‘I have opened the land for you’: pastoralist politics and election-related violence in Kenya’s arid north

ABSTRACT The shadow of election violence has hung over Kenyan politics since 2008, when post-election violence erupted across the country. These events paved the way for major national reforms, including the devolution of central government, designed to counteract tendencies of ethnic patronage and violence. Kenya’s subsequent election cycles have not seen the same explosion of nationwide violence, and therefore little has been written about election violence in Kenya in the post-devolution years. However, this article draws attention to the arid, pastoralist-dominated north, where there have in fact been significant episodes of violence that are election-related. Drawing on ethnographic research, it explores the case of Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia counties during the 2017 and 2022 election cycles, when mass movements of armed pastoralists and herds forced their way, often violently, into targeted areas of land, resulting in widespread clashes, killings and displacement. The article investigates the endogenous elites and machinations within nomadic Samburu communities involved in and affected by this violence, using a ‘public authority lens’. It argues that ongoing governance changes in this region have created opportunities for political elites to mobilise territorial violence for strategic, political ends in advance of elections, including through a previously undocumented practice of “vote shipping”.

recently in August 2022. Since these reforms, the country has not experienced the same catastrophic explosion of nationwide election violence again. 2 As such, the literature and analysis that has emerged on Kenya's politics has predominantly focused on devolutionrelated structural questions around land tenure, constitutional issues and county-level institutions, rather than analysing violence.
However, as this article seeks to demonstrate, in the post-devolution years Kenya has experienced significant episodes of armed violence in its arid, pastoralist-dominated north, which do, on close inspection, fit the description of election-related violence. In 2016-17 and again in 2021-22periods immediately preceding electionsthe area of northern Kenya where Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia counties meet was thrown into violent turmoil by large scale mass movements of heavily armed pastoralists and their livestock herds. Referred to in this article as 'land invasions', an etic term, these movements saw several different pastoralist communities force their way into territories and areas of land usually grazed, settled or cultivated by other communities. The invasions produced widespread armed clashes, injuries, death, sexual violence and the displacement of tens of thousands. 3 During the invasions, it was often whispered that local politicians had incited and mobilised them, promising that they had 'opened the land' for their communities.
Turning a more political lens towards violence and conflict in pastoralist zones is crucial. Across Africa, conflict among pastoralist communities is the primary driver of displacement and civilian deathsmore so than terrorism and civil war. 4 Regarding the Horn of Africa region specifically, we see a region which on the one hand is defined by intractable civil wars, political crises and so-called 'inter-communal conflict' 5 ; and on the other hand, arid and semi-arid landscapes account for more than 60% of the region's total surface area, home to tens of millions of pastoralists. 6 Kenya alone is estimated to have a pastoralist population of more than nine million. 7 Pastoralist violence in the region's arid zones has been given various labels, some more accurate than others. Certainly, pastoralism in northern Kenya and other areas is undergoing complex and multi-layered transformations, which can make it difficult to precisely identify the nature and drivers of conflict and violence. In ethnographic literature and the media it has commonly been labelled as 'cattle raiding' which paints it as timeless, traditional and ritualised, intrinsic to these societiesdisconnected from 'the centre' and swiftly forgotten. 8 Meanwhile in the 'environmental security' literature, pastoralist conflict is often described in broad strokes as 'resource-related conflict'. This perspective argues that this chronic, diffuse and seemingly localised form of violent conflict is predominantly driven by natural resource scarcity. 9 Bromwich, writing about predominantly-pastoralist Darfur, argues global discourse on the conflict there is often highly de-politicised, with an emphasis on the role of natural resources that lacks a nuanced depiction of the role of politics amid this context. 10 Certainly, global policy responses are increasingly framed as 'addressing the climate-conflict nexus', 11 in which pastoralist violence is depicted as largely inevitable, apolitical and devoid of endogenous agency.
In this article, I look at and beyond existing explanations for election violence in Kenya, investigating patterns at county level in the arid north. I employ the public authority lens advanced by Lund, which asks us to look not only into the formal sphere of politics but also at informal and 'twilight' institutions, through granular studies at ground level. 12 I apply this lens to unravel the political and electoral drivers of pastoralist conflicts in northern Kenya. I argue for the need to devote attention to local elites in pastoralist areas, as a means to understanding the strategic nature of and motivations for election relation violence in Kenya's peripheries in the post-devolution era. In particular, I highlight an under-researched phenomenon that I call 'vote shipping', in which political elites deliberately move voters between different constituencies, using targeted violence in the process, in order to influence election outcomes. This contribution is based in ethnographic data gathered across the cluster of northern Kenyan counties of Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia, during two key political moments: in a four-month period ahead of the 2017 elections, and a three-month period ahead of the 2022 elections, followed by two months in 2023.

