Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:20:10.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The State as Raider Among the Karamojong: ‘Where There are no Guns, They use the Threat of Guns’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Abstract

The article brings together archival material, past ethnography, and memory on the one hand, and up-to-date eye-witness and newspaper reports on the other, to set current traumatic events in the very long view. The presentism of contemporary developmental and research approaches has precluded such perspectives. Thus the current disarmament programme being forced on the Karamojong of north-east Uganda by the Uganda People's Defence Force is no more unprecedented than the armed conflicts it is intended to resolve. The advent of colonial administration and memories of it are examined to illuminate the constraints of the present exercise. Events are not occurring solely in a local context, still less just on the national scene, but in the global context directed by world power. Thus the significance of cattle-raiding, the nature of which has not been drastically changed by firearms, has been exaggerated as part of a threat to world peace that must be tackled by international action. This has provided the rationale for repeating the brutality of the small wars of imperialism on a larger scale and with less prospect of an ensuing peace. The article proposes a rediscovery of African agency in Karamojong religious ceremonies that are not controlled by world orders.

Résumé

L'article rassemble d'unne part du matériel d'archives, des données ethnographiques anciennes et la mémoire, et d'autre part des informations récentes parues dans la presse et recueillies auprès de témoins oculaires, pour situer des événements traumatiques actuels dans une perspective à très long terme. Le présentisme des approches contemporaines en matière de développement et de recherche empêche une telle perspective. Ainsi, le programme actuel de désarmement imposé aux Karamajong du Nord-Est de l'Ouganda par les Forces de défense populaire de l'Ouganda (UPDF) n'a pas moins de précédents que les conflits armés qu'il entend résoudre. L'arrivée de l'administration coloniale et les souvenirs de celle-ci sont examinés pour éclairer les difficultiés du programme actuel. Les événements ne surviennent pas exclusivement dans un contexte local, et encore moins sur la seule scène nationale, mais dans un contexte mondial dirigé par des puissances mondiales. Ainsi l'importance du problème des vols de bétail, dont la nature n'a pas été exagérée dans le cadre de la menace de la paix mondiale à laquelle doit répondre une action internationale. C'est ce qui a servi à une plus grande échelle et avec moins d'espoirs de paix. L'article propose de redécouvrir l'organisation africaine dans les cérémonies religieuses karamojong non contrôlées par des ordres mondiaux.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Almagor, Uri. 1979. ‘Raiders and elders: a confrontation of generations among the Dassanetch', in Katsuyoshi Fukui, andDavid Turton, (eds), Warfare among East African Herders: papers presented at the first international symposium, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, September 1977, pp. 119-45. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.Google Scholar
Alwyn, Rachel. 1998. ‘Gun for Sale'. Television programme broadcast on 22 January 1998 in the series ‘Under the Sun'. London: BBC.Google Scholar
Anderson, David. 2002. Eroding the Commons: the politics of ecology in Baringo, Kenya 1890s-1963. Oxford: James Currey; Athens OH: Ohio Univeristy Press.Google Scholar
Austin, H. H. 1903. With Macdonald in Uganda: a narrative account of the Uganda mutiny and Macdonald expedition in the Uganda Protectorate and the territories to the north. London: Edward Arnold. Reprinted 1973 London: Dawsons of Pall Mall.Google Scholar
Azarya, V. 1996. Nomads and the State in Africa: the political roots of marginality. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Barber, James 1964. ‘Karamoja in 1910', Uganda Journal 28 (1), 15-23.Google Scholar
Barber, James 1965. ‘The moving frontier of British imperialism in northern Uganda', Uganda Journal 29 (1), 27-43.Google Scholar
Barber, James 1968. Imperial Frontier: a study of relations between the British and the pastoral tribes of north east Uganda. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.Google Scholar
Barrett, Anthony Joseph. 1998. Sacrifice and Prophecy in Turkana Cosmology. Nairobi: Paulines.Google Scholar
Bataringaya, B. K.(ed. Chairman). 1961. Report of the Karamoja Security Committee. Kampala: Government of Uganda.Google Scholar
Bell, W. D. M. 1949. Karamojo Safari. London: Victor Gollancz.Google Scholar
Belshaw, D. and Malinga, M. 1999. ‘The Kalashnikov economies of the eastern Sahel: cumulative or cyclical differentiation between nomadic pastoralists?’ Paper presented at the first workshop of the Study Group on Conflict and Security, Development Studies Association, London: South Bank University, March.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 1990. ‘Ethnic conflicts in North-West Kenya: Pokot-Turkana raiding', Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 115, 73-90.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 1993. ‘Intra- and Interethnic conflict in Northwest Kenya: a multicausal analysis of conflict behaviour', Anthropos 87: 176-84.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 2000.2000. ‘Staging social structures: ritual and social organisation in an egalitarian society. The pastoral Pokot of northern Kenya', Ethnos 65 (3), 341-65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brasnett, J. 1958. ‘The Karasuk problem', Uganda Journal 22 (2), 113-122.Google Scholar
