A Memory of Loss: Ecological Politics, Local History, and the Evolution of Karimojong Violence

Since early March 1999, deadly confrontations among pastoralists and government forces in northeastern Uganda's Karamoja region have escalated. Raiding and banditry are long-established features of intertribal relations in this region, and government reprisals against such operations date from the colonial period. However, present-day violence has assumed a singular form among the Karimojong, often involving them in the murder and raiding of other Karimojong as well as people from neighboring ethnic groups. It has been argued that ongoing violence in Karamoja is the result of the acquisition of automatic weapons by the Karimojong and their neighbors. While this might explain the increased virulence of intertribal conflict since the end of the colonial era, the direction of aggression by the Karimojong against members of their own ethnic group suggests that there are other factors to be considered. In this paper, I examine the sequence of ecological, political, and historical events leading to widespread intratribal violence in Karamoja. On the one hand, the modern manifestation of violence in Karamoja is a logical outcome of an interplay of environmental catastrophes and political mismanagement dating from the colonial era. In this sense, the Karimojong sequence is continuous with events taking place in the 20th century throughout the pastoralist zone of northeastern Africa. On the other hand, the present configuration of Karimojong society represents a discrete, localized response to regional events. Specifically, serendipitous acquisition of automatic rifles provided opportunistic pastoralists with a new stratagem at a time when a shift in intratribal politics already was under way. To be sure, easy access to guns altered relationships among the Karimojong, neighboring groups, and the changeable Ugandan state, but more significantly, modem weaponry supported the transformation of fluid structural relations within Karimojong society into increasingly inflexible internal divisions. The analysis underscores the complexities of conflict resolution among pastoralist groups in northeastern Africa.