Election violence and the impacts of devolution: reviewing the debates
The period after Kenya's 2007-08 explosion of post-election violence spawned a wave of literature unpacking the factors and features of its political economy that gave rise to these events. This literature predominantly focused on elite behaviours and institutional failures in the country's 'centre' of power -Nairobi and the Rift Valley -, and among its dominant ethnic groups. Mueller summarised that three factors underlay the 2007-08 clashes: a gradual decline in the state's monopoly of legitimate force and a consequently pervasive violence, not always within state control; deliberately weak institutions, mostly overridden by a highly personalised and centralised executive; and political parties that were not programmatic, but rather driven by ethnic clientelism, with had a winner-takesall conception of political power and its financial dividends. 13 The common thread throughout the literature covering the 2007-08 period is an emphasis on 'personality politics' emanating from Kenya's executive and other central political elites and their propensity for violence. 14 At the same time, Mueller also noted that ' … we know little about the ordinary perpetrators and the specific incentives that led [the general public] to use machetes against citizens from other ethnic groups. This clearly is an area in need of more investigation by practitioners and scholars.' 15 Drawing our attention to the role of land in these dynamics, a valuable contribution has been made by Klaus and Mitchel, who use Kenya's experience in the Rift Valley in 2007/8 to advance an argument that disputes or grievances over land become effective tools for mobilising violence when vying political elites are able to convince their constituents that elections signal an imminent threat to land rights, as well as an opportunity to strengthen their land rights -'In this scenario, violence becomes a defensive strategy to pre-empt eviction or an opportunistic strategy to seize land or ensure the victory of a preferred candidate.' 16 Klaus and Mitchel also observe an absence of research that specifies how and why land patronage provides such an effective source of violent mobilisation, including the precise means that vying political actors are able to incite conflict. 17 In any case, at the policy level it was broadly decided that the country's "top-heavy" constitution, which afforded disproportionate power to the president and encouraged a divisive form of politics was the problem, and therefore the implication appeared clear: Kenya's centripetal political system needed to be dismantled in order to prevent the violence from happening again. 18 To the surprise of many, Kenya's revised 2010 constitution did indeed include significant reforms to address these concerns, encouraging cautious optimism around Kenya's subsequent devolution process as being one of the most ambitious, comprehensive and meaningful in Africaan exception to the rule. 19 Importantly however, Cheeseman et al also point out that these constitutional reforms were in fact the product of a personal deal struck between President Kenyatta and his rival Raila Odingathe continuation of a long history of elite pacts in Kenyan politics. 20 As a result, they argue, Kenyan politics in the post-devolution era may remain more winner-takes-all and an elite-driven project than it may at first seem, with many of the same predilections enduring.
While the literature on Kenya's devolution process since 2013 illuminates the political dynamics, less is said directly about its impacts on election violence. Instead, much of the scholarship broadly concerns executive dynamics within the new county governments and between these and the national government. D'Arcy and Cornell observe: [T]he expectations of devolution expressed during the campaigns in our cases were that it would now be 'everyone's turn to eat' … ethnic groups saw devolution as their turn to 'eat' state resources … that were traditionally only available to those holding power at the centre. 21 Cheeseman et al., Waddilove and Gadjanova, each highlight the variable extent of meaningful devolution across the different counties nationwide, and the persistence of some forms of patronage politics and the significance of personal relations. 22 This body of literature has not yet shed much light on how in a post-devolution landscape, political elites interact with communities "on the ground" and their constituencies within the counties during election periods. Carrier and Kochore explored the strategies used by presidential candidates to secure votes in the peripheral northern counties of Isiolo, Mandera and Marsabit in the 2013 elections, having begun to recognise the importance of these voting blocs following devolution, deploying tactics such as strategic alliance formation, exclusionary politics and the anointing of candidates by 'councils of elders'. 23 Regarding the status of land during election periods since 2013, Fox uses the case of Laikipia county to demonstrate how minority communities within counties are at particular risk of losing out, as land and political competition within counties escalates in the wake of devolution. 24 D'Arcy and Nistotskaya similarly argue that the incomplete and somewhat convoluted process of devolving land-related decision-making to the county level, has produced a situation in which local grievances within counties have intensified, as devolution has empowered majority communities and stoked their attachment to their (ethnic) "homelands"a trend which is exacerbated in the run up to elections. 25 While not focusing on elections directly, Mosley and Watson, Elliot, and Mkutu, Muller-Konéand Owino, 26 have each highlighted the ways in which, in northern Kenya, even just the expectation of large commercial infrastructural developmentsnamely the LAPSSET Corridor development, 27 which skims the geography in which my research is focusedhas driven an uptick in anticipatory competition over land, by county politicians, other local elites and communities, even though the much of the promised development is yet to materialise. In particular, the speculatory increase in land value has encouraged an increased emphasis on, and instrumentalisation of, perceived ethnic differences, among the predominantly pastoralist communities, geared towards pre-emptively gaining private ownership of plots of land or disputing boundaries.
