Poor people are bearing the brunt of violence in Laikipia even after the deployment of KDF forces, as rampaging invaders murder, rape, burn and steal from villagers who are being displaced in their thousands.
Some of the worst chaos is unfolding in Il Ngwesi, where thousands of Laikipiak Maasai pastoralists have been displaced after attacks by heavily armed militias invading from Samburu county. Attacks have escalated steadily since the 2013 elections, with a spike in attacks in recent weeks.
A resident of Ngaremare, who lost her son in the attack by Samburu raiders in November last year
Three weeks ago, 15 foreign tourists had to be evacuated by helicopter from Il Ngwesi lodge after a rangers aircraft came under fire from invaders. The lodge is now closed, as is the neighbouring Tassia lodge, and a major source of income for the local Maasai communities is gone.
Displaced, hungry inhabitants on Il Ngwesi said nobody from the press had bothered to witness their plight until The Star visited the conflict zone on Thursday – and they said they were suffering alone since police pulled out of the area after shootouts with invading militias in Nadungoro village earlier this month.
A disabled man from Meriguet village, whose 12 goats - his only source of livelihood - were stolen by armed Samburu raiders in November last year
Hundreds of Nadungoro residents have fled attacks. The Star found houses and shops looted, smashed and deserted. The attackers rustled livestock and stole maize crops. Residents said invaders loaded up donkeys with looted food and belongings – and then they pushed their cattle into what was left of the crops.
Hundreds of pupils from the school in Arjiju village have been displaced. Militias have murdered a number of people in the area. On 6th March in Arjiju raiders shot a seven months pregnant woman in the legs and her two children of five and eight were also shot. The militias fought police at Nadungoro about a week ago and then fled under hails of gunfire.
A smallholder from Kamwenje village. Armed Pokot herders broke into her home and attempted to rape her daughter in March 2015
Some 3,000 people have been displaced – some to the nearby village of Lokusero where they are now living with relatives and suffering without enough food or water. The secondary school in Lokusero is now under armed guard everyday to protect its students and may face closure. Many others have fled to Timau and Nanyuki towns.
In an empty classroom, a school teacher blamed the attacks on Laikipia North MP Mathew Lempurkel and alleged that most of the cattle belonged to him, not to the poor.
‘I saw a boy with an AK-47 here. He was not more than 12 years old. Why was he not in school, instead of becoming the slave of an MP herding cattle bought with the money he was given to build schools in his constituency?’
A smallholder from Kamwenje who has experienced numerous attacks by armed Pokot herders
Il Ngwesi’s Maasai are Laikipia’s true ancestral people, whereas the Samburu invaders come from the north. Residents dismissed the claim that only drought was forcing Samburu to trespass in search of pasture. They say the attacks are aimed at displacing Maasais because they will not vote for Lempurkel in the August elections.
Rape
The same patterns of violence are unfolding across Laikipia, hitting poor people from diverse communities that have been forgotten in media coverage focusing on the attacks against ranches and conservancies. In Kamwenje, in the county’s west bordering Baringo, The Star met Jane, a woman from the Kikuyu community.
Two children from one of the three families camped out in the chief’s hut in Lokusero, Il Ngwesi, having been displaced from their homes following shootings by Samburu herders
Seven armed men broke into her home and tried to rape her 16-year-old daughter in front of her family, until her father intervened, offering his own life instead.
The attackers were Pokot from neighbouring Baringo. In Kamwenje and other farming communities of western Laikipia also fail to fit with politicians’ claims that Samburu and Pokot herders are only after pasture during the current dry spell.
Jane’s shamba is part of a vast patchwork of small farms that are a far cry from the ranches that have grabbed the headlines during invasions that led to the murder of Kenyan British farmer Tristan Voorspuy.
Women set up temporary homes in the cramped local government offices, having been displaced from their homes in Nadungoro village, Il Ngwesi
The attacks started soon after 2013 in Kamwenje. In April the following year armed Pokot broke into the home of Nancy, a widow in her thirties with five young children. They forced her to lie on the ground and raped her at gunpoint in front of her children. Then they stole her five cows. Nancy reported the attack to the local assistant chief and the police but nothing happened.
In the neighbouring village of Mutitu, a woman in her fifties was alone inside her house, heard a noise outside and thought it was elephants trampling her maize. She went to scare them away and was confronted by five Pokot trying to break in, all armed with Kalashnikovs. They dragged her into the bushes and gang raped her.
The only remaining resident of Nadungoro village, who has stayed to protect his maize harvest, while his neighbours fled from shootings by Samburu herders
She didn’t report it to police or community leaders, or seek medical help, because she was scared that her attackers would find out and come back to kill her. Today, she remains too scared to turn lights on during the night because she worries it will alert her presence to intruders. She shuts herself away in her home, in the dark.
In November 2015 in nearby Kariaine village, seven armed Pokot gang raped a young mother in her home. She says the attack went on for at least six hours, as other intruders held her children in the next room forcing them to stay silent so that the neighbours would not hear.
She too did not report it to the authorities, fearing that the message would get back to her attackers. Now, she still sobs when she tells the story to her trusted neighbour, who says that Pokot attackers ‘are a militia, terrorising people so that they leave the land they own’.
Rape in every society is greatly underreported due to social shaming, so we can assume that these cases are a fraction of the total. The organised and extremely aggressive nature of these cases cannot be explained away as ‘one-off’. Rape is a weapon of war the world over and abuses inflicted on the poor smallholders in western Laikipia form a pattern strategic, targeted violence. The aim appears to be to humiliate and drive them from their land.
