Meaninglessness of ‘national’ border in transnational pastoralist societies of the Ilemi Triangle - by Dr Nene Mburu.

Introduction

This paper is informed by extensive field work and desk research culminating in several publications on the Ilemi Triangle. The research is also informed by discussions with many pastoralists and current and retired administrators of the region and would like to acknowledge discussions with the late Oliver Knowles1. (SL2) This presentation is about the Ilemi Triangle which is a triangular shaped piece of land measuring between 10,320 and 14,000 square kilometers that sits where the borders of , Sudan and coincide and is variously referred to as technically belonging to Sudan or Sudan claimed, Ethiopia claimed, Kenyan by default, Kenya administered, or Kenyan de facto. The goal is to position the Ilemi triangle in the wider debate of African borders by contextualizing the meaning of ‘national’ border2 in transnational societies who graze their livestock there. The paper starts by briefly teasing out the generalizability of some concepts common to the study of borders and African history, gives background history of the delimitation of the Kenya-Sudan-Ethiopia border over the Ilemi Triangle and explores some aspects of the delimitation of the contentious frontier to support the argument that ‘national’ borders are not necessarily central to the lives of borderland people.

Conceptual framework

The presentation would like to tease out three theories. First, in his discussion of the concept of a boundary, Brownlie says of a meeting of boundaries, in this case a tripoint, ‘involves a point and not a zone of joint sovereignty’.3 The observation, to my

1 In the early 1950s Lieutenant-colonel (RTD) Oliver Knowles was the District Commissioner and magistrate for the area under discussion. 2 The terms border and boundary are used interchangeably in this paper. 3 Ian, Brownlie. (1979). African boundaries; a legal and diplomatic encyclopaedia. London: C Hurst & Company. p.3. 12 understanding, is premised on a Eurocentric model of agreed or conclusively determined borders where transhumance and ethnic character of the boderlanders have not been central to the determination of territorial sovereignty and the tripoint is an unambiguous marking where the said borderlines coincide. What has not been considered is the case, such as we are highlighting here, where inconclusive borders of three states coincide thereby creating a zone, not a point, whose size and sovereignty are not ascertained.

Second, a lot of debate on the impact of borders tends to develop along two axes. Either that they are suffocating by virtue of including distinct pre-existing social-political units or have led to dismemberment of previous societies. But As Anene observes of the Cameroun border, the notion that colonial borders split united ethno-political groups of Africa is often exaggerated because some transhumant groups under consideration existed and still exist as fragmented or loose affiliations that do not constitute a coherent social-political unit describable as a tribe or nation.4 Despite the borders, communities under discussion have consolidated identity and loyalty with the main element of their ethno-linguistic group and in some sense, we could claim the borders have been a catalyst for oneness and gravitational pull towards each other. Also, taking the simple definition of a border as the line that divides two countries, the main issue here is not primarily that the lines defining where Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia coincide have led to suffocation or dismemberment of the societies living astride or in close proximity; access to dry season pastures and water is what really matters irrespective of what we perceive to be the nationality of the respective transhumant people.

Third, many scholars, such as Hertslet, 1896; McEwen, 1971; Brownlie, 1979; Asiwaju (1985); Davidson, 1992; to mention a few, have argued that the borders Africa inherited from colonialism are arbitrary although there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that arbitrary delimitation is peculiar to African states.5 If we

4 See Anene, JC. (1970). The International Boundaries of Nigeria 1885-1960. London: Longman. pp.290. 5 Brownlie, op cit.; Sir Edward, Hertslet. (1909). Map of Africa by Treaty, 3rd Edition Vol.I Nos. 95 to 259. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.; Alec, McEwen. (1971). International Boundaries of . Oxford: Clarendon Press.; A. I. Asiwaju (Ed.), (1985). Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations and Africa’s International Boundaries, 1884-1984. London: C. Hurst.; Davidson, Basil. (1992). The Black man’s burden: Africa and the curse of the nation-state. New York: Times Books. 12 take the lay definition of arbitrary to mean random or lacking any plan or order the argument is not generalizable as the borders under discussion present a mixture of meticulous use of precision instruments to determine reference points to the minutest details of degrees and minutes but also an element of ill defined delineation and incomplete demarcation. The question is whether the term arbitrary should continue to refer to the process of imprecise or incomplete delimitation, or the outcome whether deliberate or inadvertent.