Brasnett, J. 1996. ‘Basic administration', in Douglas Brown, and Marcelle, V. Brown (eds), Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: recollections of District Officers, pp. 25-30. Dalkeith, W. Australia: Douglas Brown.Google Scholar
Broch-Due, Vigdis. 1999. ‘Remembered cattle, forgotten people: the morality of exchange and the exclusion of the Turkana poor’, in Anderson, David and Broch-Due, Vigdis (eds), The Poor are Not Us: poverty and pastoralism in eastern Africa, pp. 5088. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Broch-Due, Vigdis. 2000. ‘The fertility of houses and herds: producing kinship and gender among Turkana pastoralists’, in Hodgson, Dorothy(ed.), Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: gender, culture and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist pp. 165–85. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Bruijn, Mirjam de and Dijk, Han van. 1993. ‘State formation and the decline of pastoralism: the Fulani in central Mali’, in Markakis, John(ed.), Conflict and the Decline of Pastoralism in the Horn of Africa pp. 122–42. Basinsgtoke: Macmillan; The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cleave, John H. 1996. ‘First posting’, in Brown, Douglas and Brown, Marcelle V(eds), Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: recollections of District Officers pp. 30–7. Dalkeith, W. Australia: Douglas Brown.Google Scholar
DflD. 2002.Clare Short on peace mission to Sudan: first UK cabinet minister to visit in 10 years', available athttp://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/PressReleases/files/pr4jan02.html [accessed 23 April 2002].Google Scholar
Darley, Henry 1935 [1926]. Slaves and Ivory: a record of adventure and exploration among the Abyssinian slave-raiders. 2nd ed.London: Witherby.Google Scholar
Dietz, Ton 1987. Pastoralists in Dire Straits: survival strategies and external interventions in a semi-arid region at the Kenya/Uganda border: Western Pokot, 1900-1986. Amsterdam: Instituut voor Sociale Geografie, Universiteit van Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Dietz, Ton. 1993. ‘The state, the market, and the decline of pastoralism: challenging some myths with evidence from Western Pokot in Kenya/Uganda’, in Markakis, John(ed), Conflict and the Decline of Pastoralism in the Horn of Africa pp. 143–62. Basingstoke: Macmillan; The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.Google Scholar
Dyson-Hudson, Neville 1966. Karimojong Politics Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Errington, Sarah 1966.Taming the gun', BBC Focus on Africa Magazine April-June.Google Scholar
Fleay, Martin. 1996. ‘Karamoja's district team and development scheme’, in Brown, Douglas and Marcelle, V. Brown(eds), Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: recollections of District Officers pp. 2035. Dalkeith, W. Australia: Douglas Brown.Google Scholar
Fleisher, M.. 2002. ‘“War is good for thieving!” The symbiosis of crime and warfare among the Kuria of Tanzania’, Africa 72 (1), 131–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukui, Katsuyoshi and Turton, D..(eds)1979. ‘Warfare among East African Herders: papers presented at the first international symposium, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, September 1977’, pp. 119–45. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.Google Scholar
Galaty, John G 1998. ‘Pastoralists and forced migration’.Paper presented in the Forced Migration series, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, 25 NovemberGoogle Scholar
Gourlay, Kenneth A 1971. ‘Studies in Karimojong musical culture’. Ph.D. thesis, Kampala: University of East Africa.Google Scholar
Gray, Sandra. 2000. ‘A memory of loss: ecological politics, local history, and the evolution of Karimojong violence’, Human Organization 59 (4), 401–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Dorothy L. 2002. ‘The escalation of cattle raiding’, Journal of African History 43 (2), 355.Google Scholar
Höffler, Anke. 2001. ‘On the incidence of civil war in Africa’. Paper presented at the African Studies Seminar, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, 25 October.Google Scholar
Hussein, Karim, Sumberg, James, and Seddon, David., 1999. ‘Increasing violent conflict between herders and farmers in Africa: claims and evidence’, Development Policy Review 17 (4), 397418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, Sharon Elaine. 1990. ‘Rising divorce among the Nuer 1936–83’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25 (3), 393411.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Sharon Elaine. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: coping with money, war, and the state. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, Sharon Elaine. 2001. ‘“A curse from God”? Religious and political dimensions of the post-1991 rise of ethnic violence in South Sudan’, Journal of Modern African Studies 39 (2), 302–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, Michael. 2000: ‘The context for livestock and crop-livestock development in Africa’, in Nancy McCarthy, Brent, Swallow, et al. (eds), Property Rights, Risk, and Livestock Development in Africa, pp. 23–54. Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.Google Scholar
Knighton, B. P. 1990. ‘Christian enculturation in Karamoja, Uganda’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham.Google Scholar
