Living along the Meru–Isiolo road means learning to coexist with insecurity as if it were weather, unpredictable, recurring, and largely ignored until it turns violent. Cattle rustling here is not an isolated crime; it is a system. It is organized, anticipated, and quietly normalized by the absence of consistent state presence.
I saw this clearly in October.
Cattle rustling is not new to this area. Everyone knows when tensions are rising. Everyone knows which routes are used, which nights are dangerous, and when retaliation is likely. What struck me most was not the violence itself, but how prepared the community is and how absent the government remains until something breaks.
There are long stretches of time when security is invisible. No patrols. No preventive engagement. No early intervention. The road remains open, life continues cautiously, and people adapt. Herds move differently. Travel is timed. Information circulates informally because formal systems do not exist or are not trusted.
Then, when an incident finally happens when cattle are stolen, when lives are lost, when fear spills onto the road the government arrives loudly. Security. vehicles. Statements. Temporary operations. A visible performance of authority that contrasts sharply with the long months of silence that preceded it.
This pattern is not accidental. It reflects how peripheral communities are governed: ignored when stable, intervened upon when destabilized. Prevention is expensive. Presence is inconvenient. Reaction is politically useful.
What makes cattle rustling persist here is not just poverty or tradition, but neglect layered with predictability. Young men know there are few alternatives. Communities know justice is slow or selective. And the state knows that as long as violence remains localized, it does not demand sustained attention.
For those of us living here, this creates a distorted reality. Safety is temporary. Calm is fragile. And trust in institutions erodes quietly. People stop reporting early signs because nothing happens. They stop expecting protection and instead rely on local networks, negotiations, and, at times, retaliation.
This is where the problem deepens.
When the government finally intervenes, it often treats the situation as sudden chaos rather than accumulated failure. Communities are questioned aggressively. Movement is restricted. Tension increases. Yet once the immediate crisis fades, so does the attention. No long-term strategy. No livelihood alternatives. No consistent security presence.
Cattle rustling then resumes not because people want it to, but because nothing structurally changes.
Working here has forced me to understand that insecurity is not always about active conflict. Sometimes it is about abandonment. About living in spaces that only matter when they disrupt national order, not when they quietly endure risk.
Until we stop treating communities like this as emergency zones instead of governance responsibilities, cattle rustling will remain less a crime to be solved and more a symptom to be managed.
And the people who live here will continue to pay the cost of a silence that looks a lot like policy.