We begin by observing that before 1926 Kenya was not limitrophe with Sudan. (SL 3) The situation changed after Uganda’s borders with Kenya and Sudan were adjusted which resulted in Uganda ceding to Kenya its Eastern Province, previously referred to as Rudolf Province, and the adjustment was published in the and Protectorate (Boundaries) Order in Council of 1926.6 The border was later re-defined and provisionally adjusted in 1931 on the basis of a commonsense administrative arrangement that would accommodate Turkana’s customary grazing grounds in Kenya and such delimitation would be observed without prejudice to the ultimate determination of the Kenya-Sudan boundary.7 (SL 4) In 1938, during ’s colonization of Ethiopia the Italians laid claim to the Ilemi Triangle and constructed military frontier posts east of the triangle ostensibly to reinforce the legitimacy of their Dassanetch and Inyang’atom traditional linkage to and shared ownership of the water and pasture of the disputed triangle. Later that year the combined Sudan-Kenya Wakefield Commission was mandated to survey the Kenya-Sudan frontier and its work was embodied in an international agreement that recognized the Red Line as an administrative boundary thus placing the Ilemi Triangle under Kenya’s cession d’administration.8

Henceforth, the Kenya-Sudan border was drawn with a dotted triangle at Kenya’s top left corner, or Sudan’s bottom right corner, with the words ‘administrative boundary’ or ‘provisional boundary’ clearly written in the middle of the triangle or along the dotted line.

6 Colonial Office, Public Records Office, Kew Gardens, London (henceforth CO) 822/1559 ‘From Governor of Uganda to Ian N. Macleod, Secretary of State for the colonies dated 18 December 1959 titled “Revision of the Kenya-Uganda inter-territorial boundary”. 7 See a detailed discussion in ; Nene, Mburu. (2007). The Ilemi Triangle: Unfixed Bandit frontier claimed by Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia. London: Vita House. 8 Cession d’administration means surrender of administrative responsibility which is not the same as surrender of sovereignty. 12 In 1950 Sudan dispatched its survey team to the Ilemi Triangle to determine grazing limits to ensure security for its ethnic communities from neighbouring pastoralists of Kenya and Ethiopia. The unilateral survey established what is known as the Sudanese Patrol Line which enlarged the area previously mutually agreed as falling under Kenyan administration. After this patrol line was established, Kenyan and Ethiopian trans-national pastoralists were excluded from pastures and water to the north and west of the grazing line. Henceforth the Sudanese government abandoned frontier policing and economic development of any area south and east of the 1950 Patrol Line which suggests territorial concession to either Kenya or Ethiopia.9 From 1979 the political map of Kenya changed and erased the dotted line to the triangle and also, crucially, the base of the triangle. Kenya’s unilateral adjustment of its border with Sudan suggests that the conditionality and provisionality of the previous border had been lifted. In theory, the unilateral adjustment is meant to accommodate the mysterious Turkana pastures that are north of the gazetted Uganda Line of 1914. But after 1926, the map of Sudan has not been adjusted to correspond to the Kenyan version of the common border. Ethiopia and Kenya have no direct territorial disputes as many were settled through several talks and treaty agreements that were made possible by personal cordial relations that existed between Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie, the prevailing superpower clientele competition of the period, and common perception of threat from Somalia’s irredentism, or self-determination depending on one’s political persuasion, which entailed claims to Somali inhabited enclaves of Kenya’s Northern Frontier District and Ethiopia’s Ogaden region.10 However any adjustment of the Kenya-Sudan border could affect the pending Sudan-Ethiopian territorial barter in which Sudan desires to annex parts of the Beyrou and Gambella salient so that it can embrace within its territory the Nuer and Anyuak societies including their clans which live in Ethiopia and in exchange cede to Ethiopia eastern Ilemi Triangle including the Boma plateau.