Greiner offers unique insights from a pastoralist context, writing about East Pokot, in Kenya's Baringo county, where the Pokot community is embroiled in extremely violent armed cattle raiding and rustling. Writing more than a decade ago, Greiner contends that the violence led by Pokot youth was 'related to highly politicized negotiations over land, boundaries, or votes.' 28 Greiner claims that the erosion of traditional governance structures has created a power vacuum, into which political leaders and other power brokers have stepped, using the opportunity to renegotiate boundaries and land access. These elites have replicated the trends of ethnic mobilisation seen at the national level, with the result that the struggle for land in East Pokot is increasingly ethnicised. 29 For these elites, Greiner argues that encouraging livestock raiding is useful in that it undermines the livelihoods of rival communities and drives them away, while at the same time permitting the acquisition of livestock for the Pokot. Meanwhile, the same elites are quick to blame the cattle raiding on young, undisciplined, illiterate herders, obfuscating any vertical connection to political forces. 30 The informal politics of violence: a public authority lens What is clear is that tensions over land have been at the heart of politics and conflict in Kenya both before and after devolution. Yet the connections between them, the role of local elites and electoral cycles since the creation of Kenya's 47 county governments, and their particular manifestations in the pastoralist arid north, remain under-examined. In particular, exploration of the internal, endogenous dynamics among political elites who have emerged in the post-devolution era and roles they play within their constituent communities is still needed. In this light, this article seeks to provide a distinctive contribution to the literature by applying the concept of public authority to these dynamics.
The term public authority denotes any kind of authority beyond the immediate family that commands a degree of consent 31from clan elders, to civil society organisations, to rebel militia, as well as the formal or semi-formal mechanisms of government. The public authority lens is distinctive in that it encompasses and investigates the full range of actors claiming to be allocated power. This lens moves us away from the imposed state or nonstate dichotomy and from the assumption that 'in the long run all states will converge towards a model of Western liberal democracy' 32in order to better understand the different forms that power and governance can take. In a key text on public authority in Africa of direct relevance to this research, Hagmann and Péclard observe that: [T]he territorial redefinition of regions and peripheries within the state allows for the instrumentalization of identity politics at the local level in attempts to claim authority and access to state resources … institutional rearrangements of state power contribute to blurring frontiers between state and non-state actors, between private and public domains. 33

Case study approach
The geographic scope of this article covers a cluster of northern-central Kenyan counties -Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia. Put very simply, the upper half of Kenya is semi-arid, remote and pastoralist-dominated, while the lower half is comparatively developed, green and agricultural; my research sits at the seam where these two zones meet. The pastoralist communities in this area include the Samburu, Borana, Pokot, Turkana, Rendille and Somalis. There are also communities of semi-pastoralist Laikipiak Maasai, and agricultural Meru and Kikuyu, plus some Kenyans of European descent and others, residing across a mosaic of diverse land tenure systems. The presence of multiple different communities, where land interests, tenure and usage are varied and under increasing pressure, and with a historical legacy of (often violent) territorial competition and mounting ecological stressors, are all trends we see across many settings in the Horn region. I therefore use this area of Kenya and the example of the nomadic pastoralist Samburu, with the expectation that it can serve as an illustrative case study for understanding election-related violence across Kenya's arid pastoralist zones, even offering abstractable lessons for the interpretations of pastoralist conflicts and political violence in the wider Horn of Africa.
The nomadic Samburu tribe spans a vast and fluid geographic territory in northern Kenya. The Samburu are a maa language speaking cattle-herders, for whom 'the economic and social value of having large numbers of cattle is unquestioningly accepted'. 34 They are believed to have coalesced into a distinct ethnic group around the mid-1800s and have proven 'dynamic, flexible, and innovative in their exploitation of scarce resources'. 35 In Spencer's ethnography from the 1960s, the Samburu are depicted as the classic example of a gerontocracy, with a stratified age-set system whereby almost every aspect of community life is governed and sanctioned by the male elders, and by a particular power dynamic between the male elders and the male youth, known as morans, who are charged with herding the community's cattle, and are considered the 'warriors' of the community. 36 Lesorogol suggests that a variety of contemporary changes relating to land privatisation and economic transition have exacerbated an erosion of their gerontocratic governance structures within the Samburu and other pastoralist groups. 37 Generally speaking, the literature has not yet deeply explored the roles of the Samburu and other pastoralist groups within Kenya's contemporary political dispensation, particularly post-devolution. Boye and Karhuus illustrate how changes in governance and land tenure regimes, particularly in Kenya's post-independence era and more recent history, have left the Samburu's access to grazing territory in flux and in intense competition with other pastoralist communities and other land interests. 38 Meanwhile Straight et al argue that the close association between physical territory, identity, chaos and conflict have long formed a core tenet of Samburu culture, encapsulated by the maa term ntoror. Notably, in recent years, ntoror has also come to encompass 'the chaotic situations that occur when political constituencies, elections, and lucrative conservation programs transform the nature and value of a landscape'. 39 Elsewhere, Straight suggests that conflict between the Samburu and other communities, namely the Pokot, has since 2005 become increasingly tied up in electoral politics, although this suggestion is not unpacked further. 40 This article is based on ethnographic data gathered across Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia counties, around two key political moments: in a four-month period ahead of the 2017 elections and a three-month period ahead of the 2022 elections, followed by a two-month period in 2023. Ethnographic conflict researchers hold that analysis of, and solutions to, armed conflict must be informed by an understanding of how conflict is experienced by those who live through it; and yet, as Krause argues, ethnography in conflict zones invites ethical dilemmas concerning the 'physical and emotional dangers associated with a particular field site and the researcher's impact on the environment but also the dynamics of access and navigation' as shaped by researcher's own positionality. 41 Mindful of these considerations, I used a "limited immersion" approach for data collection, whereby fieldwork was conducted intermittently, to ensure the safety of research participants, interlocutors and myself in this highly sensitive and sometimes volatile environment. The data includes interviews with community elders, morans and other youth, political actors and government officials, belonging to the Samburu community but also the other relevant communitiesespecially the Laikipiak Maasai, Turkana and Somalis. The analysis also relies on participant observation and media coverage. Due to the potential risks that such discussions could pose to respondents, all information was gathered on the condition of anonymity.
