Minister denies troops deployed on Ugandan border

Kenya on Tuesday denied media reports it had deployed troops along the country’s border with Uganda due to recent incidents of cattle-rustling.

“We have not amassed any troops along the border,” Kenya’s Minister for State in the Office of the President, Marsden Madoka, told IRIN. “We carried out an exercise to show our presence in the area recently, but this was generally part of our regular training.”

He said cattle-rustling had been “commercialised” and was no longer strictly an activity carried out by pastoralists alone. “We are going to do everything possible to flush out the culprits,” he added.

Press reports claimed that pastoralists from Uganda and Kenya were rearming themselves for fresh spates of cattle-rustling. ‘The EastAfrican’ on Monday said warriors from Matheniko county in Uganda’s central Karamoja district and their Turkana allies from northern Kenya were retrieving guns and unexploded hand-grenades, anti-tank and rocket propelled grenades from Nagolepak, Moruarion and the Kamerimej hills.

Uganda’s independent ‘Monitor’ newspaper also quoted a Kenyan official on Friday as saying that the Kenyan government “could not take chances” over the tense situation in neighbouring Karamoja region, following ethnic clashes last month in which some 400 people were reportedly killed. ‘The Indian Ocean Newsletter’ blamed these clashes on a new rebel group, the Anti-Referendum Army (ARA), saying these were not “simply problems of cattle-rustling”.

Ugandan High Commissioner to Kenya Francis Butagira told IRIN on Tuesday he was “not aware” of new threats of possible violence along the borders of the two countries. “What I know from the September security meeting is that the two countries agreed to join hands in disarming the warriors and putting measures to curb rustling,” he said. “The process has not started but will be effected at an appointed time. I don’t think what the papers are saying is true,” he added.

Regional analysts say cattle rustlers have “modified” their methods of attack and there are probably “newer players” in the field of rustling, which has led to increased loss of human lives and property. According to Ugandan academic and veterinary surgeon Dr S. Chemonges-Kasumbein, cattle rustling was formerly carried out “stealthily”, usually at night, with basic weapons. “These days rustlers strike any time of the day,” he said in a report received by IRIN.