mau uprising from 1952-1958, when thousands of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyus, died during the battle for black majority rule.

With independence in 1963 under Kikuyu President Jomo Kenyatta, many British settlers were bought out from their picturesque farms by the government.

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And instead of redistributing the land to the people who had lived there for centuries, like the Kalenjin and Luo tribes, the new president gave much of it to his own Kikuyu tribe.

Resentment over this land has built up over the past four decades. The Luos, who make up 12 per cent of the population, have long complained not only about the land but also that the best jobs have gone to Kikuyus. And with Kibaki's election as President in 2002 - he, too, is a Kikuyu - that process accelerated.

The Kikuyus have become Kenya's elite, with prominent - and lucrative - jobs in medicine, law, politics and business. And now, the grievance of the other tribes - encouraged by political opposition - has spilt over into bloody violence.

Amid warnings that the country is sliding into tribal anarchy and even civil war, what happens next in Kenya is crucial for Africa's future. U.S. and British diplomats fear that chronic instability will lead to Kenya becoming a bigger base for terrorists, as well as a burgeoning centre for drug and people smuggling to the West.

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With Sudan and Somalia in turmoil to the north, and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe in ruins to the south and west, the loss of Kenya would prove a devastating blow to the safety and prosperity of the continent, bringing chaos to a huge swathe of East Africa.

The signs are not encouraging. More than 300,000 people have been driven from their homes. Much of the country is under siege. Roads have been blocked by mobs hunting tribal enemies. Some victims have been beheaded. Others have been hacked to death with machetes.

Gangs are roaming the streets, stopping vehicles and killing people suspected of being members of an enemy tribe. Unable to get troops into affected areas, army helicopters have resorted to strafing gangs with machine-gun fire to protect women and children from attack.

In the past five days, at least 100 people have died, although the true death toll is undoubtedly higher. Much of the killing has been in outlying areas, away from the eyes of aid workers and journalists.

I watched one night as a Kikuyu man was abducted by a gang armed with clubs and hustled away to deserted wasteland. I don't know what became of him as the group was lost in the darkness.

Rape is used as an instrument of terror. In one township, a gang of thugs, high on drink and drugs, seized eight women and held them in a burned-out building, raping them time and again. Doctors say victims are being sexually assaulted and made to hack members of their own families with machetes.

The situation has chilling overtones of Rwanda. In the worst genocide since the Holocaust, up to one million Tutsis were murdered by Hutu neighbours in the tiny, mountainous country during a four-month period in 1994.

The Tutsis, favoured and promoted by Belgian colonialists, were hated by Hutus for holding the most lucrative posts.

Now, more than a decade later, Kenya's Kikuyu and Luo tribes have become involved in deadly clashes that have left many fearing Kenya could be heading for a similar fate.

As Britain and the U.S. voiced their alarm about the scale of the Kenyan crisis this week, unconfirmed rumours swept Nairobi, the capital, that the United Nations was poised to start evacuating staff from Kenya if the violence continued.

There are no UN troops on the ground in Kenya, but there are 800 international staff working on "humanitarian" projects who may be evacuated, while 1,200 local staff will be left to "fend for themselves" if the collapse in law and order continues.

In one of the worst incidents, more than 70 women and children were locked inside a church and burned to death. Both the ruling Kikuyus as well as Luo opposition leaders in Kenya have been accused of using newspapers and radio to stir up hatred.

With death threats being made against local editors, millions of sinister leaflets are being distributed in Kenya's slums, where 90 per cent of the 40 million population lived in grinding poverty - surviving on less than £1 a day.

In Juja, a township on the outskirts of Nairobi, dozens have been killed and thousands driven from their ramshackle homes. A group of men armed with machetes stood at one entrance to the maze of alleyways that lead through the slum, handing out pieces of paper urging people to take up arms.

Written in Kikuyu, the leaflets state: 'Kenya, for how long must our blood pour out? For how long must we die? Hear it from the horse's mouth. If the clashes are not over in seven days, we declare war.' Luo enemies are circulating similar pamphlets, urging death to Kikuyus.

On the streets of Kibera, Nairobi's biggest slum, I met Teddy, a Kikuyu, who sells stolen mobile phones and drugs to impoverished slum residents. Sweeping his machete through the air in an arc he claimed his Luo enemies were "dirty" because they were not circumcised.

"Luos deserve to die," he told me. "They are unclean and lazy. We cannot let them kill us. If there is no political settlement, we must cut them with our weapons. They are trying to take everything from us. They must die."

The violence has sent tremors through the white community, dubbed the "Happy Valley Set" in the 1930s on account of their decadent lifestyles.

At the Nairobi Sports Club, a favourite expat haunt, one white landowner said many wives and children and have been sent away to London and South Africa. "It has never been this bad," he said.

