Thousands of police officers and soldiers, armored cars and special units of the secret service are on a very delicate mission:  disarm the restless communities of cattlemen who live in Northern Kenya.  After more than a week into the campaign the numbers are clear:  20,000 people have been forced to flee, with their cattle, into the neighboring countries, and at least 68,000 people are at risk of starvation. All of this activity led to the recovery of 18 pistols—of the 50,000 they had expected to find.
 
Operation disarmament.  At least for the moment, this operation for disarming cattle rustlers who live on the borders with Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda is officially a failure.  The communities involved, who both raise cattle and engage in armed raids to rustle cattle from neighboring tribes, can sleep  well tonight.  Every year the cattle wars claim hundreds of victims without the authorities being able to root out the problem.  Last year they tried playing the amnesty card for anyone who would voluntarily hand in weapons.  After seeing the meager results of that ploy, this time Nairobi decided to try the iron fist, disarming the communities by force.  They have found the project much tougher than they had envisioned.  A sizeable number of the able-bodied men fled to neighboring countries along with their cattle, leaving behind the elderly, the women and children.  

Reasons for this fiasco.  Why is it that all these attempts to disarm pastoral communities end in failure?  PeaceReporter asked Dennis Onyango, editor of the daily  Eastandard, just this question.  “The principal reason is that the communities involved  have no idea whatever that possessing arms might be a problem.  Consequently, tribal chieftains encourage the men to resist and not hand in their arms.  Furthermore, in the past, these attempts at disarmament were always only partial.”  Many tribes did not accept disarmament for fear that they would automatically become the sacrificial victims of their neighbors.

A hunt in the dark.  So far fewer than twenty pistols have been recovered in a region where there are between 30,000 and 50,000.  In spite of military leaders’ optimism, the operation has so far only resulted in creating problems in the local communities.  “Thousands of people have fled to neighboring countries.  Schools have been closed,” says our informant.  Abandoning the fields will have dire consequences for the issue of hunger, which could strike at least half of the inhabitants of the region.  Meantime, the armed forces are engaged in a fruitless manhunt.  “Those who have fled have left their relatives in the villages, and these relatives, in turn, inform them of the army’s movements by means of their cell phones.  They are just groping around in the dark.”  The armed forces are so demoralized by these days of useless moving from place to place that some police officers have taken to practices that are less than orthodox.  “Soldiers and police officers get paid little,” concludes Onyango.  “And as for those cattlemen, it is easy to bribe them.  A policeman wll sell his own service revolver for a cow.  In theory, he is supposed to be disarming the man, but he ends up giving him a gun.  In these conditions, hoping to see any serious results from this operation is just folly.”