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Kenya |
VIOLENCE
In Kenya today, insecurity ranks among the biggest problems facing the nation
In Nairobi, hardly a week goes by without news of shoot-outs between the police and armed gangsters. According to the African Peace Forum, in Nairobi alone — a city of two million people —there are an estimated 5,000 illegal firearms.
The most notorious arms caches are to be found the city’s Eastleigh, Kayole, Zimmerman, Dandora and Kawangware Estates. Kenya’s ill-equipped police officers are hard put, to provide adequate protection to Nairobi residents and, are themselves, also exposed to serious danger.
In the North-Eastern province, gunlaw rules and insecurity is an on-going hazard. The same can be said for the more remote areas of the Rift Valley province where members of the Turkana, Samburu, Marakwet and Pokot communities routinely acquire guns to protect themselves and their livestock from raiders, infiltrating from neighbouring communities.
Other hostile raiders cross the border from neighbouring countries.
Police statistics indicate that gun-related crimes such as bank-robberies, car-jackings and household break-ins, have risen sharply in recent years. Firearms are now to be found in rural areas where in the past, criminals had access to only crude weapons.
Armed reservists
The problem is so serious that in some areas, the government allows the locals to arm themselves with guns in order to protect themselves from cattle raiders. The government has also issued gun to police reservists to augment its security efforts in the more remote parts of the country. The plan is to allow local citizens to be involved in ensuring their own security.
The problem, however, is that often, guns issued hastily to the reservists, end up being used as weapons of war against neighbours and businesses. Since most of the reservists are not paid, many go on raids with the same weapons they are issued with, to provide security for their families.
According to Father Gabriel Dolan, co-ordinator of the Catholic Diocese of Kitale’s Justice and Peace Commission, there is potential danger in arming a large number of unpaid, ill-disciplined reservists as they can easily be hired and turned into private militia by unscrupulous and power-hungry politicians.
It’s not altogether clear how the reservists are recruited. In one administrative division in the Rift Valley province, 35 residents recently paid the equivalent of US $1,491 to their chief, who in turn handed the money over to the officer in charge of the local police station so that they could be recruited as reservists.
Most reservists are illiterate. When ammunition is given out, they often sign (a thumb print) unwittingly for a hundred rounds of ammunition, but they in fact only receive twenty. Corrupt senior police officers are also often involved in the sale of ammunition.
Disarming
When it comes to gathering in those weapons which have been handed out, it’s no easy matter. Decommissioning the reservists requires a great deal of planning, negotiation and goodwill.
In May this year, after months of internecine inter-tribal feuding in Northern Rift Valley, President Daniel arap Moi ordered all those holding firearms without a firearm’s certificate, to surrender them. Only one old gun was handed in!
For example, Elders of the Pokot community, people associated with aggression and livestock theft from their neighbours, retorted defiantly that surrendering their firearms would expose them to attacks by their enemies, the Marakwet, the Turkana and the Karamonjong of north-eastern Uganda.
Sources indicate that over 50% of all ammunition used in the Northern Rift comes from government stocks.
Apart from those guns handed out «officially» by the authorities, where do all the firearms come from? Lethal weapons, including the deadly AK-47 and other Russian-made weapons are easily obtainable from gun runners operating both in Nairobi and in the country’s frontier towns.
In some quarters, concern has been expressed that an ammunition factory put up in the town of Eldoret by Belgium’s leading weapon’s supplier, FN Herstal, could be supplying ammunition to some of those in possession of illegal arms. The government says this is not true. The Eldoret factory is capable of producing twenty million bullets per year.
Also, according to the police, some of the syndicates involved in smuggling firearms from neighbouring countries into Kenya, do so using oil tankers and lorries ferrying animals into the city.
Another source of weapons could be through ever-increasing number of armed refugees entering Kenya from the troubled regions of the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region.
It is clear that there is an urgent need for neighbouring States to develop joint security/arms control policies, and to recognise the important role of traditional elders in conflict management. It’s only by working together that security in the region can be ensured.
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