When the guns fell silent, over 600 were dead, thousands maimed and displaced from their homes.
Women, children bore the brunt of the whole mess that has bedevelled Mt Elgon region for the past two years.
Now the residents can sleep, go to their farms and carry on with their normal businesses as usual after a recent operation by the Kenyan army which saw the fall of the dreaded Sabaot Land Defence Force whose mention sends a shock wave down the spines of the residents who were lucky enough to have survived the wrath of the militiamen.
A combined operation of the Army and paramilitary police swooped on villages in Mt Elgon District at dawn as scared residents of all ages scampered for dear life.
In what is being billed as the biggest operation in the country since the Shifta wars of the 1960s, the no-nonsense officers attacked from the air and on the ground.
Whole villages and shopping centres had been turned into ghost areas.
At the same time, the Government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the troubled Kitale and Mt Elgon regions.
The military operation was launched from the southern end of Mt Elgon District, an area the Government said was the stronghold of the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), which has been accused of atrocities.
Most of the killings linked to the group took place in Kopsiro and Cheptais divisions, and in the upper parts of Saboti in neighbouring Trans Nzoia District.
The fighting, which has been going on for nearly two years, started when residents differed over the allocation of land in Chebyuk Settlement Scheme, with residents claiming they had been overlooked.
The Ndorobo claimed that the rival Soi clan had been given land hived off the forest, which was their home until they were evicted and moved to a reserve by the Government.
Western Provincial Commissioner, was upbeat that the operation would deal a deathblow to the militia group.
“We are going to wipe them out and ensure that peace returns to Mt Elgon after over two years of mayhem,” said the administrator.
Asked about the involvement of the military and the heavy hardware deployed, the Police boss said it was necessary because past operations had yielded nothing.
But local leaders criticised the operation.
A furious Mt Elgon Member of Parliament, protested at the manner in which the campaign was being conducted.
He demanded that attacks on the civilian population stop and an explanation why military helicopters were being used to “bomb the banks of Cheptais and Lwakhakha rivers”.
“They are targeting populated areas instead of rounding up the militia who operate from the forest,” said the lawmaker.
“The Government action is not the way to solve an insecurity problem. Instead, it is subjecting innocent people to unnecessary suffering,” he lamented.
For most of the residents in the Mt Elgon region, life has been extremely vulnerable, as their houses are burnt, food stocks destroyed and their livestock and livelihood threatened by the SLDF.
It will be important to know that a group like the SLDF did not come into existence on its own, but was financed and encouraged on by people of means and standing in the region and probably in the country.
Such people have the power and means to wage a counter propaganda strategy that will strive to paint the culprits as the victims.
Our neighbouring sister, Uganda, took so long to deal with the menace of the Lord’s Resistant Army (LRA) that the humanitarian crisis in Northern Uganda had to reach alarming levels for the government to come out strongly and even seek international help to stop the group’s murderous activities.
But at least the operation has restored peace and normalcy in the area which was a battle field for the last two years.