Inside Museveni’s plan to permanently end cattle rustling in Karamoja

Over the last two years, Karamoja has experienced episodes of instability that has disrupted more than a decade of peace. Between 2006 and 2011 the government engaged in a disarmament exercise spearheaded by the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces in an attempt to end a culture of cattle raiding. This had decome more rampant as guns were in abundance since the 1970s.

As a result of the disarmament and subsequent government engagement with the occupants of the nine districts of the northeastern region, there has been relative peace. But over the last few years, raiders have returned, killing many people and stealing the cattle that are their livelihoods. A fresh disarmament campaign, launched by the army in July 2021, has so far failed to stem the violence, while drawing allegations of human rights abuses.

With rising cases of aggravated deaths and cattle raids in Karamoja region, the Government has called for another disarmament exercise. But as this is mooted, the Commander in Chief of the armed forces in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni has vowed to make the cattle rustlers in Karamoja ‘lose appetite’ for the gun.  

Speaking shortly after passing our 2610 Local Defence Personnel intake 06/21-22 who trained at the Labwordwong Training School in Agago district in northern Uganda, President Museveni said the cattle rustling that has re-emerged in the region will stop.

He explained that by restoring the 5^th division training facility, the government had established a stop measure. We had removed the 5^th division training and they took advantage of that. But now we have brought it back. It will help make the rustlers lose appetite for the gun,” he said.

The President said with the large number of trainers, the school now needs a guard force.

“One you have got a big number of people here, those who disturb security will not come. We need a guard force to contribute to security of this area. It will also contribute to the economy of the area.”

Reporting on the recent clashes a blog from the London School of Economics and Political Science states, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ states: “More recently there has been an increase in raiding amongst Karamojong communities and the neighbouring regions of Acholi and Teso. In the most recent incident on 22 March 2021, in Kaboong District, Sidok Sub-county, it was announced over local radio that a UN vehicle with two occupants fell into a road ambush mounted by approximately 10 warriors carrying guns and clad in army uniform. The UN vehicle was moving behind a truck carrying cows heading to Kotido Market. The warriors fired three bullets and demanded money from the occupants of the vehicle, with 10,000 Ugandan shillings taken.

The warriors offloaded the animals and vanished into the bush. While no death or injury was reported, the incident has created tension amongst the raiding communities and people feel unsafe. In Napak district alone, more than 50 lives have been lost since the insecurity started, leading to a peaceful protest in the community rallying with the slogan ‘Napak is bleeding’.

A related incident, also announced over local radio, occurred on 19 March 2021 along Nakapiripirit-Bulambuli/Mbale road, where armed warriors shot a Uganda Prison car coming from Mbale. They missed the target and all the occupants escaped safely.

In the last year, the escalation of insecurity has grown as livestock thefts have advanced into the peri-urban and then urban areas of the region, leading to an increasing loss of lives and property in these areas.

These incidents started as a conflict between pastoral communities straddled along the Kenya-Uganda border, namely the Dodoth ethnic community of Kaabong and the Turkana of Kenya, but later advanced towards the Jie of Kotido before spreading into central Karamoja (Matheniko of Moroto and Bokora of Napak). The largely disgruntled Local Defense Units security outfit were deployed along, ethnic lines, which together with a demotivated strata of peace committees made mitigation measures clumsy, worsening the situation further.”