Transnational pastoralist societies of the Ilemi Triangle

9 Ibid. 10 The issue is analysed exhaustively in Nene, Mburu. (2005). Bandits on the Border: The Last Frontier in the Search for Somali Unity. New Jersey USA: Africa World & The Red Sea Press. 12 We briefly look at the transnational communities of the Ilemi Triangle and focus on the existing trans-national ties and social-economic reciprocity to place the discussion into its proper social context and later link this to the contradictions of the delimitation of the disputed borders. In this context the author’s awareness of various forms of social-economic squatting and assimilation is also informed by extensive field work on the Somali of Kenya’s North-eastern Province, previously known as the Northern Frontier District, where the phenomenon of Sheghat is quite intriguing.11

The Ilemi Triangle derives its name from the Anyuak (Anuak) society.12 The main trans-national pastoralists of the disputed triangle are the Dodoth, Inyang’atom, Toposa, Dassanetch and the Turkana. Each of these ethnic communities temporarily relocates into the triangle after breaking away from the main element of their society that lives in at least two countries. (Slide 5). In the nineteenth century the Inyang’atom migrated from northern Karamoja region of Uganda and settled in the lower Omo basin. They are organized into territorial sections which have no fixed boundaries and further broken down into patrilineal descent groups or clans which are not political units. This is a main feature of their social organization which they share with other Karimojong cluster of ethnicities such as the Toposa. Today they live in northern Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan and are known by several names, for example in Uganda they are called, Nyam-etom or eaters of elephant meat. The term has been modified to ‘yellow guns’ to mark their warrior’s association with the fashionable AK 47 Kalashnikov rifles. In Ethiopia their name is Bume and Hum amongst their Sudanese Toposa allies. The main element of the population lives astride the Sudan-Ethiopian border, and being agro-pastoralists their transhumance is across the Sudan-Ethiopian border and also the Kenya-Sudan border to reach the seasonal pastures of the south-eastern corner of the Ilemi Triangle. The Inyang’atom have maintained very cordial relations with the Toposa of Sudan and Kenya through inter-marriage and shared religio-political ceremonies. The most notable tradition that continues today is cross-border migration during hard times where they live with the Toposa for long periods after the

11 Ibid 12 The murder of the Anyuak Chief Ilemi in 1936 sowed seeds of incessant feuding and cycle of organized violence between the Anyuak and their Murle neighbours that continues to the present day. 12 long rains. Apart from cementing good neighbourliness the relocation allows their exhausted land to recover. Bearing in mind that the Toposa outnumber and outgun most of their pastoralist neighbours, and are spread over a large area of southern Sudan, such migrations by the Inyang’atom nowadays have the added motive of providing the guests a safe haven to escape the law or retribution from their enemies after a successful cattle raid.

The north-western pastures of the contested triangle are dominated by the Toposa who are also descendants of the Karimojong and share customs with their pastoral neighbours such as not circumcising their boys similar to the Turkana in the south, the Inyang’atom to the east, and Jiye and Murle to the north, and the Pari and Didinga to the west. The Toposa ethnic community lives in region of southern Sudan. To survive in their harsh environment the Toposa keep large herds to support their families and other social functions but the scarcity of pasture compels them to practice transhumance beyond the fringes of southeastern Equatoria into the disputed Ilemi Triangle. In the past, war in southern Sudan and marginalization by successive governments in Khartoum created deprivation in essential services for example education, veterinary services and water. However, numbering 750,000 souls, the Toposa are more populous and better armed than most of their immediate neighbours hence they frequently rustle for cattle out of necessity but also as a rite de passage for their young warriors. It is claimed that before the government of national unity crystallized, the Toposa had received more than 250,000 firearms from Khartoum excluding land mines.

