BANDITS AND POLITICAL OPERATIVES WALK, WORK, EAT TOGETHER

Kapedo hot waterfall

The situation up north, particularly along Turkana-Pokot-Baringo axis, is by all standards unbearable. There is a growing need that Nairobi must intervene with full force to send a message to bandits and to save lives and property. No doubt, this is what the State should have done long before the recent tragic incidents in the region.

Personally, I believe this is the right time to pacify this region for meaningful development to take root.

The tragic reality, however, is (that) truth is always the first prime victim. Whatever justification the media - and by extension, the government might give, they are jointly to blame for spewing half-truths about this banditry business up there. 

For long, stories have revolved around things like tribal fights, scramble for pasture et al.

Unfortunately, it has taken much pain and loss of lives for the country to demand complete answers on this. The on-going military campaign to flush out bandits is just half of what the State must do. The nation must be told who the faces behind these primitive criminal acts are.

Banditry is a three-pronged exercise bringing together different players. At the top of this chain is a group of political operatives masquerading as leaders. Their principle role is to defend, scare away any political force, and curtail periodic government interventions under the cover of speaking for the 'innocent members of their communities'. They are the de facto spokespersons and the external face of the whole game.

Banditry for them is a political mobilization tool. It is what guarantees their political survival.

At the second level is a group of connected livestock businessmen. At some point, the political operatives double up as businessmen directly or indirectly through their proxies. 

Now at the bottom of the pyramid is a group of illiterate desperate gun-wielding men whose only job is to wreck havoc to fulfill the demands of their co-players. In most cases, they do this thinking they are "defending their territorial integrity against encroachment from other 'enemy communities'."

They possess little/no critical capabilities to interrogate the intentions of their masters. They survive at the mercy of the tiny clique atop the banditry pyramid. Whenever government boots come pounding the ground, they are left on their own.

You see, this is the classic case of slavery invented and practised in the north of this country!

Which provokes a bitter question: Is the State incapable of dismantling this web and go after the big shots whose profiteering banks on the ever flowing blood of children, women and men of this region?

Piecemeal interventions stand no chance of rooting out this vice. A quick look into the past reveals that half-hearted operations have achieved no lasting impact. Instead, such operations have helped the top cream gain a permanent foothold among members of the affected communities. This is for one simple reason, operations targeted only one segment; the lower portion of the pyramid.

Going for guns and leaving killers and their sponsors off the hook smacks of a government that gambles with the lives of its people. The Kapedo incident in Turkana in which police officers were killed must not be allowed to go just like that. Guns did not kill them. People used guns to kill them and many other civilians. The killers did not plant themselves there. There must be other people who planned and owned the whole process.

Justice can only prevail when the brains behind these killings are brought to book. Only through this shall banditry come to an end. 

For now Kenyans must live with this truism: Bandits and political operatives are birds of the same feather. Only a committed government can dismantle this marriage.

Lemukol Ng'asike is an Architect. E-mail:  lemoseh89@gmail.com.  Twitter:  @mlemukol.