Playing Different Games: The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia 9780857450890

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Playing Different Games

INTEGRATION AND CONFLICT STUDIES Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale Series Editor: Günther Schlee, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Editorial Board: John Eidson (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Peter Finke (University of Zurich), Joachim Görlich (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Jacqueline Knörr (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Bettina Mann (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) Assisted by: Cornelia Schnepel and Viktoria Zeng (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

Volume 1 How Enemies are Made – Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts Günther Schlee Volume 2 Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa Vol.I: Ethiopia and Kenya Edited by Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson Volume 3 Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa Vol.II: Sudan, Uganda and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands Edited by Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson Volume 4 Playing Different Games: The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia Dereje Feyissa

Playing Different Games The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia

Dereje Feyissa

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2011 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2011 Dereje Feyissa All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feyissa, Dereje. Playing different games : the paradox of Anywaa and Nuer identification strategies in the Gambella region, Ethiopia / Dereje Feyissa. p. cm. – (Integration and conflict studies ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-088-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Anuak (African people)–Ethiopia–Gambela Astedader Akababi–Ethnic identity. 2. Nuer (African people)–Ethiopia–Gambela Astedader Akababi–Ethnic identity. 3. Ethnicity–Ethiopia–Gambela Astedader Akababi. 4. Gambela Astedader Akababi (Ethiopia)–Ethnic relations. I. Title. GN652.E75F49 2011 305.896'509633–dc23 2011018006 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed on acid-free paper ISBN 978-0-85745-088-3 (hardback) E-ISBN 978-0-85745-089-0

Dedicated to my wife meron zeleke and our son naol

Contents List of Figures and Tables Preface Acknowledgements List of Acronyms

ix xi xv xvi

Introduction The Regional Setting of Ethnic Identification and Ethnic Conflict

1

Part I

9

Theory and Methodology

Chapter 1

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments

Part II The Contrast

11 29

Chapter 2

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation

31

Chapter 3

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation

53

Part III The Encounter

75

Chapter 4

In the Riverine Lands

77

Chapter 5

The Cultural Contestation

95

Chapter 6

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State

119

Chapter 7

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism

145

Chapter 8

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism

167

Chapter 9

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region

193

Modes of Ethnic Identification

211

Conclusion

Glossary of Local Terms

217

References

223

Index

233

List of Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 Districts of Gambella 1.2 Ethnoregional states of the FDRE 2.1 Routes of Lwoo migrations 2.2 Anywaa woman with dimui necklace 2.3 Nyinya Adongo’s coronation at Utalo village, 28 March 2001 3.1 Kir’s shrine where Mut Wiu is kept, Dorong village, Itang 3.2 The Jikany Nuer divisions 3.3 The Cieng Buoy in the Thiang genealogical structure 3.4 A wut – Ochom village 5.1 Jingmir Anywaa within the Gaat-Guang Nuer genealogical structure 8.1 To whom does the land belong? 8.2 Bil Puk – a national hero

3 5 33 37 43 58 61 67 70 98 182 186

Tables 1.1 Demographic distributions in the Gambella region 1.2 Refugee camp population in Gambella in 2002 2.1 Anywaa villages and clan distribution along the Baro River 4.1 Land size and population density of districts 4.2 Distribution of animal population by district 7.1 Political representation in the GPNRS Regional Council, 1991–2000 7.2 Allocations of ministerial posts in the GPNRS 7.3 Ethnic profile of civil servants in the GPNRS in 2000 7.4 1984 Census result of Illubabor province

2 8 40 82 83 148 148 148 151

Preface In the years to come, there will be no Anywaa left in the Gambella region. Nasser was ours, the Nuer took it. Jikaw and Akobo were ours, again the Nuer took them. Wherever we go, they will follow us. They take our land, they take our rivers, and they take our people. Now they want to take Gambella town. Where else should we go? We should stop them doing so. The Nuer behave like that because they think that they are many and because it is their nature to be aggressive. For us the word Nuer means something bad. (Anywaa civil servant, Gambella town, June 2000) Why should the Anywaa deny us access to land that they do not use? Why do they think the land belongs to them? Land is for Kuoth [God]. Land is for kume [government]. Because kume is not coming to us, we go where there is kume. The Anywaa cannot stop us. If they say that we are Sudanese, let them go back to Malakal, where they originally came from. The Anywaa are not good people. They want to live alone. They kill you even if you are related, bär cie wat [the Anywaa cannot be relatives]. (Nuer elder, Jikaw district, September 2000)

This book explores ethnic phenomena through a comparative study of two ethnic groups, the Anywaa and the Nuer. It examines two interrelated issues: the varying configurations of ethnic identity and the causes of ethnic conflict. The geographic locus of the study is the Gambella region in western Ethiopia, one of the main areas of interaction between the Anywaa and the Nuer; but the issues raised, the actors involved and the social space within which the ethnic process occurs extend beyond the Ethiopian state and are intimately related to the political process in neighbouring countries, particularly in southern Sudan. There is a fair amount of confusion about how properly to name the Anywaa. Most authors have followed Evans-Pritchard in spelling the name of both the people and the language ‘Anuak’, with a final velar stop. Other terms used are ‘Anywaah’ (Crazzolara 1950), ‘Anyuaa’ (Bahru 1976), ‘Anyuak’ (Perner 1994; Hutchinson 2000) and ‘Anyua’ (Reh 1996). In this book I have spelled it ‘Anywaa’, which sounds closer to the way the people call themselves. Kurimoto (1992) has used a similar spelling. The Anywaa and the Nuer are two of anthropology’s ‘classic’ people, made famous in Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer trilogy (The Nuer, 1940a; Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer, 1951a; Nuer Religion, 1956), in Evans-Pritchard’s book on the Anywaa nobles (1940b) and in Godfrey Lienhardt’s articles on the Anywaa village headmen (1957, 1958). The Nuer were revisited by Douglas Johnson and Sharon Hutchinson in the 1980s, which resulted in the seminal books, Nuer Prophets (1994) and Nuer Dilemmas (1996), respectively. All of these studies were carried out in

xii Preface southern Sudan among either the Anywaa or the Nuer. To date, there has been no study that focuses on the inter-ethnic relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer in general and in the Gambella region in particular. Kurimoto wrote a book (in Japanese) and numerous articles on the subsistence economy and politics of the Anywaa in Ethiopia. Although I carried out fieldwork among the Anywaa and the Nuer in southern Sudan for a short period of time, my study is focused on the Anywaa and the Nuer in the Gambella region of western Ethiopia, where my fieldwork was extensive. The study upon which this book is based was initiated in the context of the explosive emergence of ethnicity as a focus of identification and political action worldwide – a context in which the escalation of ethnic conflict in Ethiopia represented one variant among many others. Gambella is one of the most conflict-ridden regions in Ethiopia. The most protracted conflict in contemporary Gambella is between the Anywaa and the Nuer, who are caught in a deadly struggle to determine their political futures. Although there have been elements of reciprocity and complementary socio-economic exchanges, the dominant pattern of inter-ethnic relations is conflict. In interpersonal and intergroup relations, friends and foes are represented in ethnic terms, and tension and violence are expressed in various fields of social interaction: from villages to churches, from schools to political parties. In cities, inter-ethnic hostility has resulted in segregated ethnic neighbourhoods. The manifestation of violence ranges from the complete destruction of villages to rioting in the schools; from the targeting of minors and the raiding of public transport to the burning in effigy of individuals to symbolize group humiliation. In recent times, the conflict has assumed a more violent form, involving bombings, massacres and the circulation of inflammatory so-called ‘confidential papers’ that tend to fuel ethnic animosity. The intensity and magnitude of the violence lends an existential quality to the conflict. It also involves mutual stereotyping that is premised on different conceptions of the world in which one’s sense of justice is interpreted as evidence of the moral corruption of the other. On the basis of ethnographic and historical data collected through systematic fieldwork and archival research in the Gambella region and neighbouring southern Sudan, this book examines the contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation among the Anywaa and the Nuer – modes which I call, respectively, primordialist and constructivist; and it explains the causes of conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer as it is acted out in various domains of social life, becoming increasingly violent. The conflict is also explained with reference to ‘significant others’ in Anywaa–Nuer relations, including especially the Ethiopian state and the Highlanders, the category of people most closely associated with it. The book addresses the following questions: what are the conditions for the emergence of the contrasting modes of ethnic identity formations? To what extent is this contrast acted out in ethnic conflict? Why, among alternative and coexisting units of identification, has the social struggle found expression in ethnic terms? For those who profess such identities and invest in them, what does it mean to be an Anywaa or a Nuer? Who entertains what kind of fears, and how do such fears enter into the definition of the conflict situation, as, for example, in the opening quotation, in which an educated

Preface xiii Anywaa speaks of the extinction of his people? Considering that a similar discourse about ethnic extinction was expressed by various travellers who visited the Anywaa in the late nineteenth century and by historians of Nilotic peoples, do Anywaa fears of extinction have a real basis? Does the statement made by the Nuer elder indicate changing power relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer? In addressing these questions, this book describes and analyses the multiple concerns of the Anywaa and the Nuer in different social fields in which interactions are increasingly competitive and in which the power of one provokes fear in the other. The book is organized into three parts and nine chapters, preceded by an Introduction that presents an overview of the location, demographics, historical background and political context of the study area. The single chapter of Part I outlines the theoretical orientations and major arguments and describes the research methodology and field experiences. Part II, consisting of two chapters, depicts and analyses Anywaa and Nuer varieties of ethnicity, arguing that they are not simply similar forms with variable contents but two fundamentally different ways of conceptualizing, representing and practicing ethnicity. Chapter 2 describes and analyses the Anywaa ethnic identity formation and its primordial configuration. The chapter also discusses new socio-political processes that have reinforced Anywaa’s primordialist conception of ethnic identity. Chapter 3 describes and analyses the Nuer form of ethnic identity formation and its constructivist configuration. The chapter also discusses the incipient forms of a primordialist reconfiguration of Nuer ethnic identity formation in new socio-political contexts. Part III describes and analyses the encounter between the Anywaa and the Nuer in various domains of social life, an encounter which not only has reinforced the two contrasting modes of identity formation but also has resulted in violent conflicts. The more the Nuer elaborate on their constructivist approach to their own ethnic identity, the more primordialist the orientation of the Anywaa becomes. In the remaining six chapters, the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer is discussed in terms of three interacting variables: competition over resources, struggles for cultural identity, and fluctuating power relations. Chapter 4 examines the resource dimension in the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. It argues that competition for natural resources is relevant in Anywaa–Nuer conflicts, but that scarce resources are not in themselves sufficient factors to cause ethnic conflict. The ethnic framing of the resource conflicts is discussed with reference to the contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation and the new political context of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia. Chapter 5 examines the identity dimension of the conflict and the cultural contestation that follows. It describes and analyses processes of ethnic conversion – how in some areas Anywaa have become Nuer – and the different ways in which most Anywaa respond to the process of ethnic conversion. Chapters 6 to 9 follow the fluctuating power relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer in the context of the changing policies of the Ethiopian and Sudanese states. Chapter 6 discusses the differential modes of incorporation of the Anywaa and the Nuer into the Ethiopian state system during two political regimes – imperial (1898–1974) and socialist (1974–91) – and their impact on local identification

xiv Preface processes. In this chapter, I argue that the Anywaa were integrated into the state system in a way which caused their economic marginalization, political decline and social dislocation. Meanwhile, the Nuer ‘benefited’ from being neglected by the state. This political process has generated an Anywaa narrative of loss which has, in turn, reinforced their primordial form of ethnic boundary making. Chapter 7 discusses the Anywaa response to ethnic federalism in Ethiopia since 1991, specifically, how the Anywaa have sought to contain Nuer expansion by using administrative power in the new regional state of Gambella. To that end, they have employed various strategies to gain political power: contributing to regime change, claiming ‘indigenous’ status on the basis of settlement history, and framing ethnopolitics in national terms. The chapter shows how the Anywaa’s radical notion of territoriality emerged in the context of Ethiopia’s unique experiment in ethnic federalism, which has offered new incentives to invest in primordialist boundary making. Chapter 8 discusses the Nuer response to ethnic federalism – how the Nuer have contested Anywaa political dominance in the Gambella regional state in the 1990s through counter-narratives and creative ideologies of entitlement. Nuer politics of inclusion have drawn on various sources of legitimation, including the use of mythology as an ideological resource, invocation of a longer historical frame of reference, census-based claims to ‘ethnic majority’ status, and reframing ethnopolitics in national terms. Nuer political strategies vis-à-vis the Ethiopian state are embedded in their cultural world. They draw on their constructivist concept of identity in relating to the state, for example, by projecting their flexible concept of localization onto the state concept of citizenship. Chapter 9 describes and analyses Anywaa–Nuer conflicts in the context of the Sudanese civil wars. This issue is explored in terms of the following topics: changes in the regional demographic structure; the differential access that the Anywaa and Nuer have to the military power of the various rebel groups and to the government of the Sudan; their differential access to resources delivered by aid agencies; and the link between the experience of civil war and the reconfiguration of identity concepts. The concluding chapter recapitulates key aspects of the two central issues addressed in this book: the conditions for the particular (re)configuration of ethnic identities and the causes of ethnic conflict. From an ethnographic perspective, it becomes clear that ethnicity and ethnic conflict do not correspond to media images of African ‘tribal violence’ and cannot be reduced to simple reflections of local economic and political changes. On the contrary, this book demonstrates how the existing ethnic attributions (‘Anywaa’ and ‘Nuer’) are transformed and consolidated in the context of translocal economic and political changes.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany, for providing the intellectual climate in which this book could be produced. On a personal note, I would like to thank Günther Schlee especially. As a member of the Department of Integration and Conflict at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, which Schlee heads, I have gained valuable insights that I have applied extensively throughout the book. Schlee also visited me in the field while I was doing the research upon which this book is based. One of the research tools that I used – the village census – was inspired by this field visit. Thanks also go to John Eidson, who contributed in many ways to the successful completion of the book, particularly in the area of refining and smoothing the flow of argument, as well as providing extensive editorial support. I also thank Richard Rottenburg, Professor at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle (Saale). I benefited greatly from the postgraduate colloquium that he organized and also from the thoughtful discussions that I had with him. Some of the insights from these discussions were used to develop my arguments, particularly in my attempt to make sense of the dynamic interaction between manifest and latent functions of social action. I am indebted to Boris Nieswand, a colleague and a friend at the Max Planck Institute, with whom and from whom I have learned a lot. The stimulating discussions I had with him, and his keen interest in the research project, sustained me during the extended process of undertaking the research for and writing this book. Among experts in the field area, those to whom I owe special thanks include, above all, Eisei Kurimoto, Sharon Hutchinson and Douglas Johnson. I am grateful to them for their encouragement and for their generosity in sharing with me their ideas, observations and relevant fieldnotes. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all residents of Gambella who shared with me their views, concerns and worries. Special thanks go to my research assistants: Peter Lual, Uchan Kayier, Okello Akuway, Maria Nikolai, Agape Nikolai, Okello Awiti, Oman Agwa, Simon Shenkuoth, Chuol Gew, Chuol Ruey, Luk Kuey, Amanuel Bahru and Sisay Tilahun, all of whom have actively contributed to this book in various ways. May I also take this opportunity to thank my wife, Meron Zeleke, and Ashebir Mesfin for their encouragement and editorial support. Finally my deepest gratitude goes to my father, Feyissa Dori, and my mother, Askale Wechu, whose unfailing support and keen interest in my academic development have always been a source of inspiration.

List of Acronyms ACANA ACORD Anyanya Anyanya II APM BGPNRS EGBS ELF EPLF EPRDF ETAM FDRE GLF GPLF GPDC GPDF GPDM GPDU GPDUP GPLM GPLP GPNRS MPDO NGO NIF NPDO OETA OLF PDRE REYA RPG SNNPRS SPLA SSIM TPLF UNHCR UNICEF WPE

Anywaa Community Association in North Africa Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development First southern Sudanese liberation movement (1960–72) Second southern Sudanese liberation movement (1978–89) American Presbyterian Mission Benishangul-Gumuz Peoples National Regional State Eastern Gambella Bethel Synod Eritrean Liberation Front Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front Ethnic Transmission and Acquisition Model Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Gambella Liberation Front Gambella Peoples Liberation Front Gambella Peoples Democratic Congress Gambella Peoples Democratic Front Gambella Peoples Democratic Movement Gambella Peoples Democratic Union Gambella Peoples Democratic Unity Party Gambella Peoples Liberation Movement Gambella Peoples Liberation Party Gambella Peoples National Regional State Majangir Peoples Democratic Organization Nongovernmental organization National Islamic Front Nuer Peoples Democratic Organization Occupied Enemy Territory Administration Oromo Liberation Front Peoples Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Revolutionary Ethiopia Youth Association Rocket-propelled grenades Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State Sudan Peoples Liberation Army Southern Sudanese Independence Movement Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Educational Fund Workers Party of Ethiopia

Introduction

The Regional Setting of Ethnic Identification and Ethnic Conflict Location and Demography This study of the varying ways in which the Anywaa and the Nuer conceive of their own ethnic identity and of the causes of conflict between these two groups is set in the Gambella region, located in western Ethiopia about 780 kilometres from the national capital, Addis Ababa. Currently, this region covers 34,063 square kilometres, and consists of nine weredas (hereafter, districts):1 Gambella, Itang, Jikaw, Akobo, Abobo, Gog, Jor, Godere and Dimma.2 Two features stand out in defining Gambella, not only as a physical space but also as a socio-political unit. First, Gambella is one of the hottest lowlands in the country, having an average temperature of 37 degrees Celsius at an altitude of only 500 metres above sea level – in contrast to the neighbouring highland regions, which rise as high as 3,000 metres (Ellman 1972: 2). Second, Gambella is a peripheral region, situated along Ethiopia’s long international border with the Sudan. These two features explain in part Gambella’s socio-economic marginality and political sensitivity. Gambella is one of Ethiopia’s poorest regions in terms of infrastructure and social services. Because of its location along the border with the Sudan, Gambella is also susceptible to wider geopolitical processes. In fact, identification processes in the region are intimately related to the civil wars in southern Sudan. The population of Gambella has been variously estimated. The results of the 1994 national census indicated that it had at that time 181,862 inhabitants, more than eightyfive per cent of whom lived in rural areas.3 Aside from recent arrivals from elsewhere in Ethiopia, members of five ethnic groups – referred to, officially, as ‘national minorities’ – coexist in Gambella: the Anywaa, the Nuer, the Majangir, the Opo and the Komo. The Anywaa and the Nuer speak languages belonging to the Nilotic language family, whereas the languages of the Majangir, the Opo and the Komo belong to the Koman language group (Bender et al. 1976). In recent decades, these populations have been supplemented 1. 2.

3.

Cf. Bureau of Planning and Economic Development (2000), Conservation Strategy of the Gambella Region. Gambella: Gambella Peoples National Regional State. The term ‘Gambella’ stands for three things: Gambella region, Gambella district and Gambella town. Throughout the remainder of the book, if not specified as the district or town, the word Gambella stands for the region. The 2007 census results have not yet been made official but a preliminary report suggests that the Gambella region had at the time of the census a total population of 306,916.

2

Introduction

by internal migrants from the Ethiopian highlands and by refugees from the Sudanese civil wars. The internal migrants refer to themselves collectively with the generic term degegna (Highlanders), indicating their places of origin, or with the more prestigious term habesha, a cultural identity associated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The majority of the Highlanders came to the Gambella region in the mid-1980s as part of the government’s policy of resettling famine-affected people from the northern and southern highlands to the western lowlands. Most are ethnic Amhara, Oromo or Tigreans, but they also include a variety of ethnic groups from southern Ethiopia. Beginning in the 1960s but with much greater intensity since the late 1980s, the number of Nuer in Gambella has increased due to the arrival of refugees from southern Sudan. For the same reason, the Anywaa population has also risen but to a much lesser degree. The consequences of these processes is made evident in the census of 1994, according to which the Nuer constitute forty per cent of Gambella’s population, the Anywaa twenty-seven per cent, the Majangir six per cent, and the Komo and the Opo, taken together, three per cent. The same census identified twenty-four per cent of Gabella’s population as Highlanders.4 Table 1.1 Demographic distributions in the Gambella region Group

National Minorities Anywaa Nuer Majangir Opo and Komo

Urban Per cent Rural population of urban population population

Per cent Total of rural population

Per cent of total population

9,831 3,014 64 1,067

Internal Migrants (Highlanders) Amhara 4,639 Southerners 1,334 Oromo 5,890 Tigrean 1,341 Total 27,180

36 11 0 4

34,750 61,459 9,286 3,735

26 45 7 3

44,581 64,473 9,350 4,802

27 40 6 3

17 5 22 5 100

7,927 12,170 4,635 1,255 135,217

6 9 3 1 100

12,566 13,504 10,525 2,596 162,397

8 8 6 2 100

(Source: The 1994 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia. Results for Gambella Region. Addis Ababa: Central Statistics Authority, 1995.)

The various groups of people in Gambella pursue different livelihood strategies: the Anywaa, the Opo and the Komo are predominantly cultivators; the Nuer are agropastoralists; and the Majangir combine hunting and gathering with shifting cultivation (Stauder 1971). In the villages, the Highlanders make a living as cultivators, and in the towns they comprise the majority of the traders and civil servants. Patterns of religious affiliation also seem to reinforce social boundaries between groups. Thus, most

4.

According to the preliminary report on the results of the 2007 census, the Nuer constitute forty-six per cent and the Anywaa constitute twenty-one per cent of Gambella’s population.

Introduction 3 of the Highlanders are followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, while the Anywaa and the Nuer are members of various Protestant denominations, principally the Presbyterian Church, or they are traditional believers. In Gambella, the majority of the Anywaa live along the major tributaries of the Sobat River: the Baro, the Gilo, the Akobo, the Alwero and the Pibor. In the current administrative structure of the region, the Anywaa live in eight of the nine districts, the exception being Godere; and they constitute the majority in five of those districts (Abobo, Gog, Dimma, Gambella and Jor) as well as occupying the largest part of the mixed-settlement district of Itang. The Anywaa also live in pockets of settlements in Jikaw and Akobo districts. Most Nuer, on the other hand, live in the two outlying districts of Jikaw and Akobo. More crucially, the representation of the Anywaa and the Nuer in Gambella town shows a great disparity: thirty-six per cent and eleven per cent, respectively. Most of the Majangir inhabit one district, Godere, although some of them are dispersed among the Anywaa in Abobo and Gambella districts as well. All of the Opo live in Itang district, whereas pockets of Komo settlements are found in Gambella district. The Highlanders live predominantly in three districts: in Godere district they live together with the Majangir; in Abobo district they live together with the Anywaa; and they constitute the majority in Gambella town.