A woman displaced from Nadungoro lives in cramped conditions with several other families in the chief’s hut in Lokusero, Il Ngwesi
Elections
Across the wider western Laikipia area, smallholders say armed land invasions are linked to the upcoming elections because violence aims to displace inhabitants so they cannot vote.
A network of Samburu and Pokot MPs and their lieutenants have joined forces to incite large scale invasions of private land in Laikipia, using their cattle-herding kinsmen in Baringo, Samburu and Isiolo as foot soldiers.
Members of this elite network - of which MP for Laikipia North Matthew Lempurkel, and MP for Baringo East Asman Kamama are widely said to the ringleaders - have been accused of sending cash payments to herdsmen and distributing weapons in order to facilitate the violent invasions. The aim is to rebalance the demographics at constituency level in favour of their own voters.
Two children sit on their bed, the wall behind them riddled with bullet holes, following a night-time raid by armed Pokot herders in February
Elizabeth, an elderly woman from the Turkana community whose family owns five acres of land Ngaremare village, near Rumuruti, says:
‘When I came here there was no insecurity, but the Samburu started coming, stealing our goats and using the land. Every election year the insecurity here gets worse. Stealing always happens but it is much worse in election years. Since the 2013 elections the Pokot started coming here too. They come saying they are looking for grass but leave here taking other people’s cows with them.’
On 13th November 2016, Samburu herders murdered Elizabeth’s 23-year-old-son David. David was part of a group trying to recover goats stolen from his neighbours. The raiders ambushed the group and three Ngaremare men were shot dead. The unrelenting insecurity around Ngaremare has led the majority of its residents to flee. All except Elizabeth, who points to her son’s grave on her plot and says, ‘I cannot leave because my son is buried here. I have nowhere else to go.’
Some 30 kilometres north in the village of Bombo, Freddie, a Kalenjin man in his forties, spoke of the attack on his five acre smallholding on the 22nd February of this year. He says, ‘people came at midnight while we were sleeping, so we didn’t know they were there. Eight armed men surrounded the shamba and started shooting everywhere. They are Pokot. There are Pokot who stay around here and those who come from Baringo. In this attack it was both, working together.’
‘We don’t have a gun so during the attack we just decided to stay quiet and hide,’ says Freddie. ‘The shooters were positioned all over the shamba and fired around 100 bullets. They stole 22 cows and 150 goats, which was all that we had.’
Bush lunch is served during World Indigenous Day at Il Ngwesi eco-lodge, Laikipia county, on August 9, 2010
He showed The Star bullet casings he found scattered over his land following the attack -- all stamped KOFC, the mark of Kenya’s national weapons factory. He pointed to the bullet holes in the mud wall above the bed slept in by his two young children.
Five households in Bombo were targeted in the attack by around 15 armed Pokot herders. Freddie said it was the second time that livestock had been stolen in the last year. He named two prominent Pokot politicians from neighbouring Baringo county, who use herders from their own tribe as a kind of private militia.
‘These people are after our land,’ Freddie says. ‘They want to steal our cattle so we disappear and then they can settle on our land.’
Another man in the same village says simply, ‘I am confused, but the way these people come, it is like they have been sent by someone.’
Government Response
The apparent inertia of the Kenyan government to confront the armed invasions has been widely noted. Token deployments of police and GSU have primarily focused on the large private ranches, and affected smallholders have said they feel forgotten by the government. According to Francis Aruo of Marura Narok village, ‘We are told that the government should protect us, but we see nothing.’
Further north in Meriguet village, Peter, a Kikuyu man, disabled by suspected cerebral palsy, lives with his brother on the three acres of land that they have owned since 1978. Last year on 25th November, armed herders started shooting at his house and stole his all of his twelve goats. Despondently, Peter says, ‘To us, this problem is political. There were invaders and rustlers before but not like now...Now it is Samburu from Samburu county…the government has done nothing, the police have not visited. Nothing will be done to improve the situation because of the elections.’
Community members have described the government as both unwilling and unable to ensure their security. In Peter’s words, ‘the government is doing nothing because of the elections, because they all want to gain’.
Stephen of Kamwenje explained that after an attack or theft has taken place, there is little that can be done.
‘This community is not armed so we can’t pursue them. All we can do is scream and report to the police. The police may take a while but they do come. Before, they wouldn’t come at all but in the last year they have started coming. But the police are also too scared to pursue the rustlers because they are armed.’
On 7th March, Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery issued a declaration that certain areas of Laikipia are currently “disturbed and dangerous”, warranting enhanced police operations. Shortly afterwards, President Kenyatta announced that the KDF would be deployed to Baringo and Laikipia to provide support to the police in a disarmament operation.
Community members observe with dismay that human rights groups have jumped to the defence of pastoralist tribes’ ‘ancestral rights’ to access grazing land and make a big noise when police operations are announced – but they fail to stand up for the smallholders in villages like Nadungoro and Kamwenje when they are attacked.
Laikipia’s conflict is not about black against white, or the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots’. The fault lines of this conflict lie between two groups: those who benefit from stability and community security, and those who profit from its absence, flourishing in a climate of chaos, where cattle bought with ill gotten gains, election votes, weapons, hard cash and violence circulate freely.
Most of the names in this story have been changed to protect their identities.