The Turkana numbering approximately 350,00013, majority of who are Kenyans, are scattered over a wide rangeland traversing the Kenya-Sudan border and also the Uganda-Kenyan border where their livelihood combines several means of subsistence namely, nomadic pastoralism, gathering, raiding, and fishing. During the dry season they criss-cross the Sudan-Kenya border to graze their livestock in the Ilemi Triangle for protracted periods. In the fringes of the disputed triangle their immediate neighbours to the southwest are the Didinga. The latter’s traditional pastures are the better-drained hilly areas of northwestern Ilemi, but being hunters,

13 Population figures for trans-national nomadic pastoralists are rough estimates which should be treated with caution. 12 the scarcity of wild game lures them further to the east of the triangle. Turkana territorial sections, for example, the Kwatella of Sudan, Matheniko of Uganda, and the Ngibochero of Kenya have retained stronger ties among themselves than they have developed with their respective states, and transhumance into the respective neighbouring country has endured despite the borders. Notwithstanding, due to shortage of resources, greed and the proliferation of firearms has affected Turkana’s tradition of social reciprocity with their allies. For example, the Turkana and Dodoth have always had unwritten mutual arrangement whereby the Kenya Turkana migrated with their livestock for long periods into Dodoth territory in Uganda after they had a poor crop on the Kenyan side and low animal productivity due to exhausted land. In return, the Turkana would return the favour by giving their hosts an agreed quantity of livestock, usually cattle or donkeys. Of late, the Turkana have refused to honour the agreement, and heavily armed as they are, resisted all forms of persuasion. The result has been sporadic fracture of relationships and forging of cross-border temporary alliances that are based on each community’s perception of the prevailing threat.14 Traditionally, the Turkana raided their neighbours using hand-held weapons such as spears, bows and arrows and their dreadful wrist knives during hand to hand combat. (SL 6) Today the Turkana and Pokot regions are awash with AK 47 Kalashnikov rifles supplied by illicit arms dealers or bartered with livestock.

Unlike the aforementioned neighbours, the Dassanetch language, customs and physical features are different. For example, they circumcise their boys and girls but the custom is abhorred by the neighbouring Turkana, Inyang’atom and Toposa, who do not. The Dassanetch straddle the Kenya-Ethiopia border with approximately one third being Kenyans and the rest Ethiopian nationals. Being agro-pastoralists, they live and practise retreat cultivation along the River Omo basin up to northern where they grow some grain, but they also keep livestock. Their mode of existence makes it necessary to spread over a large part of the Omo riverine and also criss-cross the Sudan-Ethiopia border, the Sudan-Kenya border and also the Ethiopia-Kenya border to graze their livestock in eastern Ilemi Triangle. The

14 There is a detailed discussion of security implications in Nene, Mburu. “The proliferation of arms in Turkana and Karamoja districts: the Case for Appropriate Disarmament Strategies” The Journal of Peace, Security and Development 2 no.2 (2002). 12 Dassanetch are certainly not outgunned by their neighbours as they not only comfortably defend their turf but frequently carry out long range raids against the Turkana and the Inyang’atom.

Dassanetch community is divided into eight clans which are not independent political units but elements of one ethno-linguistic group. Numbering approximately 20,000 people, of whom one third live in Kenya and two thirds in Ethiopia, the Dassanetch are known as people of the delta in reference to their home in the confluence of the Omo River and Lake Turkana which is a wetland measuring approximately 250 kilometers across its widest point. They are traditionally agro-pastoralists and are renowned for having large stocks of cattle and camels and growing a lot of grain. However, due to recent poor harvests and protracted drought the community has struggled to maintain its traditional livelihood and a minority of the community has settled in the north-eastern part of Lake Turkana where they fish and hunt for crocodiles. The crocodile hunters are called Dies to despise them as poor and miserable because they do not have cattle. Their situation is viewed as temporary and they are expected to return to the ‘normal’ life of agro-pastoralism at a later date. Interestingly when the Dies want to marry, their kinsmen of Ethiopia or Kenya, who are pastoralists, will support them with the appropriate bride-wealth they need to exchange in order to marry. In hard times, they squat amongst other Dassanetch across the border where they live until they have sufficiently recovered economically. The Dassanetch have always traded with each other for beads, cattle, camels, and hand-made ornaments, and more recently, small arms and ammunition unconcerned by the border that separates Ethiopia and Kenya.

