Kapedo, Kenya — 'Those who say there is calm in the North Rift don't know the life we live.'
Kenya has sent some of its best-trained police officers to tackle gangs in Haiti, but at home its security forces have struggled to stop cattle-rustling and banditry in the north of the country that has displaced thousands and led to an endless cycle of violence.
The Kenyan government has deployed 400 of an expected contingent of 1,000 special forces police to Haiti as part of a UN-approved security mission. The intervention has faced legal challenges, and widespread criticism that the government is neglecting communities in its North Rift region that constantly need police escorts just to fetch firewood and water, or drive safely along the major roads.
President William Ruto argues that his administration can do both - help Haiti, and restore peace in the North Rift, where the violence between rival pastoralist communities is unrelenting, and repeated disarmament initiatives have failed.
But Velma Mkaudi, a resident of Kapedo in Turkana County, an area plagued by insecurity, is not convinced. "We are living like prisoners in our own homes. The 1,000 police officers the government is sending to Haiti could have helped a lot here," she told The New Humanitarian. "You cannot purport to help outside when your own home is burning."
650,000 illegal guns
The North Rift region is made up of five counties: Turkana, Baringo, Samburu, Elgeyo Marakwet, and West Pokot. It's known for its beautiful rugged terrain, arid landscapes, and rich cultural heritage. Pastoralist communities - including the Turkana, Pokot, and Samburu - dominate the region.
I travelled across Baringo, Turkana, and Samburu counties to try and understand what drives the communal violence, and to hear from residents on whether they felt the government was doing enough to bring peace and development to the area.
It's a region that for generations has been plagued by cattle-rustling, where rival communities have fought over control of grazing areas. The conflict has escalated and turned more deadly with the commercialisation of cattle-rustling and the proliferation of illegal weapons.
The violence has left the area extremely insecure, underdeveloped, and isolated. That's at least how I felt -- isolated and insecure -- driving from Marigat to Kagir Primary School in Chemolingot, Baringo County.
In 2023, at the height of the insecurity, the school's headteacher, Thomas Kibet, was shot dead by pastoralist militias. Residents fled for safety, and it wasn't until June this year that some started returning.
The 2023 attack was part of the continuous competition over grazing land between pastoralists from Turkana and Baringo counties. The aim of the violence has been to displace residents from the area so as to access grazing land and steal their cattle.
The road, a muddy track winding through the undulating hills is barely visible - a clear indication that vehicles rarely came here. Abandoned mud-straw houses cling to the side of the road, with no sign of life.
While small-scale cattle-raiding has long been a cultural practice among the pastoralist communities of the North Rift - carried out to replenish herds, for dowry payment and as initiation into manhood - it was a traditionally well-regulated affair and loss of life was rare, entailing compensation when it did occur. However, commercialisation of the practice, coupled with the proliferation of small arms, has sidelined community elders and turned it into a deadly business, financed by new actors supplying markets regionally and further afield. Along with the historic marginalisation of the area dating to colonial times, this has generated a complex security problem.
Conflict has been exacerbated by years of worsening droughts that have diminished grazing areas. The creation of county borders has also limited pastoralist movement, which is key to the herding economy and lifestyle.
Then there are the estimated 650,000 illegal weapons in the hands of the region's young men, smuggled through Kenya's porous borders with South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, which has made cattle-rustling so deadly.
Too afraid to go home
Mary Lorengei was among the 12 families that had just returned to Kagir when The New Humanitarian visited. Still afraid to go back to their original homes, they had set up camp at the school where they felt safer because of a police post in the school grounds.
She and the rest of the women and their 22 children sleep in a single tent donated by the World Health Organization. The boys and the men sleep in classrooms on the bare floor because of insufficient bedding.
As we talked, she explained what had driven her from her home and into this current state of destitution - dependent on well-wishers and the county government to provide food and other basics.
"Things started getting bad in 2022. They [pastoralist militia] stole all our animals. It went on until 2023, when they started grazing their cows even outside our homes, daring us to fight back," said Lorengei.
"Then they started killing people. They would waylay people on the road and kill them. They even killed the headmaster. It became very risky," she said. "Even getting food became a problem."
In March last year, the "bandits" - as they are commonly referred to - made a direct attack on Kagir, but the police fought them off. Lorengei and over 2,500 other residents fled the village.
Almost 60 children have resumed learning at Kagir Primary School, but more than half of them do not know where their parents or any family members are. They were separated when everyone fled - and stuck with whichever adult they were familiar with or whoever took them in - and are still hoping their families will come and find them.
When Lorengei and the other families returned in June, nobody could recognise their homes anymore: They had been vandalised, some razed to the ground, and now, after more than a year, have been erased by creeping vegetation.
Almost everyone is too afraid to venture beyond the school compound to the nearby forest to fetch wood for construction to enable them to rebuild their lives.
"For how long will we live like this - in tents, no houses?," said Lorengei, a mother of eight who has sent her children to live with relatives away from the North Rift. "This [school] is the only safe place, because of the police presence."
