It's a shame that bandits can run rings around our security agencies at will

It's a shame that bandits can run rings around our security agencies at will.

It is practically impossible that 200 individuals can, on the spur of the moment, congregate somewhere and proceed to commit large scale crime. By the same reasoning, 700 head of cattle cannot just sit at one point waiting to be herded elsewhere. Both require meticulous planning to execute and planning takes time.

Two days ago, miscreants were reported to have attacked Nadome village in Baringo County, making away with 700 head of cattle and abducting a 12-year-old girl while at it. That is the sad reality of life in Kapedo, Suguta, Nadome and many other parts in the Northern part of the country. It is alarming that a ragtag assortment of half-naked, illiterate individuals can outwit government machinery for decades on end.

Intelligence gathering is reputed to be one of the fortes of the Kenya Police Service, yet nothing vindicates this view. Too often, economic saboteurs and other criminals have walked off scot free after the prosecution bungled cases in court. And at the heart of all these are police investigators and specialists. So, how did Nademo happen without the police getting a whiff of its stench?

How easy is it to move 700 head of cattle; narrow paths, cloud dust and all, to a place where they cannot be traced by pursuers in the name of law enforcers? Granted, as the excuse has always been, the terrain is bad, but how about deploying helicopters?

I could have wondered why the police do not use the much publicized Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) acquired from China, but a few Improvised Explosive Devices employed by the Al Shabaab have proven that the APC’s are just repainted scrap metal on wheels; no steely armor to protect occupants.

Peaceful environment

The decision by the police to acquire new riffles equipped with telescopic sights and enough punch to put the fear of God in the likes of Al Shabaab and rustlers must have arisen from situations like the 2012 and 2014 Kapedo and Suguta massacres. Rustlers in areas in the northern part of the country are known for employing guerilla tactics, because the terrain accords them the advantage.

But that does not mean the police should sit back and let criminals run roughshod over hapless villagers whose only desire is a peaceful environment that allows them to mind their own business. Hasn’t it, by now, become clear that easy to scramble helicopters and strategically placed police snipers would be the answer to the cattle rustling menace?

Numerous other prescriptions have failed because of lack of political goodwill. Nothing will detract me from believing that at the heart of all this ignominy are top politicians and highly placed security personnel pushing vested interests.

The 2014 deployment of the army in Kapedo did not bear fruit, yet knowing what the army is capable of doing once let loose; one accepts that the deployment was simply playing to the public gallery. This was meant to assuage growing outrage against a government deemed to have been showing little concern; preferring to blame the Opposition for everything that did not work for it.

Enforceable regulation

Disarming locals did not work because, as the claim went, the exercise was skewed to give advantage to certain communities. A number of times, elders from warring communities have met to find solutions to their problems. Such solutions, including the Kainuk, Sarmach, Turkwel, Masol Corridor Peace Agreement of December20, 2010 have offered only temporal solutions. No sooner does the ink on the agreements dry than the belligerents are on each other’s necks.

The government is aware the cause of the skirmishes in arid and semi-arid areas is the sharing of resources, particularly water and pasture. But while there is little the Government can do about natural attrition, there is plenty it can do through enforceable regulation. Paramount, however, is the need to create buffer zones between the communities to minimise fatalities.

In the current scenario, there is no better buffer than providing adequate security personnel to the volatile areas. There has been enough recruitment to shore police officers’ numbers. With traffic policemen and women doing nothing, but grow their waistlines from the proceeds of corruption, why not give them something invigorating to do to keep them in shape? Nothing would reduce that fat around the waistline faster than going after gun totting miscreants who shoot accurately.

The negative impact of cattle rustling on education, medical services and in the wider sense, devolution, cannot be over emphasised. With schools often closed, beating illiteracy, itself the cradle of the problems in the said areas will be an uphill task.

The government cannot be allowed to expend billions of shillings ostensibly to improve policing only for law enforcers to wilt before a handful of barefoot villagers sporting AK 47 riffles that corruption allows them to get.

Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The [email protected]