/ 27 February 2007

Taking guns at gunpoint

Illegal firearms have replaced bows and arrows as the weapons of choice for the pastoral people on the borders of Kenya and Uganda. The recent escalation of tension between these governments and cattle raiders not only poses a threat to political stability in the region, but has also led to widescale human rights abuses.

North-east Uganda’s Karamojong and their neighbours in Kenya, the Turkana and Pokot, have been engaged in cross-border conflict for centuries, often resulting in death and destruction of property.

Violence in notoriously lawless Karamoja has long been fuelled by inexpensive, semi-automatic firearms smuggled from Somalia and other countries in the Horn of Africa. The border tribes regularly engage in cattle raiding against their northern neighbours, the Toposa of Sudan.

The Ugandan government has encouraged voluntary disarmament of the rustlers in past years, but the Karamojong say they need guns to protect their way of life: they have to guard themselves against other cattle rustlers as well as hostile government soldiers. Meanwhile, the dry region remains the least-developed in Uganda, lacking infrastructure and basic services.

Kenya and Uganda agreed in June to cooperatively confiscate all arms from their borderlands. It is estimated that the pastoralists possess up to 200 000 guns in Kenya and up to 150 000 in Uganda. Both governments claim that their gun confiscation programmes are in accordance with the Nairobi Protocol, a treaty banning unlicensed gun possession. A government programme to rid the region of firearms recovered 4 500 guns in “cordon-and-search” operations between January and October, along with thousands of looted cattle and goats.

But local Karamajong leaders have accused the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) of numerous human rights abuses in the course of the disarmament programme, a claim the government has denied. In mid-2006, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP ) halted its own disarmament programmes in Karamoja in protest against UPDF abuses during the gun recovery process, which they said were worse than the violence committed during cattle raids.

The UNDP has recently lifted its suspension of activities in the area. Last November, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour released a report that found that the soldiers used “indiscriminate and excessive” force, killing 55 civilians including women and children between late October and mid-November 2006. She called on the UPDF to halt a six-month disarmament campaign until it could guarantee civilian safety in the Karamoja region.

The Kenyan government says a strong hand is necessary to ensure the peaceful handover of guns by the Pokot and Turkana pastoralists. Last March, the Kenyan Internal Security Minister, John Michuki, issued a shoot-to-kill directive to the police.

Allegations of murder, rape and torture by state forces in West Pokot have been reported and thousands of people have fled to Uganda, leaving behind ghost towns.

Despite the professed collaboration between the two governments, there is still frequent movement across the porous border. And the countries’ solution to the armed conflict so far appears to have primarily left thousands of refugees, burned villages and destroyed livelihoods.