Because most of the political actors being discussed were incumbent or actively campaigning within the local political arenas during the field research, the dynamics were evolving constantly and interviewees were often reluctant to mention certain actors by name, referring to them only by their position or in vague terms. In this article, only one political actor, Mathew Lempurkel the former Member of Parliament (MP) for Laikipia North constituency, is explicitly named, because in the run up to the 2017 elections and thereafter, he attracted and often actively courted media attention, which allowed me to triangulate the rumours and accusations levelled against him by my respondents more easily. However, his actions were by no means exceptional among his peers and through candid interviews over several years, interviewees directed widespread accusations at multitude of senior elites in each county, strongly indicative of broader political tendencies in this region.

Public authority and election violence in northern Kenya
As noted in the introduction, in late 2016-17 and again in 2021-22, this part of Kenya hit headlines when mass movements, referred to here as land invasions, by thousands of armed pastoralists and hundreds of thousands of livestockmostly from the Samburu and Pokot tribes as well as some otherstook place across these counties. As the pastoralists forcibly entered smallholder land, ranch land and conservation areas, widespread clashes erupted between different communities, including killings, abuses, sexual violence and large-scale displacement. 42 While violence against Laikipia's ranchersmany being Kenyans of European origin received the most media attention, in fact the bulk of violence in this area on the 2016-17 period and more recently in 2021-22, was exacted against other pastoralist communities, semi-pastoralists and smallholders including the Laikipiak Maasai, Somali, Turkana and Kikuyu communities. 43 For example, having faced a sustained assault from armed Samburu invaders, entire villages in north-eastern Laikipia's group ranches were deserted in the first quarter of 2017, decamping south to towns such as Timau and Nanyuki 44an estimated 350 households, or around 3,000 people, were displaced from just one of several group ranches. 45 In the same period, Kikuyu, Turkana and other smallholders in western Laikipia were subject to shootings and livestock raiding. 46 Through late 2021 and early 2022, the same areas were overwhelmed again by an influx of thousands of cattle and herders, mostly from Samburu and Isiolo counties and widespread destruction of property ensued, with some shootings. 47 Some way north, in the areas where Samburu and Isiolo counties meet, shootings, armed robberies, banditry, carjackings and cattle raiding all escalated in advance of August 2022. 48 The 2016-17 and 2021-22 periods incidentally saw very little rainfall in Kenya and the wider Horn region. Certainly, the normal cyclical rainy seasons over this five-year period were considered to have 'failed' and the Climate Hazards Center pronounced the March-May 2022 rainy season as the driest on record for the region. 49 Drought became a very real and severe survival threat for pastoralists in this region. Accordingly, the land invasions and outbreaks of severe and frequent deadly armed clashes involving the different pastoralist communities, as well as an uptick in armed criminality in the towns and on the roads across northern Kenya, especially in the first half of 2022, led most observers to conclude that the violence was straightforwardly drought-driven, an inevitable sideeffect of a desperate search for grass and water. Many key political elites were vocal about the drought as a driver of conflict. 50 Certainly, the drought during this period does make it very difficult to distinguish between incidents of pastoralist violence driven by resource scarcity, and those driven by election-related interests. In many cases the two motivations are inextricably linked. A wider investigation of the precise intersection between drought-driven violence and politically-driven violence is warranted, but beyond the scope of this article, which will discern some of the aspects of simultaneous violence and vote shipping during these periods that appear to be directly tied.

Inside a land invasion
A first step to unravelling the political dimensions of the Samburu invasions, is to understand the complex internal authorities and relations that make the organisation of violence possible. According to members of the Samburu community interviewed during this research, land invasions are mobilised by a complex assemblage of different elites and actors belonging to the spiritual, customary and political spheres of the community. Sometimes these elites collaborate in a broadly organised, coordinated fashion, while at other times they will work in smaller localised political clusters, to mobilise the land invasions. Interviewees spoke of constellations of aspiring and incumbent county and national government-level political elites, senior members of the state security forces and police units, along with prominent elders, Samburu spiritual leaders, senior morans and other wealthy or influential actors, all being involved in the mobilisation of invasionswith varying degrees of complicity and collaboration. 51 Notably, these informal coalitions have little relation to the political lines of Kenya's party politics, as the actors working together are ostensibly affiliated to rival different parties, or frequently switching sidesbetween Jubilee and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in 2017 and United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and ODM in 2022.
