My encounter with bandits

By NLM writers

Over the last week, I spent the better part of my time in the volatile regions of Turkana and West Pokot counties, specifically in areas around Kainuk, Lokichar, Lorokon, Kakongu, and Lokapel. In these areas, guns are commonplace. Children as young as 10 years are armed with AK-47 or G3 assault rifles.

Going about my assignment I encountered the first group at Lokapel, one of the most remote areas near the border of Turkana and West Pokot counties. Eight heavily armed men stopped our vehicle as we headed to Kalemunyang, a distance of about 180 km, which takes a minimum of three hours from Lokapel. 

The armed men stood in the middle of the road with guns pointed at our vehicle, signaling us to stop. I asked my driver to pull up and remain calm. Inside the vehicle, I had one other colleague and a Pokot local to help with translation.

Upon stopping, two of the eight men went around the vehicle to ensure we were not carrying any arms or police officers – who are considered enemy number one. One of them ordered all of us, including the driver, to step out of the vehicle and update them on the progress of the ongoing police operation that rudely uprooted their lifestyles. 

I told our translator to inform them that the police officers carrying out the operation were about 200 km in the opposite direction. Tactically, this was to throw them off-balance and allow ourselves enough time to proceed to the nearest police camp to report on the encounter.

They then demanded that we give them water and money. Luckily, we had over three dozen 500ml bottles of water, which we handed to them before giving them Ksh2,000. 

After holding us hostage for over 30 minutes, they let us go under instructions that we do not notify police officers of their whereabouts. We drove to Naipa, a settlement about 65 km North of Lokapel. Here we found a contingent of police officers who interrogated us and, upon understanding our mission, escorted us to Angorangora, a distance of 80 km from Naipa.

The officers were part of a larger team hunting bandits and cattle rustlers who had wreaked havoc in the region, killing over a dozen civilians, and six police officers and injuring tens of others. 

According to our translator, the bandits would be severely punished if they killed a person from their community, which is the only reason they were not shooting at civilian vehicles at random. 

According to residents of West Pokot and Turkana Counties, the bandits have a pecking order which is roughly defined by the rank of policeman one kills. For example, if a bandit kills an inspector of police, they automatically ‘attain’ that rank within their ‘platoon’. Whoever kills a unit commander becomes the ‘commanding officer’ of his outfit. Those who attain these coveted ranks, their age notwithstanding, need not go for raids; they will get a share of the stolen livestock his ‘juniors’ bring back, and the largest share of the fees that their benefactors pay them for each successful raid.

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A colleague who recently traveled to Lodwar provides a more chilling insidious perspective of what he reckons is the genesis of the current spate of attacks. According to him, besides their core business of cattle rustling, have taken on the equally lucrative trade of highway robbery, where they drive their livestock onto the highway, particularly between Kapenguria and Lodwar. As approaching vehicles slow down or stop to let the large herds of cattle pass, they get robbed at gunpoint by bandits masquerading as herders.

One such robbery in January prompted a swift response from the Anti-Stock-Theft Unit (ASTU), who caught up with the bandits and shot over 100 cattle. Their mission thus thwarted, and faced with the prospect of possibly weeks on the move without food, the bandits surrendered. Now, given the nature of the relationship between bandits and the police – where each side holds grudging respect for the other in a see-saw relationship that vests on war-time like rules of engagement – the police will often let the bandits carry what they can to survive on under a limited amnesty window if it helps their cause. 

This time, the police, with the advantage of surprise and sufficient ammunition, and possibly with orders from quarters that had no connection to the bandits’ political godfathers, told the bandits to leave with just the guns on their shoulders: despite the bandits’ best attempts at negotiating, the police maintained there would no carcass to carry this time, nor live cattle to drive away. 

Those who have covered the Pokot-Turkana feud have heard enough times the oft-repeated line that politicians, the majority of whom sit in sensitive security dockets in Parliament and who ostensibly are tasked with ending the banditry – they fund the raids and deliver the stolen cattle to the Kenya Meat Commission. The bandits, thus emboldened by the protection they enjoy, carry on undeterred.

Back to the incident at hand, the bandits left under the threat of death but silently swore revenge – cattle is gold, and the cops had crossed a line. And so the killings began, targeting police officers: first for killing the cattle, and second for not allowing the bandits to carry chunks of meat to survive on. (