Counting the dead
Ninety-three deaths in the past year, the count has dominated national TV coverage of conflict in Marsabit, contributing to the trend of turning the effect of the conflict and the loss into a body-counting exercise.
A year ago, Saku Member of Parliament (MP) Ali Raso Dido spoke of the number of people killed in his constituency. On his list there were only the Borana dead; he did not include the dead from other communities. To him, as an MP, only Borana lives mattered and were worthy of raising on the floor of parliament.
In a lengthy response, his counterpart, North Horr MP Francis Chachu gave the number of dead in his constituency. He listed only the Gabra dead.
In the last cycle of conflict in Marsabit County, 75 houses were burnt down, and about 850 families were displaced. Governor Mohamud Ali called a press conference at which the list of the dead was the central theme of his statement.
Since the state has no official data on number of people who have died as a result of conflict in Marsabit, all these accounts are true, but they are also subjective and incomplete. Just why the counting is done, where to begin counting, who is to be counted and who does the counting are the concerns of these times.
In between the statistics informing politicians’ petitions to parliament, or forming the subject of a governor’s hasty press statement or the prop of a news story, there is a whole social milieu within which the conflict exists and how it is processed at the political and economic levels of grief.
A macabre dance between voters and politicians
Proximity to countries in conflict—Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan—and the easy availability of Small Arms and Light Weapons have been the central explanation for the conflict in Marsabit County. While valid and, in some instances, correct, this explanation misses the fact of the banality of conflict in the county—a more insidious new lexicon that normalizes killing beyond the traditional boundaries of ethnic conflict is developing.
In the last cycle of conflict in Marsabit County, 75 houses were burnt down, and about 850 families were displaced.
This change in the ethnic conflict dynamic is a function of a perverse, mutually reinforcing loop involving politicians and voters, each egging on the other to visit more death and destruction on the opposite community. The hypercompetitive nature of local elections post-devolution significantly exacerbates this loop.
Thus, taking the “war” to the other community becomes a politician’s campaign pledge rather than the promise of building hospitals and schools or bringing about the desperately needed development. The more vociferous a politician becomes, the more likely he is to be elected.
This perverse incentive makes politicians more incendiary, making both the threat of violence and the violence itself politically rewarding.
Ancestral hatred theory
While it is often cast as anchored in ancestral hatred, there is something new about conflict in Marsabit. And because it is mutating even as we all watch, we sometimes miss it. What makes it unique is its banalisation.
Three aspects make recent conflicts in Marsabit distinct from the old ones.
One, the slow-burning, episodic nature of the conflict and the attendant “peace” meetings have come to be accepted as an immutable fact of life. But the peace-industrial complex has done little to end the conflict; instead, the conflict has mutated into something new, complete with a new lexicon and signals far more incendiary than the old conflict. This rinse-and-repeat cycle has spawned a coterie of peace entrepreneurs activated at a moment’s notice whenever violence breaks out.
This perverse incentive makes politicians more incendiary, making both the threat of violence and the violence itself politically rewarding.
Two, with increased competition over land and resources under devolution, this “new” conflict is increasingly framed in apocalyptic, existential language. As a result, voters prefer politicians who cast themselves as the “defenders” of the community from outsiders’ keen on taking their land and resources. Thus, voters lean towards politicians with a “warlord” mentality rather than those with a good development record.
Three, in this “new” conflict controlling the narrative is central, making the national media and the local-language radio stations the battleground. Where the national media frames the region as a godforsaken Badlands, local-language radio stations offer politicians a safe space from where to speak directly to their people unfiltered. WhatsApp and the ever-mushrooming Facebook groups act as a functional auxiliary for sharing media content. This interface has made the Marsabit conflict far deadlier on and offline.
Conflict as theatre
Every death in Marsabit is increasingly seen through the prism of cold arithmetic—losing and winning. This strips death of its meaning. Every death is accounted for on a ledger; it is a debt to be repaid with the death of another. Death is performance theatre, acted rather than mourned.
This theatre extends to the burial, measured by the length of the cavalcade of vehicles that accompany the body to the grave, and the promises made by politicians at his funeral or in their interviews in the local and national media. During a recent funeral, the number of vehicles contributed to the drama as cars stretched a kilometre from the centre of town to the cemetery.
Every death is accounted for on a ledger; it is a debt to be repaid with the death of another.
There was such silence in the picture that the silence was in our minds, but we know that the slow pace of the vehicles inching towards the cemetery had no connection to the past murders. In the prevailing mind-set, this image will replace that of the mad man whose throat had been slit at 8 p.m. near the market and who had tried to walk from the back of the police van into the hospital and failed—rising and falling, rising and falling.
Later, as the region’s leaders foam at the mouth on TV, everyone goes home with smaller versions of the same talk. Emotions are gauged through the metrics of tribe, place of murder, murder weapon, the known backstories of the casualties; many went unmoored as collaterals of the drama that people made of the conflict.
Part of the post-death package is “what have our leaders said?” This reaction is baked into the system of conflict, whether the said leaders are maintaining the honour of the tribe. Whether they have promised to even the score or repay the death debts. Their words are shared on and off line as a whispered social contract.