The clearest exemplar of these dynamics can be seen in the former MP for Laikipia North constituency, in Laikipia county, Mathew Lempurkel. Lempurkel is a member of the Samburu tribe, originally from Ol Donyiro, the border area between Laikipia and Isiolo counties. He was elected as MP for the newly created Laikipia North constituency in March 2013. Though he was the official representative of Laikipia North, in fact he had styled himself as the representative of a Samburu ethnic constituency that transects the county border. His campaign T-shirt read 'Shield of Cattle' in maa. A Samburu interviewee in Laikipia relayed that in early 2017 Lempurkel went to a meeting in Wamba in Samburu county and said to communities whose cattle were starving there, 'Why aren't you coming to Laikipia, I have opened the mzungu 52 ranches for you'. 53 For political elites like Lempurkel and his associates, as with any military endeavour, certain elements for mobilising a land invasion and other violence are crucial: communications, weapons, and other forms of logistical support. Interviewees described the various ways through which political elites communicate with the morans and other actors involved in the invasions. In addition to in-person meetings in the bush or at night, incitement through the radio was commonly referenced, including an incident in 2016 when Lempurkel reportedly incited the Samburu over the maa-language radio station Serian FM, announcing that 'there is no private land in Laikipia North. Nobody will go short of grass while I am MP'. 54 Witnesses claimed that once an invasion was underway, the former MP would then claim credit for the work and attempt to reap election votes by saying to the morans, 'Before I was MP, you hadn't grazed on these ranches. Now you have, so it is all down to me'. 55 Mobile phones are also essential in the process of choreographing land invasions. Almost all Samburu morans today have in recent years obtained or have shared access to a mobile phone. Coordination through mobile phones and payments through Kenya's MPesa mobile money transfer system, explains how during an invasion herders arrive simultaneously and on foot from an expansive geographical area spanning several counties. 56 An interviewee in Isiolo from the Samburu community described the process: Most morans have phones, which has contributed a lot to the chaos and mobilising of invasions, but also they video invasions to use as propaganda … The vast numbers of cattle invading Laikipia in 2021 was because of people making calls to people elsewhere in other communities saying 'We have opened Loisaba [a conservancy in Laikipia North]'. Cattle and herders came from far places. 57 The growing prevalence of mobile phones is particularly valuable for political elites, who are often based far from the landscape in question, in Nairobi or other cities, allowing them to communicate directly and immediately with the morans and other community members, circumventing the traditional elders and vast distances. An elder in Isiolo county explained: [the morans] access social media through their phones and they charge their phones from solar chargers and power banks. Now they have their own private line of communication through their phones which does not involve the elders. 58 It was a poorly kept secret among my interviewees that political elites in the Samburu and other pastoralist groups in the area actively arm their communities. During my fieldwork in 2017, in Laikipia's conflict hotspots I heard invading herders firing rounds liberally and consistently for durations of several days or even weeks, seemingly confident that their supply would not be exhausted. 59 Bullet casings found across the area were stamped with KOFC, the mark of Kenya's national ordnance factoryhinting at the complicity of actors from Kenyan state security structures in the invasions. 60 In an interview in February 2017, Lempurkel admitted that influential people were buying weapons and arming the Samburu morans. 61 Following invasions in northern Laikipia in mid-2021, motorbikes ferrying boxes of bullets were apprehended travelling back and forth from the invaded areas, believed to have been supplied by an MCA from a ward in Isiolo county. 62 In a discussion in Samburu county I was told: The MCAs and Ward Representatives support morans with their cattle. They take them food and they take sick people to hospital … If it rains in Baringo and Merti … they want morans to be prepared for insecurity, so they might provide them with heavy weapons. 63 Political elites also provide other forms of material support to the invading morans. On several occasions in 2016-17 and 2021, vehicles were found near the scene of an invasion carrying food rations and other supplies such as miraa (the leafy stimulant drug also known as khat). 64 Interviewees even noted that politicians have sometimes sent ambulances to the sites violent clashes to round up injured morans or to pay for their medical treatment. 65 Where the politicians enter is that they bring food for morans also when there is a conflict, they send an ambulance. For example, there is drought here, so we sent cattle to Kom (on the border of Samburu and Isiolo counties) and politicians put food in a Landcruiser to win votes, and they also put bullets. All of the politicians get involved in this: MPs, MCAs and Ward Representatives. 