Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [20]
The sublocation bore witness to past violence. Just off the dirt track stood the burned-out walls of what had been a school and a dispensary, destroyed in an earlier stage of the war between the Turkana and the Pokot. Through a translator, the moran explained what had happened the previous day.
The raid began at mid-morning and lasted six hours. About ninety of the Pokot attacked from two sides, plunging deep into the flat savanna between the hills and the Turkwel River. They moved east and then swept back west toward the hills like an armed human net, driving thousands of animals before them in an attempt to push the cattle through the pass and up into the Karasuk.
If they could get to the pass and up into the hills, they could hold off, or even decimate, any pursuing Turkana warriors. In the hills at the mouth of the canyon, the Pokot had prescouted gun emplacements from which to ambush anyone who gave chase. About two months earlier, just such a Pokot raid, followed by an ambush, had left twenty-six pursuing Turkana dead and fourteen injured.6
If the cattle made it into the hills, the raiders would break the stock into smaller herds and scatter deep into the district of West Pokot, and then maybe across the border into Uganda. Or they could sell the beef cattle to brokers with links to abattoirs in Nairobi and keep the sheep and goats for themselves.
As the Pokot moved in, the shooting started. Other Turkana men heard the crack of the AK-47s on single shot and then the high-pitched war cries of the Pokot. Alert to the threat, battered and on edge from a summer of unrelenting violence, aware that they could be reduced to penury in a day if the raid was successful, the moran rushed toward the sound of the guns.
As they attacked, the Pokot danced, weaving and bobbing with their guns, ululating and calling out the names of their prize cattle before squeezing off single shots or bursts of three. With only limited ammunition, the Turkana answered the Pokot, snapping off well-aimed single shots, calling out their pledges of valor, their deadly vows, and the descriptions of their prize bulls: This is for the gray bull with a white face. If a warrior kills a man, he can then split the drooping ears of his prize bull so the world will know what he has achieved.
The battle ranged over about six kilometers and lasted for several hours of running, hiding, firing, and chasing the cattle. The Pokot were pushing the cattle and “the shorts”—the sheep and goats—west toward the gap in the Karasuk. Stretched out across several kilometers, the Pokot had warriors at the head of the herd, guarding the sides, and in back guarding the rear.
The Turkana, outnumbered and outgunned, ran desperately to get ahead of the raiders, to outflank them, cut them off, block their retreat into the mountains, and scatter the animals before they entered the narrow valley pass. This time it worked. Many of the sheep and goats panicked, but instead of running, they bunched up, each animal trying to hide inside the flock, all of them pressing into a dense, immobilized mass. Other animals got tangled up in the brush.
The Pokot raiders were stuck on the savanna, trying to get the frightened little beasts to move west. But the sheep and goats were too scared and confused; not understanding the human drama around them, they just tried to hide. Brown and white and golden, the little shorts jammed in closer and closer together, the dust rising among them while the Pokot warriors—their own fear mounting as the delay grew more dangerous—kicked, pushed, and yelled at the animals to move. From the brush, Turkana warriors occasionally snapped off harassing rounds. But most of the Turkana men raced past the flocks, running west toward the hills in an attempt to outflank the raiders. They had to beat the Pokot to the mouth of the pass, block their escape, and scatter the herds back onto the savanna.
When the Pokot finally unjammed the stolen flocks and arrived at the pass, the Turkana were there waiting. The two forces collided, the Turkana firing into the