Historical Background and Political Context Gambella was incorporated into the Ethiopian state at the end of the nineteenth century. The current international boundary between Ethiopia and the Sudan was set

Figure 1.1 Districts of Gambella

4

Introduction

by the Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Agreement of 1902 (Bahru 1976). This agreement also gave the British an important economic concession to establish a commercial enclave in Gambella town on the Baro River. The British claimed sovereignty over the western half of the town, while the eastern half remained under Ethiopian sovereignty. Gambella remained an economic hub of the country, serving as an important station in Ethiopia’s international trade via the Sudan for the first three decades of the twentieth century (Bahru 1987). According to the terms of the concession, the enclave was transferred to the Ethiopian government upon the independence of the Sudan in 1956. The security situation in southern Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s undermined the viability of the trade route passing through Gambella. The town lost its economic significance as trade in the former enclave declined because of competition with the eastern railway route through Djibouti, and trade finally ceased because of civil war in the Sudan. Gambella regained its strategic importance for the Ethiopian state in the context of the geopolitics of the Horn of Africa in the 1980s. After 1974, when a militarysocialist government (the Derg) replaced the imperial Ethiopian government, interstate relations between Ethiopia and the Sudan became tense. By the early 1980s, both countries were actively supporting each other’s rebels: the government of the Sudan supported the Eritrean secessionist struggle, whereas the Ethiopian government supported the southern Sudanese liberation fronts (Johnson 2003). Gambella hosted southern Sudanese military training and refugee camps. The strategic importance of the Gambella region led to its promotion from a district to an administrative region in 1987, when the Peoples Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) was established by the Derg. With the region’s enhanced political status, the infrastructure and social services in Gambella improved and, above all, a new political space was created within which Anywaa and the Nuer elites competed for political power. The 1990s brought tremendous political changes to Gambella. In 1991 the Derg regime was overthrown by the EPRDF (Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front). The EPRDF adopted ethnicity as the official state ideology, an ideology that was institutionalized in the 1995 constitution in the form of ethnic federalism. According to this constitution, every ethnic group (‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ in Ethiopian parlance) was accorded the right of self-determination up to and including secession (Art.39/1) in order to develop its culture and language (Art.39/2) and to form a state of its own within the federation (Art.39/3). On the basis of these constitutional provisions, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) was established. The FDRE consists of nine ethnoregional states (see Figure 1.1), including the Gambella administrative region, which was renamed as the Gambella Peoples National Regional State (hereafter the GPNRS). The GPNRS is one of three multi-ethnic regional states of the FDRE. The remaining six regional states are allocated to ethnic majorities despite the heterogeneity of the populations of all the regional states.5 5.

The multi-ethnic regional states are the GPNRS, the BGPNRS (Benishangul-Gumuz Peoples National Regional State) and the SNNPRS (Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State). The six regional states allocated to ethnic majorities are the ANRS (Amhara National Regional State), ONRS (Oromia National Regional State), ANRS (Afar National Regional State), SNRS (Somali National Regional State) and HNRS (Harari National Regional State).

Introduction 5

Figure 1.2 Ethnoregional states of the FDRE

Ethnic federalism is the contemporary political context of Anywaa–Nuer relations. The Anywaa and the Nuer constitute the two largest ethnic groups in Gambella, accounting together for sixty-seven per cent of the total population of the state. Politically, they are also the two most dominant groups in the GPNRS. As a result, the post-1991 political process in the GPNRS has been shaped largely by social interaction and political relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer and also by the way in which both relate to the EPRDF and the Highlanders.

The Highlanders, the Ethiopian Government, the Anywaa and the Nuer The relationship between the Highlanders and the other inhabitants of Gambella, especially the Anywaa and the Nuer, is multidimensional. Most commonly, the boundary between these two categories is constructed in terms both of regional origins and skin colour: the ‘black’ Anywaa, Nuer, Majangir, Opo and Komo are contrasted with

6

Introduction

the ‘red’ Highlanders. The category of Highlander is socially elastic insofar as all nonNilotic and non-Koman people with brown skin pigmentation (‘red’ in local parlance), no matter where they come from, are classified as Highlanders. Thus, the term makes sense only in the context of Ethiopia’s borderlands, such as Gambella (see Table 1.1). When understood with reference to Anywaa–Nuer relations, however, the term ‘Highlanders’ signifies not only a diverse group of newcomers from other parts of Ethiopia but also and especially the Ethiopian state itself. Ever since its first representatives arrived in the Gambella region at the end of the nineteenth century, the Ethiopian state has been introduced through, represented by and identified with the Highlanders. It is for this reason that the Anywaa and the Nuer use the same word – gaala or buny, respectively – to refer both to the Highlanders as people and to the Ethiopian state.6 Once politically dominant and numerically the third largest group, the Highlanders have been stripped of formal political rights under the terms of the constitution of 1995, because, as migrants, they now ‘belong’ to various other ethnoregional states in Ethiopia, depending on their respective ethnic identities. Despite the EPRDF’s new ideological spin, however, there has been marked continuity in centre-periphery relations in Ethiopia from one regime to the next. In the current government, as in the past, all authorities who wield substantial clout in the politics of the region are Highlanders. This enduring special political status of the Highlanders makes them the ‘significant other’ in Anywaa–Nuer relations. Possibly due to the large population of Highlanders, who have been frustrated with their lack of representation in regional politics under conditions of ethnic federalism, the EPRDF strategy towards this constituency has changed significantly since the advent of violent conflict between the Anywaa and the Highlanders in 2003. Particularly since the contested regional and national elections of May 2005, the EPRDF, in an attempt to reclaim ‘protest votes’, has chosen the Highlanders as their chief target of reconciliation. Accordingly, the Highlanders are being invited to join EPRDF’s member organizations on the basis of their respective ethnic identities.7 This is likely to alter the existing power relation between the ‘indigenous’ and the settlers/highlanders in Gambella. Despite occasional rifts between the Highlanders and the Ethiopian government, they also share an ‘organic’ link, insofar as both are positioned to benefit from the continued conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer, given the ethnic basis for the organization of the Ethiopian federal system. It is thus not surprising that tensions between either the Anywaa or the Nuer and the Ethiopian government also result in tensions between the corresponding Nilotic groups and the Highlanders. 6.

7.

Etymologically, the term gaala is associated with the word galla, a pejorative term used by the Amhara and the Tigrean in reference to the medieval Oromo (Hultin 1996). The Oromo were the first Highlanders with whom the Anywaa came into contact. The term buny was coined by the Nuer prophet Ngundeng in 1898 during the first encounter between the Nuer and the Highlanders. Buny, in the Nuer language, means ‘those who bow down’, in reference to the Highlanders’ reverence towards authority figures. Both the Anywaa term gaala and the Nuer term buny signify the same things: skin colour (red) and the Ethiopian state. The Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) has taken the lead in recruiting the Amhara in the Gambella region, followed by similar attempts by the Southern Ethiopia Peoples Democratic Movement (SEPDM) among members of ethnic groups from Southern Ethiopia who live in Majangir Zone. The TPLF and the OPDO are moving in the same direction.

Introduction 7 Admittedly, there also seems to be an ‘organic’ link between the Anywaa, the Highlanders and the government on the basis of the Anywaa’s greater integration into the Ethiopian state and their higher degree of competence in Ethiopian national culture – in contrast to the Nuer. In other domains, however, a more competitive relationship is observable, particularly with regard to Anywaa political empowerment. Over an extended period of time, the Highlanders and the various political regimes in the Ethiopian state, though they have differed significantly in their modes of governance, have tended to view Anywaa political empowerment with consternation, as it is perceived to undermine the economic dominance of the Highlanders in the Gambella region. The Anywaa’s potential and actual political claims to ownership of the region, as ‘first-comers’, are also considered to be a threat. The relationship of the Highlanders and the Ethiopian state to the Nuer is also ambiguous. On one hand, the greater presence of the Nuer in the Sudan and their lesser political and cultural integration into the Ethiopian polity make the Nuer ‘unreliable’ citizens. As will be shown in the chapters that follow, there have even been occasions when the Nuer have been viewed as a ‘national security threat’ (see Chapter 8). On the other hand, the Nuer display a number of characteristics that facilitate the development of cooperative relations with the Highlanders. In the villages, the Highlanders make a living as cultivators, for whom the Nuer serve, via the regional livestock market, as the sole suppliers of cattle. The Highlanders also share with the Nuer the politically insecure status of being ‘late-comers’ to the Gambella region, which the Anywaa are keen to highlight. In fact, the Highlanders appreciate the more inclusive and ‘cosmopolitan’ orientation of the Nuer, in contrast to the more parochial tendencies of the Anywaa. Finally, it must be noted that the protracted conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer has benefited the Highlanders and the Ethiopian government, at least indirectly, insofar as it enhances their own respective economic and political standing in a highly contested region. This political motive may help to explain the Ethiopian government’s apparent lack of a strong political will to find a sustainable resolution to the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. Maintaining and at times fanning the conflict could have its own political rationale for those who might lose power or influence under conditions of inter-ethnic peace.

The Effects of the Sudanese Civil Wars The recurring civil wars in southern Sudan are another important political context of Anywaa–Nuer relations. Indeed, the political process in Gambella has been intimately tied to the politics of liberation in southern Sudan ever since the first civil war broke out in 1955. As early as the mid-1960s, war-fleeing southern Sudanese refugees crossed the border and settled in different parts of Gambella. By the mid-1980s, the refugee population outnumbered the local population by far. Even if the actual number of refugees amounted to only about half of the official estimate of 366,000, as some experts have suggested (Kurimoto 2005: 344), and even though many refugees returned to southern Sudan before the regime change in Ethiopia in May 1991, these population transfers had lasting effects on demographic relations in Gambella. Since the Nuer far outnumber the Anywaa in southern Sudan, the same is true of the relative proportion of members of these two groups among the refugees who remained in

8

Introduction

Gambella. As a result, the Anywaa ‘first-comers’ are now outnumbered by the Nuer ‘late-comers’ – a fact which adds to the Anywaa’s demographic anxiety. Although the exact size of the Nuer population in southern Sudan has not yet been established, it was estimated to be 500,000 in the Sudanese census of 1956. Basing his estimates on this census and on the population growth rate of the Sudan, Duany (1992: 20) writes that, in southern Sudan, ‘the population of the Nuer people in 1990 should lie between 1.5 and 3 million people.’ The size of the Anywaa population in southern Sudan is less disputed: several scholars have estimated it at 25,000 (Johnson 1986; Perner 1994; Kurimoto 1997). This demographic imbalance is significant, as the cross-border settlement pattern is one of the social contexts within which contemporary identity politics in Gambella are being fought out. The expansion of the Jikany, the specific group of Nuer covered in this study, from the western Upper Nile region in the Sudan to the Gambella region several hundred miles further east, has been intensified in the context of the Sudanese civil wars, but it is also a general pattern which began over a century ago. The escalation of the civil war in southern Sudan in the late 1980s and the conflicts following the regime change in Ethiopia in 1991 drove many Nuer and Anywaa to refugee camps, located either in Gambella or in Kenya. Surging dramatically in the late 1980s, the refugee population in Gambella was estimated in 2002 to be 51,374, or twenty-two per cent of the regional total. At that time, the refugees, forty-five per cent of whom were Nuer, were distributed among three refugee camps, all of which were located in Anywaa territories. Many other refugees of the civil war in Sudan were resettled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in North America and Australia. The number of the Anywaa and the Nuer in the diasporas dating from the late 1980s is estimated to be 10,000 (Shandy 2001; Falge 2006) and 3,000 (Dereje 2006b), respectively. Members of both the Anywaa and the Nuer diasporas are actively engaged in the identity politics of Gambella, as shall be shown in subsequent chapters. In sum, the Sudanese civil wars have produced new political actors and alternative centres of power, thus making access to transborder political networks one of the most important factors in determining the outcome of the Anywaa–Nuer conflict. The significance of these facts will be explored in detail in subsequent chapters of this book. Table 1.2 Refugee camp population in Gambella in 2002 Refugee camps

Pinyudo

Dimma

Ethnic groups

Number

Per cent Number of camp population

Per cent Number of camp population

Per cent of camp population

Nuer Anywaa Uduk Others Total

12,086 7,216 – 3,565 22,867

57 29 – 14 100

79 2 – 19 100

– – 95 5 100

(Source: Abraham 2002: 2)

11,083 300 – 2,490 13,873

Bonga

– – 13,832 689 14,521

Part I Theory and Methodology

Chapter 1

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments Debating Ethnicity The terms of the debate in ethnic studies do not allow for a comprehensive understanding of ethnic processes in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Scholarly discourse concerning ethnicity and ethnic conflict exhibits a high density of polemic, producing what Richard Jenkins (2001: 4826) has described as ‘more heat than light’. What an ethnic group is, how it is related to culture, and when it is mobilized by whom and for what purposes – these questions are still largely unanswered. In the literature on ethnicity and nationalism, it is common to distinguish between two general approaches known as primordialism and constructivism; but, as scholars use them, both terms are ambiguous. The term ‘primordialism’ is ambiguous, insofar as some writers fail to distinguish between ‘naturalizers’ and ‘analysts of naturalizers’ (Gil-White 1999: 803). Some analysts of ethnicity are themselves ‘naturalizers’ of ethnic phenomena, perhaps the most obvious example being those sociobiologists who suggest that ethnicity should be understood as an extended form of kin selection (van den Berghe 1981). Probably, however, most authors who are commonly categorized among the ‘primordialists’ are not themselves ‘naturalizers’ but, rather, ‘analysts of naturalizers’. This is certainly true in the case of Clifford Geertz, who is often regarded as a key spokesperson for the primordialist approach to ethnicity (see also Foster 1991: 237; Jenkins 2001: 4826; Fenton 2003: 73–90). Nevertheless, Geertz and his senior colleague, Edward Shils, may be regarded as primordialists, insofar as they assume that the people studied by anthropologists and other social scientists attach ‘a certain ineffable significance … to the tie of blood’ (Shils 1957: 142). In Geertz’s much-cited statement, primordial sentiment is defined as One that stems from the ‘givens’… – or the assumed ‘givens’ – of social existence: immediate contiguity and kin connection mainly, but beyond them the givenness that stems from being born into a particular religious community, speaking a particular language, or even a dialect of a language, and following particular social practices. These congruities of blood, speech, custom and so on, are seen to have an ineffable, and at times overpowering, coerciveness in and of themselves. One is bound … [to these loyalties] in great part by virtue of some unaccountable absolute import attributed to the very tie itself (1963: 109).

12

Playing Different Games

Thus, those who emphasize primordial attachments to ethnic identities maintain that ‘ethnicity is a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon’ (Horowitz 2002: 73). From this perspective, ethnic identification cannot be explained solely in terms of a ‘pressure group that mobilizes in order to compete for scarce resources or for the ambitions of a few leaders’ (Connor 1994: 73). Accordingly, ‘ethnic affiliations belong to the class of fundamental affiliations that reflect feelings of intense solidarity and are capable of inducing selfless behaviour on the part of group members’ (Horowitz 2002: 74). The object of analysis in the primordialist conception of ethnicity is thus ‘the powerful emotional charge that appears to surround or to underlie so much of ethnic behaviour’ (Epstein 1978: xi). Constructivism, on the other hand, is an approach based more obviously on ‘an understanding of ethnicity and nationhood as products of human thought and action’ (Yeros 1999: 1). In this view, ‘ethnicity is the product of a social process rather than a cultural given, made and remade rather than taken for granted, chosen depending on circumstances rather than ascribed through birth’ (Wimmer 2008: 971). According to advocates of constructivism, ‘the process of social construction proceeds at an individual as well as at a group level; in the innumerable transactions of daily life, individuals are engaged in a constant process of defining and redefining themselves’ (C. Young 1993: 24). Like primordialism, constructivism comes in many varieties (Comaroff 1996; Yeros 1999). For the purposes of my argument, however, I will focus on a variety that differs most clearly from Geertz’s form of primordialism; namely, the instrumentalist variety of constructivism formulated by Fredrick Barth (1969). The hallmark of the approach to ethnicity introduced by Barth was the shift from the cultural to the social function of ethnic groups. According to Barth, ethnic groups are not ‘culture-bearing units’ but rather ‘a form of social organization’ (Barth 1969: 11–13), meaning that people who share a culture can have different ethnicities and, conversely, people who are culturally different may have the same ethnicity. This shift from the cultural to the social in the study of ethnicity was part of a theoretical movement in the wider anthropological scholarship in which culture was no longer taken for granted but was seen, rather, as part of the explananda. Barth’s paradigm of ethnicity emphasizes the role of boundaries in the formation and reproduction of ethnic identity: ‘the critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses’ (ibid.: 15). The cultural content is defined as variable, depending on which aspect of the culture is selected by its members to construct the ethnic boundary. Thus, Barth emphasizes the subjective meaning of ethnicity, for ethnic groups are conceived as categories of ascription and identification by the actors themselves on the basis of their own standards of evaluation, expressed in the form of diacritical markers and core values: ‘the features that are taken into account are not the sum of “objective” differences, but only those which actors themselves regard as significant’ (ibid.: 14). In this book, I analyse Anywaa and Nuer modes of ethnic identity formation with reference to Geertz’s primordialism and Barth’s constructivism, but with an important difference: in my analysis, the primordialists and the constructivists are, respectively, the Anywaa and the Nuer themselves. In formulating my argument, I employ the distinction between emic and etic points of view, which was introduced

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 13 to anthropology by Kenneth Pike and elaborated in somewhat altered form by Marvin Harris among others (Headland, Pike and Harris 1990). Harris (2001: 571–75) glosses these terms as follows: Emic statements refer to logico-empirical systems whose phenomenal distinctions or ‘things’ are built up out of contrasts and discriminations significant, meaningful, real, accurate, or in some other fashion regarded as appropriate by the actors themselves … Etic statements depend upon phenomenal distinctions judged appropriate by the community of scientific observers. Etic statements cannot be falsified if they do not conform to the actor’s notion of what is significant, real, meaningful, or appropriate. I call the Geertzian native model of ethnicity ‘emic primordialism’ and the Barthian native model of ethnicity ‘emic constructivism’. By emic primordialism I mean the actors’ belief that ethnic identity is a natural part of ‘the givens of social existence’ in the Geertzian sense (1993: 58). For emic primordialists, the reference point for inclusion in or exclusion from an ethnic group is common origin. Belonging is framed in biological terms, however subjectively constructed these terms might be. By emic constructivism I mean the actors’ belief that ethnic identity is acquired and that ethnic membership is open to all on the basis of cultural competence. This distinction is useful in avoiding the conflation of etic terms with emic categories. Of course, my basic framework is constructivist, insofar as I assume that both emic primordialism and emic constructivism are constructed in the context of specific historical, social and political processes. To the extent that Barth and Geertz were engaged, in their seminal works, with subjective meanings, they both may be seen as constructivists, despite the conflation of ‘naturalizers’ and ‘analysts of naturalizers’ under the heading ‘primordialism’ in the secondary literature. They differ in their views of actors’ understandings of the basis of their own ethnic identity. For Geertz, the subjective belief in a common origin, which Roosens (1994: 86) calls the ‘genealogical dimension of ethnic belonging’, is central to the construction of ethnic identity. Barth’s ethnicity paradigm is also a native model of ethnicity to the extent that actors themselves set the criteria that define the ethnic boundary, so that membership in an ethnic group is determined less by common ancestry than by cultural competence. Barth’s ethnicity paradigm is based on emic constructivism, but his ideas of flexibility and manipulation contain elements of rational choice theory, insofar as he assumes that actors are self-interested and often seek to maximize ‘utilities’ (Hechter and Kanazawa 1997: 194). This is evident in his concept of identity switching: individual actors change their ethnic identity in order to tap into the resources of other ethnic groups. Barth’s theory draws on ethnographies demonstrating that positive bonds may be established between ethnic groups on the basis of complementary differences (Barth 1969: 18–20). Inter-ethnic relations based on complementary differences may create especially favourable conditions for identity switching on the part of individuals. What the ethnic boundary marks is the complementary differentiation between the groups, while individual actors straddle the boundary as best fits their interests. In

14

Playing Different Games

this sense, Barth’s ethnicity paradigm has an instrumentalist dimension. What matters for membership in an ethnic group is competence in value standards that allows the flow of persons across the ethnic boundary, while the boundary itself persists. The continuity of an ethnic group, therefore, depends on the active maintenance of the boundary that differentiates it from other ethnic groups, not on policing individuals who cross the boundary. In sum, the perspective I adopt shifts the choice between primordialism in the Geertzian sense of the word, and constructivism in the Barthian sense, to the emic level where these two approaches to ethnicity can coexist. Whether an ethnic group under investigation is primordialist or constructivist in the self-understanding of group members is sometimes, perhaps often, an empirical question. The task of scholars should be, then, to identify modes of identification – how ethnic membership is defined by the actors – and to explain the conditions of a particular identity configuration. This perspective entails a shift from Weber’s notion of ideal types to Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances among various phenomena. To illustrate the idea of family resemblances, Wittgenstein (1983: §66/§67) uses the example of games: ‘Consider … the proceedings that we call “games”. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic-games, and so on. What is common to them all? … For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances” … And I shall say: “games” form a family’. As Llewelyn (1968: 344) notes, Wittgenstein’s concern is ‘to show that not all words function in the same way’ and to challenge ‘the strong essentialist idea that where a general term is used univocally there is a property or set of properties necessary to anything to which the term is correctly applied and sufficient to entitle one to apply that term’. In this sense, I argue that various ethnic groups, like games, form a ‘family’. The ideal typical definition of an ethnic group privileges common origins as the quintessence of ethnicity, but differences between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ understandings of common origins among members of various ethnic groups, and the implications of these differences for identification processes, have not yet been sufficiently acknowledged. In his important work Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Donald Horowitz has argued along similar lines: Many of the puzzles presented by ethnicity become much less confusing once we abandon the attempt to discover the vital essence of ethnicity and instead regard ethnic affiliations as being located along a continuum of ways in which people organize and categorize themselves. At one end, there is voluntary membership; at the other, membership given at birth … Both principles of membership – birth and choice – are capable of accommodating fictive elements … Ethnic groups can be placed at various points along the birthchoice continuum. (Horowitz 1985: 55) On this conceptual basis, it is possible to discover different kinds of ethnic groups showing only family resemblances to one another. This is so because in real-life situ-

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 15 ations – for example, in Gambella among the Anywaa and the Nuer, the two ethnic groups at the centre of this study – ethnic phenomena may take different forms. Judged in terms of their own ideas of relatedness and the nature of their ethnic boundaries, the Anywaa may be called ‘primordialists’ and the Nuer ‘constructivists’ – today and in the recent past, at least. In that sense, the Anywaa and the Nuer play different ethnic language games, as Wittgenstein might say – language games, which, to conceive of the ‘givenness’ and ‘constructedness’ of ethnic identity in somewhat differently, seem to be played in terms of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’.1 Being Anywaa is defined with reference to exclusive criteria: descent from an apical ancestor, having Anywaa parents, belonging to a specific territory, sharing a particularistic reproductive regime (regulated by scarce bridewealth beads) and valorizing social order, especially in the form of territorialized ethnicity. Anywaaness is something which one is born into. The same is not true for the Nuer: Nuer identity can be acquired, even if one comes from a different ethnic background. Scholars of a primordialist persuasion, who posit that ‘ethnic actors believe that membership is a matter of shared biological descent’ (Gil-White 1999: 803), might not consider the Nuer to be an ethnic group at all. For constructivists in the Barthian sense, Anywaa ethnic identity formation and the various institutional arrangements they have designed to police the ethnic boundary might contradict their understanding of ethnic groups with permeable and manipulable boundaries. But if we adopt the concept of family resemblance, we get a different picture: the Anywaa and the Nuer are examples of different modes of ethnic identity formation. The concept of family resemblance allows for the possibility of discovering different ‘kinds’ of ethnic groups, without obscuring their structural comparability. Various ethnic groups may be similar enough to be compared, but they may also exhibit variations in central features, such as ideas of common origin, criteria of ethnic membership and degrees of shared sociality. Conceptualized this way, ethnic groups share a ‘family resemblance’ with one another but are not necessarily identical in the degree to which they accord relevance to the different dimensions of ethnicity. On Horowitz’s ethnic continuum, the Nuer occupy one end, whereas the Anywaa, with a stronger belief in common origin and an ideology of ethnic endogamy, occupy the other. To the extent that they emphasize different criteria of membership for their respective ethnic identities, the Anywaa and the Nuer are, indeed, playing different ethnic ‘language games’. Using the terms ‘Anywaa’ and ‘Nuer’, they refer to different ideas of ethnic identity and to divergent conceptualizations of what an ethnic group is. These divergent conceptualizations correspond in turn to different rationalities and create a potential for conflict in situations of increased interaction. The Anywaa and the Nuer communicate in various domains of social life, but the messages conveyed are frequently not understood by those for whom they are intended. In explaining the two ‘emic’ modes of ethnic identity construction, I find it necessary to adopt an historical approach. My own ethnic language game is, like that of 1.

Compare the similar distinction in Hutchinson 2000 between the ‘primordialist’ and ‘performative’ approaches to ethnicity on the part of the southern Sudanese Dinka and Nuer respectively.