66 My research indicates several motivations for these political elites to go to such effort and expense to mobilise these invasions. Most directly related to the elections themselves, there are two mutually-reinforcing incentives for an MP, MCA or other locally elected political elite to sponsor the invasions, which explains the timing of the invasions and links them directly to electoral competition. Firstly, it is a very effective way to win the favour of voters who reside within one's constituency or ward. Samburu respondents described to me how, for livestock-keeping communities in drought-stressed areas struggling to survive, any politician who is seen as helping them to find grass will be extremely popular. In this way, grassor at least, the promise of grassbecomes the most valuable patronage resource at a political elite's disposal. Perhaps more so than the provision of any other form of public service, the perception that a politician has "opened land" in order for a community's livestock to graze is the most significant thing they can do to win favour ahead of election day. A Samburu respondent in Isiolo county explained: … the morans go into the land and then the politicians take credit for opening it. For example in 2017, Lempurkel took credit for the opening of Laikipia. [The MCA in Ol Donyiro ward] also takes credit for the grazing that the morans find. He does this to maintain his seat after August 2022. The county governments have a budget for emergencies which these guys use, and their personal funds. 67 Elsewhere, another Samburu respondent commented that during the invasions: … morans report to their MCA is that they are moving and ask for food and water to protect then and provide sustenance. During these large movements, for the local politicians this is seen as a big win. That wins votes for them from the community. 68 Significantly, non-elite members pastoralist communities are not necessarily passive in these processes, with many recognising the tactics deployed by their elites and using the situation to their advantage. As one interviewee posited, 'If you want control of land, you will find an elite who provides vehicles money, weapons, bullets and food in order to gain control of the land.' 69 Indeed, with the expectation that aspiring politiciansespecially MCAswill support their community in this way ahead of elections, the morans use this as license to commit crimes and armed violence. Several interviewees in Samburu county described this two-way relationship: Before the elections there are shootings … When there is violence or criminality involving the morans, the politicians do don't do much, they usually ignore it. Politicians are reluctant to act because they don't want to be seen as harassing people. They fear it might damage their election prospects. 70 [The morans] know that there will be no punishment because if they got caught, they know that an aspiring MP or MCA or Women's Representative will intervene and protect them with a payout or using their influence in some way. Also, politicians have discouraged police from patrolling villages and trying to catch morans, because the politicians will be perceived as not protecting his community if the morans keep getting caught. 71 These tactics serve to win more votes from within the politician's local community in advance of elections, while also displacing and deterring voters who might vote for rival candidates, especially those from other communities. The second motivation for the invasions is that it allows many of the same aspiring politicians to concurrently deploy another set of tactics to 'import' votes from other wards, constituencies and even counties, as will be described below.

Pre-election "vote shipping"
My research has found indications of a strategy deployed by aspiring and incumbent political elites in advance of elections across all of these counties, which I call "vote shipping": the deliberate and strategic movement of voters from one political unit into another; this strategy could be seen as an alternative to gerrymandering, where the voters stay in place but the borders between constituencies are deliberately moved. I argue that this strategy is largely distinctive to pastoralist areas, because it relies on the inherent nomadism of the communities and the presence of livestock as a key feature of the process. 72 Kenya's elections are run by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). To vote in Kenya, citizens need to have a voter registration card, as well as a national ID card. In some cases, political elites will round up youths who do not have national ID cards and get their place of birth registered to a different location of their choosing, which requires the sign-off of the chief in the chosen location. Because Samburus and other pastoralists by definition traverse the wider landscape of northern Kenya, according to interviewees, community members and their elites can easily argue that the person's 'home' area is wherever is deemed strategically valuable at the time. 73 Meanwhile voter registration cards specify the person's home constituency, ward and voter registration station in which they will vote on election day. To change voting constituency, from one election to the next, the person must apply at the IEBC office at the constituency headquarters. Changing the registered ward and polling station on a voter card can be done locally by an IEBC officer at the voter registration station in the registration period in the months preceding the election. Each voter registration station then becomes a polling station on election day. While changing the constituency is more difficult than changing the ward or polling station, both are apparently relatively easy because according to local respondents, many IEBC officers are easily bought off by local political elites wishing to manipulate elections because they are just poorly paid short-term contractors. 74 During the voter registration period, political elites either pay members of their community to travel to their targeted voter registration stations, or they transport the IEBC officers from the stations to different wards to register new voters. A former political aspirant in Samburu county explained: 'The aspirants for political positions hire the IEBC officers and bring them to their homes.' 75 Then, as was seen on election days in August 2017 and August 2022, the newly transferred voters arrive at or are transported to their new polling station to vote.

