Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 18:56:13 +0300 [10:56:13 AM CDT]
From: Kombo Ogaro
Subject: Re: Lokichoggio – Illegal Arms Centre!

Carl

Thanks for giving me the inside i didnt know. But do you think can be done practically? – Kombo

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Carl Mullwoh wrote:

kenya, Sudan and Uganda for you . However, you have passed there, some of us have lived and operated in both sides of that boarder. You don’t need to interview anybody in Turkana, pokot or Marakwet to know that they have guns. Everyone has a gun period! if you have cattle, you must have a gun. You either buy one or the government must give you one. Otherwise you and your family are “dead meat”. Their neighbours, Karamojongs, Murles,Toposas, Dongiros etc are all armed.

Secondly, it is mutual “diplomatic” respect between Kenya and SPLM to allow some of these senior officers to move around Loki with their guns, only that they don’t use them. After all they do all their shopping in Loki, and have to get back to their camps or homes via Toposa Land where, for them there is no escort coz they are their own escort. The officers cannot sell their guns.

The people who bring guns into kenya from sudan don’t use the main road from Kapoeta to Loki. The Turkana worriors who go for cattle raids inside sudan have so many routes and when they go for the raids, guns are some also targets for the raiders. Ofcourse there maybe afew cases of guns exchanging hands, but…

The picture of guns being easy to get on the Sudan side is not really here nor there. Guns are precious among some of these communities, infact, some of the parents ask for it as part of dowry. Some years ago Agencies(NGOs) engaged in disarmament in some areas in Sudan, were even offering more than the $100 to get the guns, but could not not, except for defective ones.
Some of these reports written by travellers make it appear like guns are manufactured in Sudan. It’s not that easy for someone to sell his gun, because even SPLM have to buy guns and ammunition.

Well, what you observe on the road, while passing may not be a true representation of reality.

For your information, the insecurity between Loki and Nadapal is not from “rebels”, no sir. These are mostly the same young men you meet in Loki, and others from the Toposas on the Sudan side who target drivers using the route, they are robbers, not rebels. Their time or day of striking is not known. They move on foot through the shrub land, and mts they are normally 5 or less in number. The Loki youngmen are the same doing this between Loki and Kakuma. The stretch of 4-10km outside Loki is so dangerous you don’t know. Then, another stretch from Lokichar..there, when the pokots decide, even a DC or police or GSU is not spared. It’s like the robberies in Nairobi or Mungiki menace.
Deploying our men to guard the entry point is just guarding the main road, the “known” entry point. They are not on the footpaths and bushes stretching hundreds of kilometres away from that main entry point. On the other hand even levels of secrecy among these communities is excellent, such that even major cattle raid can be planned by your friends and you don’t know about it, till you hear that they were short dead some 400kms inside sudan or inside pokot land or Karamoja.

As I have said in this forum before, this is an area that you cannot give prescriptions from a journalists point of view. Or from an office. It’s too complex.
It’s a mixture of the peoples cultures, Lifestyle and attitudes, the terrain and distance of the boarder under consideration, personnel numbers and equipment.. etc. Besides on boarders and communities, there is no line or fence in the forests, mts and shrubland which can shows one that now, this is it for Toposas, now you are in Turkana. Nothing to stop cattle from crossing one side to the other. These are people who even look alike and speak almost similar languages. their settlements are scattered and not permanent (forget what you see around Loki) beyond the town in the interior, life is different.

For somali side, it’s a totally different story which cannot be compared to the Sudan side. The somalis have direct access to arms manufacturing countries in the East, thus the flow of arms is not droplets, it is streaming.
The best way to handle this would have been to disarm all these communities over a period of time. But one country cannot do it while the other is unable or is unwilling.
It would be like tethering a goat and then lettling the hyena loose.

carl