16

Playing Different Games

the Nuer, constructivist; but it differs from the Nuer understanding of constructiveness insofar as in adopting an ‘etic’ position, I do not attribute any intrinsic worth to a constructivist mode of ethnic identity formation as the Nuer do. Both the Anywaa primordialist ethnic identity and the Nuer constructivist ethnic identity are constructed under specific historical circumstances and in response to certain sociopolitical processes. These identities differ in their modes of construction on the basis of the nature of social experiences, in the conditions of their mobilization and in their historical depth. Viewed from a diachronic perspective, neither the Anywaa nor the Nuer mode of identification has remained stable, despite assumptions to the contrary on the part of the Anywaa and the Nuer themselves. In fact, the Anywaa identity discourse seems to have moved over time from an assimilationist ideology to an ideology of ethnic purity. The conditions under which the transformation of the identity discourses has occurred can be specified with reference to differing interactional settings and various social experiences. Based on the available evidence, I hypothesize that the objective conditions for the construction of these contrasting ethnic groups are related to differing processes of ethnogenesis. Historians of Nilotic society have noted that the Lwoo, a category of people among the western Nilotes including the Anywaa, incorporated various groups of people during what Crazzolara (1950: 34) called their ‘epoch-making migrations’ from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. In the postmigration period the emergence of the Anywaa as a distinct people among the Lwoo seems to have been conditioned by relative isolation or by the presence of weak neighbours, who could not serve, in the process of self-identification, as ‘ethnic others’. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the relevant ‘other’ in Anywaa ethnogenesis is an oppositional spiritual force known as Jwok. In Anywaa ethnic identity discourse, Jwok is a belligerent force posing a constant threat to their existence. Anywaa primordialism has been reinforced by various socio-political processes, including the confrontation of Anywaa primordialism with Nuer constructivism as well as the territorial and cultural encroachment of the Ethiopian state on the Anywaa cultural world. Apart from a brief moment of politico-military empowerment in the early decades of the twentieth century, the Anywaa have been weakened progressively with their incorporation into the Ethiopian state. The centre-peripheral mode of relations between the Ethiopian state and its minorities has undermined the possible emergence of an alternative national identity that is both meaningful and inclusive. In fact, the Anywaa have practiced their ethnic identity within the Ethiopian state as a form of resistance, further elaborating on their primordialist imagination of ethnic identity. The new political process related to ethnic federalism has further validated and reinforced their primordialist concept of ethnic identity. Nuer conceptions of ethnic identity, on the other hand, seem to have developed in the opposite direction, i.e., from an earlier ideology of ethnic purity to an elaborate assimilationism in the context of their dramatic territorial expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nuer ethnogenesis seems to have taken place in a context characterized by a high occurrence of competitive intergroup interaction with neighbours, particularly the Dinka (Evans-Pritchard 1940a; Sahlins 1961). This appears to have produced an externalized boundary-making process in the Barthian

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 17 sense of the term. As a result, Nuer ethnicity is strongly pragmatic: ethnic membership is defined in terms of competence in ‘the cultural standards of evaluation’ rather than being based on origin. This entails an inclusive identity discourse that places a high premium on ethnic conversion (becoming Nuer). As in Barth’s version of constructivism, there is an instrumentalist current in Nuer emic constructivism. The emphasis on ethnic recruitment among the Nuer is consistent with a strategy of resource extraction. As will be shown, however, new social experiences have recently induced an incipient form of primordialist reconfiguration of the Nuer identity concept (cf. Hutchinson 2000).

Ethnicity and Conflict Understanding the link between ethnicity and conflict is even more problematic than debating the nature of ethnicity. The existence of an ethnic identity does not necessarily entail the political mobilization of group members in conflicts. Horowitz (1998) has identified a wide variety of theories of ethnic conflict, including primordialism as advocated by Shils (1995) and Issacs (1975). The primordialists are principally concerned with describing the density and intensity of ethnicity as a form of collective identity. Horowitz (1998: 5) has summarized their views on the link between ethnic identity as a form of Gemeinschaft and ethnic conflict in the following manner: ‘a sense of community of this sort … necessarily generates awareness of other communities, and this spills over (by mechanisms unspecified) into conflict and violence’. Taking the primordialist notion of the coercive nature of ethnic emotions as their point of departure, some sociobiologists have developed theories of ethnic conflict based on evolutionary conceptions of kin selection and inclusive fitness (van den Berghe 1981; Brewer and Miller 1996; Gil-White 2001). From this perspective, ethnicity has an adaptive value ‘because individuals historically were unable to survive alone. The benefits of cooperation, however, decline as groups expand, and so there is an optimal level of group distinctiveness beyond which groups lose the loyalty of their members ... Outside the boundaries lie ethnocentrism and hostility’ (Horowitz 1998: 12). The most explicit formulation of a primordialist theory of ethnic conflict has come from anthropologists inspired by evolutionary psychology. Taking birth as the essential criterion for group membership, Gil-White (2001: 535) recently advanced a normative theory of ethnic conflict, rehabilitating the old concept of ingroup amity as a condition for out-group enmity: ‘[the] baseline attitude towards out-group ethnics, in the best of times, is one of at least mild distrust’. Interacting with members of groups who do not share norms about social exchange may entail inclusive fitness costs, he argues. Thus, a cognitive framework that sharply demarcates ethnic groups as if they were natural species has, in his view, survival value. In another theory of ethnic conflict, ancient hatred between groups is emphasized. This idea, which is especially popular in the mass media, explains contemporary conflicts in much of the less-developed world with reference to the resurgence of ancient hatreds (Varshney 2002). While some hostilities are very old, however, many are not (Horowitz 1998: 6). Even in the more distant past, apparent antipathies were often constructed by means of undercommunication of cooperative intergroup relations. Although traditional antipathy may play a role in some con-

18

Playing Different Games

flicts, it is far from sufficient in explaining all current conflicts. It is true that the expansion of the Nuer in the second half of the nineteenth century and their encroachment on Anywaa territory provides a historical reference point for the contemporary Anywaa–Nuer conflict, so that, in this sense, past enmity enters significantly into contemporary actors’ definition of the conflict situation. However, this past enmity is once again relevant not in its own right but because the Nuer continue to expand. Institutionalized identity politics within the Ethiopian state have also influenced the selective memory of the Anywaa, which is based on a narrative of loss. Advocates of the clash of cultures theory argue that conflicts arise between ethnic groups ‘whose values are in conflict, who want different things, and who do not really understand each other’ (Horowitz 1998: 6). This theory of ethnic conflict was originally a reaction to the ‘contact hypothesis’. Proponents of the contact hypothesis argue that the key feature of prejudice and intergroup conflict is the existence of unfavourable stereotypical attitudes and related behaviour. The best way to reduce tension and hostility between groups, these same authors suggest, is to bring them into systematic contact with each other in various ways (R. Brown 1995: 236). Contact alone, however, is not a sufficient condition for reducing inter-ethnic hostility, especially in situations of unequal relations. Forbes (2004: 74) identifies three variables that condition the nature of contact between ethnic groups: (1) ‘the equality or inequality of status of the groups in contact’; (2) ‘their cooperative or competitive interdependence in the pursuit of common goals’; and (3) ‘the presence or absence of social norms supporting intergroup contact’. It will be shown that the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer is not related to a lower level of interaction but rather to changes in the nature of their contact. After the initial conquest of Anywaa territories by the Nuer, the relationship between these two groups evolved into a seasonal symbiotic interaction that was built upon complementary exchanges of products from their respective agrarian and pastoral economies. This seasonal contact was well regulated by a local power differential: Nuer settled temporarily in Anywaa territories along the banks of the rivers with the consent of Anywaa local leaders. Changing power relations and the transition from seasonal to permanent contact have made the cultural differences between the two groups more visible. In his insightful article ‘The Cultural Contexts of Ethnic Differences’, Thomas Eriksen (1991: 140), drawing on Wittgenstein’s (1983) concept of language games, identifies three inter-ethnic contexts where the degree of shared meaning is variable: (1) language games within a single language, which ‘implies agreement over constituting and strategic rules of interaction … [through which] the agents understand each other when they are playing the same language-game’, (2) overlapping language games, when ‘there is agreement as to the form and content of only some relevant aspects of the interaction’ and (3) incommensurable language games, when ‘interaction is difficult and its regulating rules will normally be defined by the most powerful agent. Misunderstandings and highly divergent definitions of the situation will be common’. In conceptualizing ethnic identity, the Anywaa and the Nuer play incommensurable language games, in Eriksen’s sense, which makes for an inter-ethnic context with great potential for conflict. The Anywaa define the inter-ethnic context as a Nuer conspiracy to eliminate them. This interpretation is partly generated by the profound cul-

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 19 tural differences between the two societies, including a divergent conceptualization of what an ethnic group is or ought to be. If, however, the Anywaa are angered by what Hutchinson (2000: 9) calls ‘the sticky grasp of the Nuer on their neighbors’, the Nuer are also bewildered by attempts of the Anywaa to achieve ‘closure’. Cultural differences between the Anywaa and the Nuer find expression in contrasting ideas of the link between identity and the land. Anywaa identity discourse is rooted in an historical sense of place; thus, the land has an important symbolic meaning. Nuer identity discourse is mobile, and territorial expansion is a function of their material conditions of life, especially of the exigencies of the pastoral economy. The Anywaa experience Nuer territorial encroachments less as a threat to their economic well-being than as a symbolic violation of their cultural world. In fact, one aspect of the struggle in the Anywaa–Nuer conflict is the struggle for cultural identity. The Anywaa are trying to prevent the Nuer from making territorial and also cultural encroachments. It is a struggle that is fought at different levels and with different means, encompassing the masses and the elites in different social arenas. Competition for natural resources is another factor that is often cited in explaining ethnic conflict (Fukui and Markakis 1994; Schlee 2004). Riverine lands represent a contested resource at the inter-ethnic level in the Gambella region. Access to and control of riverine land is, therefore, a genuine material concern for those who participate in ethnic conflict. Nevertheless, not all the resource conflicts are based on ethnicity. Even when a resource conflict assumes an ethnic dimension, not all the Nuer are antagonistic towards all the Anywaa. Therefore, competition for natural resources is not in itself a sufficient factor to generate the conflict between the contemporary Anywaa and Nuer. There are internal divisions within each ethnic group, and there is a buffer zone occupied by groups that have links to both sides and, therefore, would benefit from inter-ethnic peace. In fact, in Gambella, resource conflicts within ethnic groups often take more severe forms than those between ethnic groups, because the various subgroups are competing for the same economic niches. Other theorists argue that elite competition for political power drives ethnic conflict (Vail 1991; Brass 1999). According to Brass (1999: 13), ‘elite competition is the basic dynamic which precipitates ethnic conflict under specific conditions, which arise from the broader political and economic environments rather than from the cultural values of the ethnic groups in question’. Brass further notes (1999: 25) that ‘ethnic communities are created and transformed by particular elites in modernizing and in postindustrial societies undergoing dramatic social change. This process invariably involves competition and conflict for political power, economic benefits, and social status between competing elite, class, and leadership groups both within and among different ethnic categories’. Not surprisingly, the elite competition model has been criticized for creating an inaccurate picture of ‘evil’ politicians and ‘innocent’ masses and for leaving too little room for individual acts by those members of the masses who engage in conflict behaviour. The model sheds light on the ethnic process, but it cannot provide definitive answers to the questions posed by Horowitz (1998: 9), including the following: ‘Why does inter-elite conflict proceed along ethnic lines, and why do the followers of elites follow them if the benefits flow solely to the elites whose interest motivates the strug-

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Playing Different Games

gle?’ Varshney (2002: 29) criticized the elite competition model in similar terms: ‘If the masses were only instrumental with respect to ethnic identity, why would ethnicity be the basis of mobilization at all? Why do the leaders decide to mobilize ethnic passions in the first place?’ Furthermore, the depiction of the elites as manipulators leaves no room for their occasional articulation of societal concerns. In my analysis of the dynamic relations between the Anywaa, the Nuer and the Ethiopian state, I will show that elites, while often pursuing their own self-interest, often also articulate and engage in vital collective interests. While doing so, they are not, however, in total control of the effects of their own actions. They are, indeed, rational actors, but the end result does not always match their intentions. If the empowerment of the Anywaa in the 1990s led to the political marginalization of the Nuer elites, it also meant an increase in Nuer expansion into Anywaa areas, which allowed them to gain access to social services, most of which were concentrated in these Anywaa areas. The unintended consequences of political action can also be illustrated with reference to the varied results the Anywaa and the Nuer elites obtained by framing local issues in national terms. The Anywaa initially succeeded in framing their conflict with the Nuer in terms of ‘Ethiopian citizens’ troubled by the ‘Sudanese Nuer’. But this also encouraged the Nuer to adopt the same political discourse in the politics of entitlement. Indeed, the Nuer utilized the Anywaa strategy of political entitlement with greater success than the Anywaa, but it also resulted in increased intra-ethnic political fragmentation, as some Nuer tribes or clans appeared to be ‘more Ethiopian’ than others. In the wider debate over causes of ethnic conflict, I go beyond monocausality, explaining the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer with reference to three interacting variables: identity, resources and power. The multiple causal links and the interaction between the variables that generate conflict are formulated in this book as follows: • Contrasting ethnic identity formations create the potential for ethnic conflict (the identity variable) • Unregulated access to and control over natural resources lead to ethnic conflict (the resource variable) • Differential patterns of incorporation into an ethnically stratified state generate ethnic conflict by altering inter-ethnic power relations and preventing the emergence of an alternative national identity (the power variable) The ‘identity’ variable is related to the cultural opposition inherent in the contrasting ethnic identity formations, which find expression in different ethnic language games. For the agrarian Anywaa, ethnic identity is territorialized, and this is the basis for interethnic exchanges. The identity discourse of the Nuer, embedded in their pastoral lifestyle, is mobile – a contrast which is also evident in the constitution of their local communities. Unlike Anywaa villages, Nuer local communities can be transplanted into new territories with new members who can claim full membership. The inherent formation of Nuer culture is geared towards the dissolution of other ethnic boundaries, resulting in their own territorial and demographic expansion and eliciting from the Anywaa an even more extreme reiteration of their primordialist self-understanding. This has produced mutually antagonistic stereotypes. The contrasting ethnic identity

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 21 formation has also created a certain degree of value dissonance. For example, the economic value the Nuer give to the land and the symbolic value the Anywaa give to the land make it difficult to negotiate a settlement of interests at the inter-ethnic level. The ‘resource’ variable is related to access to and control of riverine lands. This type of land covers only a minimal percentage of the total land area of the region, but it has outstanding agricultural and pastoral value. Imbalance in the geographical distribution of riverine land also contributes to resource conflicts. Most land of this type is located in Anywaa territories. Individual Nuer and Nuer local communities have a strong desire to gain access to riverine land, which is vital for their agropastoral livelihood. Thus, the economic stakes are high for both the Anywaa and the Nuer. For the Anywaa, however, the economic expansion of the Nuer into the riverine lands also poses an additional threat, insofar as land serves as a symbolic resource in their identity construction. The resource dimension of the Anywaa–Nuer conflict, as it is experienced through the lens of varying identity structures, must be understood with reference to fluctuating local ‘power’ relations and translocal political processes – particularly the various ways in which the two ethnic groups are incorporated into the state system. Anywaa and Nuer elites do compete for political power, but power is valued not only for its materiality. In the case of the Anywaa, it is also of vital importance in their attempts to maintain their ethnic identity and support their status claim. This is all the more true in the context of post-1991 Ethiopia, where state politics are organized in terms of ethnic federalism. Anywaa elites seek political power in order to contain Nuer expansion and to prevent what they perceive as the threat of the extinction of Anywaa society. For their part, Nuer elites seek power to create and expand a political space that allows them to make use of the new opportunity structure that has accompanied ethnic-based decentralization in Ethiopia. Basically constituted in terms of centre-periphery relations, the ethnically stratified Ethiopian state has failed to integrate its historic minorities such as the Anywaa and the Nuer in a positive way. The strategic co-optation of one or the other ethnic group by the various political regimes has created fluctuating inter-ethnic power relations. Rather than providing opportunities for transcending ethnic division by constructing an alternative national identity, the Ethiopian state has thus become an arena for inter-ethnic competition. Simultaneously, the competitive relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer has allowed state actors to seek political control in the spirit of the old dictum, ‘divide and conquer’. The lack of political will on the part of the government to resolve the conflict in a sustainable manner might have its own political rationality, namely, that of enhancing state control over its periphery. This book identifies the causes of conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. What is more, it also shows how these causes interact. In competing over natural resources, the Anywaa and the Nuer orient themselves with reference to different identity systems. The interplay between the resource and identity variables is expressed in the different values that the Anywaa and the Nuer give to the land and in the inevitable misunderstanding this creates. In inter-ethnic relations, the Nuer, pursuing their own economic interests, overlook the symbolic concerns of the Anywaa. Conversely, the economic imperatives of Nuer territorial expansion are interpreted by the Anywaa in terms of a conspiracy theory: They see it as a deliberate

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attempt by the Nuer to eliminate the Anywaa. The interplay between the identity and the power variables, on the other hand, is expressed in the Anywaa’s discourse of ethnic extinction. The progressive economic and military decline of the Anywaa within the Ethiopian state has undermined their capacity to contain Nuer territorial encroachments. The failure of the Ethiopian state to integrate its minorities and its recent institutionalization of ethnicity have also put a premium on primordialist imaginings of the social universe. Thus, in post-1991 Gambella, the three variables to which I refer in explaining the Anywaa–Nuer conflict – identity, resources and power – reinforce one another. Nuer expansion has assumed a new dimension, as it has a direct bearing on the politics of ethnic entitlement. Nuer pastoral mobility is now associated with the expansion of a political constituency, which, in turn, leads to a magnification of the Anywaa discourse of ethnic extinction. It is in this new political context that the issue of Anywaa ethnic rights becomes prominent. The subsequent chapters substantiate the main arguments of the book. The two chapters of Part II describe and analyse the contrasting ethnic identity formations of the Anywaa and the Nuer. Chapter Two shows what makes the Anywaa primordialists, describing the conditions for the primordialist configuration of their ethnic identity formation; while Chapter Three shows what makes the Nuer constructivists, describing the conditions for the constructivist configuration of their ethnic identity formation. The first two chapters of Part III – Chapters Four and Five – explain the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer as resource-based and identity-based conflicts, respectively, and they show how the two variables interact. Finally, Chapters Six to Nine explain Anywaa and Nuer conflict in terms of their differential pattern of incorporation into the Ethiopian and Sudanese states.

Notes on Methodology This book has grown out of ethnographic fieldwork that I carried out from 2000 to 2006. Systematic fieldwork was preceded by two years of residence in Gambella, from December 1997 to September 1999, when I worked there as a research officer and programme coordinator for a nongovernmental organization, the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD). The working conditions and the staff composition of the organization made it an ideal site for preliminary observations. Members of each of the three major groups in Gambella (the Anywaa, the Nuer and the Highlanders) worked in the organization in various capacities. My own social position as a Highlander was a ‘methodological resource’. In Anywaa–Nuer relations, the Highlanders, given their identification with the Ethiopian state, become an audience for their political debate.2 The two years when I lived in Gambella were times of heightened conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. In fact, it was the magnitude of one of these conflicts, the 1998 conflict in Itang, that inspired me to carry out research along the lines developed in this book.

2.

It was relatively more difficult for me to do fieldwork in Gambella after 2003, when a major conflict broke out between the Highlanders and the Anywaa.

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 23 As a researcher in the Department of Conflict and Integration at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany, I carried out thirteen months of fieldwork in Gambella between June 2000 and May 2001 and in January and February 2002. In March 2002, I undertook further fieldwork among the Anywaa and the Nuer refugees in Kenya and the Sudan as part of a research project, ‘Social and Political Settings of Refugees’, organized by the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University. From May 2003 to February 2005, as a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Osaka University, I carried out fieldwork in Gambella: in the Anywaa and Nuer refugee camps in Ruiru, Kenya; in Pochalla County in southern Sudan; and in Khartoum. From December 2005 to March 2006, as a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, I was occupied with additional fieldwork in Gambella. Throughout 2007, I conducted research among the Anywaa and Nuer diasporas in the United States and Canada, also following up on their homeland ties. The nature of the research topic required a multi-sited ethnographic project for which specific sites were chosen on the basis of the issues being explored. Nevertheless, much of the data used in this book is derived from four sites: Gambella town, Pinykew village in Gambella district, Makot village in Itang district and Wechdeng village in Jikaw district. The choice of these sites was largely dictated by the nature and density of the social and political interactions of the people being studied. Gambella town is the main area of interaction among the Anywaa, the Nuer and the Highlanders. According to the 1994 census, the town had a population of 18,263, of which thirty-four per cent were Anywaa, ten per cent were Nuer and fiftysix per cent were Highlanders. Above all, most of the contemporary conflicts between the Anywaa and the Nuer have occurred in Gambella town. Pinykew village is located eight kilometres west of Gambella town. Traditionally, Pinykew was an Anywaa village, but since the mid-1980s it has hosted a growing Nuer population, the members of which were attracted by the availability of social services in nearby Gambella town. The Nuer in Pinykew live in a compact settlement area called Ochom. According to the 1994 census, the population of Pinykew village was 2,500. Although the numbers of Anywaa and Nuer in Pinykew are roughly equal, the Anywaa are politically dominant. This partly mirrors the new power relations at the regional level and is based largely on Nuer recognition that it is Anywaa land. The subordinate position of the Nuer is expressed in the power of the Anywaa to appoint and demote local Nuer leaders. The Nuer also pay tax to the government on behalf of the Anywaa, which de facto gives them something equivalent to a ‘residence permit’. This power relation echoes the seasonal encounters that occurred when the Nuer were hosted by Anywaa nobles and headmen prior to the 1970s. Unlike other rural villages and Gambella town, where the nature of social and political relations are characterized by contestation and intermittent conflict, social relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer in Pinykew village during the study period were largely peaceful.3 It was this peacefulness and my interest in comparing the dif-

3.

The only major confrontation between the Anywaa and the Nuer in Pinykew occurred in 2002, itself a spillover from the power struggle between the Anywaa and Nuer elites in Gambella town.

