No Honor Among Cattle Thieves in Africa

The invaders had no ideology to push or grievances to avenge -- they just wanted the cows.

Hundreds strong, they dashed into this village on tire-track sandals, their beaded collars flapping and red mini-kilts folded high on the thigh -- the warrior way.

By the end of that afternoon last month, the fighters had taken away scores of sheep, 300 goats and 600 head of cattle.

And 30 villagers -- mostly women and children -- were dead.

In much of the eastern Ugandan and western Kenyan frontiers, people are killing and dying for livestock. In this arid region where seeds often burn in the sand as soon as they’re planted, hardy humpbacked cattle are the pivot around which these cultures turn.

Families name their sons after their favorite bulls and stake their prestige on their herds. Cows are doted on and spared hard labor. And when a young man seeks to acquire the sheen of heroism and daring, he goes cattle rustling.

Glory isn’t the only thing the young men are after -- they’re also driven by love. Dowries are paid in beef, so without a phalanx of bovines -- the bigger and fatter, the better -- a man stands no chance of starting a family.

For most of their history, cattle raids were sanctioned by village elders and carried out by a select cadre of fighters. Tribes usually participated in the raids with sportsmanlike respect for rules and procedures: no raiding during drought or famine, no killing unless absolutely necessary, no taking livestock other than cows, no harming women or children, no looting or burning.

But the abundance of casualties during last month’s raid by members of the fearsome Karamojong tribe was a sure sign that old conventions are eroding and the fair fight is a thing of the past. When the attack came, most of the village men, members of the more agriculturally based Teso, were fighting the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in the north.

Florence Janet Akello, 36, ran into a hut with five of her children and cowered behind two other women. A Karamojong warrior kicked open the door and fired, killing the women in front of her.

Ten years ago, spears and arrows were the weapons of choice in the border areas. Now it is the assault rifle. Small arms are floating into Kenya and Uganda from Somalia and Ethiopia as well as Sudan, home to one of the world’s oldest civil wars. The AK-47 is changing pastoral cultures, increasing the frequency and lethality of cattle raids and destabilizing large swaths of East Africa.

Many tribes engage in cross-border raids, lending the clashes a dangerous international dimension. Occasionally, Ugandan and Kenyan troops have pursued the bandits across each other’s borders, sparking sharp words in both capitals.

With so much rustling, shepherds are moving cattle to more remote and arid pastures to avoid thieves. The herds’ increased mobility is hindering their reproduction and spreading bovine illnesses. Anecdotal reports from the region estimate that cattle stocks in some areas have dropped by half in the past three years.

All of this is straining old tribal customs and hierarchies. In the dusty foothills of western Kenya, the Pokot tribe is entering high season for cattle raids.

In August, scores of young women underwent genital excision -- a painful and dangerous procedure in which the vulva is scarred and the clitoris removed. Soon, they will be ready for marriage.

But first, young Pokot suitors will need herds. Nameri Komolimo, 20, who lives outside the village of Makutano, has had his eye on a village girl for several years but hasn’t married her because he lacks 40 cows for the dowry. There are many young men like Komolimo in the village -- ready to wed but with no animals in pasture.

Lately, Komolimo has been tracking some cows across the border in Uganda -- they belong to the Karamojong.

“When I go on a successful raid and come back with many cows, that is when my father will say that I am grown up,” said Komolimo, sporting a hiphop-style Fubu shirt over a traditional kilt. “I am determined. I have been over the mountain and watched their footprints. If I am courageous enough, bullets will not harm me.”

But Komolimo has been wrong before. Last year, he and several dozen other suitors raided the Karamojong on the other side of Mt. Elgon, which straddles the border. They brought back scores of cows and goats.

“Some days later, they came in large numbers for revenge,” Komolimo recalled.

“They killed 86 animals, 16 young men and seven mothers. We were displaced from our village. Yes, we made a mistake, but what can we do?

“We wanted the cows. A person without animals has no respect. He is nothing.”

Komolimo plans to improve his luck this time by consulting a different libon, or oracle. Traditionally, warriors preparing for raids consult these elders to receive their blessings and guidance.

