Kenya moves on nomadic Pokot in disarmanent drive

KANYARKWAT, Kenya, May 8 (Reuters) Kenyan soldiers have moved into the bush to disarm the nomadic Pokot, famed as cattle raiders, and many in the tribe say the operation is another case of the government abusing and marginalising them.

The operation has been gathering steam in the past weeks, with paramilitary police from the feared General Service Unit and troops setting up camps in West Pokot District, a vast, semi-arid area in Kenya's northern Great Rift Valley.

Bloody livestock raids are common across Kenya's rugged northern regions, fuelled by poverty, easy access to automatic weapons and cycles of tribal revenge in areas that have been ignored and left largely undeveloped since colonial times.

One raid last year led to 80 deaths near Marsabit, and the issue was put back on the national agenda last month after a plane crash killed 14 people, including politicians on a mission to broker peace there.

A Kenyan army unit is camped just above the dusty and dry village of Kanyarkwat, about 400 km northwest of the capital Nairobi.

Soldiers mounted a morning raid last week, villagers said.

''We scattered and ran away. They broke into the houses and took our money, anything precious,'' Longorianyang Lorita told Reuters. ''They even beat those children who never ran away with their mothers and told the children to find them guns.'' Reverend Simon Alew, an elder and peace activist from Kapenguria, the district seat, said: ''We are citizens of Kenya and we deserve government attention. Instead of taking us positively, they are turning against us because they are seeing Pokots asking for their rights.

''That is why you see helicopters, heavy military equipment as if we are another country fighting another country.'' The government has denied any wrongdoing but has said it will not tolerate anyone refusing to hand over their guns.

''In all these communities, the gun must be removed,'' West Pokot District Commissioner Stephen Ikua told Reuters.

Ikua, the top government official in the region, said he was working with Pokot elders over the problems.

The Pokot were moved off of their best grazing land in the early 1900s by the colonial government and have irritated successive administrations with habitual cattle raiding and an insistence on getting their land back.

Pokots say they are reluctant to surrender their arms until the government can provide protection from rival tribes.

Pokots have faced an estimated 50 military operations since before independence, and many say they spend the night in the bush for fear of soldiers or flee at the sound of helicopters.

Ikua said cattle rustling in West Pokot was down -- with no major incidents in the past eight months.

But Pokot raiders in neighbouring districts killed at least five people last month, reinforcing a negative image that has long dogged the tribe of about 350,000, Ikua said.

REUTERS OM RK0925