Drivers Of Pastoralist Violence In Northwestern Kenya - Analysis
Pastoralist violence in northwestern Kenya can be divided into three
contexts - the traditional, the political and the business - each of which
must be taken into account when prescribing a viable long-term peacebuilding
strategy.
By Willis Okumu
(March 2, 2013)
Pastoralist violence involving the Pokot, Samburu and Turkana has been
well-documented by academia, development agencies and even the Kenyan
government. In these reports, however, one finds different perspectives on -
and diagnoses of - the root causes of violence in north-western Kenya. It
can therefore be argued that pastoralist violence can be divided into three
contexts - the traditional, the political and the business context.
The traditional context of pastoralist violence is evident when pastoralist
communities compete over scarce and diminishing water and pastural
resources. This has become more pronounced over the years owing to bi-annual
recurrences of drought which end-up decimating livestock. Such droughts
increase the possibility of ethnic violence among these three communities,
who often raid cattle from one other to replenish their livestock. Once one
community raids the other, it is only a matter of time before warriors from
the rival community organize and execute a retaliatory raid in order to
recover the previously stolen animals. This is achieved through the use of
weapons which often times lead to the death of community members, including
women and children. Lastly, the cultural need for cattle accumulation for
payment of dowries makes cattle raids inevitable.
Pastoralist violence cannot, however, only be seen in the traditional sense;
sometimes it is politically motivated. In northwestern Kenya, political
leaders use cattle raids and inter-ethnic violence to influence the outcome
of political contests, especially during a general election. Warriors from
these three communities have been used by political leaders at one time or
another to raid rival communities, especially in areas where two pastoralist
communities share one constituency. For instance, the violence witnessed in
Baragoi in Samburu County has been attributed to the intense rivalry between
the Turkana and Samburu, whose population in that district is almost equal.
Cattle raids have also been motivated by a need to amass livestock that can
then be sold by political aspirants to fundraise for political campaigns,
with such cases well-documented in Turkana South, East Pokot and Samburu
North. Political elites have been accused of using their high offices to
influence the eviction of rival communities by advocating for their lands to
be converted into conservation zones. This was, for instance, partly the
cause of ethnic violence between the Samburu and Pokot over the
establishment of the Ltungai Reserve, where the Pokot accused Samburu
leaders of grabbing their land. The proliferation of small arms and light
weapons among these three communities - plus the use of these weapons for
political violence - is designed to evict or eliminate communities from
shared resources, and to alter the political arithmetic of these areas.
The business context of violence in Pokot, Turkana and Sambur involves
illicit business men and women from within and without the pastoral
communities, who hire and arm warriors to raid rival communities solely in
order to resell raided livestock in urban markets, such as Nakuru and
Nairobi, where the demand for beef is very high. Further, these illicit
businessmen and women often control the sale of small arms and light weapons
to all communities, thereby increasing the possibility of armed violence
during cases of commercialized cattle raids.
In conclusion, practitioners need to understand the interplay between these
three contexts of pastoralist violence in order to rightly prescribe a
viable long term peacebuilding strategy.
Willis Okumu, a Kenyan citizen, holds an MA in Anthropology from the Cologne
African Studies Centre, University of Cologne. His MA thesis is entitled,
"Trans-local Peacebuilding among Pastoralists Communities in Kenya-the Case
of Laikipia Peace Caravan".
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2013 - 06:20:58 EST
