Territoriality, Conflict & Development :: Ethnic Frontiers of South-Eastern Sudan
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1 Territoriality, conflict & development in Sudan’s southeastern frontiers. I.Eulenberger 2011 Territoriality, Conflict & Development: Ethnic frontiers of Southeastern Sudan Paper for the ABORNE Conference “Sudan’s borders” 2010 by Immo Eulenberger Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Department I Integration and Conflict PO Box 11 03 51, 06017 Halle/Saale {{{ Draft paper, not for public use }}} Contents Foreword ............................................................................................................................................. 2 The Area .............................................................................................................................................. 4 Population ....................................................................................................................................... 5 The Toposa .................................................................................................................................. 7 The Nyangatom ........................................................................................................................... 9 Mobility, Territoriality and Conflict................................................................................................... 10 Territoriality and resources ............................................................................................... 10 Movement of spatial boundaries ...................................................................................... 12 Flows of resources, people and relations.......................................................................... 14 The Nàdapal border crisis of 2009 .................................................................................................... 16 Peace & conflict in the Mogila corridor 03‐08.2009: a Toposa account ........................... 25 Historical changes.............................................................................................................................. 26 Cattle rustling, boundaries, and nation states .............................................................................. 28 The 2nd Sudanese Civil War and the Toposa‐Nyangatom alliance............................................... 29 Development and the shift of boundaries .................................................................................... 33 Conc. draft map of ethnic spatiality in the SES border zone............................................................. 35 2 Territoriality, conflict & development in Sudan’s southeastern frontiers. I.Eulenberger 2011 Foreword Regarding the material for reflections on the problem of boundaries, the South‐eastern Sudan (hereafter: SES) is a very interesting area. This is so because it has unique difficulties with an international boundary that was not agreed upon by the key stakeholders for the last century1 and because this situation is deeply entangled with conflicts over boundaries of a very different kind, boundaries that belong to a type of social organisation that precedes the state by millennia2 and that leads up to today a parallel existence which partly rivals the modern formal order in its grip on the patterns of perception, reasoning and action of the populations organised in that manner. By reflecting the situation of South‐Eastern Sudan, some of the key questions concerning legal boundaries come up and urge attention. What are the criteria for establishing boundaries we should accept and prefer? What should boundaries be for? What should they bring about and what not? These questions do partly arise here because of the protracted inconclusiveness of the process. If we would ask people of different affiliation, including different scholars, the answer as to where the ‘real’ or ‘legitimate’ boundary is – or should be – would be remarkably disparate. Educated (South) Sudanese of knowledge on that matter will often insist that the line which cedes the maximum of territory to Sudan is the only valid and legitimate one; with Kenyans one is likely to make the inverse experience. And the pastoralists living in the area would give answers that again differ significantly. They often take the discourse on the ‘legal borders’ into account, according to their particular understanding and interests. Yet it is obvious that while they very self‐confidently create spatial realities by way of their daily actions and long‐term strategies, they use the discourses on state borders they pick up as mere instruments for their own purposes. They are far from obedient to alien pretensions claiming exclusive powers over their most vital affairs, claims made in spite of the fact that the ideas of those aliens are hardly sufficiently integrated with their own local and tribal3 world. In some of these aspects, SES resembles the case of Abyei4. We find a similar entanglement of a tribal and pastoralist sphere, a similar situation of protracted uncertainty about the “correct” and “legitimate” political categorisation* of the affected territories and similar weight of the divergence between the concepts the inhabitants of the area traditionally have of territoriality, focussing rather on flexible and not necessarily exclusive rights to passage and resource use as subject of temporary agreements and eternal re‐contestation and re‐negotiation, to those of the modern sphere that 1 Regarding the case of the Elemi Triangle see Barber 1968, 1965; Taha 1978, 1976, 1975, 1972-3; Collins 2006, 2005:367-374, 1983:85-112, 1962; Brownlie & Burns 1979:917-921*; McEwen 1971:129ff.; Blake 1997; Mburu 2009, 2007, 2003; as a fatal irony of history, it came into existence because the British (Kelly-Tufnell) expedition of 1913, sent out to establish the tribal (and by implication administrative) ‘border line’ was not apparently not well enough equipped to complete its mission and cover the distance between the northern end of Mogila, the northern tip of Lake Rudolf (Lake Turkana) and Sudan-Ethiopian border east of the Kauto Plateau; or because they set their preference to explore the Boma Plateaux as a ‘more interesting’ – and certainly more inviting – area. 2 This presupposes certain assumptions on the history of social organisations that cannot be discussed here.* 3 The use of the term tribe could as well be a case for serious discussions I cannot provide here. I am aware of its problems, yet I use it because of its usefulness (in the sense of a Wittgenstein ‘language game’, see idem, Philosophical investigations, § 19-26*) in our contexts as referring to a system of social organisation based on inherited ‘traditional’ principles of autonomous communal integration that differ significantly from ‘modern’ and ‘formal’ ones, among others. Although it is necessary to explain these principles in more detail, I assume sufficient compatibility of what I am trying to express with the common notions the term uses to evoke. Almost all English speaking actors in the research area (as well as Arabic speakers in Sudan with the corresponding term gabíla) use it, often just as a synonym for ‘ethnic group’, yet I my main intention here is to distinguish local societies which are organizing behaviour and crucial daily affairs along traditional tribal structures from other ethnic communities, like e.g. most of Kenya’s sedentary population, who ceased* doing so. 4 See Johnson 2009, 2008 3 Territoriality, conflict & development in Sudan’s southeastern frontiers. I.Eulenberger 2011 requires clear‐cut divisions absolute and markedly exclusive forms of belonging to be compatible with the assumed absolutism of the written word.5 This apparent incommensurability in principle is another reason to ask the mentioned questions where the two cases partly meet. Yet while Abyei has gained spectacular importance and prominence from its explosive role for the relations of the North and South Sudan, the most intricate part of the SES case, the question of the Elemi Triangle, remains under the carpet of the amicable relations between Kenya and the SPLA, relations not only based on a tried and trusted alliance, but massive mutual interests in economic and political cooperation. Further difference is to note, apart from the very different political and legal constellations, the weight of the rich oil reserves of Abyei and its symbolic importance for the leading factions of the conflicting parties – in contrast to the so far unsubstantiated guesswork about oil in the Triangle and the relative political marginality of the involved ethnic communities. And while the frontlines seem to be quite simple in Abyei, they are rather complicated for Elemi. All these factors sum up to vast differences of the character of the two cases and the way they are handled by the involved parties. Yet under the given limitations, this paper cannot but spell out to open a glance at the complexities of the situation of SES, especially regarding boundary issues between different types of political communities6, while leaving other aspects to more extend versions. Above: active rural Toposa youth on casual display, Kapoeta East County (Nabeyoìt), 2009 (All photos in this document are my own and with all rights reserved. Interviews are not specified, yet will be in later stages of my ongoing work. This paper is not to be considered a publication and is submitted to the members under condition of provisional confidentiality and respect of intellectual property rights. The author.) 5 See Scott 1998 6 I basically concur with Dyson-Hudson (1966) and