"The young ones, they don't respect elders." "If you don't have a weapon," added another, "your grave is open." "Guns are changing things," one young Pokot man told the Washington Post newspaper. The impact of modern military weapons on the Pokot and surrounding communities was brought tragically home in early 2001, when Pokot youth opened fire on a rival settlement, killing 47 people, burning down the village and transforming the almost-ceremonial tradition of cattle raiding into an occasion for human slaughter. ![]() But in less than a generation the pastoral Pokot people and their neighbours have gone from protecting their herds with spears to outfitting their young men with cheap, reliable and deadly automatic rifles from the war zones of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. ![]() The dry rolling plains of northern Kenya seem an unlikely place for an arms race.
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