A man whirls a whip round his head and brings the lash down hard on a Kenyan youth clad in a "Save our Forests" T-Shirt.The whip cracks again and a mob starts hurling rocks at a bus-load of environmental activists from Kenya's Green Belt Movement, barring their way to a patch of threatened woodland.The skirmish on the edge of the Kaptagat forest in central Kenya was only one battle in a much wider was against a clearance scheme menacing what survives of Kenya's dwindling tree cover.The fight for the forests has broadened into a political confrontation, with Opposition parties alleging that the plan is simply a ploy by the ruling party to parcel out land to politicians to buy support ahead of elections next year.