Historical contradictions of ‘national’ borders in trans-national societies

Many portions of the borders that mark the Ilemi Triangle are inconclusive and vague. An example is the portion of the Kenya-Sudan border from Makonnen Cherosh to the Kenya-Sudan-Uganda trijunctional point near Mt Zulia which up to now has never been demarcated.15

15 See Colonial Office Records Public Records Office Kew Gardens London (hereafter CO) CO 533/390/2 ‘Situation on the Sudan-Kenya-Uganda frontier, Draft Order in Council’ Secretariat Minutes NLND 1/1/4 II dated 20 June 1930. 12 Another example is when demarcating the Red Line colonial surveyors did not travel the entire length of the border to place their pillars on the ground yet they were able to describe a point on the peninsular of the Sanderson Gulf to which the borders of Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia should relate. Hence, variable interpretations of where the borders of the three countries coincide suggests that surveyors were nowhere near the water mass they were describing and may well have been deceived by a mirage. What we have to remember is that the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 which launched the partitioning of Africa did not require colonizing powers to demonstrate physical connexion with the territories they claimed to be within their sovereignty.

It comes as no surprise therefore that some of the treaties delineating the regions under discussion were fraught with contradictions that lend weight to the meaninglessness of their delimitation. Two examples of some clauses contained in the delimitation of the Sudan-Kenya border and the Ethiopia-Kenya border will shed light to the subject under discussion. We begin with Sudan’s border with British East Africa (Uganda and Kenya) which Britain delimited in 1902. At the time, Sudan was jointly administered by Egypt and Great Britain under the terms of the arrangement known as the Anglo-Egyptian condominium. The delimitation, which described Sudan’s southern border as roughly running along latitude 500 eastward to the northern end of Lake Turkana was known as the Uganda Line and published by the Uganda boundary Order-in-Council of 1902. The border was vague in many respects necessitating a readjustment by the boundary Order-in-Council of 21 April 1914 which added to Sudan the territory roughly from 400 37′ to latitude 500 to coincide with the previous 1902 Uganda Line. The adjustment was gazetted as the 1914 Uganda Line.16 Describing the Red Line, appendix A of the rectification implies that Sudan’s southern border should not prevent trans-national Turkana pastoralists from accessing their traditional pastures in Sudan in one clause that allows the border to run along: (SL 7)

‘A line beginning at a point on the shore of the Sanderson Gulf …thence following a straight line, or such a line as would leave to Uganda the

16 Uganda published the notification because its eastern province extended to Lake Turkana (previously Lake Rudolf) and neighboured Sudan. Also, consult CO 533/380/13 ‘Memorandum on the history of the boundary between Kenya and Uganda’. 12 customary grazing grounds of the Turkana tribe’17

Several contradictions emerge; a) by calling it a line, the perception is that the border is a rigid or fixed surveyor’s meridian but its observance on the ground would be as a flexible grazing frontier to accommodate characteristics of transhumance. Arguably the inclusion runs contrary to the spirit of a border as a determinant of who the other is and ipso facto defining the self and bequeathing membership in the political unit. We say this because when observing the fixed meridian, territorial component of national identity is distinct, but as a grazing limit, us and them are indistinct. b) Turkana’s perception of the length and breadth of their grazing grounds did not coincide with the geometrical boundary. Then as now, key characteristics of a grazing frontier include the ability to close in during the rainy season when there is plenty of pasture and water and extend further afield during the dry drought. The latter makes sense today because when the delimitation was made the region used to experience a brief period of drought once every ten years. However, in the last two decades, there is drought every four years and each is more severe and lasts longer than the previous one. c) Calling it a line did not corresponded to strategic considerations of security as the Turkana needed to deny their traditional enemies access to hilly terrain in the north from where they easily rolled down to raid Turkana livestock in the low grounds. It also meant that Kenyan troops would have to patrol and erect police posts to the north of this line to block Ethiopian and Sudanese pastoralists encroachment on Turkana’s ancestral pastures; d) Finally, ‘thence following a straight line or such a line as’ lacks the specificity required of a border and does not enlighten us on the course of action to be taken if its description on paper or observance on the ground at any time did not enclose within Uganda Turkana’s traditional pastures.