A 'negative peace'
The Kenyan government says it has stationed 3,000 soldiers in the North Rift region and that calm is returning. Some NGOs are helping to lead inter-communal dialogues and are launching peacebuilding measures to try and ease hostilities.
But Hassan Ismail of Interpeace - an NGO working on reconciliation and development - describes the current relative calm as a "negative peace".
"The impact of conflict is still immense," he explained. "People have lost livestock, relatives, and properties, and they require [the implementation] of a humanitarian and developmental agenda."
Lorengei is also not optimistic. "The problem is, right now, the bandits can say they are willing to talk and stop fighting because they have grass for their cows," she said. "But when it's dry, they will still come back and terrorise us."
With the militia fighters able to hide in the hills, she doesn't regard the police post at the school as a long-term solution.
"The police only secure us here in the compound," she said. "The government can't talk of peace when the bandits still have guns. If they are talking of peace, then they have to surrender the guns."
The difficulty of disarmament
The pastoral sector, valued at $1.3 billion - equivalent to 13% of Kenya's GDP - has historically been overlooked by both colonial and post-independence governments. Throughout much of the colonial period, northwestern Kenya was declared a closed region; hence only administrative/military posts were established. Following independence, the new authorities continued the marginalisation, with a policy that favoured investment in areas with abundant natural resources and settled populations deemed likely to "yield the largest increase in [economic] output".
Free movement across the rangelands is central to both the local economy and the pastoral lifestyle. But the creation of country borders following devolution in 2013 has interrupted that mobility and led to boundary disputes - particularly in areas with abundant grazing land, water, and minerals, with communities vying for control.
Weapons abound in the region. I saw many young men carrying guns, something I had not expected, assuming they would keep hidden rather than display in public.
"Why can't the government just take these guns?" I asked my driver, a local from Baringo, as we passed a herder with a rifle, who looked barely 15 years old.
"It's not just a matter of taking the guns," he explained. "If they take these guns today, the community will feel attacked by the government, and they will rise and retaliate."
Mistrust between warring communities has created an arms race among pastoralists, leading to the cycles of violence that repeatedly displace vulnerable families, as well as hindering economic development.
While disarmament is key, a deep-seated distrust of the government makes gun-bearers reluctant to surrender their weapons. Some local politicians - believed to have links to the militias - accuse the government of taking sides when it comes to disarmament, and have frustrated past initiatives.
In 2023, Kenya launched Operation Maliza Uhalifu (Operation Stop Crime), one of numerous unsuccessful multi-agency disarmament efforts aimed at bringing peace to the region. It omitted to address the underlying drivers of violence - the competition over resources exacerbated by the lack of government investment in the local economy, and in its pastoralist sector in particular.
The North Rift region has the lowest levels of education in Kenya. A 2023 survey found that 35% of young people have never enrolled in school, leaving many with limited options for a livelihood beyond pastoralism - a lifestyle under threat as a result of the dwindling rangelands and worsening droughts.
The Kenyan government has belatedly responded by promising more investment in schools as part of a broader initiative to restore peace to the area.
Musa Makal, 22, was a member of a pastoralist militia but is now attending an electrical engineering course at a local vocational school. The initiative is part of an Interpeace-run disarmament programme providing job training.
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Makal, like many of the young men who have enrolled, has no formal education. "There were guns in my household for as long as I can remember," he told The New Humanitarian. "My father and my big brothers had guns, and they all went to fight."
But after the death of a friend in a clash between the Pokot and Turkana pastoralists in 2022, he sees his future as lying outside pastoralism.
Smarter policing needed
Without an effective police presence to ensure peace, the pastoralists' leaders remain suspicious of any disarmament programme.
That was clear from a dialogue session I witnessed between Pokot and Turkana communities, organised by Interpeace in Kapedo. It drew together village elders, political leaders, and administrative officials. I had never before seen so many guns in the hands of unauthorised civilians.
The discussions initially focused on building trust, and while the participants seemed to agree on most issues - including refraining from attacking each other - disarmament was a sticking point.
"You cannot ask one community to surrender arms," said Turkana East MP Nicholas Ngikolong. "If these people are not protected [with their guns], who will protect them? What are the police doing?"
Velma Mkaudi, a teacher at Lomelo Primary School where the meeting took place, believes the government is not only not doing enough to deal with insecurity but says it's also out of touch with the reality on the ground.
"Those who say there is calm in the North Rift don't know the life we live," she explained, directly rebuffing the government's position that the deployment of soldiers has improved security in the region.
There is a common perception here that corruption is also fueling the violence - with a blind eye turned by officials to the trafficking of weapons.
"If they say that the guns come from Somalia, don't we have police at the border who have been there for years? Where are they when these guns pass through the border? Let them tell us the truth of what they do," said Mkaudi.
For Ismail of Interpeace, the real issue is the need for more effective policing rather than just additional boots on the ground.
"The security organs should have addressed criminal events [here] just like they would do in Nairobi, and any other place," Ismail said. "If there was tracking, intelligence gathering, they could have responded effectively, and [the violence] would have been fully managed."
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