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ferent processes in different villages that led me to choose Pinykew as one of the villages to study. The nature of the social and political relations in Pinykew is used to illustrate the changing power relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer in the context of the new ethnopolitics in the Gambella regional state. The third main field site was Makot village in Itang district. Makot is also a village with recent Nuer migrants, who came to Itang in the early 1980s, largely from southern Sudan. Unlike Pinykew, however, Makot had been at the forefront of conflicts between the Anywaa and the Nuer, though social and political relations have also included cooperative economic exchanges. One of the extended case studies (the 1998 conflict in Itang district) is drawn from Makot and the neighbouring villages. The fourth main field site was Wechdeng village in the Kurtony area, which is the Thiang Nuer wet-season settlement area in Jikaw district. Most of the data used to describe the Nuer identity discourse and practices is derived from the microcensus I conducted in Wechdeng village. Wechdeng village serves as my main example in demonstrating the flexibility in Nuer recruitment of ‘outsiders’ for membership in their local communities. Wechdeng village was founded by Deng Buoy, an assimilated Dinka. The integrative thrust in Wechdeng village is contrasted with the persistence of the insiders-outsiders boundary among the Anywaa in Akedo village on the Baro River. To illustrate the process of ethnic conversion, especially among the Nuer, further intermittent fieldwork was carried out in the following localities: Akobo villages of Pone, Burbey and Jingmir; the villages of Pol, Itiel and Pinyman in Itang district; and the mixed-settlement villages of Edeni, Pijwo and Teyluth in Jikaw district. The research area included four districts, Gambella, Itang, Jikaw and Akobo, where the majority of the Anywaa and the Nuer live together. The Anywaa who live in these districts are the Openo Anywaa, whereas the bulk of the Nuer covered by the study are the Gaat-Jak, with the exception of Pone and Burbey villages, which are home for the Gaat-Jok Nuer. In Gambella town, however, all of the Anywaa and Nuer sections are represented. In order to get a more accurate picture of the refugee population, I also carried out fieldwork in the refugee camps, particularly in Pinyudo refugee camp, located in the Anywaa district of Gog, some seventy kilometres south of Gambella town. In March 2001, I visited Utalo village in Pochalla County in southern Sudan, where I attended the coronation ceremony of Adongo Ageda, the current nyiya (king) of the Anywaa. In August and September 2002, I carried out fieldwork in Nairobi and Khartoum among the Anywaa and Nuer refugees and political leaders. The fieldwork in Nairobi, where I managed to interview some of the key political actors who were in Gambella prison during my earlier fieldwork, was crucial. Most of the data for the analysis of transnational political networks in the Anywaa–Nuer conflict is also based on fieldwork in the Sudan and Kenya. I used a variety of tools to collect data. One of the research tools was localization through host families. In Gambella town I stayed in the guest house of the church compound of the Eastern Gambella Bethel Synod (EGBS), also known as the Mekaneyesus Church. This was also the site of the church’s administrative office. There were three families living in the compound, two Anywaa families and a Highlander family. Being a ‘normal’ resident in the compound gave me the degree of invisibility that was necessary to observe everyday interaction between the Anywaa

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 25 and the Highlanders. I also cultivated friendly relations with my Anywaa and Nuer field assistants, who often stayed with me in the compound. The rapport they developed over a period of seven years contributed to the development of an atmosphere that allowed me to engage them in discourse and counter-discourse. I gained considerable insight into the complexity of inter-ethnic relations in Gambella by observing the interaction among my research assistants. I also had a host family in Gambella town, George Nikola and his wife and children, an interesting family with a mixed history. George Nikola is a descendant of one of the Greek merchants who came to Gambella during the enclave period (1902–56). He is a Highlander on his mother’s side and is married to an Anywaa. George is very knowledgeable about the early history of Gambella, and his wife, Ariat, an Anywaa from Gog area, commands a considerable degree of respect among the Anywaa in different walks of life. Apart from enjoying the advantages of my longterm acquaintance with George’s family, I also benefited from being in his family home, which was an important social meeting place. His compound was frequented by notable Anywaa opinion-makers, who were also my interviewees. In Pinykew village, I was hosted by Riek Tuany, a Gaat-Jak Nuer from the Cieng Cany clan. Following Riek’s recommendation, I built a hut in his compound. I chose Riek as my host for two reasons. First, he is the first Nuer settler in Ochom, the Nuer section within Pinykew village, and so my association with him helped me to gain recognition among the others more easily and more quickly. As the representative of the Nuer, Riek had a compound that served as a site for socializing, particularly in the days before and after court cases. Court cases are preceded by factional politicking and followed by a drinking party. My stay in Ochom subvillage enabled me to learn about the different facets of Anywaa–Nuer relations, not least the economic basis of Nuer local power (the cattle economy), which is at the heart of the assimilation process and ultimately leads to ethnic conversion, particularly in areas far from administrative centres, where there is less reflexivity on ‘identity maintenance’. The Anywaa political influence in Pinykew village is not supported by economic power, and so it is not unusual in everyday life in Ochom to see Anywaa asking Nuer for favours or entering into unequal economic exchanges. Riek’s family is also interesting, insofar as it illustrates one of the micro-processes through which the Nuer expand, i.e., instrumental inter-ethnic marriages. Riek’s second wife is a widowed Anywaa, and my intimate and open discussions with him and his Nuer first wife, Buk, about inter-ethnic marriages provided most of the data I used to explore the grey area between manifest and latent functions of social acts. I employed similar research methods in Makot village. My first attempt to visit Makot village in 1998 was frustrated because, by then, it was a ‘no-go zone’ after months of bitter conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer in Itang district. This resulted in the imprisonment, for one year, of Kong Diu, the leader of the Cieng Reng Nuer community in Makot village, as one of the ‘ringleaders’ of the conflict. When I went back to Gambella to carry out fieldwork in June 2000, I learned that Kong had been released and had left for Addis Ababa to appeal to the national parliament for citizenship for his community. I followed him to Addis Ababa. After some initial hesitation on his part, we established a rapport and, over a period of

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intermittent meetings, the relationship further developed into a friendship. When Kong left Addis Ababa for Gambella, I followed him to Makot village, where Kong, who had been impressed by my courage in visiting him in what was still a ‘no-go zone’, introduced me to the Cieng Reng Nuer as his trustworthy friend. This personal relationship was crucial for my fieldwork in Makot village. Without it, it would have been virtually impossible for me to earn the confidence of the Makot villagers, who, living through an extremely volatile and uncertain situation, had good reason to be suspicious of strangers. The data I used for one extended case study (the 1998 conflict in Itang) is largely derived from formal and informal exchanges I had with Kong in various places.4 I conducted extensive semi-structured interviews with people of various social categories among the Nuer, Anywaa and Highlanders in Gambella town and in the villages. These interviews were conducted in various ways. Interviews with ordinary Anywaa and Nuer men and women in rural settings were carried out in vernacular languages with the help of my Anywaa and Nuer field assistants, who also worked with me as translators. I tried to enhance translation accuracy through cross-checking with other native translators, particularly for the narratives included in this book. Furthermore, my admittedly limited knowledge of both languages still enabled me directly to follow some of the conversations and to communicate during casual encounters in everyday life. I conducted interviews with the Anywaa and Nuer political leaders and ordinary men and women in the urban areas either in Amharic or in English, whereas all of my interviews with Highlanders were conducted in Amharic. A few of my interview partners agreed to be identified with their real names, but most of the names of interviewees have been replaced with pseudonyms in order to ensure their anonymity. The choice of the interviewees was largely dictated by their degree of relevance to the case studies selected. I organized the interviews in a way that allowed me to elicit discourses pertaining to the definition of the conflict situation. Explorations of the life-histories of interview partners helped me to determine the extent of the overlap between individual and group interests. I also conducted random interviews and informal discussions. By recording interviews in narrative form, I came to understand the views, worries and concerns of my various Anywaa and Nuer informants and was able to document their own stories and definitions of the conflict situation. The bulk of the argument in the cultural analysis of the conflict is derived from these narratives. I tried to minimize the limitations of selectivity by including ‘negative cases’, that is, alternative representations of the conflict that did not fit into the dominant discourse of the group. Thus, in addition to interviewing the main political actors in the conflict, who, not surprisingly, subscribed to an essentialist discourse of ethnic differences, I also talked to ordinary Anywaa who had encountered new forms of social experience. These categories of interviewees included both educated Anywaa and church leaders, who, despite their presumed modernist and universalistic outlook, were often at the forefront of ethnic radicalism. 4.

Kong passed away in February 2003. I would like to take this opportunity to express my condolences to both his family and the entire Cieng Reng community in Makot village.

Theoretical Orientation and Arguments 27 I also used a novel method that I call ‘engaged conversation’. Throughout the fieldwork period, I participated in political debates as a former resident of Gambella. On the basis of past experience, I could initiate everyday conversations on issues related to the conflict situation without appearing to be an interviewer. In the course of ‘engaged conversations’, I mediated a discursive dialogue, provoking the Nuer with Anywaa arguments, and vice versa, in order to elicit their counter-arguments without naming the originators. This methodology was intended to evoke counterdiscourses in order to gain access to what went on in the minds of the relevant actors, i.e., what they thought the conflict was about and how they were involved in the conflict. This methodology had its own rewards and risks. Except for one major incident, I was successful in my approach. In Makot village, I was once confronted by a Nuer elder who thought that I was defending the Anywaa in the discursive dialogue I was conducting. In the middle of our conversation, he became very angry with me and said, ‘You are talking like the Anywaa’. In the tense atmosphere that followed, my reputation was restored, thanks to Kong’s intervention. In his opinion, I was a friend of the Cieng Reng, evidenced by my courage in visiting his troubled fellow villagers and listening to their worries. Interviews were supplemented by systematic observation and participation. This included attending conferences, political meetings and celebrations on public holidays, and getting the ‘feel’ of the emotional landscape of those who participated in the conflict. I was in Gambella during the 1998 Itang district conflict between the Nuer and the Anywaa. I visited some of the Anywaa villages burned by the Nuer, talked to the displaced Anywaa in Itang town, and met many Nuer in Itang and Gambella towns who were deeply angry about what they called unacceptable Anywaa domination. I was horrified by the magnitude of the conflict and the atrocities committed by both sides. During my systematic fieldwork, the emotional investment of both the Anywaa and Nuer in the conflict later became a part of the problem for which this study seeks to provide solutions, at least analytically. What generates such strong emotions? Were such atrocities mere creations and manipulations by the elites as is often claimed in the literature on ethnicity? While preparing for the field, therefore, one of my main research inspirations was Horowitz’s (1985, 1998, 2002) perennial question: ‘Why do followers follow in situations of ethnic conflict?’ My personal encounter with the people who took part in the conflict convinced me that there is more to ethnicity than a mere ‘false consciousness’ – an observation which became vivid as I got to know more about the attitudes and the differences between the Anywaa and the Nuer in their definition of the conflict situation. Another important research tool I used was the microcensus. I conducted a complete microcensus in Pinykew village in order to determine demographic trends, economic status and push-and-pull factors for migration.5 An additional neighbourhood census was conducted in Wechdeng village to determine the social composition of a local Nuer community, which became the data I used to determine Nuer social organizations and their mode of recruitment into local communities. Collection and 5.

I learned about microcensus as an anthropological research tool from Professor Günther Schlee during his visit to my field sites in February 2001.

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Playing Different Games

analysis of songs, proverbs and sayings was another method of data collection. I found it useful to learn which aspects of social interaction are judged to be typical and which historical events are remembered by whom and how. I collected and analysed the songs and sayings particularly to learn about stereotypes, collective memory and cultural representations of the political process. As the research project was basically diachronic, I used historical methods in order to examine the impact of the various political regimes on local identification processes. Towards that end, I carried out archival research in Gambella town and in the two highland towns of Gore and Metu. I supplemented my own archival research and the oral accounts of the interviewees by drawing on two seminal dissertations on the history of the region and its people: Bahru Zewde’s Relations between Ethiopia and the Sudan on the Western Frontier (1976) and Gabriel Jal’s History of the Eastern Jikany before 1920 (1987). I also consulted the writings of Robert Collins extensively, particularly Land Beyond the Rivers: The Southern Sudan, 1898–1918 (1971) and Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, 1918–1956 (1983). Data for the Nuer concept of ethnic identity was generated from my own observations as well as from three sources: Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer trilogy: The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940a); Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (1951a) and Nuer Religion (1956); Douglas Johnson’s Nuer Prophets (1994); and Hutchinson’s Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with War, Money and the State (1996). For the discussion of the Anywaa discourse of ethnic identity, I supplemented my own material with four sources: Evans-Pritchard’s Political System of the Anuak of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1940b); Lienhardt’s two articles on the Anywaa village headmen (1957 and 1958); two volumes of Perner’s meticulous ethnography on the Sudanese Anywaa, The Anyuak: Living on Earth in the Sky (1994 and 1997); and numerous articles by Kurimoto on contemporary Anywaa politics and their subsistence economy.

Part II The Contrast

Chapter 2

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation Once one concedes that the term ‘ethnicity’ refers to a range of phenomena linked loosely by certain underlying family resemblances, in Wittgenstein’s sense, it becomes evident that ethnic groups may exhibit considerable variation in their specific manifestations. This chapter is devoted to a description and analysis of the formation of ethnic identity among the Anywaa – a formation which may be characterized generally as primordialist. In this context, the term primordialism is used as a gloss for the ‘emic’ discourses and practices of the Anywaa themselves: the Anywaa believe that ethnic identity is among the ‘givens of social existence’ (Geertz 1963: 109) that are conferred by birth. The primordialist aspects of Anywaa ethnic identity are observable in various domains of social life, including in particular their ideas of origin, their marriage practices, their ideology of purity, their village-based political organization, and a belief system based on particular understandings of territoriality. A primordialist style of establishing ethnic boundaries may be inferred from Anywaa interactions with neighbouring groups, from Anywaa images of divinity and also from new socio-political processes, including especially the reactions of the Anywaa to the hegemonic projects of the Ethiopian state.

Emergence of the Anywaa – Common or Diverse Origins? While the Anywaa tend to view themselves as essentially homogeneous, due to their supposedly common origin, the evidence from language history, ethnohistory and the analysis of mythology is ambiguous. The following, very brief review of the literature on Anywaa ethnogenesis is offered here to provide some insight into the complexity and controversy surrounding the origins of a supposedly ‘pure’ ethnic group and to serve as a backdrop to the subsequent exposition on the various aspects of the ‘emic primordialism’ of the Anywaa. Anywaa – sometimes spelled Anuak or Anyuak by other scholars – is the name of the people. Pach Anywaa and dho Anywaa are, respectively, terms which the Anywaa use to refer to their country and their language. Dho Anywaa is part of the western Nilotic language family, and within that family it is classified under the category of the Lwoo (Crazzolara 1950; Ogot 1967).1 The Nilotes are said to have come from West Africa and to have occupied the Nile valley in central Bahr al-Ghazal ‘perhaps before the birth of Christ’ (Collins 1971: 51). Crazzolara (1950: 34) believes that Anywaa ethnogenesis occurred in the context of the ‘epoch making migrations’ of the Lwoo. 1.

Lwoo is spelled by other scholars as Lwo (Collins 1971) or Luo (Ogot 1967).

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The Lwoo group consists of nine major divisions, including, among others, the Anywaa and the closely related Päri and the Shilluk of the Sudan, the Acholi of Uganda and the Luo of Kenya (Crazzolara 1954; Reh 1996). Crazzolara (1950: 31) suggests that ‘the land of origin of the Lwoo must apparently be sought for southeast of Wau and south of the Bahr-al-Ghazal’. Collins describes the great Lwoo migrations as follows: In the fifteenth century … the Lwo began to migrate from the Bahr al Ghazal. The Lwo marched south and east toward the Bahr al-Jabal. [One group] struck off to the north … Another group led by Gilo also disengaged themselves from the main body, marched north and east to the Sobat River, and made their way upstream to their present location at the base of the Ethiopian escarpment. They are known today as the Anuak … in the seventeenth century, a splinter group moved from the Anuak country to Lafon Hill where they are called the Pari, while a second clan, the Pajook, penetrated southward into Acholi territory in to northern Uganda. (Collins 1971: 53) Jal concurs with Collins in locating the original homeland of the Lwoo, their routes of migration and the reasons for the migration. He further identifies the last settlement of the Lwoo before their split into various groups as Wipach, east of the Bahr el-Ghazal, near the Lake No: Their tradition recalls that the Luo [Lwoo] managed to remain in harmony at Wipach until the three cousins, Nyikang, Dimo and Gilo placed a quarrel [sic] which led to the splitting up of the Luo migrants into three groups … Dimo led a party of adherents and marched southwards … Nyikang led another group … to the west bank of the White Nile and Gilo led a third party and went eastwards, directly to the Bahr el-Jebel which they seem to have crossed to the east. (Jal 1987: 111–12) The underlying causes of the Lwoo migrations may have been, Crazzolara (1950: 33) speculates, internal population pressure or displacement by the Nuer-Dinka group.2 The Anywaa emerged, as Collins (1971) argues, from a Lwoo splinter group. Crazzolara (1950, see annex) identified the complex routes of Lwoo migration as they are depicted here. The views of Crazzolara (1950) and Collins (1971) reflect those of the Anywaa themselves, who trace their origin to Gilo, the leader of one of the Lwoo splinter groups. It is for this reason that contemporary Anywaa call themselves dibuoc gilo (followers of Gilo) or kwar nyigilo (descendants of Gilo). They refer to a popular myth to establish their common origin. This myth is about the aforementioned quarrel among three brothers – Nyikang, Gilo and Dimo; it is about ‘getting one’s

2.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had seen waves of population movements involving the Somali and the Oromo as well as the Nilotes in much of East Africa (Bahru 2001).

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 33

Figure 2.1 Routes of Lwoo migrations

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Playing Different Games

own thing back’.3 In this narrative, the quarrel between Nyikang and Dimo is given as the reason for the rupture between the Anywaa (Nyigilo), on one hand, and the Shilluk (Nyikang) and the Jur-Luo (Dimo), on the other. Some analyses in the secondary literature suggest, however, that the contemporary Anywaa had diverse origins. For example, Perner (1997: 134–35), attempting to reconstruct ethnohistory using clues provided by mythology, hypothesizes that Anywaa history started with three leaders: Cuai, Gilo and Othieno. The existence of people called Jowatcuai (a clan named after Cuai) seems to lend support to this hypothesis. Cuai is mentioned in other myths as the chief of the Anywaa before the emergence of the divine nobles. Another origin myth documented by Perner suggests a separate origin for one of the Anywaa clans, the Jowatnaadhi: [Out of the ashes of the skin of a divine goat] grew two calabashes: one had a long and narrow neck (awido) while the other had no neck (amulo). People of the village belonging to the chief of the Maro clan tried to open the calabashes in order to make vessels out of them, when a voice cried from inside that the knife was hurting. People got very afraid and threw the calabashes into the river. The calabashes were carried away by the water. The awido calabash went downstream and reached the country where the Nuer people are living today; it was cut and out came the ancestors of the Nuer. When the people tried to open that awido gourd in the Nuer country, a voice warned them not to cut it. But the people insisted and opened it by force. It appears that the calabash cried very loudly, as the people had to put the knife in it many times until it was finally split open. Because of the people’s disobedience and because they had inflicted great pain on the calabash, the Nuer were cursed by it: ‘Was it you, Nuer, who cut me?’ the calabash said. ‘Well then, your children’s heads shall be marked forever’. The amulo gourd was seen floating in the river by children who took it on land. Inside the calabash, there was a voice singing … The children brought the calabash to the chief of the village, Cwai [Cuai] … It took a long time to split the calabash, as the people tried not to penetrate with their spears inside the calabash. Finally, it was split into two halves. In the right half of the gourd, there was a human being and its placenta. In the left half of the gourd a small lizard was found. This lizard is known as digwi Watnaadhi (lizard of the Watnaadhi people). The child found in the gourd was taken home for care … and he was adopted. [He was named Abek and became the chief of the village]. Abek prophesised that after his death his grave would turn into a mountain. On the fifth day after his death, Abek turned into a mountain. The people evacuated the village because they feared Abek’s spirit. (Perner 1994: 80–82) The origin myth of the Jowatnaadhi clan is intriguing for a number of reasons. First, it establishes a common origin for this Anywaa clan and the Jikany Nuer on the basis of 3.

The idea of ‘getting one’s own thing back’ is featured in many Nilotic mythologies. In this myth, Nyikang and Dimo quarrelled because they demanded, respectively, the same beads and spear that they had lost to each other.

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 35 their shared name, Naath, an ethnonym of the Nuer. Evans-Pritchard (1940b) provides further evidence of links between these two groups. There is, he notes, a similarity between the honorific name of the Jikany Nuer and the honorific salutation of the Jowatnaadhi clan: ‘The honorific name of the Jikany tribes is gatyou (nyayou) while the honorific salutation of the Jowatnaadhi is nyooyu and … the Gaatgankiir, the dominant clan of the Jikany tribes, like the Jowatnaadhi, believe that their ancestor came out of a gourd’ (Evans-Pritchard 1940b: 32). So it seems possible that the Jowatnaadhi clan was originally a proto-Nuer group which was later detached from the broader Nuer background; or it could have been a Nuer division that was incorporated into the Anywaa during the Lwoo migrations or at a later stage. But the really intriguing question is why this myth accounts for the origin of one Nuer section (the Jikany) but not for all of the Nuer, who also call themselves Naath but do not share this myth of origin. Generally, however, the calabash mythology is significant for seeming to suggest that the contemporary Anywaa have diverse origins – a point contradicted by most Anywaa discourse. The supposition that contemporary Anywaa actually have diverse origins – which receives further support from Evans-Pritchard’s suggestion that the Anywaa clan named Jowatjaango may be traced back to the Dinka – might well be suggestive of an assimilationist past probably made inevitable by the large-scale migration of the Lwoo. But despite or perhaps because of these apparently diverse origins, the Anywaa espouse an identity discourse based on a strong ideology of a common origin, namely, common descent from Gilo. In this sense, their own self-understanding corresponds to the standard definition of an ethnic group as a community that is based on a subjective belief in a common origin.

Anywaa Social Organization and the Ideology of Purity Anywaa primordialism also finds expression in an ideology of ethnic purity, which is linked to distinctive practices of ethnic distancing, of descent and descent group affiliation, and of alliance. At first glance, the evolution of the Anywaa identity discourse of ethnic purity seems paradoxical, given their Lwoo roots. According to Crazzolara (1950: 45), ‘the Lwoo could never afford to be too particular in their choice, and they have never been. The Lwoo do not despise a man because he is an alien. These dispositions guided the Lwoo in their migratory march and have become the base of their growth and greatness up to the present day’. Crazzolara does note, however, that Lwoo assimilationist tendencies have their limits: The Lwoo have never incorporated aliens into one of their clans as the Nuer used to. Prisoner-slaves are joined or added to a family or clan group and treated as blood-relatives. Such men would be given wives, or cattle to marry, as members of the family; but with their children and descendants they started their own sub-clan and social life … The real Lwoo autochthons of the group always remained distinct and the real masters, the ruling clans; while the assimilated, added clan groups always remained in the mind and tradition of the people, descendants of ancient slaves. (Crazzolara 1950: 47–48) Similarly, recent war captives were incorporated into Anywaa society, but they were subjected to identity-distancing by the ‘pure Anywaa’. Descendants of Murle and

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Nuer captives taken during the large-scale Anywaa counter-offensives against the territorial expansion of the Nuer in the 1910s are still recognizable as a separate group of people, referred to as Tung Akwei, named after the Anywaa king who famously carried out the raids. Anywaa notions of ethnic purity seem to be especially evident in social organization and in practices linked to descent and descent group affiliation. The Anywaa are divided into twelve clans called dho-oto: the Jowatcuai, Jowatnaadhi, Jowatmaaro, Jowatjango, Joponguu, Jowatmaalo, Jowatong, Jowatluaalo, Jowatkaanyo, Jowatyuaa, Jowatnaamo and Jowatmuongo (Evans-Pritchard 1940b).4 Besides these, there is a royal clan called the Jowatnyiye, which is related to the Jowatong clan, whose members lost their noble rank because of their failure to acquire the royal emblems. Each dho-oto has its salutation, or math, i.e., the mode of address used for both male and female members of the clan by members of other clans. Membership in any given dho-oto is determined through patrilineal descent, but other aspects of Anywaa kinship pertain to relatives of the mothers. For example, each dho-oto is divided into descent groups called tung, defined by Evans-Pritchard (1940b) as patrilineages; but a tung as understood by the Anywaa also includes the maternal kin (Kurimoto 2000: 3). Each dho-oto also has an honorific title, or paak. Girls take the honorific title of their father’s clan, and boys take the honorific title of their mother’s clan. Thus, the patrilineal affiliation of the mother is relevant for her children’s social identity; and in order to be considered fully Anywaa, one should be born of Anywaa on both the father’s and the mother’s sides. In this sense, the Anywaa conception of social status institutionalizes an identity discourse that centres on the ideology of ethnic purity. Ideally, then, a person needs to be Anywaa on both paternal and maternal sides of his or her family in order to claim full Anywaa ethnic identity; otherwise, he or she will be socially disadvantaged, deprived of both honorific title and clan salutation. This emphasis on purity discourages inter-ethnic marriages. Children of mixed ethnic background are subjected to social discrimination. They are referred to by the derogatory term jur, which literally means ‘foreigner’. In sum, marriage practices have served as mechanisms for the active maintenance of an ethnic boundary. The names of children born of inter-ethnic marriages often signify their ‘foreign’ background. As a result, few of the ethnically mixed children live with their Anywaa parents. This stands in contrast to the practices of the Nuer, who give names featuring the integrative motif to children of ethnically mixed parents.5 The ‘pure’ Anywaa employ naturalistic arguments in justifying their own practices of ethnic purity. For example, in the following statement, an informant from Pinykew village explains Anywaa scepticism regarding adoption and assimilation with reference to supposedly self-evident truths derived from biological origins: 4. 5.

