Of War-Leaders and Fire-Makers: a Rejoinder

If there is to be a "great Karamoja debate", then it is necessary to keep in focus the leading issues, with the constraints of historiographical and methodological concerns. Since 1990 publications on the Karamojong¹ have in general taken the line expressed in Mirzeler and Young's abstract: "The transformation of local modes of conflict by large-scale infusion of the AK-47 has had far-reaching effects …".² Against this trend I cite the French critic, Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". My perversity is sustained by studying the Karamojong over 23? years, living there 1984-86, and returning for fieldwork across Karamoja in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2005. Taking copies of my monograph³ to deposit for Karamojong literati to read, the dominant impression was that mobile telephones notwithstanding, this was the same Karamoja. I will not have the last word, but history will.

The issue in Mirzeler's paper above is that "Pastoral Politics" has been misrepresented. Of course any part of an article cannot fully represent the whole, but my book cites Mirzeler no less than 49 times, often giving multiple page references. There is therefore no attempt at disguise or misappropriation: readers are invited and enabled to see for themselves. Where I have fallen down is in five sentences in one chapter, which Allen enjoys for its rare antipathy,⁴ where I have inverted commas in manifestly the wrong places. Sadly this is merely where my incompetence got the better of my conscientiousness. These five sentences were my précis, which I knew contained phrases it would have been appropriate to quote, so I marked them with inverted commas with the full intention of checking with the original article. Since I did not have it in my study, my intention was never executed, so now Mirzeler has his reward and I a lifetime's chagrin.

It would be much worse if they formed a poor précis, but this case has not been made. His conclusion settles on the missing jots of punctuation,⁵ which he does not establish for the book as a whole, rather than slight differences in representation. He claims that the worst intervention is in quoting Amuk, Lamphear's informant. I have dropped the top and the tail of a quotation enclosing a story which would otherwise amount to 109 words. Again this does not change the sense a tittle, for "the west" does not refer to the Western World. Among the 73 occasions on which I have used the term, he will see that I consistently use a capital letter when referring to the occidental "West", but much more often refer to the geographical "west". I am not referring to sorghum seed from the West where it is not grown, but from Serere in neighbouring Teso district to the south. As to the time difference, Seredo sorghum was being developed at just the same time that Lamphear was recording Amuk's story.

There is hardly space here⁶ to give even three main points to their argument:

1. Before 1979 (a date which is given three times) Karamoja was pastoral and traditional, but that year ushered in a "new era", "new epoch", "the new dynamics", which is "the AK-47 era", "The age of the AK-47". The intensified human cost of automatic weaponry would threaten Karamojong survival by 2009, unless the violence were halted.⁷

2. The gun has facilitated the young, led by warlords, to triumph over the elders.

The large-scale infusion of AK-47s after 1979 introduced a new dynamic, again favouring the emergence of warlords and the decline of the elders. The guns, and the power that came out of their barrels, were in the hands of younger men, grouped and led by warlords.⁸

3. National identity has taken precedence over ethnic identities, so that the Karamojong have become part of Uganda politically, militarily, and ethnically.

In the words of Nakapor, they dismiss the spiritual consequences caused during national defence. Nakapor says that today, the overarching political context of the...