The whole episode had an uncanny resemblance to a scene in a Hollywood blockbuster movie during which a highly trained cast of characters storm a hospital to rescue one of their own who has been wounded in battle and who could spill sensitive information under interrogation should he fall into the hands of law enforcement officers.
In a raid that would suit a scene in a film on the Mafia or American gangsters like Al Capone or John Dillinger, a band of heavily armed bandits visited Iten Referral Hospital on Monday night, and without firing a shot, rescued a high-ranking colleague, leaving a team of policemen bewildered.
But this is not the kind of stuff that is manufactured in the fabled “Dream Factory”; it is happening right here in Kenya where bands of livestock rustlers seem to have taken over a vast swathe of territory, turning life for its inhabitants into an unending nightmare.
Even when a combined force of KDF soldiers and police officers recently set out to flush them out, none of their efforts has worked so far.
In the past, the activities of rustlers used to be ignored by the rest of the country except when they went overboard, but now they seem to have become an entirely new force, almost a government on its own that brooks no interference from “outsiders”.
Just how did we get where we are when all past governments, with their vaunted monopoly of violence, have been challenged for years on end by a force that is gradually eclipsing terrorism as one of the greatest threats this country has ever faced since the Shifta war of the 1960s?
While it may be true that cattle rustlers are not likely to bring violence to the doorstep of the majority of Kenyans, it is also true that the current government seems to be at its wit’s end on what to do to pacify a territory that has been ungovernable since the colonial times and does so without committing atrocities against innocent civilians.
It has been reported that these marauders have, in the past six months alone, killed more than 100 civilians and at least 16 police officers deployed to hunt them down.
However, all that the government has done has been to make thunderous threats against them and vow to wipe them off the face of the earth.
Indeed, all past governments keep unrolling a well-used template that has never worked in the past: impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew, offer amnesty to those who voluntarily surrender illegal guns, pledge to arm reservists who know the terrain well, and vow to bomb the bandits to smithereens.
Deep distrust
All these strategies have uniformly failed. Indeed, what usually happens is that civilians are left with a deep distrust of a government they only encounter during violent operations where they are victimised by the same security forces that should be defending them.
It is no use for the government to declare Elgeyo Marakwet, West Pokot, Baringo, Laikipia, Turkana and Samburu “dangerous” and “disturbed”.
The perpetrators of these heinous crimes whose sponsors are often ensconced in posh offices in Nairobi — and may even hold senior government jobs — only snicker at such labels, for they are responsible for causing the mayhem in the first place.
The first thing to do in these circumstances should be to seek ways to deal with the warlords responsible for arming the bandits.
Even where there is no hard proof, it should not be too difficult to investigate them and if found guilty, deal with them mercilessly.
The second is to determine who trains these people in war tactics, use of sophisticated arms and effective use of field intelligence. Obviously, fellows who are neither afraid of the police nor the army, and who can brazenly thumb their nose at the government by lighting bonfires as Interior Security Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki is declaring war on them, have no regard for the authorities whatsoever.
However, this should not even be our greatest fear. Cattle rustling used to be a cultural practice. Bloody, yes, but relatively tame compared to what is happening today.
It seems to have graduated into something more sinister, a gory commercial enterprise in the pursuit of which, after stealing livestock, the bandits end up killing women and children.
If they do not have other motives, why should they terrorise innocents and torch houses before leaving? This has all the elements of ethnic cleansing and forcible displacement of “enemies” from specific areas, ostensibly due to competition for water and pasture.
The bandits seem to have, in the course of time, become the only functional government in those troubled counties. It may not be true to say they have overwhelmed our security forces, but appearances are vital, and if the bandits conclude that the government has lost control, they will only be encouraged to become more violent and predatory in their operations.
With the passage of time, they may even turn into guerilla militias under warlords whose main objective is to dislodge elected governments and seize power. This may sound far-fetched but such precedents have been set elsewhere in the continent, with dire results.