The prefix Jo- means ‘people of ’. Nyanuer is, for example, a common Nuer name given to a daughter with a mixed ethnic background. It means ‘daughter of the Nuer’. Ugaala, on the other hand, is a typical name that the Anywaa give to a person born of an Anywaa father and Highlander mother. It means ‘he has become a Highlander’.

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 37 This is the way we were created. We do not take other people’s things. Stealing of whatever sort is bad. It kills you. The Anywaa ask about origins. You might adopt a child, but there is always a danger that when he grows up people might bother him. Although the adopted child grows up with the family, people might remind him of his background. For that reason the Anywaa do not take other people’s children. It is different with the Murle and Nuer. They steal people, just like they raid the cattle. (elder Ujulu Omot, Pinykew village, June 2000)

A Particularistic Medium of Social Exchange Unlike their pastoralist neighbours, such as the Nuer, the Dinka and the Murle, the Anywaa do not ascribe a crucial role to cattle in creating and maintaining social relationships. In traditional Anywaa society, fundamental social relationships between leader and commoner, elder and junior or husband and wife were created through the medium of beads. The traditional Anywaa bridewealth is not cattle but the blue glass beads called dimui (see Figure 2.2). The social significance of the beads is so fundamental that Evans-Pritchard called the Anywaa the ‘beads people’ (1940b: 20). The origins of dimui are obscure. In their oral traditions, the Anywaa say that the ancestors brought the beads with them in ancient times. According to other statements, dimui were brought to the Sudan from Egypt by Ottoman traders. Be that as it may, dimui is for the Anywaa the scarce good par excellence. There is a finite supply of dimui, which cannot be replenished and which are transferred from one kin-based group to another in the form of bridewealth, bloodwealth, ransom or other kinds of payment. Traditionally, the number of dimui one possessed deter-

Figure 2.2 Anywaa woman with dimui necklace (photo: Dereje Feyissa)

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mined one’s status. The beads possessed by a family formed a kind of heritage, which was controlled by elders and which, therefore, gave them tremendous power over juniors. Men were also dependent on their sisters, inasmuch as they could usually only gain access to dimui through the bridewealth that they received when their sisters married. With the beginning of wage labour in the 1950s, especially in coffee plantations in the neighbouring highlands, and with the beginning of salaried jobs and gold mining, it became possible for men who lacked sisters or daughters to buy dimui; but because of its fundamental scarcity, it always eluded commercialization. Sometimes, perhaps often, men without sisters could gain access to dimui, if only indirectly, by placing themselves in the service of a noble (nyiya, pl. nyiye) or a headman (kwaaro, pl. kwaari), who then served as their patron. When the client had reached the age that entitled him to marry and had rendered sufficient service to his patron, especially through agricultural labour in his gardens, then the patron would assume responsibility for paying the bridewealth. The nobles and headmen were able to accumulate dimui by means of imbalanced reciprocity, to modify Sahlins’s famous term. While the nyiye and the kwaari received dimui for their daughters’ marriages, they were not required to pay dimui for their sons’ marriages; rather, it was the sons’ maternal uncles who assumed responsibility for these payments. This created a oneway flow of the resource on which power was based, filling the treasury of the nyiye and the kwaari with one of the most desired cultural objects. At the same time, however, the nobles’ and headmen’s dimui was considered to be public property, insofar as these offices served as redistributive centres for dimui-poor families. In return for their crucial support in helping poor people marry, the nyiye and the kwaari could build a constituency based on their networks of clients. Besides serving as a medium of exchange among the Anywaa, the dimui are a marker of Anywaa identity in the eyes of the Anywaa themselves and in the eyes of their neighbours.6 Because the dimui are valuable and scarce, the Anywaa make efforts to prevent their loss to the community through bridewealth payments to outsiders. In this way, the dimui and the practices related to them encourage ethnic endogamy, place a limit on inter-ethnic marriages and, more generally, reproduce the ethnic boundary between the Anywaa and others. One consequence of this effective policing of the ethnic boundary, however, is to limit the demographic size of the Anywaa, particularly in comparison to assimilationist neighbours with an expanding cattle-based bridewealth system.

Descent and Territory as Structuring Principles There were two kinds of political communities in traditional Anywaa society: the jinyiye (‘peoples of the nobles’) and ji-kwaari (‘peoples of the headmen’). The jurisdiction of both the nyiye and the kwaari were confined to specific territories. Leading scholars have found Anywaa territoriality to be worthy of special commentary. According to Evans-Prichard (1940b: 37), for example, ‘the Anuak are strongly

6.

Besides the dimui, there are at least five other kinds of beads that are peculiar to the Anywaa and that have specific meanings and uses; for example, the uchuok, which serve as royal emblems.

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 39 attached to the sites where their ancestors lived and often tenaciously occupied them in the face of extermination.’ In a later work, this same author illustrates the close identification between the Anywaa village and the dominant lineage, or jobur, of the village, by emphasizing the precarious status of newcomers: ‘however long strangers and their descendants live in a village and however much they intermarry with … [the jobur], they can never become members of it but remain welo, strangers’ (EvansPritchard 1947: 93). According to Kurimoto (1992: 4) ‘the Anywaa possess a clear notion of their territory’. Perner (1997: 144) described Anywaa territoriality in a similar way: ‘Because of fighting – but also because of floods – the history of Anyuak settlement never ended. But if one site had been chosen as the definite home of one community and had been inhabited for several generations, its people would never give it up definitively but would always try to return and re-occupy it’. Anywaa territoriality is embedded in the institution of the earth priest known as the wat-ngomi. The wat-ngomi is selected from the jobur. In Anywaa cosmology, the sphere of the earth has a spiritual dimension, a quality which, according to Perner (1997: 51), is expressed in their daily greetings: piny bede nidi (‘how is the earth/your land?’, ‘how are you?’) to which one answers: piny be`r yak (‘the earth is just fine’) or piny rac (‘the earth is bad’, ‘things are bad’). The relationship between earth and the people living on it is a very intimate one. The earth is respected, as it is considered a site for the piny kwari (ancestors). According to Perner (1997: 77), the wat-ngomi is ‘the representative of the earth and of the earthly substance of human life and can, because of his authority, urge the matter of earth to fulfil its natural duty of protecting a foreigner who has come with merely friendly intensions’. This ritual office is hereditary but with no political rights derived thereof. Besides ensuring fertility (human and agricultural), and maintaining the ‘dignity’ of the earth, the wat-ngomi also ensures the separation between the human and animal territories. When wild animals threaten a village, the wat-ngomi performs a ritual to protect the villagers. The village is the principal unit of social identification among the Anywaa. A village is identified with a dominant lineage but, despite a strong preference to stay in one’s own lineage village, there are always strangers, the welo. It is the lineage of the first-comers who become the dominant lineage of a village. A clan per se is not associated with a particular territory. The twelve Anywaa clans are dispersed nearly in all the regions, although there might be a concentration of one clan or the other in a certain region. The Jowatcuai and the Jowatnaadhi, for instance, are prevalent, respectively, in the Adongo and Akobo regions. With the exception of the noble clan, a commoner clan as a whole has no precise genealogical structure (Evans-Pritchard 1940b: 28). As shown in Table 2.1, more than six clans are spread along the Baro River, collectively known as the Openo Anywaa. Members of the Jowatnaadhi, the Jowatcuai and Jowatnaamo clans live in three different villages each. The Jowatnaadhi are also prominent in the Akobo region, whereas the Jowatcuai are also found in the Adongo region and so on. Clusters of villages form regional groupings. As Perner (1997: 88) noted, ‘when Anyuak think of their country, they do it in terms of regions and distinguish eleven factions’. These Anywaa regions are Openo, Rawanye, Jor, Ciro, Lull, Bat Gilo, Nyakani, Ojwa, Adongo, Tiernam and Thim. A region is not a political unit and it

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Table 2.1 Anywaa villages and clan distribution along the Baro River Village

Dominant lineage

Name of clan

Emetho Pinymau Etiel Pole Pinymole Pijuwo Emetho Pimoli Enyuwey Edeni Itang Kir Pinymou Abol Akedo

Pelow Pubala Pompai Tung Gilo Pakini Ejuwo Pelow Pinygilo Pumalo Puguta Nyguni Tungwit Pinykuey Tumbela Ekan

Jowatnaamo Jowatnaamo Jowatnaadhi Jowatnaadhi Jowatnaadhi Jowatcuai Jowatnaamo Jowatcuai Jowatjango Jowatcuai Jowatcuai Jowatongo Jowatmaaro Jowatmaaro

(Source: author’s field notes)

primarily designates ecological conditions. However, at times, the regions or cluster of regions might form a political block or units of social identification. In contemporary Anywaa politics in the Gambella region, for instance, political alliances are often framed in terms of the ecological differences and separate political history of the Openo and the Lull. The Openo are those who live along the Sobat River and its tributary Baro River. When used in the Anywaa language as an ecological category, lull means ‘forest’, specifically the area between the Baro and the Gilo Rivers, ending in the east at the foot of the Ethiopian escarpment. In present-day Gambella the districts of Abobo and Gok are considered Lull regions, but Lull is also used by the Openo Anywaa to refer to all the groups outside of the Baro/Sobat basin. Ideally, the Anywaa fix descent with territory, but practice has it that there are always welo in many of the villages. Nevertheless, the welo permanently remain as guests and are always treated as ‘second-class’ village citizens. The Anywaa say, ‘One must be a very bad person to leave his natal village in the first place and settle with others’. Guests of a temporary or permanent nature are welcome but they are not fully integrated into the jobur; they might contribute to the economic or military strength of the village, but they can also leave at any time. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, the Anywaa and the Nuer differ in their conception of a stranger. A stranger is marginal among the Anywaa and he is not fully integrated into the centre. Among the Nuer, a stranger plays a crucial role in the affairs of the centre, particularly in the competition for vital resources and political power. Anywaa territoriality was originally a general conception of the spiritual dimension and supportive nature of the Earth. But the longer the familiarity with a particular territory, not only does the attachment to it become greater, but it also becomes a more constitutive part of local identity. Unless there are good reasons to leave, such as epidemics, pressure by neighbours or crop failure, the ideal is to remain permanently in one’s natal village. In extreme cases, the Anywaa can be re-rooted to a new

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 41 village, but this occurs only as a last resort. Even when they leave their villages, the Anywaa keep the names of their former villages. Resettlement in a new village requires an elaborate ritual of ‘befriending’ the new earth. The exclusivity of an Anywaa village is expressed in an anthem known as agwaga. Each Anywaa village as a territory has boundaries (kew), known to both its own inhabitants and those of other villages. According to Perner (1997: 180–81), ‘each village in fact does have its territory with boundaries, well known by everybody […] the borders of a village’s territories were outlined by runners who went to circumscribe the limits of a site, fixing certain points (such as trees, mouths of rivers, etc.) as boundary posts. The clear demarcation of a territory is extremely important as it helps to avoid conflicts between people of different territories’. The Anywaa’s strong emotional ties to their own territory contrasts with apathy towards other people’s land. Evans-Pritchard (1947: 64) reported that there were more than one hundred and twenty Anywaa villages in Ethiopia, and Perner (1997: 86) mentioned that there were forty to fifty such villages in the Sudan. Until the 1970s, there were more than forty autonomous villages alone along the Baro River in Gambella, which formed distinct local identity units, each associated with a dominant lineage. The Anywaa notion of territoriality is different from the notion of autochthony as applied, for instance, in West African cases, where groups claim to have originated from a particular territory or where some lands could assume a sacred status (Lentz 2000). The Anywaa have no such holy places. Some parts of a territory, such as nobles’ graves, streams and extraordinary rocks, assume a spiritual dimension and are believed to be inhabited by a supernatural being, Jwok. However, these abodes of Jwok in ‘human territory’ are not revered, but avoided. More than half a century after Evans-Prichard’s (1940b) observation, a similar discourse on territoriality still exists among the contemporary Anywaa. In March 2001, for instance, the Adongo Anywaa were evicted by the Openo Anywaa from the village of Akedo by the Ekan lineage after an interpersonal quarrel became politicized on the basis of origin. The Adongo Anywaa belong to the Jowatcuai clan whereas the Ekan dominant lineage in Akedo belongs to the Jowamaaro clan. The Adongo Anywaa first came to Akedo village in the 1950s, when the American Presbyterian Mission established a clinic there. Like the Adongo Anywaa, many other Anywaa and Nuer flocked to Akedo village in order to have access to the new welfare services provided by the church, giving the village a more multi-village and multi-ethnic composition. But neither the Nuer nor the Anywaa migrants were ever fully integrated into the Akedo village community, although a significant number of them intermarried with the Ekan. After they were evicted from Akedo village, the Adongo Anywaa resettled in Gambella and Itang towns. Interestingly, they did not use their half-century of localization as an argument for entitlement to remain in Akedo village. In not doing so, both the Akedo and the Adongo villagers played the same language game. When they use the term Akedo, they mean it belongs to those Anywaa whose ancestors come from Akedo. Identification on the basis of territory is often described in the literature as inclusive (civic) as opposed to an exclusive ethnic form (Brown 2007). The Anywaa, however, intertwine descent with territory, which makes their mode of identification a ‘thick’ primordialism. ‘Anywaaness’ is not only defined in terms of purity of blood

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but also in having a location in a particular village. Residence in a certain village does not mean ‘belonging’ to it, a mode of identification which sharply contrasts with the Nuer. As will be shown in the next chapter, residence in a village among the Nuer guarantees one a secure local identity, whereas newcomers are viewed as political resources in the competition over community leadership.

The Anywaa Political Organization Anywaa territoriality also finds expression in characteristic forms of political organization, which are quite distinct from the political organization of their neighbours. The relatively centralized ‘village state’, which has been described in detail by EvansPritchard (1940b) and Lienhardt (1957/58), contrasts sharply with the political organization of their pastoralist neighbours such as the Nuer, whose decentralized political system has been described by anthropologists as ‘ordered anarchy’ and which is more contemptuously referred to by the Anywaa as ‘chaotic’. As has been seen in the preceding section, there were two kinds of political communities in traditional Anywaa society: the ji-nyiye (people of the nobles) and the jikwaari (people of the headmen). Despite some differences in their political status, both the nyiye and the kwaari were attached to specific villages, and they rarely embarked on missions of territorial expansion. While inter-village warfare was rife among the Anywaa (Evans Pritchard 1940b; Shumet 1986), none of these intervillage fights resulted in territorial encroachments. The object of the struggle between the various nyiye and kwaari was not territory but royal emblems or emblems of authority. Traditional Anywaa politics is noted for its rituals (see Figure 2.3). The insignia of the offices of headmanship and kingship consisted especially in additional forms of precious beads; in particular, a string of beads called the abudho for the kwaaro and a necklace called the uchuok for the nyiya. Unlike the dimui of the common people, the abudho and uchuok cannot be obtained by exchange; they must be inherited within ruling lineages. In addition to the uchuok, there is a second royal emblem, the walo (the royal stool). The Tooth Drum, three spears and iron fork are also regarded as royal emblems. The nyiya who controls the uchuok and the walo is called the nyinya. The nobles were found in the east and south-east part of the Anywaa land and that of the headmen in the rest of the country (Evans-Pritchard 1940b: 38). The royal emblems, however, are not monopolized entirely by the nyinya, as he is required occasionally to allow other nyiye to wear the uchuok and to sit on the walo to demonstrate their nobility. Nevertheless, the competition for the position of nyinya was a constant source of warfare. In the sixteenth generation after the foundation of the Anywaa kingdom by the descendants of Goora, the royal line was divided into two: the tung udola and the tung goc.7 By the late nineteenth century, the tung goc had left the Adongo region and established a new political centre at the foot of the Alwero River on the eastern fringes of Anywaa land (the present-day Abobo district of the Gambella region), thus extending the nobles’ political sphere of 7.

Goora had two sons, Udiel and Apur. The mother of Udiel was called Akew Nyigoc and the mother of Apur was called Ochuro Nyiudola. The two lineages were named after the respective mothers.

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 43

Figure 2.3 Nyinya Adongo’s coronation at Utalo village, 28 March 2001 (photo: Dereje Feyissa)

influence farther east. The royal emblems alternated between the tung udola and the tung goc until, in the mid-1920s, the British fixed the royal centre in the Adongo region in present-day southern Sudan (eastern Anywaa land), further dividing the two royal lines. The political system of the Anywaa is characterized by a kind of ritual kingship, which Evans-Pritchard (1940b: 137–38) describes: The Anuak kingship is a good example of the ritual character of African kingship … The royal emblems have only a ritual value. Their composition symbolizes some of the more important objects in Anywaa culture, beads, spears and drums …The kingship is indivisible. It can circulate, but there cannot be more than one king at the same time … The kingship is not an office with ritual duties but is itself a ritual object … It is the acceptance of a common value, and not corporate action, which constitutes the polity. Comparatively, the nyiye hold more power than the kwaari, but the office of the headmen is also buttressed by ritual authority. For example, men bow low and women kneel down in front of the kwaari – a courtesy called gungi. As in the case of the nyiya, courtesy is due primarily to the institution of headmanship, not to the headman himself (Lienhardt 1957). In return for the prestige and respect that the incumbent of the office of kwaaro receives, he is expected to provide regular feasts. Neither the nyiya nor the kwaaro wields absolute power. In fact, the instability of leadership is characteristic of Anywaa political history. Leaders are respected inas-

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much as they continue serving their people by sponsoring feasts, helping the poor to marry and leading their followers to victory. In extreme cases, Anywaa leaders, particularly the kwaaro, may be removed violently from office for failing to offer such services, either in fact or in allegation. This is known as agem, which Lienhardt (1958: 31) called ‘village rebellion’, i.e., violent efforts on the part of members of certain factions aimed at replacing a discredited leader by a new favourite. The Anywaa mode of governance, kingship and headmanship ties people to a specific territory (villages), and its distinctiveness reinforces their sense of who they are. The Anywaa take pride in their political organization as an index of ‘civilization’ and often contrast it with ‘stateless’ pastoralist neighbours such as the Nuer and the Murle. Anywaa traditional leaders, particularly the nyiye, provide ideals of social behaviour and are the bearers of the ideology of purity. Ideally the nyiye do not marry into other ethnic groups.

Anywaa Cosmology The Anywaa primordialist identity discourse is also embedded in their cosmology. In the post-Lwoo migration period, the Anywaa seem to have developed an elaborate worldview that has, to a large extent, defined their sense of who they are. In Anywaa cosmology the relevant ‘others’ serving to help orient self-understanding are Jwok and animals. The Anywaa self-image is expressed in the concept of luo. The term luo refers to human purity. In Anywaa cosmology, luo is contrasted with Jwok, the world of spirituality. Jwok is the principle of creation and is represented by its dual nature, the forces of creation (nyingalabuo) and the forces of destruction (nyidungu). The Anywaa belief system recognizes three ‘spheres of existence’, which Perner (1994) calls the Human Person, the Sphere of the Earth, and the Sphere of Spirituality (Jwok). Each is entitled to ‘exist’ within its own specific sphere. The Anywaa do not subscribe to the concept of a supernatural being that ‘governs’ the natural world. They acknowledge the precedence and primacy of Jwok, but the dominant pattern of relationship between Jwok and human beings is oppositional. In most Anywaa creation myths, human beings appear to have been an accidental product of Jwok’s creative work and to have survived not because of Jwok’s will but despite it (Lienhardt 1962: 77–78; Perner 1994: 57–68).8 In Anywaa identity discourse, therefore, human existence, particularly that of the Anywaa, has to be defended against ‘encroachments’ by Jwok. Jwok is not envied for its power, but is merely contrasted with humans. In this belief system, there is no ‘original sin’ and subsequent ‘fall’ as in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The source of human suffering is attributed directly to the malevolence of Jwok (nyidungu). The only positive aspect of Jwok is creation; but, even so, Jwok regretted having created a conscious being that was similar neither to the animals nor to the spirits. In fact, in the creation myth, the Anywaa owe their survival to the caring Medho (dog), not to the creator Jwok. The persistent themes in Anywaa–Jwok relations are those of confrontation, abandonment and hostility. When the destructive side of Jwok is manifested, as in 8.

For a full account of Anywaa creation myth, see Perner (1994), Living on Earth in the Sky: The Anyuak, Volume I, The Sphere of Spirituality, pp. 57–68.

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 45 droughts, epidemics, infertility and floods, people openly revolt and chase Jwok out of their villages. Such acts of resistance against Jwok are expressed in collective rituals. One of these rituals is pö, which Perner describes (1994: 143) as a ‘manifestation against the presence of Jwok in human territory … it takes place in the case of general death in the village, when Jwok has become a common disease’. The Anywaa ‘chase’ Jwok from the human territory by making a human noise. Perner (1994: 143) presents the ritual as follows: ‘At the sight of the new moon, the Odolodrum will be taken out to the dancing place of the village and beaten by elders; women will take the skins out of their huts and beat them with a stick, thus cleaning them from the dust; the men of the village and the children will clap their hands and shout “ci-ya, ci-ya, ci ki moi ya” (Go-yaah, go-yaah, go with your own)’. The Anywaa rebellion against the evil Jwok alternates with appeasement. When a woman is pregnant and about to give birth, Jwok might appear to her in dream. When this occurs, the Anywaa say that Jwok is jealous of the creative capacity of humans. Ultimately, however, the creative principle is attributed to Jwok: ‘The women will in such a case symbolically give her child to Jwok, naming it after that particular spirit; beads of certain colours particular to that Jwok are to be tied around that child’s neck, thus demonstrating its affinity with Jwok but also to concentrate Jwok in those particular beads and to prevent it from entering the child’s body’ (Perner 1994: 115).9 The Anywaa are ambivalent about Jwok, which they recognize as the ultimate source of power. They also attribute ultimate justice to Jwok, at least in its benevolent capacity (nyingalabuo). But the Anywaa do not pray to Jwok for justice; rather, they invoke it, even against Jwok’s destructive features. As Lienhardt (1962: 75) puts it, ‘Anuak have produced headmen and nobles, but not significant priests or prophets’. Although they actively resist Jwok, the Anywaa also connect with it discursively, for example, in the name they give to themselves: nyilwinyjwok, ‘unique among Jwok’s creations’. The Anywaa worldview and the identity discourse it entails are expressed in dominant symbols such as the sexual features marking the boundary between humanity – luo or the Anywaa – and Jwok. If Jwok is primarily defined as pure spirituality, luo is physical, a quality that consists principally in having ‘proper’ sexual organs. ‘Proper’ sexual organs must not exhibit any anomalies, such as peculiarities in the number and shape of the testicles, an incompletely formed vagina, or a penis that is disfigured naturally or through circumcision.10 In Anywaa identity discourse not all of those who seem to be human satisfy the aforementioned criteria. There are those who ‘look like’ humans but who in reality work for Jwok (and its various manifestations) and participate in the destruction of humanity. Such anomalous beings are called padhano, ‘nonhuman’. The padhano are greatly feared because they work 9.

In the Anywaa belief system Jwok can manifest itself as various spirits at various times. ‘That spirit’ and ‘that Jwok’ refer to a particular manifestation at a particular time. 10. The Anywaa believe that Othieno, an Anywaa culture hero who is believed to have brought technical knowledge and equipment to the Anywaa country, was socially rejected because of his circumcised penis. An Anywaa oral tradition has it that even when Othieno turned into a lizard after his rejection, the lizard was still recognized as circumcised (Perner 1994: 182).