Knighton, B. P. 1999. ‘Traditions and “traditionalism” among the Karamojong’. Paper presented at the North-East Africa Seminar, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, 4 December.Google Scholar
Knighton, B. P. 2001. ‘Forgiveness or disengagement in a traditional African cycle of revenge’, Exchange 30 (1), 1832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knighton, B. P. forthcoming. The Enduring Vitality of Karamojong Traditional Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Kyemba, Henry. 1977. State of Blood: the inside story of Idi Amin. London: Corgi.Google Scholar
Lamphear, John E. 1976. The Traditional History of the Jie of Uganda. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lamphear, John E. 1994. ‘The evolution of Ateker “new model armies”: Jie and Turkana’, in Katsuyoshi Fukui, and John Markakis, (eds), Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, pp. 63–94. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Lamphear, John E. 1998. ‘Brothers in arms: military aspects of East African age systems’, in Eisei Kurimoto, and Simon Simonse, (eds), Conflict, Age & Power in North East Africa: age systems in transition pp. 79–99. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Little, Peter D., Smith, Kevin, et al. 2001. ‘Avoiding disaster: diversification and risk management among East African herders’, Development and Change 32 (3), 401–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, J. R. L. 1899. ‘Notes on the ethnology of tribes met with during progress of the Juba expedition of 1897–99’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute 29, 226–47.Google Scholar
Markakis, John (ed.). 1993. Conflict and the Decline of Pastor alism in the Horn of Africa. Basinsgtoke: Macmillan; The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.Google Scholar
Marshall Thomas, Elizabeth. 1966. Warrior Herdsmen. London: Martin Seeker & Warburg.Google Scholar
Mirzeler, Mustafa, and Young, , Crawford. 2000. ‘Pastoral politics in the northeast periphery in Uganda: AK-47 as change agent’, Journal of Modern African Studies 38 (3), 407–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mkuta, Kennedy. 2001. Pastoralism and Conflict in the Horn of Africa. London: Africa Peace Forum; Saferworld; University of Bradford.Google Scholar
Niamir- Fuller, Maryam. 1999. ‘Conflict management and mobility among pastoralists in Karamoja, Uganda’, in Maryam, , Niamir-Fuller (ed.), Managing Mobility in African Rangelands: the legitimization of transhumance pp. 149–83. London: Intermediate Technology.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oba, G. 1992. Ecological Factors in Land Use Conflicts, Land Administration, and Food Insecurity in Turkana, Kenya. Pastoral Development Network Paper 33a. London: Overseas Development Institute.Google Scholar
Ocan, Charles. 1994. ‘Pastoral crisis and social change in Karamoja’, in Mahmood Mamdani, and Joe Oloka-Onyango, (eds), Uganda: studies in living conditions, popular movements and constitutionalism, pp. 97-142. Kampala: JEP Centre for Basic Research; Vienna: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik.Google Scholar
Oloka- Onyango, Joe, , Zie, , , G. and Muhereza, , Frank. 1993. Pastoralism, Crisis, and Transformation in Karamoja. Drylands Network Programme, issues paper no. 43. London: International Institute for Environment and Deveopment; Kampala: Centre for Basic Research.Google Scholar
Otim, Peter O. 2002. ‘Scarcity and conflict in pastoral areas: a look at the other side of the coin’, in Mustafa Babiker, (ed.), Resource Alienation, Militarisation, and Development: case studies from East African drylands. Addis Ababa: OSSREA, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Oxfam., 2001. Conflicts Children: the human cost of small arms in Kitgum and Kotido, Uganda. Oxford: Oxfam.Google Scholar
Persse, E. M. 1934. ‘Ethnological notes on the Karimojong’, Uganda Journal 1 (2), 112–5.Google Scholar
Quam, Michael D. 1997. ‘Creating peace in an armed society: Karamoja, Uganda, 1996’, African Studies Quarterly 1 (1).Google Scholar
Rees, Garth ap. 1996. ‘The last intake of administrative officers’, in Douglas Brown, and Marcelle, , V.Brown, (eds), Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: recollections of District Officers pp. 59–62. Dalkeith, W. Australia: Douglas Brown.Google Scholar
Spear, Thomas. 1999. ‘Generational histories’, Journal of African History 40 (2), 301f.Google Scholar
Spear, Thomas, and Waller, , Richard, (eds). 1993. Being Maasai: ethnicity and identity in East Africa. London: James Currey.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straight, Bilinda. 2000. ‘Development ideologies and local knowledge among Samburu women in northern Kenya’, in Dorothy Hodgson, (ed.), Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: gender, culture and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist pp. 227–48. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Tornay, Serge. 2001. Les Fusils jaunes: generations et politique en pays nyangatom (Ethiopie). Nanterre: Société d'Ethnologie.Google Scholar
Wairagala, Wakabi. 2002. ‘East African round up’, available at http://www.tbwt.com/specialrpt_0164.asp"> [accessed 16 April 2002].+[accessed+16+April+2002].>Google Scholar
Walker, Robert. 2002. Anti-pastoralism and the Growth of Poverty and Insecurity in Karamoja: disarmament and development dilemmas. Kampala: DflD.Google Scholar
Weatherby, John M. 1962. ‘Intertribal warfare on Mount Elgon’, Uganda Journal 26, 200–12.Google Scholar