Nkaiserry, Boinett fiddle as Baringo and West Pokot burn

NAIROBI: Fears expressed by this paper over communities in Baringo County arming themselves for retaliatory attacks came to pass as Turkana raiders attacked a village in West Pokot Monday this week. In the attack, in which the Pokots and Turkana's engaged each other for hours, 50 people are feared dead, but the death toll could be much higher.

This attack took place in the same locality in which 21 police officers were killed in November last year.

In 2012, 42 police officers deployed to help recover cattle stolen from by Turkana raiders, lost their lives in the notorious Suguta Valley.

Whereas the brazen attack on the officers should have been enough reason to send more armed men and women to secure the area against further raids, the opposite has obtained.

Yet when the second attack happened last year and the unfortunate political statements from local leaders, who should in the first place be held accountable for their inciting pronouncements in public, everything went back to business as usual.

Hundreds of people have died and thousands of livestock have been stolen and property worth millions laid to waste in the mindless orgy of destruction.

Social life in Baringo has been disrupted, businesses have closed and agricultural activities severely crippled as people flee the unending criminal enterprise.

Today, because of increased insecurity, 16 schools in Turkana and Baringo Counties have not opened their doors to learners, even as other schools in the country proceed with learning.

Effectively, thousands of school-going children will not attend classes unless the wanton destruction to life and property is halted.

In some areas, people who have fled their homes have turned some of the abandoned classrooms into temporal quarters where their safety is not also guaranteed.

What is more, cattle rustling and banditry has killed more people in Baringo County and surrounding areas than the Al-Shabaab terrorists have done, yet the Government seems to expend more resources going after the insurgents than containing a volatile situation that has persisted for decades.

Even the new Security Laws that were passed last December seemed to dwell more on the terrorists than on the internal raiders keen on perpetuating a culture of theft and thuggery nick-named cattle-rustling.

Admittedly, the reason why Kenyans demanded a new Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security and a new Inspector General of Police was because their predecessors were perceived to be lackadaisical, even ineffectual in executing their duties, given the ease with which terrorists attacked.

Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery and Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinett gave their solemn promises that security would be enhanced.

So far, theirs has been mere talk with little evidence to the change of guard.

In places like Baringo and Turkana and West Pokot, insecurity is a daily occurrence with the Government seemingly at a loss on how best to tackle the situation.

The United States government has given Kenya Sh9.5 billion to fight terrorism.

Because the money will go to border security, intelligence, investigations, training and equipment, it is the hope of every Kenyan that more resources will be freed to tackle cattle rustling.