“There was a time when raids were limited and elders could intervene,” said Etodo Ekwachir, a libon. “But the gun gives them the power to go without asking. They say, ‘Why should we ask an elder when we have a gun to blow everyone up?’ ”

According to the 2001 edition of the global Small Arms Survey, civilians in Kenya (population 31.6 million) and Uganda (25.6 million) had as many as 860,000 and 620,000 small arms, respectively. Disarmament programs by both governments have been draconian, inconsistent and occasionally bloody. In July, Turkana warriors killed six Kenyan soldiers over alleged rough treatment by a disarmament task force.

Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, Ugandan troops rounded up Karamojong fighters for alleged torture and execution. The warriors often reacted violently, assassinating government officials and ambushing nearby military barracks.

Although some tribes have cooperated with their government and disarmed, they have later discovered that their rivals did not.

The Sabei, who live along the slopes of Mt. Elgon between the Karamojong to the west and the Pokot to the east, are among the most persecuted of the pastoral tribes.

“We used to have guns, but the government took them away,” complained Sabei Francis Chesakit, 51. Now he spends his time sitting on a log fashioning arrows for a new bow to guard against the monkeys that eat his corn crop.

Chesakit had saved up for three years to buy four cows for his son’s engagement; they were among the 140 cows that armed Pokot rustlers stole from the community pasture. They killed a Sabei man in the process.

“We love peace,” Chesakit said. “When the government says to give the guns, we obey. But the Pokot and the Karamojong, they rebel and raid when the grass is green. How can we resist them?” Chesakit said he is now saving for a gun.

Insecurity and poverty have plagued the pastoral lands of Uganda and Kenya since colonialism. British administrators tried to force shepherds to give up their nomadic way of life and plant crops, but after several warrior uprisings they designated the tribal grasslands as “closed zones” -- reservation-like sectors that were ineligible for development and off-limits to nonresidents. The tribes’ isolation continued after independence as farmers such as the Kikuyu and the Luo took power in Kenya.

“These people have been marginalized for a long time,” said Sellineo Korir, a peace activist with the National Council of Churches of Kenya.

“The government denied them roads, communication, education. So they kept a lot of harmful practices going, like [female] circumcision and raiding for dowries.”

The largest and most heavily armed tribe is the Karamojong. The name, which means “we will walk until we die to find grasslands,” is really a catchall for several Ugandan peoples. They fight in concert as often as they fight against one another.

The village called Jie, in the heartland of the Karamojong, lies in the shadow of Mt. Kinyeti. And beyond lies Sudan. Jie’s center looks like the sandy set of a cowboy Western, with a number of rough saloons, barbershops and plenty of unsanitary eateries that serve more bone and cartilage than meat. Several years ago, AK-47s were sold here as openly as bananas.

Sales are a little more covert now. Although Ugandan arms-control units regularly prowl the town, Jie’s gun trade is a low-tech cottage industry affair, and very difficult to detect.

Most of the weapons here are sold one at a time. They drip, rather than flow, across the Sudanese border.

Lodia Musa, 36, a Jie warrior, knows exactly how porous the border is.

He got into the gun business 19 years ago. Inside his cow-dung hut, Musa is wistful about the good old days, when an AK-47 cost 15 cows.

“Now it’s only three, maybe two cows,” he said, shaking his head. Musa has plenty of competition too. “Lots of people here sell guns. It’s not like before, but we still sell them, just like anything else.”

Most of the guns, he said, come from Sudan’s rebel forces, the People’s Liberation Army. But lately, Musa and other traders have been getting rifles from another source, Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Musa claims there’s no political agenda at work -- just commerce.

“We’re not LRA. We’re not government,” he said. “We’re Karamojong.” Musa said he’ll buy from anyone and sell to anyone, even rivals. To prove his point, he explained why he, a reputable fighter with two bullet scars and three wives, has no cows.

“Raiders took them. They were Bokora. I often sell to them,” he says with laughter, referring to a northeastern Uganda tribe. “They had a good day. Next time I will take their cows.”