The State as Raider Among the Karamojong: ‘Where There are no Guns, They use the Threat of Guns’

Abstract

The article brings together archival material, past ethnography, and memory on the one hand, and up-to-date eye-witness and newspaper reports on the other, to set current traumatic events in the very long view. The presentism of contemporary developmental and research approaches has precluded such perspectives. Thus the current disarmament programme being forced on the Karamojong of north-east Uganda by the Uganda People's Defence Force is no more unprecedented than the armed conflicts it is intended to resolve. The advent of colonial administration and memories of it are examined to illuminate the constraints of the present exercise. Events are not occurring solely in a local context, still less just on the national scene, but in the global context directed by world power. Thus the significance of cattle-raiding, the nature of which has not been drastically changed by firearms, has been exaggerated as part of a threat to world peace that must be tackled by international action. This has provided the rationale for repeating the brutality of the small wars of imperialism on a larger scale and with less prospect of an ensuing peace. The article proposes a rediscovery of African agency in Karamojong religious ceremonies that are not controlled by world orders.

From the border to the bedroom: changing conflict dynamics in Karamoja, Uganda

“…The first is the now 10-year-old disarmament campaign. Although beset with early problems (Human Rights Watch 2007) and – like previous campaigns (Knighton 2003) – extremely unpopular, local perceptions began to change in approximately 2012 (with variations based on location). Today, male and female residents in both rural and urban areas express overall support for the outcomes of disarmament.…”

“…In accordance with a pattern of response to the regional upheaval that began in the early colonial era (Knighton 2003; Bevan 2008), the Ugandan government implemented a short-lived forced disarmament programme in 2001, followed by a more comprehensive campaign beginning in 2006. Insecurity initially increased following the start of the 2006 disarmament campaign and human rights violations were widespread; in addition, many communities reported experiencing increases in violence due to the loss of firearms for protection (Human Rights Watch 2007; Stites and Akabwai 2010).…”

The Contextualization of the Nilotic Pastoralist Conflicts in Northern Kenya

“…Northern Kenya has in the past witnessed numerous cattle raids. These raids are widely believed to have increased after 1990, an escalation which was attributed to a variety of factors including resource scarcity (Dyson-Hudson, 1966;Ocan, 1992) and the criminal nature of the post-colonial state (Knighton, 2003). For the longest time the Turkana, Pokot and the Samburu communities in Northern Kenya have been perpetrators and victims within a cycle of conflict that has claimed lives and destroyed property.…”

Small arms and conflict among East African pastoralists: the Karamoja (in)security complex

“…2003). On the other hand, recent literature has increasingly questioned the validity of the ‘established knowledge’ around small arms and cattle raiding (Eaton 2008; Knighton 2003). Factors mostly listed as root causes of cattle raiding, one of which is the proliferation of small arms, are not enough to fully explain it (Eaton 2008).…”

“…Sagawa (2010) argues that accepting the knowledge that automatic weapons have increased violence is a ‘[narrow] attempt to understand the region in a techno-deterministic way’. Recent developments in pastoralist communities could easily be interpreted as the ‘degeneration of culture into chaos’ (Knighton 2003: 431); however, as Knighton ( ibid . : 432) notes, ‘raiding and insecurity are a perennial feature, and firearms have been a dimension of warfare for 120 years’.…”