Unveiling Women as Pillars of Peace Peace Building in ...

Once raided, animals are driven across borders and sold to markets beyond the reach of
pastoralists. In this situation, traditional rescue efforts and negotiation mechanisms are useless.
Raiding has become an income generating activity rather than a means for augmenting social status
or fulfilling cultural roles. Knowing that raided cattle are valuable commercial assets in a money
economy and that raided animals may never be recovered, pastoralists are forced to guard their
remaining stock closely. Attempts at raiding are met with strong resistance, often ending in
massive destruction of property and loss of life.
An increasing influx of arms complicates the pressures from the environment and the
expansion of animal export commerce. Following the concert of conflicts in the Horn of Africa,
and north-eastern Uganda, all of northern Kenya has become an arms bazaar. Two developments
have increased the quantity and quality of arms. First, the influx of asylum seekers from countries
afflicted by conflict has overwhelmed the capacity of the Kenyan government to control the guns
that come in with these populations. Combatants, including militias, mercenaries, and remnants of
armies from countries at war, have come with these groups. These men bring the skills and
knowledge of waging war along with their sophisticated weapons. The influx of all these armed
groups means that the pastoralists have to contend with more than the traditional raiders. Fighting
groups operating from northern Kenya include the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) who are fighting
a low-key secessionist war in Ethiopia, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), and
miscellaneous other groups supporting Somali warlords. This situation has ignited an arms race
throughout the region. Increased violence and insecurity have followed.
Conflicts Between Pastoral and Agricultural Communities
Faced with expanding desertification from the north, ecological pressure within their zones, and
encroachment on the fringes of their lands by farming communities, pastoralists have responded in
ways that have escalated ethnic conflicts.
Many pastoralists have moved out of their regions in search of pastures for their
significantly reduced herds or alternative means of subsistence. This development has brought
them into direct conflict with non-pastoral communities. Migrating groups come into conflict with
agricultural communities living on the borderlands of semiarid and arable lands. For example,
conflicts between the Somalis and the Akamba people of northern Mwingi District, or between
communities in northern Meru, epitomise the clash of different ways of life and the failure of a
harmonious interface between pastoral and agricultural modes of production.
For those without animals, the search for other means is affected by lack of education,
skills, or training. The pastoral communities have the lowest levels of education and training.
Therefore, those who seek jobs, enter the labour market at the lowest stratum. Some end up as
farm hands in agricultural areas, often being paid as little as the food they need for survival.
Others have moved to cities. In both cases, they join the inhabitants of sprawling slums in towns
and peri-urban areas. Private security companies favour the Turkana and Maasai because of their
reputation for fearlessness. They can obtain employment as watchmen, a job that is not only among
the lowest paid, but also carries great risks (Kitunyi 1991). Just as their counterparts in the
agricultural sector, they are exploited and abused.
Movement out of the northern pastoral zone ultimately destroys pastoral communities and
their way of life. It has resulted in family breakdown as the mainly male population gravitates to
urban centres and agricultural areas. Left without any other livelihood, the dependency on relief
assistance has become the other “mode of subsistence” for those left behind. Most of these people
are unprotected women and children who make easy targets for raiders. In Turkana for example, it
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