By being state-led, colonial treaties and borders imposed formalities to relationships that were previously informal, were fraught with inconsistencies, and in many cases

17 See CO 533/537/8 ‘Description of the Red Line’. Also, Kenya National Archive (KNA): DC/ISO/2/5/5, ‘The Kenya / Sudan boundary and the Elemi Triangle’ a report from the Provincial Commissioner Northern Frontier Province, in Isiolo District Reports. 12 lacked the ownership of the people whose lives they were meant to control. For example, whilst delineating their common border in 1907, Great Britain and Ethiopia were not precise whether the Kenya-Ethiopian border would be observed as an open or closed frontier and failed to precisely address the central issue of water and pasture in one treaty clause which states:

(SL 8)

“The tribes occupying either side of the line shall have a right to use grazing grounds on the other side as in the past, but during their migrations it is understood that they shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the territorial authority. Free access to the wells is equally accorded to the tribe occupying either side of the line”.18

On the one hand, the clause implies that we have a flexi-border in which nomadic pastoralism would continue as before and in a way that membership to a particular sovereignty is not particularly relevant. On the one hand, we have a rigid border by virtue of subjecting trans-national pastoralists to the jurisdiction of the territorial authority. To this day, it remains unclear how any government could monitor, let alone control, trans-national migrations across a porous border whose position on the ground remains unknown to the nomadic pastoralists and unclear even to local government officials.

Meaninglessness of national borders

It is persuasive to argue that as colonial borders were imports of the state and the concept of territorial delineation of sovereignty foreign to traditional African political thought, with the notable exception of some pre-colonial empires such as Abyssinia, for a ‘national’ border to be observable its description must make sense to the lives of the people it seeks to separate or lump together. The involvement of the local people will ensure there is a purpose for the delimitation and their security,

18 Command Papers Public Records Office Kew Gardens London (hereafter Cmd.) 4318 ‘Agreement between the United Kingdom and Ethiopia relative to the frontiers between British East Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia,’ treaty signed at Addis Ababa by the Emperor Menelik II and his Britannic Majesty’s charge d’affaires on 6 December 1907, published in Treaty Series no. 27 (1908). 12 social-political and economic interests will be safeguarded. That was often not the case in the region of study and some of the survey work was incompetent, inconclusive and the description in parts of the Ilemi Triangle so vague that today we cannot state with certainty the size of the disputed territory or where the frontiers of each of the respective countries commence or terminate. A few examples will illustrate this point.

(SL 9) Parts of the Red Line19use impermanent objects thus creating scope for variable interpretation at a later date. For example, border point (BP) 6 is described as ‘a prominent tree on the slope of the north-western spur of Kolukwakerith’; BP 16 is ‘A distinctive and blazed brown olive tree in the midst of the forest’.20 A key descriptor of the Kenya-Ethiopia-Sudan border meeting point in south-estern Ilemi Triangle is Namurupus village which has long moved and no one can accurately point the extent and breadth or general location of the village surveyors saw in 1907. The other problem with the borders in this area is their tendency to relate to shorelines of the available water mass. For example, the right side of the Ilemi Triangle is described as ‘a line running to the creek at the south end of Lake Stefanie, thence due west to Lake Rudolf, thence north-west across lake Rudolf to the point of the peninsular east of the Sanderson Gulf’. In addition to the description being vague, Lake Stefanie is known by different names and the Sanderson Gulf has long dried up. Other descriptions relate to Lake Turkana water’s edge. However due to ecological and human factors the shoreline of Lake Turkana has receded significantly which makes the location of this border imprecise.