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within ‘the human territory’ as fifth columnists, to borrow a military metaphor. The padhano are not only destructive but also indistinguishable, for, although their features are known, it is difficult to detect them, except in their childhood. Since adult padhano are not easily recognizable, children are carefully watched. One of the dominant events after childbirth is checking the testicles or the vagina of the infant. If any of the aforementioned signs are observable, the child has to be disposed of, lest it grow up to be a padhano (Perner 1994: 182). From the perspective of the Anywaa, the witchcraft of the padhano is not motivated by personal envy or by any of the factors known from standard sociological explanations for witchcraft. For the Anywaa, witches simply work for Jwok in furthering the ultimate destruction of humanity. That is why the padhano are called ci-Jwok, ‘wives of Jwok’, modelled on Anywaa gender relations, which subordinate women to their husbands.11 The padhano operate by spiritually transplanting bones in their victims. This is variously called ramo or aramo. The Anywaa believe that when a ci-Jwok looks at a human being, a bone will be transplanted into that person’s body. The bone can only be removed through an elaborate ceremony performed by an ajuwa (ritual expert). If the boundary between humanity and Jwok is drawn along natural lines (sexual organs), the boundary between humans and animals is marked by artificial means (Perner 1994: 247). The second important symbol of humanity (‘Anywaaness’) is naak, the extraction of the lower incisors of humans in order to distinguish them from animals. The canines are destroyed early in infancy, and the four lower permanent incisors are removed at about the age of ten. Many Nilotic societies, including the Nuer, practice dental evulsions, but none of them attribute a fundamental meaning to it as do the Anywaa.12 Although the relationship between animals and humans is not fundamentally oppositional, animals are represented in the creation myth as part of Jwok’s conspiracy against humanity. Unlike humans, animals are not rebels against the ‘kingdom of Jwok,’ and their relationship to Jwok is believed to be peaceful. Still, animals share an ‘earthly existence’ with humans, and some animals, such as dogs and chickens, have a close relationship with the social world of the Anywaa (Perner 1994: 216).

Constructed Primordialism The Anywaa primordialist ethnic identity formation, like any other forms of identities, is socially constructed. Various social identities may differ, however, in their mode of construction in various historical contexts and in response to specific sociopolitical processes. In this section I discuss the particular circumstances that underlie the construction of the seemingly primordialist ethnic identity of the Anywaa.

11. This does not mean that all ci-Jwok are women. It is used metaphorically to express the power relationship between Jwok and humans; men can also serve Jwok as ci-Jwok. 12. Schlee (1994: 133) has analysed extraction of the teeth among the Rendille as an emblem serving to enhance visibility in intergroup interaction: ‘The Rendille refer to Gabra or Boran as “the enemies with teeth” because these northern neighbours do not remove the two central lower incisors’.

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 47

Relative isolation and social introversion It seems likely that the ethnogenesis of the Anywaa was affected by the peculiarities of the interactional setting in which it occurred. In contrast to the settlement history and the corresponding intergroup relations of other Nilotes, which were characterized by protracted warfare, there is no historical account of major military confrontations between the Anywaa and the pre-Anywaa settlers of the present-day Anywaa settlements in the Sobat basin. According to Jal, ‘on the Sobat the Anuak migrants appear to have stayed peacefully for a long time. They did not experience any threat of attack from their immediate neighbours – the Thoi Dinka who were far deep inland off the south bank of the Sobat and the Shilluk who appear to have concentrated their settlements on the west bank of the Nile’ (Jal 1987: 116). Oral traditions also suggest that the pre-Anywaa settlers of the present-day Anywaa territories were the Burun, a non-Nilotic Koman-speaking people. According to the late nyiya, Agada (quoted in Perner 1997: 138), ‘the Burun were originally in possession of Anyuak land. They were fought, decimated and enslaved’. Much remains to be learned about the early history of the Burun, but there is no indication that they were incorporated into Anywaa society. Instead, they seem to have resisted the Anywaa but to have been defeated for reasons that are not yet fully established. This is true particularly for those Burun (Opo) who live near Gambella town, to whom the Anywaa refer with the derogatory term lango, or slave (Perner 1997: 138). Given the weakness of the neighbours of the Anywaa in their new homeland, it seems fair to say that Anywaa ethnic identity evolved in relative isolation – unlike that of other Nilotic groups in the region, such as their closest Lwoo relatives, the Shilluk. None of the ethnographers and historians of the Anywaa have reported protracted fights and hegemonic struggles between the Anywaa and any of their neighbours before the nineteenth century. At the same time, much is known about inter-village warfare among the Anywaa, which has shaped the political identities of the villages to a significant degree. The Anywaa’s neighbours to the north and east are the Oromo Highlanders and the Majangir, respectively. The social and political relationship between the Anywaa and the Oromo before the arrival of representatives of the Ethiopian state was characterized by reciprocal exchange (Kurimoto 1992). The neighbouring Illubabor and Wellega highland regions of the Oromo are rich in resources. In contrast to the northern highlands, whose inhabitants have incessantly encroached on bordering lowlands in the north-west, there is no land shortage in the western highland regions.13 The other eastern neighbours of the Anywaa are the Komo and the Majangir, who are numerically and militarily weak. In fact, by the 1940s, the Anywaa of the Abobo and Gog districts had reduced the Majangir to the status of vassals (Evans-Pritchard 1947: 73). This contrasts quite sharply with the ethnogenesis of the Nuer: in the formation and reproduction of Nuer ethnic identity, intergroup warfare played a central role. 13. For a historical and comprehensive account of the land pressure on the north-western lowlands, see Wolde Selassie Abute (2002), Gumuz and Highland Settlers, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Göttingen.

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While it is wise to be suspicious of theories of ethnogenesis positing a general development ‘from isolation to interaction’, it still seems that significant differences in the nature and intensity of intergroup relations in the broader interactional milieu, as it changes over time, should be taken into account when explaining the development of particular ethnic groups and their self-understanding. During the Lwoo migration, the Anywaa were part of a larger Lwoo community, the various subgroups of which made contact with different peoples in various ways. Following the ‘epochmaking’ migrations, as they have been described in the secondary literature, the Anywaa seem to have experienced a relatively low density of inter-ethnic interaction (Crazzolara 1950/54; Ogot 1967; Collins 1971). This ‘low’ interactional density and the corresponding absence of a ‘relevant other’ in the form of threatening neighbours seems to have induced an internal mode of ethnic boundary formation, namely, the Jwok/luo relational template, as described above. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that the Anywaa began to experience sudden and massive encounters with two of their new, powerful neighbours: the Nuer in the west and the resettled Highlanders in the east.

Changes in the material conditions of life Other factors contributing to the primordialist self-understanding of the Anywaa, particularly to Anywaa territoriality as described above, include changes in the material conditions of life. Anywaa territoriality has, it seems, been strongly affected by the change from a pastoral to an agrarian mode of production. Many Nilotic people are pastoralists, but the significance of pastoralism varies from one group to another. The Anywaa are, arguably, the group that has moved furthest away from pastoralism and the associated cultural practices; this, in turn, appears to have induced a significant shift in values. Major indices of this shift in values have already been described. One is the change from a bridewealth system based on cattle to one based on scarce beads; another is the development of a strong attachment to the land, which has gained symbolic significance within an ideology of territoriality. One of the most noticeable features of the Anywaa vis-à-vis other Nilotic societies is their agrarian economy, based largely on riverine maize and sorghum cultivation, an economy which is very much embedded in the local ecology. Most of the Anywaa villages are found along rivers. It is for this reason that the Anywaa are often called ‘River Nilotes’ (Perner 1997: 103). In some areas, such as Jor district, the Anywaa still keep some cattle, but pastoralism has a minimal significance in their livelihood and social relationships. Various scholars have attempted to explain why the Anywaa stand out as ‘cattleless’ people and have become cultivators among their pastoralist Nilotic neighbours, despite indications that they were once pastoralists themselves. Evans-Pritchard (1940b: 20) was the first to note the absence of cattle values among the Anywaa, a ‘lack of that deep feeling truly pastoral peoples have for their herds’. Perner (1997: 21), however, refutes EvansPrichard’s representation of the Anywaa as ‘uncaring towards their cattle’. Through oral testimony, he establishes the recent conversion of the Anywaa from an agropastoralist to a largely agrarian life, and he also provides other kinds of evidence, most notably ecological: the presence in Anywaa territories of the tsetse fly (Trypanosomiasis), which infects

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 49 the cattle. Large parts of Anywaa land are reputed to be unfavourable for cattle keeping, owing to the hot and humid climate, which promotes a great number of other diseases. But such accounts fail to explain why the Anywaa remain cultivators even in areas where cattle could be kept, as the new Nuer settlements in Anywaa areas have demonstrated. The abandonment of the pastoral economy, notes Perner (1997), might have been caused by pressure from the Anywaa’s pastoralist neighbours, who, presumably, raided existing Anywaa herds and stole whatever cattle the Anywaa had. Finally, Perner (1997: 21) suggests an additional economic reason for the decline of the pastoral economy, namely, the presence of game and fish, which provided alternative sources of nourishment: ‘the seasonal presence of thousands of whiteeared cob antelopes [called anger in Anywaa] in their country may well have influenced the Anywaa’s decision to lead a more sedentary existence and to concentrate on agriculture, hunting and fishing’. The skin of these antelopes is still an important individual possession, even in areas where anger is no longer found. The abundance of fish supplies, particularly for the Openo Anywaa, who live along the Baro River, may have had a similar effect. Fishing is one of the crucial economic activities for the Anywaa and fish forms a significant part of the Anywaa diet. Thus, regardless of precise relations of cause and effect, Anywaa territoriality corresponds to their material condition of life. Their agrarian lifestyle ties people to specific territories.

Changes in the nature of the inter-ethnic setting The sudden and massive encounter with new and powerful neighbours appears to have reinforced Anywaa proclivities for primordialist forms of self-understanding. After centuries of relative isolation, the Anywaa began in the nineteenth century to experience territorial encroachments by two of their pastoralist neighbours, the Nuer and the Murle. In subsequent struggles, the Anywaa lost large expanses of territory along the Pibor, Akobo and Baro Rivers to both of these groups. These pastoral territorial encroachments, primarily driven by the desire for access to the riverine lands in the Sobat basin, represent not only a loss of land but also a violation of a central symbolic resource in Anywaa identity construction. Reacting to these expansive pastoral systems, the Anywaa have invested in primordial forms of boundary marking. Primordialism here emerges as a form of resistance, a counter-hegemonic project extending beyond an ‘innate’ feeling developed on the basis of self-reflection. The expansion of the Ethiopian state and the arrival of its representatives in the areas occupied by the Anywaa have also meant territorial and cultural challenges to the Anywaa way of life.14 The expanding presence of the Ethiopian state has entailed changes in the demographic structure. In contrast to the reciprocal relations between the Anywaa and the neighbouring Highlanders in the pre-state era, the recent resettlement of Highlander farmers from different parts of the country, which peaked in the 1980s, has resulted in losses of Anywaa territories and in subjection to various forms of cultural hegemony. Pressed by pastoral expansion from the west, and facing 14. For a fuller account of the Ethiopian state territorial and cultural encroachments into the Anywaa mode of life, see Chapter 6.

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a continuous influx of Highlanders from the east, the Anywaa have ‘gone on the defensive’, exhibiting, in the process, clearly xenophobic tendencies.

State-related socio-economic processes and the consolidation of Anywaa primordiality After briefly improving in the early decades of the twentieth century, the position of the Anywaa in regional politics has declined progressively with their incorporation into the Ethiopian state. Anywaa regional power was curtailed by the joint military pressures they faced from the Ethiopian imperial government and the British colonial government of the Sudan (see Chapter 6 for a fuller exposition). Their political power was further undermined by the Ethiopian government’s projects of control in the 1970s. For the Anywaa, the so-called cultural revolution of the socialist government was equivalent to cultural uprooting. Throughout these periods, the Anywaa experienced and articulated their ethnic identity as a form of resistance to state encroachments, thus further consolidating their primordialist imagination. State related economic processes have also led to the dispossession and disempowerment of the Anywaa. Over a period of a century the Anywaa gradually lost their status as producers of their own subsistence and active participants in the regional exchange economy, becoming instead consumers of relief food and Highlander products. These processes of economic marginalization have fostered Anywaa’s narratives of loss and introspection. Domestic politics and wider geopolitical processes have brought hundreds of thousands of settlers from the Ethiopian highlands and refugees (mostly Nuer) from southern Sudan to Gambella. All of these settlers and refugees were resettled in Anywaa territories. Moreover, the new neighbours appeared to be more empowered than the Anywaa, since both the settlers and the refugees had stronger ties to state actors. These new state-related socio-political processes have generated a kind of anxiety among the Anywaa, which is in turn linked to a ‘growing sense of territoriality … and autochthony’ (Kurimoto 2005: 351). Since 1991, this consciousness has intensified in the new political context in Ethiopia in which ethnic identity has been institutionalized in formal ethnopolitics. Ethiopia’s unique experiment in ethnic federalism has legitimated ethnicity and, beyond that, it has established ethnic identity as the preferred idiom of political action. Responding to the new political structure and hoping to make use of it , the Anywaa, ‘like other nationalists, … recognize their own identity from an essentialist/primordialist point of view and have an exclusive attitude towards other peoples living in Gambella’ (Kurimoto 2005: 351). The preceding discussion has shown the ‘construction sites’ of the Anywaa primordialist configuration of ethnic identity formation, ranging from an emphasis on presumed common origins to an ideology of endogamy and to pronounced notions of territoriality. It has also been seen that primordialism, like other modes of social identification, should not be taken for granted; rather, the conditions of its dynamic construction need to be explained. The conditions for the particular primordialist configuration of Anywaa ethnic identity include a whole series of variables: the absence of a ‘relevant ethnic other’ during the early period of ethnogenesis; changes in the material conditions of life, i.e., the shift from a pastoral to an agrarian life-style

The Anywaa Primordialist Ethnic Identity Formation 51 and to corresponding forms of territoriality; changes in the conditions of the interethnic setting – from relative isolation to sudden and massive confrontation with more powerful neighbours; and the state-related socio-economic processes such as political disempowerment and economic marginalization in a dominant society. Ethiopia’s unique experiment in ethnic federalism, itself based on a primordialist understanding of ethnic identity, has reinforced the Anywaa’s own primordialist imagination of the social world. In the following chapter, however, a radically different concept of ethnic identity is presented and analysed, namely, the constructivist configuration of Nuer ethnic identity.

Chapter 3

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation In this chapter, I describe and analyse the Nuer mode of identity formation, which, I argue, is not primordialist, as among the Anywaa, but constructivist. In this context, ‘constructivism’ is used in an ‘emic’ sense, that is, to refer to the Nuer conviction that ethnic identity is not ascribed but achieved – that being a Nuer is based on cultural competence rather than on shared origins. Hutchinson (2000: 9) anticipates my argument in her distinction between ‘primordialist’ and ‘performative’ aspects of Nuer ‘concepts of identity’. Still, it is important to emphasize at the outset that this view of the Nuer is at variance with received interpretations from the classical era of social anthropology. The chapter also discusses the incipient form of primordialist reconfiguration of Nuer ethnic identity formation in new socio-political contexts (cf. Hutchinson 2000: 9–12). Ever since the publication of Evans-Pritchard’s classic study, The Nuer (1940a), the larger community known by this name has become synonymous in the ethnographic literature with the so-called segmentary system based on patrilineal, or agnatic, descent. The Nuer, in Evans-Pritchard’s presentation, are a Nilotic ‘people’, who are divided into a number of ‘tribes’, or groups of related tribes, such as the Gaawar, the Lou, the Jikany and so on. These tribes or tribal groups are, in turn, divided into clans, just as the clans are divided into lineages. Finally, Evans-Pritchard distinguishes among ‘maximal lineages’, which are most inclusive, ‘major lineages’, which are less inclusive, ‘minor lineages’, which are relatively exclusive, and ‘minimal lineages’, which are most exclusive. He refers to all of these units, which represent different levels of inclusiveness and exclusiveness in the organization of descent groups, as genealogical ‘segments’ or sometimes as ‘sections’; hence the term ‘segmentary system’ (Evans-Pritchard 1940a: 148). What impressed Evans-Pritchard most, and what he sought to convey to his readers in his famous monograph, was that this segmentary system provided the basis for coordinated political action in a community of circa 200,000 souls that was totally lacking in hierarchical structures and centralized political institutions. I shall return to EvansPritchard’s analysis of decentralized political coordination among the Nuer throughout this book. At this point in my argument, however, it is important to emphasize that the segmentary system is based on the principle of patrilineal descent. When descent is patrilineal, as it is among the Nuer, all individuals, whether male or female, belong to the segments – the minimal lineage, minor lineage, major lineage, maximal lineage, clan and tribe – to which their father belongs; and, ideally, all Nuer should be able to trace their ancestry through a chain of males back to a common male ancestor. If, however, group membership among the Nuer were determined only or even primarily by descent, as Evans-Pritchard claimed, then we should expect them to be

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‘emic’ primordialists, much as the Anywaa are. In fact, it is well known that the Nuer regularly incorporate people into their communities who began their lives as outsiders, transforming these former outsiders into Nuer in the process. What is more, the Nuer are fully conscious of their practices of incorporating outsiders, and they provide extensive commentary on them. Indeed, it is largely because of their aggressively assimilationist policy that I describe the Nuer mode of ethnic identity formation as constructivist. My task in this chapter, then, is to qualify the descent-based model of the segmentary system, which has shaped our understanding of the Nuer since the publication of Evans-Pritchard’s cogent and very influential study. Clearly, patrilineal descent is important in Nuer society, as Evans-Pritchard insisted, but it is equally clear that the Nuer do not live by patrilineal descent alone. Evidence of the constructivist character of identity formation among the Nuer may be found in various domains of social life, e.g., in representations of origins in mythology, in a change in the identity discourse from purity of descent to assimilation, in multiple modes of affiliation, and in the bodily construction of manhood. I also argue that the Nuer constructivist mode of identification has a predominantly materialist character, in contrast to the ideological orientation of the Anywaa. The Nuer assimilationist drive may be understood as a social strategy for resource extraction and also as a function of competition for leadership within descent groups and under conditions of political decentralization at the national level. In revising our view of the Nuer, I draw on my own field research and on the recent secondary literature. It is a tribute to the quality of Evans-Pritchard’s research, however, that any revisionist approach to the Nuer must rest to no small degree on his data, which reveal more facets of Nuer society than one might suspect, if one is familiar with his central theses alone.

Representations of Origins in Mythology Because of similarities linking Nuer and Dinka languages, scholars have placed them together within the Western Nilotic language family (Evans-Pritchard 1940a; Lienhardt 1956; Hutchinson 1996). On the basis of glottochronological analysis, McLaughlin (1967: 87) has suggested that the separation between the Nuer and the Dinka occurred in the first century AD. Nuer definitions of Nuer ethnogenesis, however, often deviate from the organic imagery of language history, with its flowing ‘roots’, ‘stems’ and ‘branches’; and, consequently, Nuer self-understanding also deviates from standard definitions of ethnic groups as collectivities based on the subjective belief in common origins and essences. In this section, I review various Nuer and Anywaa myths for evidence of indigenous theories of origin. While some of the authors whom I cite are interested in attempting to draw conclusions from myths about actual historical occurrences, I am concerned primarily with Nuer and Anywaa self-understandings and their relation to their respective modes of identity formation. Some Nuer myths trace all human beings or all Nuer back to a single origin, but these exist only in fragmentary form. Southall (1976: 481) provides the following very brief account of common origins: ‘The tamarind tree itself was the mother of men, who either emerged from a hole at its foot or dropped off its branches like ripe fruit … this tree was in Jagai country … the Jebal Ghazal triangle … called naath

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 55 cieng, the homeland’. According to one version of the myth that I collected from Gambella, this tamarind tree is known as Jiath Lie, which is found in a village called Maar in Ler district. Jackson (1923: 70–71), on the other hand, establishes a common origin of the Dinka and Nuer, based on a popular myth: In the dim and distant past Deng Dit, the Great God of the Dinka … married a woman called Alyet … While living in an aradeib tree Alyet gave birth to Akol (or Aqwol) who married Garung from whom are ultimately descended Deng and Nuer, the respective ancestors of the Dinka and Nuer tribes … When Garung died he left behind him a cow and a calf, the former being bequeathed to Deng and the latter to Nuer … Deng stole the calf of Nuer who was the youngest brother and not able to retaliate. Nuer consequently left the family and, when he had grown to man’s estate, returned with some friends and retook his calf. From that day to this the Nuer and Dinka are constantly raiding and counterraiding one another for cattle. Evans-Pritchard, in turn, summarizes mythic representations of the descent of all Nuer from a common progenitor as follows: ‘Many Nuer regard their ancestors Gee and Ghaak as the progenitors of all true Nuer … Gee and Ghaak and Gwea are represented as brothers, sons of a mythological ancestor, sometimes called Ghau, the World, and sometimes Ran, Man, whose father is said to be Kwoth, God’ (1940a: 238–39). The idiom ran mi ran (the real person), which the Nuer employ to bolster their self-esteem, is related to this origin myth. The Dinka also use the term ran to denote a person, but only among the Nuer does it confer prestige, while denying it to members of other ethnic groups, who are not ‘real people’. Gee and Ghaak are said to have formed moieties through a ritual called rual (cutting a cow into two halves), and to have subsequently forbade marriage or sexual intercourse between their members (Jal 1987: 14). The place where rual was first practiced is called Koat Lieh, the site of a tamarind tree in Kuer Kuong (the present-day Bentiue area in southern Sudan), which is still regarded as a holy place. Koat Lieh is also called naath cieng, from where the Ghaak expanded southwards and the Gee northwards (Jal 1987: 15). In many other instances, however, Nuer origins are represented in myth as having been diverse. Evans-Pritchard (1940a: 240) acknowledges that ‘the Gaawar clan have … an independent origin, their ancestor having descended from heaven’. ‘A number of clans are not associated with tribes’, he adds. Jal (1987: 15) also cites evidence of Nuer beliefs in the diverse origins of Nuer clans: ‘Many of the ancestors of some Nuer clans appeared after Aak [Ghaak] and Geah [Gee], and according to most traditions they appeared miraculously’. The separate origin of the Jikany, a name referring to a group of related ‘tribes’ within the larger Nuer community, is recounted in a rich mythology. In the Jikany origin myth, Kir is considered to be their apical ancestor.1 Contemporary Nuer dis1.

The term Jikany is said to have come from ‘ci Kany wic ke ciok rew’, which in Nuer language means ‘someone who has come with two legs’, in reference to Kir’s mystical power with which he killed two of his wives.

