Uganda’s Wild East

originally published in The East African, Kenya

It is one of the most violent and dry regions of East Africa.

For years, water has been hard to come by; food sometimes even more difficult. Now alcohol is gone too.

Uganda last week banned the sale and consumption of the popular local gin, Waragi, in the country’s eastern region of Karamoja.

This is only the latest in a series of restrictions the government has used to contain growing violence in hostile Karamoja, believed to be related to the pressing drought also affecting Kenya, and striking terror into the hearts of locals and causing desertions by security forces.

“We found that some businessmen selling Waragi have been hiding ammunitions in jerricans and selling them to the Karamojong,” Deputy Police Commander Richard Musisi told the local press.

Karamoja has always had security problems.

It has been described as a place near where the world ends, where roads turn to dust.

It is a land of cattle rustlers, of armed horseback warriors that transcend clans and borders, and where over one million people are relying on food aid.

This particular extended drought season is threatening the lives of nearly 20 million people, according to the World Food Programme, and exacerbated violence in Karamoja.

“Cattle are dying. Goats are dying,” says Patrick Abongi of the International Rescue Committee. “People have to travel very long distances in search for pasture and water.”

The numbers vary by source, but all testify to an every-man-for-himself fatal game of tag that has left many dead.

According to the World Food Programme, at least 40 people have died from starvation.

Another 30 died from drinking untreated water and synthetic drinks.

As for the violence, Uganda’s Human Rights Commission has registered over 500 cases of human rights abuses in the region in the past five years.

Uganda has had a difficult time controlling the situation.

According to the Uganda military, 26 soldiers were killed in the region in September.

By the end of the same month, hundreds of police officers awaiting transfer to Karamoja petitioned to not be moved, fearing for their lives.

Of 200 officers transferred to Karamoja, over 120 have defied the order.

The Force has warned that officers who do not report to their new duty stations will be considered deserters and face arrest.

For the people in Karamoja, life is getting worse by the day.

Uganda is cattle-country, and Karamoja is its Wild West.

According to the country’s 2008 livestock census, the region alone is home to nearly 2.3 million heads of cattle, nearly all of Uganda’s 32,000 camels, the vast majority of its horses, and donkeys, among other domestic animals.

But the rains barely come, and this time the drought – which has persisted in varying forms for the past five years – has expanded to consume large parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.

“It is the worst humanitarian crisis we have seen in 10 years,” Oxfam’s East Africa Director for Humanitarian agency Paul Smith Lomas said.

The United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation says nearly 20 million people are now dependent on food aid.

The growing risks come at a time when the World Food Programme is suffering a financial drought of its own.

According to Marcus Prior, the WFP’s spokesperson in East Africa, the organisation is over $4 billion short of its 2009 budget.

“We understand that many donors are going through their own difficult time in this current global financial crisis, but we urge them not to forget the very real and crucial needs of people in this region,” Mr Prior was quoted last week in The Guardian.

In Karamoja, rebels trade food aid for guns, and make their own luck.

In the midst of the renewed pursuit of scarce resources, raids are again creeping across the border into neighbouring Kenya, further complicating the conflict.

Many of the robberies and deaths are blamed on young adults, unassociated with larger armed groups, who turn to theft out of poverty.

But for the past 50 years, there has been ongoing organised assault to varying degrees between clans and the horseback militia they are associated with.

“Anyplace today in Karamoja where there’s food distribution, within two days, we will realise homesteads and households are raided for food,” says Mr Obangi of the IRC.

“One clan, which does not have enough pasture and water, will have to seek peace or move to another clan area,” he says.

The Uganda People’s Defense Force has recalibrated its forces in the region in response to the instability, but has had mixed results.

One case, first reported in Uganda’s local Weekly Observer, includes the murder of two soldiers and the capture of over 80 cattle by eight warriors on horseback in mid-September, as the latter also made off with the soldier’s weapons.

As more people are killed, the army has changed strategy, moving from a general defense of pastures to an acute offensive against the cattle-raiders themselves.

While the UPDF Brig Patrick Kankiriho has called operations in the region “75 per cent” successful, Mr Obangi of the IRC say inhabitants of Karamoja would disagree.

“They say this year has been one of the worst years in their history,” he says.