2017: Laikipia North
The most prominent case of vote shipping was seen in 2017, when the aforementioned former-MP for Laikipia North, Mathew Lempurkel, utilised land invasions as part of a two-pronged effort to import votes from other counties and constituencies into his constituency in advance of election day, while simultaneously encouraging the forcible displacement of rival voting populations from those areas (and those polling stations) in Laikipia North. Laikipia county as a whole is ethnically cosmopolitan, and the Samburu community as a voting bloc would struggle to secure a seat for governor or any other county-level positions. However, at the smaller constituency and ward level, the "ethnic arithmetic" stands more in the minority group's favour. After winning the 2013 election, the former MP apparently recognised that the ethnic balance in Laikipia North was still not sufficiently in his favour to guarantee re-election in 2017. 76 Importantly, not all Laikipia's electorate votes simply according to their ethnicity -Turkana, Laikipiak Maasai and some Kikuyu in particular have shown themselves to be swing voters, 77 choosing their leaders based on other calculations, or against ethnic lines. Nonetheless, instead of attempting to win the popular vote from non-Samburu voters, in advance of 2017 Lempurkel launched a vote shipping strategy. He aimed to bolster his existing voting bloc by bringing in more Samburuand Pokot, as he was at the time allied with the Pokot leadershipinto Laikipia North from other Laikipia constituencies and Samburu, Isiolo and Baringo counties. 78 His allies who aspired to other local positions, such as MCAs, would also benefit from the same process. At the same time, they collaborated to displace potential rival voters from those same areas ahead of polling day. through violent land invasions. 79 Eyewitness reports from multiple sources in 2017 described how the former MP and his allies told Samburu communities from the across the northern counties at several community meetings that as long as they moved into Laikipia North and registered to vote in that constituency, he would ensure their continued access to its grazing landwhich comprises a mixture of private ranches, group ranches, conservancies and small-holder land. Furthermore, Lempurkel and his allies instructed youths from across the counties who did not have a national ID card, to obtain an ID card stating that they were born in Laikipia North, to obscure their origins. 80 In one village in Laikipia North, on the final day of voter registration in February 2017, I personally witnessed scores of people being ferried on motorbikes and in cars down the road from Samburu county to the voter registration station there to (re-)register, with some privately admitting that they had been paid via MPesa to do so. 81 A well-informed interviewee in Laikipia described another example of this from the same period: Eight hundred voters came around 6 February from Rumuruti (in Laikipia West) to register at Mathenge Farm polling station (in Laikipia North). Politicians are paying people around 1000KES (roughly $10 at the time) each and helping to transport them -Lempurkel is the main one doing this. 82 Indeed, data from the IEBC showing the number of registered voters in each polling station in Laikipia North (of which there are 100) in 2013 and 2017 respectively, was consistent with this strategy. For example, in one village in Laikipia North which had been the launching base for major invasions on several of the private ranches by Samburu and Pokot through 2016/17, the number of registered voters increased from 142 in 2013 to 607 in 2017. Constituency-wide, there was a massive increase in registered voters from 27,903 in 2013 to 46,942 in 2017. 83 Population growth alone cannot account for the dramatic increase in Laikipia North's registered voters in that period.
One might assume that political elites in Samburu county would be resistant to moves to transfer voters from their own constituencies to Laikipia North, because that could damage their own election chances. However, according to one local community respondent, in January 2017 several senior Samburu county political elites including MPs and MCAs held a meeting in which they agreed that their county could afford to send a proportion of its electorate to Laikipia North, because within their county, Samburu communities would still constitute the major majority and so it would only make a limited dent on their electorate; meanwhile in Laikipia North, that influx could bring about a crucial demographic rebalance in favour of their community and in doing so, extend the wider "Samburu territory".

2022: Samburu East
In 2022, similar calculations were made by Samburu political elites regarding Samburu East constituency, in Samburu county. Along a stretch of landscape between the Mathews mountain range, down towards the Ewaso River and Samburu Reserve, a transfer of voters between wards and constituencies was accompanied by a spike in armed violence in varying forms in the run up to the August 2022 elections. Though the dynamics of violence and vote-shipping differed slightly to those witnessed in 2017, they appear to have followed a similar blueprint for bolstering the vote for some Samburu political aspirants vying for MCA and MP positions, while simultaneously driving away non-Samburu voters. This area, close to the Ewaso river where the Samburu and Isiolo county borders meet, is very cosmopolitan, hosting a mixture of different pastoralist communities including the Samburu, Turkana, Somali, Borana, Rendille and Meru. Rather than a concerted effort to vote ship in favour on one political candidate, as was seen for the Laikipia North MP seat in 2017, in 2022 it appears that more aspiring political actors in this area, particularly MCAs, were deploying these strategies in a more diffuse and less coordinated manner. Indeed, one Samburu interviewee posed that the practice was becoming more widespread with every election cycle: This tactic of transferring votes is becoming more popular. More people are doing it. Back in 2017 just a few guys were doing it. What it means is that now you don't need to get support or loyalty from your local voter base because you can just import those votes from elsewhere. 84 In this area, one interviewee intimated that the newly-elected MCA in his ward is originally from a different ward in Samburu county, some 50 km to the east. In February 2022 the aspiring MCA drove an IEBC Officer around the villages his original home area, collecting the people's voter registration cards, and then (re-)registering them in the new ward he was running in. Then in August 2022, he hired busses and transported people from his home area to the to vote in the ward. 85 In these cases, the vote shipping process itself was largely non-violent and did not conform as closely to the "land invasions" pattern seen elsewhere. Instead, in this area and others on the Sambury-Isiolo boundary, experienced an uptick of other forms of armed violence: armed robberies and sporadic shootings in the town, car-jackings and roadside banditry, as well as livestock raiding on an almost daily basis. Local residents reported that the morans perpetrating this violence had imposed a de facto curfew in this area, forcing small towns to shut down by 7:00 pm every night for several months. As a result, a large proportion of the non-Samburu communities living and grazing their livestock in the settlements and along the arterial road running through northern Kenya moved away to other areas, leaving their bomas and manyattas deserted. As noted above, the police apparently did little to respond to or curtail this violence during the first half of 2022, reportedly paid off or suppressed by aspiring politicians, deliberately giving license to the morans to commit violent crimes. One interviewee commented that 'Since the August elections, we haven't heard guns around [here]. 86 Fundamentally, I argue that the goal here for the pastoralist political elites who drive these efforts is to simultaneously gain more political territory and more grazing territory, for their community and ultimately, for their personal gain. The twin desires for grass and political office are mutually reinforcing: the circular logic goes that, if an aspiring political elite encourages his community to force their way into a new ward or constituency in advance of election, ostensibly seeking grazing, they can then register to vote there, in order to install members of their own elite in the local political leadership. In theory, if successful, once installed those elites will be able to use the income, access to rents and influence in county or national-level decision-making, to initiate a new cycle of mobilisation and appropriation of resources in advance of the next election. MPs in Kenya are the second highest paid in the world, and even lower-ranking MCAs and Ward Representatives receive very generous salaries and allowances, 87 especially when compared to average household incomes in these economically marginalised areas, rendering them strongly motivated and very well positioned to drive such efforts.
