KAIKAI'S KICKER: Samburu - Dead cows, dead objectives

On my Kicker tonight, a recent, so-called multi-agency security operation in Samburu raises questions that cannot just be wished away.

The security operation was reportedly conducted in response to violent incidents involving suspected bandits around the Samburu-Isiolo border; incidents which included an attack in which security officers and innocent civilians were killed by the bandits.

Rightfully and lawfully, security officers drawn from the General Service Unit (GSU) and the Anti-Stock Theft Unit (ASTU) pursued the suspected bandits with the purpose of recovering stolen livestock and illegal firearms.

But then, right and law were dropped immediately the security operation began.

Images coming out of Samburu showcased a rampage of barbaric proportions. The landscape was littered with carcasses of cattle shot dead by police bullets. Some of the cows were still alive, wriggling in pain, in the final stages of life.

Then conflicting figures of the animal death toll started emerging, with the Samburu Governor putting the number of cows killed at 764, 116 goats and 83 donkeys.

The dead livestock was supposedly collateral damage in an operation that simply went wild and rogue.

In what is obviously unlawful and even mindless, security officers went beyond pursuing suspected criminals and unlawfully turned their guns on innocent, and I should add, unarmed cattle, goats and donkeys.

Samburu residents and their leaders have since been asking questions the government has not bothered to answer.

The single most unanswered question is short and simple: "Why?"

Without downplaying the myriad security issues, including perennial cattle rustling in Samburu and Kenya's general north, we must have the clear-eyed honesty to point out deep-seated contemptuous attitudes that inform the handling of security operations in the home areas of the country's pastoral communities.

As to why 500 or 700 herds of cattle can be shot dead in Samburu just like that, the answer can be as simple as: That is Samburu; just Samburu… not Kiambu or Kericho; it is just Samburu!

As far back as 1935, colonial security forces were shooting dead livestock in Samburu.

Historical research by the Kenya Truth and Reconciliation Commission indicates that in 1935, British colonial authorities conducted the multi-agency equivalent security operation in Samburu for one whole year, during which their animals were shot dead in what became known as the colonial doctrine of collective punishment.

By killing Samburu livestock, the present government, like its colonial predecessor, inflicts economic pain on the Samburu.

And does that catch or punish the bandits? Will a dead cow atone for the killing of a security officer? Certainly not.

It sets back the innocent, sending them back down the path of poverty, knowing, as the government very well knows, that livestock is their only source of livelihood.

As we await answers on the Samburu rampage, a basic point has to be emphasised: Killing cows, goats and donkeys in the name of a security operation is senseless.

It does not advance the objectives of restoring law and order. It is also defeatist.

It paints the state as unthinking and barbaric. It suggests a running out of ideas and ends up painting security forces as bandits, just from a different end.

It also perpetuates old perceptions of Kenya's pastoral communities as dispensable others.

For those doubting this assertion, show me, other than Turkana, Pokot and the general north; show me where else in Kenya what we saw in Samburu is possible.