Some of the suspected cattle raiders arrested by the joint security forces in Moroto district.
They have been raiding for cattle for ages for cultural reasons. Recently, the Karimojong warriors started raiding cattle for commercial reasons, and the market rapidly consumed virtually all the cattle. So the warriors turned to goats and the owners started sleeping with their goats inside the houses to protect their flock.
Now the warriors go listening at the doors at night, trying to detect the presence of goats so they charge the house. But they sometimes mistake the muffled sound of snoring humans for goat sounds. On breaking in and finding only humans for whom they have no market, the warriors angrily turn onto the occupants, beating them and sometimes injuring them seriously.
So far, the frustrated warriors have in the past few days beaten up at least ten people who were found snoring in different houses, accusing them of misleading them into thinking they had landed on goats, thus wasting their time and energy to break in.
The armed cattle rustlers who intensified their attacks early this week in the villages of Lokitumoi, Atedeoi, Kidepo and Pupu are targeting goats recently distributed by the government, and have so far stolen 230 goats of those that were given to reformed rustlers.
Josephine Naduk, a resident of Atedeoi village said that ever since they received goats from the government, they have never had peace as rustlers roam throughout the night looking for goats to steal.
Naduk said that the raiders do not fear opening people’s houses at night asking for the goats like they had kept them inside the house.
‘’We don’t know these raiders but they come when they know your names, in fact all your details, they order you to open your door for them and they enter to check if there are goats’’ she said.
Mary Naru, a resident of Atedewoi village in Lotisan sub county says warriors have finished all the cows and are now hunting for goats most especially the ones distributed recently by the government.
Naru says they are living in fear because the raiders now force them out of the house at night accusing them of snoring at night like goats.
She told URN that the warriors are torturing them at night for snoring like goats, something the warriors claim gives them an appetite for goats.
John Robert Adupa, the LCIII chairperson Lotisan sub county confirmed the attacks saying 10 people were attacked and injured by armed cattle raiders on Monday night.
Adupa says the residents call him throughout the night when the raiders attack them but it is always very difficult to coordinate the security at night because the warriors are armed.
‘’When I first received the reports about these attacks, I took it lightly because I could not see why the warriors would attack people who are just snoring, but I when I took time to move around to some villages, I confirmed it, the situation is really bad,’’ Adupa said.
He appealed to the security forces to enhance their operations, especially in the sub-counties of Lotisan and Rupa which the warriors have effectively colonized.
Micheal Longole the Mt Moroto Regional police spokesperson says they have not yet received reports of such attacks but that as security they will do whatever it takes to address the matter.
Longole advised the community to always report such cases in time so that security can plan on their deployment and contain the situation.
In early April, Paul Losiru who has been receiving TB treatment, was killed by cattle rustlers who were passing by his home and heard him coughing at night and they said the sound was irritating them.
-URN