It is worth noting that this form of violent politics does not always succeed. Many Samburu and non-Samburu community members reject the violence being forced onto them and form political coalitions to vote against ethnic lines. As a result, a number of politicians deploying these strategies have failed to secure election or re-election. Indeed, for the former-MP of Laikipia North, his seat was lost in August 2017 to a Samburu woman, Sarah Korere who won the popular vote from diverse communities cutting across ethnic lines. In early 2022 the same MP expressed interest again in running for the Laikipia North seat, but due to several pending criminal investigations against him, he was barred from running, and in August, Korere was voted in for her second term.

Conclusion: reframing election violence in northern Kenya and beyond
As noted earlier in this article, drought has been a very real and severe threat to survival for the communities described in this research. My analysis does not seek to discount the impact that this has had, but to discern the directly political and often self-interested behaviour and methods deployed by many political elites in these communitiesin many cases making the circumstances of their communities much worseamid the wider disruption of community life and survival needs of pastoralists. As one Samburu interviewee surmised: 'There is never peace during elections, whether there is rain or whether there is drought.' 88 This research illustrates the immense degree of endogenous agency within pastoralist communities, which is often neglected or minimised in the discourse surrounding them. My research extends the analysis of elite personality politics entrenched in Kenya's centre of power, to its remote peripheries, and fleshes out previous findings by Greiner in northwest Kenya and Korf, Hagmann and Emmenegger in south-east Ethiopia, who describe the internal machinations and 'complicity' among local pastoralist elites in shaping the fate of their communities, for better or for worse.
The coalitions of national government actors -MPs and some members of central ministries and departments, whose positions have existed since Kenya's independence and have a long history of participating in past election violencewith county government actors, confirms that the tendency for this kind of violent territorial politics is not a 'new' problem created by Kenya's devolution in 2013. In fact, there is marked continuity of trends of violence seen since Kenya switched to multiparty democracy in 1990s. 89 However, as the existing literature indicates, the increased political competition and availability of public funds and rents to Kenya's pastoralist peripheries has served as a powerful incentive for a new cadre of elites to participate in this kind of politics, especially in advance of elections. It does indeed seem that it is now 'everyone's turn to eat'. 90 In this context, relationships are formed on the basis of whether one has access to office and the patronage resources that this permits, while also sharing a particular vision for the landscape and territory that prioritises absolute mobility in the immediate term, and an expansion of territory for grazing and political control in the medium-long term. On the other hand, the near-absence of party politics and a lack of interest in who wins the presidential race at this local level, indicates a distinct set of dynamics from those seen in the country's political centre.
Existing literature on politics in this landscape and similar landscapes has tended to focus on the competition and conflict relating to a desire to gain access to plots of land, or disputes over boundary demarcation. Notably, the tactics of vote shipping and election manipulation through (violent) land invasions observed here has not been documented elsewhere in the literature on Kenya or other pastoralist contexts. However, these patterns of invasions are certainly not unique to this location, having been observed further north between the Gabra and Borana in Marsabit county, 91 and in the northwest among the Pokot in Baringo county, suggesting that this phenomenon demands further investigation elsewhere. The dynamics we have seen in this case demonstrate some subtle but noteworthy distinctions that are salient analytically and for policy considerations relating to political decentralisation, election design and monitoring, conflict mitigation and support to pastoralist communities and landscapes.
Perhaps most importantly, this research draws attention to the long-term, anticipatory trajectory of the land invasions and other forms of violence, which unfold over several months or even years in advance of elections, but which nonetheless are accompanied by all the hallmarks of Kenya's better-documented cases of election violencedestruction of property, killings, abuses, sexual violence and large scale displacement, coloured by ethnic division. This should encourage us to urgently reframe our conception of what election-related violence can look like. In this case, violence is anticipatory and preemptive. This tendency is not unique to this case -Klaus and Mitchell found of Kenya's 2007-08 violence in the Rift Valley that the pre-emptive deployment of narratives around land injustice by political elites was a key factor in the subsequent explosive violence. 92 However research and media attention continues to let these episodes of violence slip through the cracks and therefore tor those of us who document, analyse and seek to mitigate election-violence, this re-framing is crucial.