Enough of "Peace" talks: Safeguard Turkana Land from Expansionist!

A photo of ongoing Peace talks at Kacalang'a on March 29, 2025 (Source: Unknown)

In the heart of the scorched, sun-kissed savannahs of Turkana, where the soil tells stories of resilience and the wind whispers tales of survival, a dark cloud of betrayal and blood has hung low for decades. These lands, once undisturbed realms for Turkana pastoralists to herd their animals and nurture their families, have been turned into battlegrounds of deceit by the very neighbors who shake hands in the day and strike with bullets at night. The Pokot herdsmen, cloaked under the guise of peace emissaries, have consistently turned peace talks into strategic charades—temporary masks worn only to remove them when the time is ripe to draw blood and expand borders.

Peace, in this context, is no longer a noble aspiration but a twisted tool of conquest. Like a mirage in the desert, it shimmers with hope, only to vanish the moment one draws near. Kachalang'a in Lochakula Sub-location of Turkana East has become the theatre of this recurring farce—a place where words are softer than silk but actions harder than stone. Here, the Pokot don the robe of diplomacy not to heal wounds but to identify weak spots in Turkana's defenses. Their goal is as sinister as it is strategic: seize the land, rename it with Pokot identity, and rewrite the history of ownership while the world watches in apathetic silence.

These so-called peace talks have been the breeding ground of calculated betrayal. It is an old song sung with a new tune, yet the chorus remains the same: Turkana sacrifices land, pasture, and lives in exchange for empty promises. What follows is the most grotesque form of betrayal—a lull in the gunfire only for it to return with even greater ferocity. The blood of schoolchildren, the tears of mothers, the anguish of fathers, and the silent screams of travelers have become the currency with which the Pokot bandits purchase their territorial ambition. The cycle continues, relentless and cruel, and peace becomes a eulogy rather than a celebration.

It is almost poetic, in a tragic sense, that while a Turkana child is being taught the national anthem in school, a Pokot bullet is etching their epitaph. The mothers who rise with the sun to fetch water and gather firewood return only as corpses—or worse, never return at all. Fathers, whose only sin is tending their herds, fall victim to ambushes orchestrated by men who sat at peace tables only days prior. Travelers navigating the lifelines of the highway are gunned down without remorse, their corpses left as silent testaments to the horror that peace has failed to tame.

The irony is nauseating. In some instances, in Turkana South, there exists a semblance of coexistence, a fragile equilibrium of peace with the Pokots. But in Turkana East, the narrative is blood-stained and brutal. It begs the question that tears through the heart like a spear—what makes the Turkana in the South different from those in the East? Are we not one people? Do we not drink from the same wells of history and breathe the same winds of heritage? Or has peace become a privilege selectively granted by the whims of Pokot expansionism?

This conflict has mutated into something more insidious than mere cattle rustling or tribal disputes. It has become a silent genocide—a systematic erasure of Turkana's lives, culture, and land. And yet, the world remains silent, with lips sealed by convenience and eyes blindfolded by indifference. International organizations, NGOs, and state actors have all danced around the flames, occasionally throwing water with one hand while fanning the fire with the other. Their involvement, though well-intentioned on the surface, often dilutes the very essence of a herder-driven peace. They peddle donor-funded peace agendas without grasping the true cost borne by those whose land is under siege.

Sustainable peace has never been realized because the tactics employed have always been top-down, bureaucratic, and divorced from the lived realities of the people most affected. You cannot build peace on a foundation of falsehoods and expect it to hold. As Chinua Achebe once wrote, "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership." In this case, it is also a failure of strategy. The bandits—the very culprits of carnage—are left out of the conversations, their motives unchecked, their weapons undisturbed. We talk peace while they load their rifles. We shake hands while they sharpen their machetes. We sign pacts while they redraw maps.

The land—the sacred mother of the Turkana—is being defiled. Not just with the blood of its children but with the names of another tribe forcefully inscribed upon it. Hills, rivers, and valleys that have sung Turkana songs for generations now echo with unfamiliar names. It is linguistic colonization following physical invasion. To rename a land is to erase its memory, to pluck out its identity from the roots and plant lies in its place. And yet, every time we cry foul, we are hushed in the name of peace.

It is time, now more than ever, to call out these antics for what they are—an expansionist campaign masked as peace. And if we must redefine peace, let it be from the mouths of those who sleep with one eye open, those who count bullets instead of sheep, those who bury their children wrapped in shawls rather than swaddling clothes. Peace must be a herders' project—raw, authentic, and rooted in the soil they till and the cattle they tend. It must be a bottom-up revolution, with the elites, NGOs, and leaders playing only the supporting role.

Let the truth be laid bare: this war has claimed more lives than any genocide you’ll read about in history books. Yet it remains undocumented. The blood of the Turkana people that Pokot banditry has claimed is enough to irrigate the whole Turkana land. The rivers of blood flow silently, beneath the radar of international media. Why? Because we do not have a George Floyd moment. Because we do not riot in capital cities. Because we die in silence, in the remote corners of the map, where the only witnesses are the vultures.

Peace cannot be realized by those whose lives are untouched by war. The elite, secure in their towns, can afford to romanticize peace; the herder in Turkana East cannot. He does not have the luxury of wishful thinking—only the urgency of survival. And for that survival, peace must come with justice. It must demand accountability. The bandits must not only be disarmed but made to account for every drop of blood spilled, every acre of land stolen, every name replaced.

Let us not mince words. This is a war. A war waged not on conventional battlefields but in homes, on footpaths, in classrooms, and marketplaces. It is a war that targets the innocent and rewards the aggressor. A war that, if left unchecked, will erase an entire generation of Turkana dreams. And so we must rise—not with vengeance, but with vigilance. Not with hatred, but with history. Not to destroy, but to defend.

As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o once said, "The greatest weapon wielded by imperialism is the cultural bomb." What we face today is a cultural bomb detonated not by colonialists in faraway lands, but by neighbors with shared skin but divergent hearts. They seek to erase our culture by erasing our land, to redefine our story by rewriting our geography. This must not stand.

This is not tribalism. It is defense. It is survival. Just as one would protect their home from invaders, so must we protect Turkana land. The forest does not hate the axe, but it fears it when the handle is made of wood from the same tree. We, Turkana, have often enabled our own suffering in the name of peace. That must stop. The next generation must inherit not just livestock, but land, dignity, and truth.

Peace must mean something. It cannot just be a ritual of shaking hands while hiding guns behind backs. It must begin with hard truths, painful reckonings, and a commitment to justice over comfort. To pretend otherwise is to participate in our own extinction. As Malcolm X said, “If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.” Likewise, if we are not ready to demand justice, we must stop talking about peace.

Peace, true peace, must be mutual. It must be built not on ashes and lies but on truth and justice. Until then, every peace talk at out Turkana soil remains but a smoke screen—an interlude in the opera of war. And if we are to rewrite this script, we must start by empowering the actors who live it daily. The Turkana herder must become the architect of his own peace. Only then can the blood-soaked soils begin to heal. Only then can the wind sing again—not of sorrow, but of hope.

For even as the shadows deepen, the spirit of Turkana remains unbroken. The drums of our ancestors still beat in our hearts, calling us not to surrender but to rise. And rise we shall. Let the world hear our cry. Let history record our resistance. Let the Pokot know that Turkana is not a name to be erased, not a people to be moved, and not a culture to be stolen. Our blood nourishes this land, our songs rise from its soil, and our spirits are tethered to its mountains. We will not be shadows in our own homeland. The mirage of peace must give way to the oasis of justice.

Only then—only then—will true peace be possible.