Narrating and practising the state border between Uganda and Southern Sudan Julian Hollstegge ([email protected]) Royal Holloway, University of London (MA Cultural Geography) Introduction This paper focuses on the reconfigurations and dynamics around the state border between Uganda and today's independent Southern Sudan in the pre‐referendum period. The border separates two regions which for much of their colonial and postcolonial history have been politically and economically marginalised within their respective national contexts and have for several decades experienced a considerable amount of conflict and civil war. Within the alleviation of conflict‐related tensions instituted by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan and a new dynamism in cross‐border relations, it takes a look at the state border as both institution and social construct, based on empirical research at a border crossing between Uganda's West Nile and Southern Sudan's Equatoria region1. By looking at border people's everyday practices and narratives and border management performances it seeks to lay bare multiple meanings and the symbolic functions of the border. In doing so, I will first sketch the conceptual and methodological approach, before briefly outlining the historical context of the border. In the main part of this paper, I will present empirical material by linking dominant views and attitudes towards the border ‐ and the other side of it ‐ to the practises of the border management and border people. Border studies and research on African borderlands: Studying border‐related narratives and practices Related to major questions posed in the panel abstract, in here I want to adopt a perspective on the border which focuses on the manyfold ways in which people (and the state, too) attribute meaning, make sense and use of the border. African borders have for long adhered a "consistently poor reputation" , regarded by many border scholars as either severe obstacles to the African continent or as quasi non‐existent in practice (Nugent 1996: 35). Recent work however goes well beyond the clichée of the artificiality of Africa's colonial and postcolonial boundaries, suggesting that there is actually some common ground to suggest that "African border are often now an accepted, even actively reproduced ground of social and economic life for borderlanders" as they use them, exploit them and interpret them in many various ways (Coplan 2010: 2; see also 1 Fieldwork was conducted between December 2009 and February 2010 as part of a Bachelors thesis in Geography at the University of Bayreuth. Ramutsindela 1999; Miles 2005). Particular attention is paid to borderlands as specific functional and social spaces, which are 'typically distant' from the center (Engel&Nugent 2010; Coplan 2010). As regions of strong economic (both formal and informal), ethnic and cultural cross border linkages a major theme in this context are the various opportunities these frontiers offer for people in the borderlands (Nugent and Asiwaju 1996; Egg&Herrera 1998; Pederby 2000; Konings 2005; Feiyissa&Hoehne 2008). In line with the growing amount of work on borders ‐ rather than borderlands ‐ in Africa (Brambilla 2007; Raeymaekers 2009; Doevenspeck 2011; Doevenspeck&Mwanabiningo forthcoming), I intend to study the Sudan/Uganda border as both institution and social construct. In doing so, I will draw on recent conceptual developments of border studies in Political Geography which, informed by notions of borders as discourse and practice (Paasi 1996;1999), foreground the dynamic and processual nature of borders. Rather than fixed and static political dividing lines demarcating sovereign state territories, the border is here understood "a site at and through which socio‐spatial differences are communicated" (Van Houtum 2005: 672). In here, I will therefore focus on the 'small discourses' of border people, their practices and the performative aspects of the border management operating at a 'micro‐level'. In this conception, the border is understood as part of the daily life of borderlanders, where its impact and effects ‐ be they material or symbolic ‐ might be most obviously visible. Following Newman in his suggestion that "[if] we really want to know what borders mean to people, we need to listen to their personal and group narratives, collecting border narratives and pooling together similar views and dominant attitudes towards the border might help revealing its different barrier and interaction functions and lay bare the lines of inclusion and exclusion that they inherit (Newman 2006: 154) In detail, I will look at how those people who live at, work at, deal with, and cross or don't cross the border 'story' their way of seeing and experiencing the border ‐ and the other side of it. In doing so empirically, I conducted 46 interviews with different kinds of individuals from both sides of the border2, ranging from small‐scale and mobile traders, businesspeople, local border residents from different generations, lorry drivers, clearing agents, shop owners, moneychangers and local commuters to border officials. Most of the interviews and less formal conversations were conducted at or in close proximity to the border, sometimes even while crossing it. Spending a considerable amount of time at and in between the border crossing in search for talk on the border and frequently crossing the border back and fourth ‐ whether alone or with borderlanders ‐ were strategies employed to observe, find out and talk about the practices of border crossers, and the performance and constant negotiations of the border management. In order to situate the findings, I will first briefly outline the historical context of the border. Placing the border in context: rebels, refugees and trade 2 In numbers, 17 of my interviewees were Sudanese and 28 came from Uganda, while one allegedly had double citizenship. This imbalance reflects the challenges of gaining access to Southern Sudanese more generally, a fact which may also have impacted on the quality of some of the interview data. Basically agreed upon between the Anglo‐Egyptian Sudan and the British Protectorate of Uganda in 1914, the border and the areas close to it have been of marginal interest to the colonial powers. While the negligibility of the border area in colonial times is in some way be illustrated by the frequent exchange of the 'Lado enclave' (comprising today's West Nile in Uganda and adjacent territories in Congo and Sudan) between the Belgian Congo, the Anglo‐Egyptian Sudan and the Protectorate of Uganda, of which it has been successively part, the marginalisation of the borderlands persisted in the postcolonial period (Leopold 2009). With initial tensions erupting as early as at the dawn Sudan' independence, causing large scale migration from Sudan to Uganda began in the late 50's, and continuing as refugee movements during the first Sudanese Civil War, the borderland has been characterised by persistent conflict with the frequent crossing of rebels, large numbers refugees on either side and large‐scale cross‐border informal trade (Leopold 2009). Shortly after the return of many Sudanese refugees in the 70's, they were soon followed by nearly 80% of West Nile's total population when Ugandan dictator Idi Amin ‐ a West Niler from Koboko ‐ was ousted from power in 1979, and soldiers of former and later president Obote engaged in massive revenge killings, collectively holding guilty West Nilers for Amin's atrocities (Lomo&Hovil 2004). Regrouping under two different rebel movements, former Amin soldiers subsequently launched attacks on Obote's troops from bases in Sudan (Hovil&Okello 2007). Shortly afterwards the outbreak of the second Sudanese Civil War between the SPLA and the Khartoum government again caused major refugee streams into Uganda. Alongside the intense refugee movements across the border also came an increasingly flourishing 'informal' triangular trade between Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo from the 70s onwards. Commonly refered to as the 'magendo' trade, which goes back to collapse of the Ugandan economy under Idi Amin and persisted during the war years, this trade consisted of "legal goods illegally traded and illegal goods illegally traded" and included goods such as gold, coffee, minerals, diamonds, tropical timbers and petroleum products (Leopold 2009: 473; Meagher 1990). Initially rooted in internal struggles and causing only minor interferences between Khartoum and Kampala governments, conflicts in the borderland became part of wider cross‐border phenomena as both governments started to support rebel groups operating on the other side from the 90's onwards. Besides the Lord's Resistance Army, the Khartoum government helped the less well‐known West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) and the the UNRF II (a reformed rebel group of former Amin soldiers) to form and launch attacks in West Nile, while the Ugandan government backed the SPLA. Having abandoned international relations between 1994 and 1999, Sudan and Uganda "were running an undeclared war on their common border" using the rebel groups as proxies to destablise each other (Prunier 2004: 359). At the border in Kaya, first captured by the SPLA in 1990, government armies started overtly fighting alongside each others enemies. While the Sudan army recaptured Kaya in 1995, the WNBF briefly occupied the border post in Oraba, before in 1997 the SPLA and the Uganda army launched a joint offensive from the border, soon taking over large parts of Sudan's Equatoria