The government is trying to hide the scale of the conflict. At the Kenyatta hospital in Nairobi, I was threatened with arrest by government police as dozens of victims of the latest clashes were brought in for treatment. Yet the pitiful scenes in the hospital were not the complete picture.

At a clandestine meeting, senior medical figures revealed that doctors and nurses have been told to hide the true nature of the bloodshed, keeping the worst cases in private wards patrolled by security guards.

One of the men produced a list of the 'real' casualties, which revealed horrific injuries and deaths caused by gunshot wounds and machetes. "You must tell people what is happening here," the source said. "We are desperate."

In a macabre twist, doctors and nurses are also deciding who should live or die according to which tribe they are from. Kikuyus are not being treated when Luo doctors are on duty; Luos have had life-support machines tampered with by Kikuyu staff.

The crisis erupted after elections last month, when Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, was re-elected president for a second term following a ballot condemned by international monitors as rigged.

Desperate to keep control of the finances of a country ranked one of the most corrupt in the world, he ignored international condemnation and formed a cabinet, sparking outrage last month among Luos. Raila Odinga, the Luo candidate, refused to accept the result.

An aloof figure rarely seen among his people, Kibaki's desire to remain president was understandable. He has spent much of his life "feeding off Kenya's carcass", says one diplomat.

During a career stretching back to the earliest days of independence, he first served under Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding president, before becoming deputy to Daniel Arap Moi, whose portrait was ordered to be hung in every building in the country during his 24-year rule.

Despite billions in Western aid, the country was undermined by staggering government-orchestrated corruption.

Investigators believe Moi and his allies plundered more than £3 billion from Kenya's coffers. When Kibaki was elected, vowing to "clean up the country", he proved himself a natural as Moi's successor, promptly spending £12million on 57 Mercedes limousines - more than the entire budget to fight malaria, the country's biggest killer.

Kenya's state airline has been used for drug-smuggling. Five crew members, with links to politicians, were forced to quit after journalists uncovered the scandal. Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean coast, has been identified as a key staging point in the route for drugs from Asia to the West.

The Kenyan media is also under assault. Offices of a newspaper were attacked by masked gunmen carrying AK-47s after they revealed how Armenian gangsters were being allowed by the government to smuggle drugs from Pakistan through Kenya. The ministers, of course, were in line for a huge cut.

After denying any involvement in the raid, during which three journalists were arrested and are still being held without charge, the government later confessed that it had taken action to "safeguard" state security.

"If you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten by it," said John Michuki, the minister for internal security.

Frustrated with the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, many Luos believe Kibaki has favoured Kikuyus. Seen as shrewd and clever businessmen, the Kikuyus hold the prominent positions in the country. They were also promoted by British military leaders who colonised Kenya.

Odinga, who claims he won December's elections, was seen as the saviour of the Luos, promising to sweep away corruption.

Married with four children - a son is called Fidel after the Cuban revolutionary, while a daughter is called Winnie in honour of Nelson Mandela's murderous ex-wife - Odinga was jailed twice in the 1990s for 'treason' amid claims he plotted to overthrow Moi.

He fled to Norway and likes to boast that he is related to Barack Obama, the U.S. presidential candidate, whose father was a Luo. Odinga has also been probed over dubious commercial deals.

Corruption now permeates all levels of life in Kenya. One study showed each Kenyan offers a minimum of 16 bribes a month. Police lurk on roads, stopping vehicles and letting them go in return for "kitu kidogo" - Swahili for "something small," meaning large sums of money often change hands.

The scale of the problem has exasperated Britain. Edward Clay, the British high commissioner to Kenya in 2004, incensed the ruling elite by stating that the number of honest Kenyan ministers could be "fitted on the back of a postage stamp".

The sad fact is that, Kibaki and Odinga are as bad as each other. All they want is Kenya's money. Both are guilty of stirring racial hatred, hoping the victor can plunder the country's remaining riches.

Isolated conflicts between the tribes are not new. In 1997, while a correspondent based in Africa, I witnessed Kikuyus, Luos and Kalenjins fighting each other in Nakuru, a town where 7,000 are this weekend hiding from the mob in a local church.

This is different. The trouble has spread throughout the country. Fear is widespread; the killing apparently organised. Neither the Kikuyu nor the Luo leader is prepared to back down. With a temporary lull in the mayhem, diplomats were last night desperately trying to broker a deal.

But the machetes are out. It is not too late to save Kenya, though there is little time. The twin curses of Africa - corrupt leaders and tribal hatreds - are blighting this nation.

We must never forget the lessons of Rwanda - testament to the fact that, in Africa, unimaginable terror can swiftly become real.

It is an enduring tragedy for the Kenyan people - and millions of others throughout Africa - that they are constantly denied the leaders they so desperately deserve.