A View on Violence
In the shadow of other civil conflicts, local violence and raiding has increased between pastoral communities along and across Kenya’s arid northern frontiers. Between persons, communities, or nations, violence transgresses boundaries and threatens identities contained. The interplay of boundaries, identities and values is illustrated with an account of the 1996 attack by the Turkana on Samburu and Ariaal Rendille at El Barta. Launched against plains locally called “The View”, this episode provides us a “view on violence”, its nature, phenomenology, and links to the state. With security forces intimidated by local weapons and implicated in local violence, communities are arming themselves to establish their own balance of terror, escalating local cycles of conflict.