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tinguish between descendants of Kir (Gaat-Kir) and descendants of Gee (Gaat-Gee). In accordance with a strict genealogical principle, Gee is recognized as the ‘original’ Nuer. On the other hand, ‘the Jikany tribes’, as Evans-Pritchard (1940a: 239) notes, ‘have dominant lineages of Dinka origin, descended from Kir’. He identifies Kir with a being found in a gourd by a Ngok Dinka named Gyng [Jing] and reared by a Ruweng Dinka (1940a: 231). On the basis of this origin myth, Evans-Pritchard (1940a: 239–40) suggests that the Jikany Nuer and some lineages of the Ngok Dinka have an agnatic relationship (buth) and that the two tribes ‘have, by analogy, a fraternal relationship’. In this mythology, Kir is said to have left the Ngok Dinka and gone to the Gaat-Gee after he killed his foster brother. Jackson (1923: 74), on the basis of genealogical reckoning, traced the birth of Kir to the beginning of the sixteenth century. With reference to such evidence in oral tradition, Johnson (1982: 185) concludes that ‘the Jikany were a group of mainly Dinka origin, closely linked to the Ngok and Rueng Dinka’. Jal, on the other hand, documents a different version of the myth, which connects Kir (of the Jikany Nuer) with the Anywaa. In the following I present Jal’s richly detailed version of this foundational myth, to which I shall return in subsequent chapters when referring to Nuer ideas of relatedness at local and national levels: The ancestral founder of the Jikany, Kiir [Kir], was an Anywaa nyipem (prince) who, after a defeat of his party by his half brother in an agem [sic, angem] (rival grouping), was taken out and made to escape in a floating gourd by his mother who said a chien (invocation), ‘thou shall go, multiply and thou shall avenge the defeat and destruction of thy family’. Incidentally, the gourd in which Kiir was hidden was discovered by a Ngok Dinka man, Yiol Kuot, who broke it into two parts and brought out the young nyipem and his ritual belongings – tuach kuach (a leopard skin), deeth (iron smith’s tools), dual (piece of skin) and Mut Wiu (the divinity spear) … Subsequently, Yiol took Kiir along together with his ritual belongings to the Ngok Dinka country, on the Zeraf island, where the young nyipem was brought up to manhood. But when Kiir grew up to manhood, the Ngok Dinka began to refuse to accept him … in their country on the ground that the nyipem was a powerful peath (witch), with the ability to employ evil powers to kill animals and people. [They] expelled Kiir from their country and Jing Mareang, his newly adopted uncle, together with a small party of men, decided to accompany the young man to an undisclosed destination. In their flight westwards … Kiir and his uncle landed on the east bank of a naam duong (large river) … But there was no canoe to cross it … As they struggled to find their way out, Kiir saw a guan yier [master of the water], Tiek [Tik]. Tiek struck the water in the river and opened up a passage for Kiir and his party to cross the Bahr el-Jebel where they were joined up by many groups of strange peoples … probably arriving in Bentiue area at about the fifteenth century … In Bentiue, however, the new arrivals did not join the Geah [Gee] or the Aak [Ghaak] groups, but they set up their own independent settlements … the Nuer sacrificed a black bull … to neutralize the power of witch-

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 57 craft in Kir … a party of men was sent back to the Bahr el-Jebel to bring Tiek … Tiek decided to put up with Jing Mareang who sacrificed a thok mi reang (bull with all colours) to welcome the new comer. After this ritual ceremony, Tiek was shaved and incorporated as a brother to Jing. (Jal 1987: 15–18) This Jikany origin myth provides evidence of complex forms of relatedness among the Nuer that go beyond the belief in common origins and common descent. Tik, the mystical figure who helped Kir cross the river, and Jing, Kir’s classificatory uncle, adopted the name of Reng.2 Tik and Jing joined the Jikany tribe called Gaat-Jak as Cieng Reng, but they both continued to acknowledge their separate origins. Various scholars identify Kir and Jing as a Dinka (Evans-Pritchard 1940a; Johnson 1982). Jal (1987: 18–19), on the other hand, establishes the Anywaa background of both Kir and Tik – or at least their connection to the Lwoo group to which the Anywaa belong. Tik’s ‘spear name’, mut pini duong, seems to be Anywaa in origin, as it is similar to the Anywaa name for a large river, naam duong.3 Thus, the Gaat-Jak is a Jikany tribe of diverse origins, including groups of people who trace their origins ultimately to Nuer, Anywaa or Dinka. According to another myth, Kir married three wives from Gee and Ghaak families. With his first wife, Nyakuini, Kir begot Thiang; with his second wife, Nyabora, he begot Khun; and with his third wife, Duany, he begot Jok. Kir died after the birth of Jok, and his eldest son, Thiang, begot him a child named Nyang with Jok’s mother, i.e., his own stepmother, Duany. The children of Kir founded the four descent groups of the Gaatgankir clan, namely, Thiang, Khun, Jok and Nyang. The half-brothers Thiang and Khun lived together, forming, along with Reng, the Gaat-Jak and adopting Khun’s ‘ox name’ (Jak) as their common designation.4 Jok and Nyang, who had the same mother, lived separately, however, forming two additional tribes, Gaat-Jok and GaatGuang, respectively. This suggests, in mythological discourse at least, that some segments of the Jikany have a single origin, while others have heterogeneous origins. I collected similar mythologies about Kir, which also connect the Jikany with the Anywaa: There was a mysterious person called Lekor who lived in the small pool near the Anywaa of Nyiche.5 He had a golden canoe and a fishing spear. One day, an Anywaa kwaaro came to him and asked him to come to the village. Lekor agreed. In that village there was a beautiful girl who had declined many marriage 2. 3.

4. 5.

Reng is the colour of the sacrificial bull that symbolizes the new bond between Tik and Jing. Among the Nuer the spear stands for masculinity. According to Evans-Pritchard (1953: 12), ‘each Nuer clans has a spear name … This spear name is shouted out by a representative of the clan, which he brandishes a spear in his right hand, in war, at weddings, and in other public occasions when the clan as a whole is concerned’. An ox name among the Nuer is ‘the name of men, males who have passed through the rite of initiation to manhood’ (Evans-Pritchard 1953: 183). The Nuer name Nyiche resembles that of the chief of the Anywaa Maro clan, Nich, further suggesting Anywaa connections. In another myth, Lekor is portrayed as a man of the Tapoza tribe from the equatorial region of southern Sudan.

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Playing Different Games offers. When she saw Lekor she said, ‘That is the man I have been waiting for’. Lekor knew all languages, as he was a man of the river and was related to Kuoth. He slept with that girl and he said to her, ‘When you give birth, take my child (Kir) to the bank of the river and ker (calabash) will come and take him away’. Lekor told her to put Kir on a kom (chair) together with a kuac (skin) and a mut (spear). The next day, he returned to the water. When she gave birth, she did as she had been told. Kir had already started speaking while he was in his mother’s womb. Kir was a strange child. His eyes were bleeding and he killed people when he looked at them. His three wives were survived by four children: Thiang, Khun, Jok and Nyang. When they became many, they were called the Jikany. (Tap Gatwech, elder from Makot village, Itang district, 12 April 2001)

Thus, the various origin myths of the Jikany Nuer provide ample evidence of Nuer beliefs in the separate origins of the various Nuer divisions. This contrasts starkly with Anywaa conceptions of Anywaa origins. Despite some indications that their origins are in fact diverse, contemporary Anywaa believe that they all descend from Gilo. On the other hand, contemporary Nuer openly embrace the idea that their own origins are diverse. The separate origins of the Jikany Nuer find symbolic expression in the cult of the sacred spear known as Mut Wiu (see Figure 3.1). It is important to understand, however, that perceptions of separate origins of the Jikany Nuer do not affect their fully-fledged membership in the wider Nuer society.

Figure 3.1 Kir’s Shrine where Mut Wiu is kept, Dorong village, Itang (photo: Dereje Feyissa)

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 59

From Descent to Assimilation: Criteria of Ethnic Membership in Historical Perspective Notwithstanding the incorporation of the Jikany into Nuer society when Kir joined the Gaat-Gee, supposedly in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Nuer of that earlier period do not seem to have been as thoroughly assimilationist in orientation as they are today. In fact, there is some evidence suggesting that, prior to that legendary event, the Nuer recognized group membership largely on the basis of descent, perhaps even espousing an ideology of ethnic purity (Jal 1987: 17). In some versions of the Jikany origin myth, the affinal link between Gee and Kir is depicted as having been weak. All the wives given to Kir by Gee were either half-Nuer or handicapped. In Jikany oral history, one of the main reasons for the eastward expansion of the Jikany tribes in the nineteenth century was the social discrimination that they experienced at the hands of the Gee. Members of Gee, supposedly the ‘original’ Nuer group, are said to have excluded immigrants such as Kir and his followers from collective rituals and associated cultural practices, such as cattle sacrifice: Nuer call themselves ran mi ran because of Gee, who was the first Ran. Gee was the dil [senior male of the dominant descent group] of Nuer. It was Gee who first opened the calabash where Kir was found. Kir and his people lived with Gee, but they were not allowed to participate when an ox was killed. Whenever the Nuer kill an ox, they usually curse the ox, putting all the bad things on it. Gee and his people used to call Kir ran mi jaang, not original Nuer. During the time of Latjor, Kir’s people said ‘let us go to a place where there are no diel’. In these new places they started cursing the ox [i.e., became real Nuer] like the people of Gee. (Kong Diu, leader of the Cieng Reng Nuer, Makot village, Itang, 2 February 2002) Given the significance of cattle sacrifice among the Nuer, the Jikany’s grievances about their exclusion from this important ritual are understandable. According to Evans-Pritchard (1956: 220), ‘most sacrifices … have a peculiar purpose. They are made in times of trouble and their general object is always the same, to get rid of the evil or threatening the evil by offering God a victim whose death will take it away’. The victim explicitly plays the role of the scapegoat. Since the ‘original’ Nuer prevented newcomers from participating in vital cultural practices such as cattle sacrifice, it seems valid to conclude that their earlier mode of identification was exclusive, being based on genealogical descent and, in this sense, on ethnic purity. In the early nineteenth century, an ambitious man named Latjor Dingyian mobilized the dissatisfied Jikany, leading them in a large-scale conquest of new lands, where they could attain the status equality that they sought and he could attain the political position that he desired. The followers of Latjor are called Jikanydoar (‘Jikany of the bush’) and those who remained in Bentiue are called Jikanycieng (‘homeland Jikany’). The Nuer shift from an ideology based on descent – and, by extension, ethnic purity – to one based on assimilation seems to have taken place in the second half of the nineteenth century as the Jikany migrated, conquering extensive Dinka and Anywaa territories in the process. By assimilating those whom they captured, particularly the Dinka, instead of killing them, the Jikany were able to

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double the size of their group in a relatively short period of time. The assimilation of new members was practically a necessity, because of the composition of Latjor’s group of followers. Because of the perceived risks, only a few women had joined the adventurous eastward migration (Pal 2006: 223). The more Latjor’s followers married among their enemies and adopted captured children, the larger their population became and the greater their need for further expansion. The success of the Jikany Nuer seems to have encouraged other sections of the Nuer to migrate, to conquer new lands and, in the process, to adopt the assimilationist strategies of the Jikany. What is more, even those who remained at home turned increasingly to assimilation in the context of competition over local leadership. According to Hutchinson (2000: 9), ‘individual Nuer men competed with one another for positions of political leadership and independence by gathering around themselves as many co-resident Dinka clients and supporters as possible’. She goes on to say that ‘the “enduring loyalty” of these clusters of co-resident Dinka was secured, primarily, through the generous provision of Nuer cattle and Nuer wives’ (Hutchinson 2000: 9). Of course, cattle and wives are linked through the institution of bridewealth, about which more will be said later in this chapter. Thus, under the new social circumstances that arose with migration or with competition for local positions of leadership, the Nuer mode of identification was reconfigured with an accent on integration rather than exclusion. Contemporary Nuer, regardless of the diversity of their origins, all claim and have access to group honour, principally expressed in their self-esteem as nei ti naath (distinct people) with a unique language (thok Nueri) and culture (ciang) and with unique rights to claim the status of being ran mi ran, i.e., a real person (Hutchinson 1996: 76). On this basis, the Nuer have redefined the criteria of ethnic membership in terms of cultural competence; and, by acknowledging the diversity of their origins, they facilitate the absorption of outsiders through various mechanisms of assimilation. These various mechanisms for absorbing outsiders, which were alluded to, directly or indirectly, in the Jikany origin myths cited above, can be seen in Figure 3.2. At the top of the diagram, the broken lines indicate the non-blood relationship between the Nuer (Gee and Ghaak) and Kir, between Kir and Tik, and between Tik and Jing. The Jikany became Nuer through matrilateral links, i.e., through marriage alliance and descent from Nuer women, as represented in the relationship between Kir and his Gee and Ghaak wives and children. Tik and Jing, in turn, became brothers through the creative power of cattle sacrifice. The bond between the Cieng Reng and Gaat-Kir is based, mythologically, on the reciprocal favours underlying the friendship between Kir and Tik. It is this mythical friendship, in which Tik appears as a kind of Jikany ‘Moses’, that contemporary descendants of Cieng Reng cite in making claims to resources and citizenship.6

6.

For the relevance of mythical friendship to the Cieng Reng politics of entitlement, see Chapters 4 and 8.

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 61

Figure 3.2 The Jikany Nuer divisions (source: author’s field notes)

Beyond Agnation: the Critique of Evans-Pritchard’s Model in the Secondary Literature The question is not so much whether the Nuer value links through men, patrilateral affiliation, and perhaps even something approximating patrilineality. They clearly do. But these are not the sole structuring forces of Nuer society. (McKinnon 2000: 68) Although patrilineal descent is a major principle of social organization among the Nuer, it is important to emphasize that it is supplemented by other modes of filiations such as locality and matrilateral ties (Hutchinson 1985; McKinnon 2000) as well as friendship rooted in mythical history. These multiple modes of relatedness and the principles that underlie them are not contradictory, nor do they operate in different domains; rather, they are mutually constitutive of Nuer social reality. The perspective I adopt regarding the nature of Nuer descent groups differs from that which privileges patrilineal descent and neglects other principles of social organiza-

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tion or relegates them to other domains of social life (Evans-Pritchard 1940a; Sahlins 1965). But I also disagree with those who dismiss the relevance of descent in Nuer social organization entirely (Kuper 1982). Instead, I argue that the mechanics of Nuer constructivism become intelligible only when the interplay among the various modes of relatedness is taken into account. The discussion starts with an outline of the various interpretations of Nuer descent groups and continues with ethnographic examples serving to substantiate the perspective I adopt. The study on Nuer descent group was inaugurated in the pioneering writings of Evans-Pritchard (1940a, 1951a). Through his research, the Nuer have become a paradigmatic case in studying political organization in ‘stateless societies’ in which patrilineal descent serves, in the absence of institutions of political power, as a basis of solidarity. In the model developed by Evans-Pritchard, which is widely known as the segmentary system, or segmentary lineage system, descent through the male line (patrifiliation or agnation) is the fundamental value upon which the political system is built. According to Evans-Pritchard (1940a), the lineage system and the political systems operate in two different domains, corresponding to patrilineal descent groups (clans and lineages), in the first case, and to territorially based tribes, in the second. The fundamental units upon which the lineage system is based are the segments known as thok dwiel, whereas the fundamental residential or territorial units within the political structure are known as cieng. Evans-Pritchard argued that, although the two structures operate in different domains, the thok dwiel takes precedence as a principle of social organization, and the cieng is predicated on the thok dwiel. Apart from serving as an ideological frame of reference for Nuer political communities, thok dwiel are also relevant points of reference in articulating the rules of lineage exogamy, and further serve as basic units in the performance of rituals. EvansPritchard accounted for what was later called the ‘E-P paradox’ (Southall 1986: 1), the discrepancy between the primacy of agnation and the prevalence of matrilateral ties in residential units, by relegating the two principles to different domains: the political domain, based on agnation, and the domestic domain, based on bilateral kin ties. In attempting to resolve this paradox, Sahlins commented somewhat later on Evans-Pritchard’s ethnography, saying that, in the case of the Nuer, ‘a descent doctrine does not express group composition but imposes itself upon the composition’ (Sahlins 1965: 104). Other scholars have criticized Evans-Pritchard’s notion of the primacy of agnation among the Nuer and reduced it to the level of ideology (Holy 1979; Southall 1986). Holy (1979: 12), for example, distinguishes between representational and operational models: ‘Among the Nuer, lineage organization is representational and the spatial relations between the various cieng (residential units) as well as the genealogical relations between the dominant lineages associated with them are operational’. Southall (1986) also demotes agnation from a fundamental principle of social structure to the level of ideology, which, in his view, serves as a kind of social cement that enhances solidarity among diverse groups in their collective efforts to secure their material well-being in a harsh environment. Southall attributes the flexibility of group formation and the fluidity of the units of identification up and down the scale of social organization, from the most exclusive to the most inclusive seg-

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 63 ments, to the very fictionality of the agnatic principle: ‘Naath [Nuer] social organization is based on localized groups recruited by cognatic and affinal bonds, linked together by genealogical charters of fictional agnation’ (Southall 1986: 16). Pushing his materialist interpretation further, Southall notes: ‘Such charters in themselves have little force with which to bind people together. They can only justify and add some sentiment to links between groups whose material interests have already brought them to desire an ideological basis of alliance’ (ibid.: 16). In his view, ‘these genealogical charters reflect the actual relationships of persons when alive or that they were as agnatic as represented. The very fictionality makes them flexible and able to express and give primordialist value to the really determining factors … [i.e.,] material culture’ (ibid.: 8). The strongest objections to Evans-Pritchard’s structural functionalist approach have been formulated by Kuper (1982). Kuper rejects the role of descent as a principle of social organization among the Nuer with reference to the discrepancy, acknowledged by Evans-Pritchard, between descent groups and territorial groups: ‘It is more reasonable to conclude that the Nuer model provides reliable guidance neither to Nuer social behaviour nor to Nuer values’ (Kuper 1982: 84). But Kuper has gone too far in rejecting the role of descent as a principle of social organization among the Nuer. Schlee (2002: 261) has recently argued in favour of an empirical approach to determine the social and political relevance of patrilineal descent in contemporary African societies and has criticized both the ‘overly one-sided accent on the segmentary lineage system’ and the ‘anti-structuralist wave’ that condemned the segmentary lineage model ‘on the grounds of principle, not on empirical grounds’. Recent studies on Nuer descent groups have proceeded in this spirit, painting a much more complex picture of the place of patrifiliation in Nuer society (Hutchinson 1985, 1996; McKinnon 2000). These studies have identified different forms of affiliations as principles of social organization, not least of which are matrilateral ties, which play an important supplementary role. Building on data provided by Evans-Pritchard (1951a: 109), Hutchinson demonstrates the importance of matrilateral ties with reference to the special relationship between two categories of male kin, namely, gaatnaar (sons of the mother’s brother) and gaatwac (sons of the father’s sister). Evans-Pritchard noted that the relationship between gaatnaar and gaatwac is ‘one of “easy companionship,” stripped of the reserve that difference of generation foster in their relations with each other’s parents’ (Hutchinson 1985: 633, quoting from Evans-Pritchard 1951a: 167). When, however, one or the other of these kin groups has difficulties in producing heirs, a basic asymmetry in the gaatnaar/gaatwac relationship becomes evident. If a man or a man’s son has difficulty in conceiving offspring, the gaatwac, the son of the man’s sister, may marry in the name of his uncle or his uncle’s son and, in this way, provide the uncle or uncle’s son with an heir. But the gaatnaar cannot provide the same service for his gaatwac – hence Hutchinson’s characterization of this relationship as one of ‘generative asymmetry’ (1985: 633). In Hutchinson’s interpretation, the gaatwac is obliged to help out in cases of infertility, because, earlier, his mother’s brother had provided him with cattle and thus helped him to pay the bridewealth required for his marriage. For our purposes, however, this asymmetrical relationship between gaatnaar and gaatwac

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shows how a patrilineal descent group, in the minimal form of the relation between a father and his son, can reproduce itself by drawing on the services of relatives who are related matrilaterally, i.e., through the man’s sister. One might say that the patrilineage ‘recruits’ new members by employing the reproductive powers of men belonging to other lineages who are related to them only through female ties. Even more recently, McKinnon (2000) has revisited the debate on the nature of the Nuer descent groups, highlighting the centrality of cattle, given as bridewealth (twoc ghok), and the supplementary role of links through women in agnation. Success in building a strong agnatic group, or patrilineal segment, depends on the nature and level of bridewealth payments. Ideally the groom’s party pays the bridewealth in full, but not infrequently the groom or his party fails to do so, because they lack the resources, i.e., the cattle. In such a case the child resulting from the union is likely to be affiliated to the thok dwiel of its mother’s brother: ‘it is bridewealth/childwealth, not birth and genealogical connection, that establishes membership in a thok dwiel’ (McKinnon 2000: 62). It is for this reason that the bridewealth payments are processual among the Nuer, occurring in three stages: larcieng (betrothal), ngut (wedding) and mut (consummation). Each phase marks the progressive transfer of cattle from ‘wife takers’ to ‘wife givers’ (Evans-Pritchard 1951a: 51). The ideal bridewealth is forty cattle, but currently among the Jikany it is set at about twenty-five. There are many Nuer men who are affiliated with their mother’s brother lineage because they were unable to pay the bridewealth in full. The ethnographic data that I collected during fieldwork lend support to the claim that agnation is both a core value and an important operational model among the Nuer. At the same time, my data indicate that agnation is not a lived experience for all Nuer. Patrifiliation among the Nuer is not automatic; rather, it is a practical achievement, a form of filiation that must be earned through fulfilling rigorously the obligation to pay bridewealth. All Nuer seek to establish strong agnatic groups, but practical limitations in achieving this ideal lead to alternative forms of filiation, most commonly to attachments through matrilateral ties. Once we acknowledge that agnation is a fundamental value and operational model among the Nuer, it is still important to ask what happens when men fail to establish strong agnatic ties and, thus, strong patrilineally based groups. In fact, failure to create strong agnatic ties is not denigrated among the Nuer; instead, there are institutional mechanisms that provide Nuer men with what might be called a ‘Plan B’. For those who fail to create strong agnatic ties, matrifiliation provides the possibility of an alternative social identity and support system centring on the mother’s brother. In the context of the close, very sentimental relationship between the mother’s brother and the sister’s son, matrifiliation even acquires a very real degree of dignity. In sum, identification among the Nuer is much more complex than the segmentary system of ‘balanced opposition’ between structurally equivalent lineages and residential units, as in Evans-Pritchard’s structural functionalist interpretation. Alliance formation does not always follow genealogical structure. In addition to descent, itself constructed through the supplementary role of matrilateral ties, friendship, rooted in mythical history and in ecological considerations, is an important element in the repertoire upon which the Nuer draw in building meaningful ties.

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 65

The Mechanics of Nuer Assimilation Descent is important for the Nuer, but it works in a way that allows the integration of those who were previously outsiders. Group formation and identification operates through three interrelated Nuer concepts: dil (pl. diel), rul and jang (pl. jaang). Evans-Pritchard (1940a: 220) defined dil as ‘an aristocratic clan’, though the term also applies to individual men within the clan or descent group in question. In Evans-Pritchard’s analysis, the diel, though a minority, provide a lineage structure on which the territorial, tribal organization (cieng) is built. A Nuer is a dil only in a tribe where his clan is the dominant lineage. As soon as he is outside of the tribe where his clan has the superior status he becomes rul. A rul is a Nuer immigrant who attaches himself to a dil through affinal ties, marrying either the sister or the daughter of a dil. Jaang are non-Nuer captives or immigrants. The jaang are assimilated into the diel through either adoption or marriage. Sons of diel are called gaattutni, while the sons of rul or of jaang who have married women from the local dil are called gaatnyiet, i.e., sons of the daughter of a dil (Howell 1954: 81–82). Evans-Pritchard mentioned the status differences among the diel, rul and jaang, but he saw these differences as characteristics of kinship or of the ‘domestic’ domain, which, in his view, was distinct from the political domain. Indeed, by separating politics from kinship, Evans-Pritchard was able to represent the political life of the Nuer as radically egalitarian. In subsequent studies, however, scholars have often rejected or at least qualified Evans-Pritchard’s analytical strategy, emphasizing instead the relevance of supposedly purely domestic distinctions for the construction of hierarchical relations within the Nuer political order (Gough 1971; Verdon 1982; Hutchinson 1996; McKinnon 2000). The rul and the jaang and their patrilineal descendants ‘were initially at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the descendants of the original Nuer conquerors (the diel …)’, Hutchinson (1985: 626) argues. Status differences between the diel, on one hand, and the rul and jaang, on the other, were indicated by the use of the terms tut, or ‘bulls’, for the former and yien, or ‘tied’, for the latter (Hutchinson 1985: 626). Gough (1971: 113) mentions that bulls have rights over land and possess considerably more cattle than rul or jaang do, which makes it easier for them to pay bridewealth and to achieve patrilateral affiliation and patrilocal residence. McKinnon also questioned the egalitarianism of the Nuer political system, citing the important distinction ‘between those who are able to achieve some kind of lineal continuity through successive patrilateral affiliation to a thok dwiel and those who are not and who, therefore, affiliate to other thok dwiel through matrilateral ties’ (McKinnon 2000: 68). The ‘tied’ are important in the politics of the ‘bulls’, because they increase the size of his group and hence his power base: the more a dil manages to attach rul and jaang to his immediate group of supporters, the higher his chances of wielding political power among his agnates.7 7.