We could further add that borders can be meaningless and the theory of dismemberment irrelevant in the context of some transnational societies, for, contrary to the purpose of separating the societies, some borders of Africa have resulted in ethnic solidarity and reinforcements. The argument is valid for any porous border whether we refer to one that is marked by conspicuous terrain feature or an invisible surveyor’s meridian. Examples from the eastern Africa region will illustrate this point.

19 Also known as the Wakefield Line after the Sudanese head of the combined Kenya-Sudan survey team. 20 For a detailed description see, Mburu op cit 2007. 12 The Ethiopia-Kenyan border from Namurupus in Lake Turkana eastward splits many societies making them trans-national. In particular, from the intersection of River Dauwa and River Genale eastwards to Mandera the Ethiopia-Kenya border runs along river Dauwa for more than one hundred kilometers which slices through several ethnic communities, clans, sub-clans, and sub-sub-clans, for example of the Borana, Ajuran, Garre, and many more whose main elements are in Ethiopia or Kenya. Proximate neighbors use and share the river, which is a flexi-border without any immigration post or official crossing point, grow crops along its fertile riverbanks especially after flooding and graze their animals in surrounding pastures without recourse to violent competition that could be directly attributed to the border. Due to its characteristic of seasonal flooding and change of course, River Dauwa can reasonably be described as artificial as a surveyor’s meridian, yet it has not been the source or catalyst of cross-border conflicts.

Another example is the 750 kilometer Kenya-Somalia border that runs from Border Point 1 in Mandera to Ras Chamboni slicing through various clans and sub-clans of the Somali society mainly. As argued elsewhere the Shifta war in Kenya’s north-eastern province was not just motivated by irredentism in the sense that Somalia sought to expand its borders to unify all five Somali speaking enclaves of the Horn of Africa, it was also a desire by the enclaves to break out of the post-colonial state, erase the artificial colonial borders and be united with their separated brethren of Somalia.21 The author’s frequent research in Kenya’s northeastern province suggests that the Kenyan Somali today is more aware of and passionate about what is happening in Somalia than in Kenya. Hence, contrary to the intention of dismembering societies, these national borders described above have resulted in ethnic reinforcement or gravitational pull to each other. Summary

The borders of Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia coincide at the Ilemi Triangle forming a territory, not a point, whose size is up to now not conclusively determined. Since the Wakefield Commission of 1938, there has been no treaty agreement to redefine the Kenya-Sudan border but it is fair take the view that there has been no overt disagreement or dissent with Kenya’s unilateral administration and absorption of the Ilemi Triangle in its

21 Mburu, 2005 12 sovereignty. In this respect, administrative acquisition of a territory without a treaty agreement does not necessarily amount to irredentist behavior. Second, giving too much attention to the impact of a ‘national’ border insofar as it suffocates or dismembers traditional societies may not be consistent with what the affected trans-national societies on the ground think, especially nomadic pastoralists. They continue to interact whether violently through raiding or competition for political space, as well as forging bond alliances and partnerships and establishing peaceful social-economic reciprocity, as did their fathers before them, oblivious of the surveyors’ meridians that are meant to isolate or embrace them. For the pastoralists of the Ilemi Triangle, the national border is not a determinant of identity. It is irrelevant. But their ability to access pastures and water wherever they can be found, and, in an area awash with guns, assurance of physical security, are the things that really matter and are central to their existence. Third, the vast body of information on the arbitrary character of the borders Africa inherited from colonialism need to be revisited as evidence does indicate that when it suited them, colonial authorities did carry out meticulous delimitation and demarcation tasks. The question scholars should ask is, given that the colonizers had the competence and resources to precisely delimit their sovereignty, how come so many borders, as the case in the Ilemi Triangle, were not conclusively defined? Finally we conclude that the disputed area has not featured prominently in any of the countries domestic or foreign policies despite sporadic armed resource conflicts that continue to claim lives and lead to destitution and degradation of the environment. Apart from alluvial gold, no strategic minerals have been discovered in the disputed triangle but the situation could change in future if the area is confirmed to contain oil reserves or similar strategic minerals hence it is important to urgently determine the territorial sovereignty of the Ilemi Triangle.

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