They hate each other. It is that simple. The language they use is sometimes a substitute for the simis, njoras, pangas, spears, bows-and-arrows, Heckler & Koch G3s, and the Barrett .50 calibres that they wield with deadly precision every time something comes up between their elected representatives and their educated elite with egos the sizes of small suns. You can see it with the wincing smiles they give each other. Especially their politicians, they are not adept at the pretend-to-be-enemies that the rest of the political world has mastered; they really, truly, with deep feeling, hate each other.
Cattle-rustling is a convenient excuse. So is resource-based conflict. As is "boundary disputes". Whatever else they fight over, the reason they fight is that they hate each other. They have done so for generations. They were encouraged to do so by Jomo Kenyatta's and Daniel Moi's forty year neglect. Their elected representatives, especially, was favoured pets in Moi's court. So long as they toed his line, they were free to build little manyattas of their own at which the young and the nubile would demonstrate fealty. Few are or were men of honour. The few women who managed to escape the manyattas have not demonstrated a capacity for dedicated community upliftment; some have become brazen flower-girls in Uhuru Kenyatta's court.
What is true about their animosities is that the balances always shift. In one season one sid is up; in another season, the other side is up. When one side is up, and some unfortunate officers of the law are killed, the army steps in and conducts a "disarmament" exercise. It does so with violence and viciousness. it does so without mercy or feeling. Then it goes back to the barracks until it is the turn of the other side. Meanwhile, the professionals, elected representatives and sons in uniform exert their political influence, such as it might be, and prevail on the national Executive to "suspend the disarmament exercise" because of "human rights abuses". The national Executive usually obliges when the rest of the nation have forgotten the worst of the dead police story. And again and again the cycle goes.
It doesn't matter how many GSU camps we build there. It doesn't matter how many Chiefs, Assistant Chiefs or DOs we appoint for each side. It doesn't matter how many firearms are recovered. It doesn't matter how many of them escape to urban Kenya in pursuit of education or livelihood. When it comes down to it, few of them have known anything but a hatred for the other side. It is something their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, cousins and friends reinforced. They know nothing else. They will never find as much satisfaction as in hating the other side, killing members of the other side, embarassing the members of the other side. It is why they strive to be lawyers, engineers, doctors, architects, soldiers or policemen: so that they can show up those other lazy bums.
Until we can erase the hate they feel for the others, until they learn to live without the bitter bile rising in their throats over something the other side did or did not do, the bloodshed will never end. You can deploy the army and the GSU over there until the end of time, but so long as this blood feud lives, the deaths will never stop. It is Joseph Ole Kaparo's job to see to it that they stop hating each other. His predecessor sucked at his job. Mr Kaparo is famous for weeping openly in public. I hope his tears will bring the enemies together and drown out their hatred for each other. Because if he fails to even get the ball rolling, you can count down to the hour when the next "massacre" will take place.
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