I must strongly contradict the above opinion of Orangasli re. the responsibility of the government for the situation. On the blog is a picture of the Kenyan police loading Samburu cattle into lorries in March as they steal them to sell on East African cattle markets. KARE also has pictures of the police coming in in helicopters in response to the original February Somali cattle raid and the resultant wounds Samburu took as the police fired upon them from the helicopters before landing and then attacking them. Several days later, the police removed what few, yes few, arms some local Samburu had, which individuals had originally received from the government to protect local conservation efforts.

We all need to be speaking out on the worsening political and humanitarian situation for the Samburu and others in Northern Kenya. As a result of the police theft of cattle and the on-going drought, people there are starving. Cholera has marched hand in hand with the famine and deaths are increasing.

As I see it the broader problems are two. First, the police are largely irrelevant. The fighting groups are well armed and protect themselves from each other. As one Samburu colleague told me last year, each Samburu household has its own automatic weapon..as do the Pokot, Borana, Somali, and so on. Second, and like you have rightly pointed out, this feeds squarely into Kenya’s broader problem of disorder and lawlessness. Northern Kenya is roamed by gun-wielding pastoralists, a law unto themselves. Other parts of the country are increasingly less different. Those that had viewed and proclaimed Mungiki as a Kikuyu problem lacked the foresight to make the connections that you have done so well.