Evans-Pritchard recognized that the ‘elders with most influence are the gaat twot, the children of bulls’ (1940a: 179), but his description of Nuer as a ‘stateless’ society operating through ‘balanced opposition’ between its various units prevented him from understanding the dynamics of competition for leadership among agnates. This may have been because Evans-Pritchard understood political power in a very restricted sense, namely, as ‘the authority and power to force compliance with laws’ (McKinnon 2000: 67).

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While the diel are concerned primarily with the intra-agnatic competition for bridewealth cattle and leadership positions, these activities also create the contexts in which assimilation occurs. Often, a rul attaches himself to a dil by marrying into his family. Then, in the course of generations, his descendants gradually assimilate as gaatnyiet. The jaang, on the other hand, are often integrated into a dil through adoption. Thus, their assimilation is often more complete than that of the rul, since the jaang, in contrast to the rul, are completely cut off from their homeland ties. EvansPritchard described the assimilation of the jaang into the diel through adoption as follows: ‘Captured Dinka boys are almost invariably incorporated into the lineage of their Nuer captors by the rite of adoption, and they then rank as sons in lineage structure as well as in family relations, and when the daughters of that lineage are married they receive bride-cattle […] People say “caa dil e cieng” or “caa ran wec”, “he has become a member of the community”… Adoption gives him a position in lineage structure, and thereby ceremonial status, for by adoption he becomes a member of his captor’s thok dwiel, lineage’ (Evans-Pritchard 1940a: 221–22). Jaang are assimilated into a dil lineage through a ‘stick and carrot’ policy. If people of foreign origin remain culturally ‘other’ and if their commitment to their affinal lineage remains precarious, they could be labelled jaang in the derogatory sense of the term, which connotes not only a foreigner but also a lower position. This is the assimilation ‘stick’. At the same time, jaang are actively supported in becoming Nuer (caa naath) insofar as they receive contributions towards their marriage payments, the size of which are often substantially reduced, and insofar as they are rewarded with leadership positions, should they be heroic enough to contribute to the strength of the local community. That is the assimilation ‘carrot’. A fully assimilated jang may assume a high social standing; and it is not ‘culturally correct’ among the Nuer to remind somebody who is fully assimilated and upholds local standards of his foreign origin. In fact, whoever is discriminated against on the basis of his origin can easily elicit sympathy. In this sense, the Nuer identity system encourages assimilation by rewarding excellence in fulfilling Nuer standards. The more complete assimilation of jaang into the diel explains in part why Nuer seeking to augment their own groups are more interested in outsiders than in their fellow Nuer. The loyalty of fellow Nuer to the thok dwiel and the cieng they become attached to is precarious, because they could defect and rejoin their natal communities. Nevertheless, both potential rul and potential jaang are encouraged to join the diel on the basis of an ideology that makes it possible to create binding social and economic ties. Unlike the Anywaa ‘strangers’ (welo), who retain the permanent status of being guests, the Nuer rul and jaang are temporary classifications. Having married into the dil family, they become full members of the local community (cieng) and they also play a crucial role in the politics of their host. Thus, and perhaps somewhat paradoxically, the Nuer notions of descent and first-comer status provide an ideological framework for recruiting and incorporating newcomers.

Census of Wechdeng village In order to shed further light on the highly debated nature of Nuer descent groups, I conducted a census in Wechdeng village in Kurtony, one of the major wet-season

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 67 settlements of the Thiang Nuer in Jikaw district. The dominant lineage in Wechdeng village is Cieng Buoy, the founder of which is a member of the fifth generation of the Thiang descent group. The Cieng Buoy is further subdivided into segments, the most important of which is Cieng Deng, after which the village is named. By examining the relations among the diel, rul and jaang in this context, I illustrate the various forms and processes of affiliation in a Nuer local community (see Figure 3.3). In Wechdeng village there are seventy-eight families. Census result show thirtyone (forty per cent) of the male heads of families are agnates and forty-seven (sixty per cent) are non-agnates, i.e., not related patrilineally to Deng. Of the forty-seven male heads of the non-agnates thirty-five (seventy-four per cent) are matrilaterally affiliated with the family of Deng, six (thirteen per cent) are rul who followed their Cieng Deng friends, and six (thirteen per cent) are affines, out of which four are rul and two are jaang (Dinka). The diverse composition of Wechdeng village reveals the principles of group formation and the multiple means of social inclusion among the Nuer. In this particular village, however, the flexibility of Nuer identity may also be illustrated with

Figure 3.3 The Cieng Buoy in the Thiang genealogical structure (source: author’s field notes)

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reference to the origins of the village’s namesake. Deng began his life as a Dinka; he became an orphan while still very young and then grew up with his uncle in a village in the Ngok Dinka country. As the story is told, one day Deng hunted a giraffe in his homeland, but his mother gave the trophy to her brother. Deng became angry and left his original home. Upon reaching Kurthony village as a jal tang (guest), he was given food by the Nuer. He made contact with Buoy, who later adopted him as his son. Thenceforth, Deng was called Deng Buoy. Deng proved his merits in hunting and fighting. Once he led the Wechdeng villagers in raiding the Anywaa and brought back many cattle. After he returned with his plunder, Deng married, in accordance with established rules of exogamy, and was fully assimilated into the thok dwiel of Buoy, ultimately succeeding in creating his own lineage and a large local community named after him, the Cieng Deng. The centrality of the thirty-one agnates in Wechdeng village who are descended from Buoy or from his adopted son, Deng – i.e., of the diel, to which the remaining forty-seven families are attached – shows the relevance of patrilineal descent as a framework of social inclusion among the Nuer. But this example also makes clear that Nuer local communities are based on various forms of affiliation. Local communities are constituted not through two principles operating in different domains – the agnatic principle in the political domain and matrilateral affiliation in the domestic domain, as Evans-Pritchard argued – but through the interpenetration of the two principles in a unified socio-political order. A village such as Wechdeng is composed of agnates, cognates, affines, friends and immigrants, and mythically related groups of people, all assuming the common name of the dominant lineage. For all practical purposes, it is their identity as Cieng Deng that matters in both their social relationships and in their political mobilization as members of their locality. The descent ideology, the very adoption of the collective name Cieng Deng, and the custom of referring even to non-agnates as if they were descendants of Deng have had a real effect, in as much as the non-agnate residents are either adopted or, more frequently, encouraged to marry into the dil. Consequently, most of the inhabitants become related to one another over a period of time, even if they are not agnates.

On the relative strength of agnatic and local ties The common name of any particular village – e.g., Cieng ‘X’ – is maintained not by the collective effort of lineage members, most of whom are dispersed among other localities, but by a local community of diverse people, united in their pursuit of their livelihood and collective security in an economy built through, and defended against, cattle raiding. This pragmatic local community is cemented through a web of kinship ties. There is always a dominant descent group in a given village, but its members, the dil, are typically in the minority. Most community members, as has been shown above, are related to the dil through friendship, marriage or matrifiliation. Village residents belonging to the dominant lineage may also maintain contact with agnates living elsewhere, especially within the immediate vicinity. But the same applies to village residents who do not belong to the locally dominant lineage. I was interested to learn what kind of relationships still exist between those rul who have become members of the Cieng Deng and their agnates who live in other villages, for this would be a real test of the relative strength of agnatic ties and local affiliation. What

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 69 I found were dispersed lineages, the members of which still participate in collective rituals promoting the spiritual well-being of the shared patrilineal descent group. I had an opportunity to observe a ritual in Wechdeng for colwic, a member of a class of divinities associated with lightning and identified by Hutchinson (1996: 138) as ‘guardians of specific lineages’. In the case that I observed, colwic was the guardian of the family of Jock. Agnatically, Jock is a Cieng Nyajani from Makuey village. He came to Kurthony, married a dil ’s daughter, and his children become gaatnyiet to the Deng family. Usually, lineage rituals are held at the place where the senior members of a lineage live. As the eldest son in his lineage, Jock made a sacrifice to the colwic in Wechdeng village in 2001. This ritual was attended only by those people who are agnatically related to Jock, most of whom came from the far-off village of Makuey. With the notable exception of such agnatic rituals, most of Jock’s social relationships are with the Wechdeng villagers and with the Thiang at large; and, ultimately, Jock and his family owe their loyalty to the village and the lineage to which they are attached, i.e., to Cieng Deng. If Wechdeng village went to war against a village in the Cieng Nyajani area, where Jock was born, Jock’s primary loyalty would still be to the Thiang or to Cieng Deng, not to the Cieng Nyajani. In such cases of conflicting loyalties, however, Jock would probably be given a face-saving option, so that he would not end up killing his agnates in Makuey village. He would, thus, avoid directly confronting them in the event of war and, instead, attack people in Makuey village to whom he was not related. Indirectly, however, he would still be joining his local community of affiliation in annihilating his local community of origin.

The Bodily Construction of Nuer Men The Nuer’s constructivist approach to ethnic identity formation is also manifest in a male initiation ritual called gar. Gar refers, more specifically, to the scars that an adult male Nuer bears on his forehead as a symbol of his initiation into manhood between the ages of fourteen and sixteen (see Figure 3.4). Evans-Pritchard described gar as follows: ‘All male Nuer are initiated from boyhood to manhood by a severe operation (gar). Their brows are cut to the bone with a small knife, in six long cuts from ear to ear. The scars remain for life, and it is said that marks can be detected on the skulls of dead men’ (1940a: 249). Nuer age sets, known as ric, differ from comparable institutions in other East African societies, insofar as they do not constitute successive age grades (cf. Kurimoto and Simonse 1998). Nor do ric serve to organize men in military units, as is sometimes the case elsewhere. As Evans-Pritchard notes, ‘The age set system of a tribe is in no way its military organization. Men fight by villages and by tribal sections and not by sets. The war companies are local units and not age-set units’ (1940a: 254). Gar is, rather, a one-time initiation that marks the difference between men (wut) and boys (dhol). After initiation, a man’s domestic duties and privileges alter radically: ‘At initiation a youth receives from his father or uncle a spear and becomes a warrior. He is also given an ox, from which he takes an ox-name and, becomes a herdsman’ (Evans-Pritchard 1940a: 254). Gar, which the Nuer describe as ‘shedding blood together’, creates an enduring basis of friendship among the Nuer. It also promotes an inclusive ethnic consciousness: ‘Initiation rites, more than anything save language, distinguish Nuer culture and give

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Figure 3.4 A wut – Ochom village (photo: Dereje Feyissa)

Nuer that sense of superiority which is so conspicuous a trait of their character’ (EvansPritchard 1940a: 260). Within Nuer society, gar creates male identity and status through the dramatization of the experience of pain; but it also serves an important ideological role in the process of assimilating non-Nuer through the articulation of a particular conception of masculinity. In this radical formulation of male identity, non-Nuer men are loosely referred to as dhol, or boys, for they have not gone through the litmus test of bearing pain in the initiation rite. Conversely, however, non-Nuer men may become Nuer by going through gar. In the secondary literature to date, one may find suggestive remarks regarding the role of gar in the assimilation process, but this role has not yet been adequately explored. Hutchinson (1996: 289) provides the following commentary on the integrative role of gar during the expansion of the Eastern Nuer, which resulted in the absorption of many non-Nuer: ‘It would not be surprising if the eastern “first comers” [Jikany and Lou Nuer] began to view initiation rites as a powerful means of recruiting and definitively affiliating new community members’. This presumed integrative function of gar was confirmed in many conversations that I had with the Nuer during my fieldwork. The following narrative by Reverend Stevenson throws light on the ideological and instrumental dimensions of gar in creating a ‘boundary of inclusion’: Once you have gar, you cannot get rid of it whether you like it or not. You permanently become Nuer. You can change your residence, you can learn a new

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 71 language, but once you have gar, it would always remain with you. Those who were captured in the war were immediately made gar. Take the case of Joshua [the administrator of Gambella during the 1980s]. His family is Bär Jingmir [Anywaa from Akobo] who were captured during a fight, and he was made a gar [became Nuer]. No Anywaa considered him as Anywaa, let alone the Nuer. But his brother is still Anywaa. Gar is one of the important means of becoming Nuer. The other is through marriage and the Nuer language. With these three you become a Nuer over time. When the Nuer migrated, they came to Anywaa land. The Anywaa left and those who remained were invaded and were assimilated into the Nuer. Many Anywaa from Akobo became Nuer this way. Similarly, many Opo were also made Nuer. That is how the Nuer became many. Above all, if you do not have gar, you will not be able to marry. Many Anywaa who are living with the Nuer started taking gar because of that. (Reverend Stevenson, Nuer Mekaneyesus Church, Gambella town, September 2000) Gar, viewed as a practice with ideological implications, operates at different levels in the process of assimilation. For one thing, non-Nuer men are encouraged to participate in the Nuer version of masculinity. Typically, when a Nuer girl declines a marriage offer by a non-Nuer, she says that she does so because the would-be groom has not been initiated. Many Anywaa men, particularly in the Akobo area, where some Nuer neighbourhoods are located, have been initiated. The Nuer tease those who refuse to undergo gar in a rather rough fashion. Those who go through the initiation confirm not only their masculinity, but also their lifelong commitment to the Nuer mode of identification. Gar is thus a vivid example of the constructivist variety of ethnic identity formation that is characteristic of the Nuer. It defines an area of cultural competence in which people are required to perform in a certain way in order to claim Nuer identity. The complete integration of the conquered Dinka and Anywaa into Nuer society was possible partly because the men underwent an initiation rite in which becoming a man is synonymous with becoming Nuer.

New Challenges to the Constructivist Mode of Identity Formation In this chapter, I have reviewed the ways in which ethnic identity formation among the Nuer might be understood to be constructivist in orientation, and I have offered some explanations for this orientation, or presented materials that might contribute to explaining it. As Hutchinson (1985, 1996) has argued, quite cogently, the assimilationist tendencies of the Nuer are consistent with their transhumant pastoralist adaptation, especially with their use of cattle as a form of wealth, as a medium of exchange, as a kind of political capital and as a religious symbol. ‘The cow creates the person’, the Nuer say (Hutchinson 1996: 60), and we have seen many examples of this, including the paying of bridewealth, the assumption by the diel of bridewealth debts for rul or jaang, the creation of new kinship links, based on friendship, through the sacrifice of a bull and so on. Clearly, this generally open orientation towards the incorporation of outsiders was encouraged further by particular historical and political circumstances, such as the eastward expansion of the Jikany Nuer and the competition in all Nuer groups among potential local leaders. And, clearly, the assimilationist orientation has been a boon to the Nuer – one might even call it the secret to their success.

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The constructivist orientation of the Nuer is evident, however, not only in the emphasis on assimilating non-Nuer but also in recognizing the potential for the loss of ethnic identity. In a reversal of the trend discussed so far, some groups of Nuer have indeed been assimilated to other ethnic groups. The Atuot and the Kuok are two examples of the loss of ethnic identity that are frequently recounted by the Nuer. Both were Nuer sections that became Dinka and Jur-Luo, respectively. In fact, a popular saying reminds the Nuer of the need actively to maintain ethnic identity: cien bi juor cet ke kuok (‘I should not disappear like Kuok’). All of this is consistent with the interpretation that contemporary Nuer local communities are constructed, not only on the basis of patrilineal descent, but also through ritual practices and flexible modes of recruitment crosscutting descent-group and ethnic boundaries. The Nuer concept of identity is not fixed. Identity is something that is acquired and has to be actively maintained, lest one lose it. Under new circumstances, however, Nuer understandings of their own ethnic identity have begun to change. In the contexts of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia and civil war in the Sudan, an incipient form of primordialism has reemerged among the Nuer or, rather, among various Nuer groups (cf. Hutchinson 2000: 9–12). The new political structure in Ethiopia is Janus-faced. If ethnic federalism has reinforced inter-ethnic boundaries, it has also fostered intra-ethnic political fragmentation. The flexible yet effective identity system of the Nuer has been undermined since 1995 with the introduction of electoral politics on the basis of group identity. The construction of primordialist boundaries within the Gaat-Jak amalgamation is a case in point. Although there was already an economic incentive for the Thiang to move towards a separate identity visà-vis the other ciengs of the Gaat-Jak, it is electoral politics that has encouraged Thiang elites to articulate a separate identity in the competition for political power. As noted above, the Jikany Nuer have, in recent memory, been divided into three tribal groups: Gaat-Jak, Gaat-Jok and Gaat-Guang. Drawing on Kir mythology and thus creating for themselves a new genealogical charter, the Thiang have advocated splitting Gaat-Jak into two parts, namely, the Thiang and Gaat-Guong, including only the remaining former members of Gaat-Jak (Cieng Cany, Cieng Wau, Cieng Nyajani and Cieng Reng).8 The result has been the emergence of a new, four-fold tribal division: Thiang, Gaat-Guong, Gaat-Jok and Gaat-Guang.

8.

In propagating a separate Thiang identity, Thiang elites refer to Kir mythology as follows. In the Jikany origin myth, it will be recalled, the apical ancestor, Kir, had three sons: first Thiang, the eldest, and then Khun and Jok. After Kir died, Thiang married Jok’s mother and begot Nyang in Kir’s name. Despite his seniority, Thiang joined Khun and, together with the Cieng Reng, they formed a wider amalgamation. This amalgamation was given the ox name Jak, and the descendants of Thiang, Khun, and Reng came to be known as Gaat-Jak, children of Jak. The descendants of Jok and Nyang came to be known as Gaat-Jok and Gaat-Guang, respectively. To mark the new boundary constructed with reference to this myth of biological descent, the Thiang have recently reinstated the older ox name of Khun, viz. Guong, when addressing the three groups descended from Khun (the Cieng Cany, Cieng Wau and Cieng Nyajani) and the group affiliated with them, the Cieng Reng. This serves to reinstate the original distinction between Thiang, the eldest son of Kir, and Khun, one of the younger sons, thus making it possible to create a new division within Gaat-Jak between Thiang, on one hand, and Guong, on the other.

The Nuer Constructivist Ethnic Identity Formation 73 This re-categorization of tribal groups, which elevates the Thiang by placing them on an equal footing with Gaat-Guong, Gaat-Jok and Gaat-Guang, bore fruit during the May 2005 election, when the Thiang managed to get the lion’s share of what had previously been the Gaat-Jak’s quota of seats in the council of the Gambella regional state, almost in parity with the Gaat-Guang and Gaat-Jok tribes.9 Aside from shaking up the political organization of the Jikany Nuer in Gambella, the success of Thiang identity politics might be a sign of future developments, for there are other units of identification within the Jikany Nuer that are also vulnerable to ‘deconstruction’. Institutionalized identity politics have also inserted primordialist currents in Nuer identification through the politicization of the diel /rul /jaang distinction. The terms of the political debate and the mobilization of political support by the Nuer electoral candidates in the May 2005 election featured this aspect of the reconfiguration of Nuer identities as well. The political competition between Peter Lual and Yie Chuol in the nomination process is a case in point. Both competed to represent the Cieng Jenyang/Thiang. When Peter obtained the party’s nomination, Yie appealed to the Cieng Jenyang constituency, framing the political competition in terms of the purity of Cieng. He also claimed the status of a dil while labelling Peter as an outsider, a rul, whose father originally came from the Cieng Nyajani. Yie managed to persuade the representatives of the Cieng Jenyang elders to write a petition to the Nuer Peoples Democratic Organization (NPDO) to reconsider its approval of Peter as the representative of the Cieng Jenyang. Peter, however, secured the party’s backing, which put pressure on the Cieng Jenyang elders to persuade Yie to accept Peter’s nomination. Yie withdrew his candidacy from the party, ran as an independent, and campaigned extensively on the ‘dil ticket’. In one of the Cieng Jenyang’s public meetings, Peter defended his Thiang identity as gaatnyiet and highlighted Yie’s ‘dubious’ genealogy as follows: In that meeting I raised the issue of dil. I reminded the Cieng Jenyang elders that my mother is a dil in Cieng Jenyang. I gathered that Yie is not a dil as he claims to be. In fact, his mother is not a Cieng Jenyang, and the origin of his grandfather is not clear. On that basis, I appealed to the elders that there are a lot of people who are not originally Cieng Jenyang and the issue of dil will bring division among the people. Many people in Cieng Jenyang were originally Gaat-Guong. Raising the question of who is pure would undermine the Thiang’s position in Nuer politics. (Peter Lual, Wechdeng village, 3 April 2005)

9.

The distribution of political power in the Gambella regional council during the May 2005 election may be summarized as follows. While the total number of Members of Parliament (MPs) in the regional council is 81, 33 of these positions are allocated to the Nuer. Previously, these 33 seats were distributed among the tribal groups as follows: the Gaat-Jak had 17 MPs, the Gaat-Jok had 9, and the Gaat-Guong had 7. Following the establishment of a separate Thiang identity, the number of MPs among the cieng of Gaat-Jak were redistributed as follows: the Thiang received 6, the Cieng Cany 4, the Cieng Nyajani 4, and the Cieng Wau 3.

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As the microcensus from Wechdeng village indicated, more than fifty per cent of a given village at any point in time is composed of families other than, but affiliated with, the dil. In the short term, the discourse of cieng purity, though an effective strategy for individuals who can claim the status of dil, is likely to undermine the viability of Nuer society, for it could ultimately result in an authenticity discourse along ‘pure’ and ‘non-pure’ Nuer lines. Although Peter managed to be elected as a representative of the Cieng Jenyang, even he framed his identity claim in the language of purity: while drawing attention to Yie’s pretence as a dil, he drew equal attention to his own blood connections with the Cieng Jenyang through his mother. The civil wars in southern Sudan and their steadily increasing ethnic framing, both by the government of the Sudan and the various southern Sudanese political actors, have also served to foster a primordialist reconfiguration of Nuer ethnic identity. The various southern Sudanese politico-military organizations that claim to represent the Nuer and the Dinka, the two largest ethnic groups in southern Sudan, have injected an ethnic current into the politics of the liberation movement. In this context, the Nuer have departed from their traditional assimilationist drive, insofar as they have begun to view ethnic strangers not as assets but as liabilities. In the new politico-military game, there are, after all, no guarantees that assimilation will proceed as it did earlier, as this would require that, in situations of conflict, captives identify with their captors (see Chapter 9 for a fuller exposition of the impact of the Sudanese civil wars in the reconfiguration of Nuer ethnic identity formation). In this chapter, I have described and analysed the constructivist mode of Nuer ethnic identity formation. Nuer constructivism is evident in the flexible use of descent, alliance and assimilation in the formation of local communities and in the ritual construction of manhood, which is open to outsiders. Becoming Nuer is not merely a possibility; rather, outsiders are actively assisted in taking this step. I have also attempted to explain the conditions of the Nuer constructivism. Beyond the intrinsic superior moral value that the Nuer attribute to their concept of ethnic identity, there is also an instrumentalist and materialist current. That is, the assimilationist drive has a political and economic rationale, insofar as it allows each cieng to add to its numbers and, hence, to gain strength vis-à-vis intra- and inter-ethnic rivals. The discussion in this chapter has also shown the dynamic reconfiguration of identity discourses, which, in the case of the Nuer, has involved an earlier shift from a primordialist to a constructivist form of identification and, most recently, a tendency to revert to primordialism under new socio-political circumstances. Taken together, the two chapters of part two serve to demonstrate the contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation of the Anywaa and the Nuer and their divergent trajectories. The following chapters in part three explain the causes of Anywaa and Nuer conflict and determine the extent to which the contrasting ethnic identity formation are implicated in the conflict situation.

Part III The Encounter As has been shown in the preceding chapters, causal explanations for ethnic conflict are often one-dimensional and, therefore, of limited relevance in explaining the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. The following six chapters explain that conflict with reference to the interaction among three variables: first, contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation (the identity variable); second, competition over scarce natural resources (the resource variable); and, third, the different ways in which ethnic groups are incorporated into an ethnically stratified state system (the power variable). Having characterized the contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation in Chapters 2 and 3, I turn now to the resource variable and its interplay with the identity and power variables.

Chapter 4

In the Riverine Lands Conflicts are often explained in terms of the interests of groups involved, especially their competition for resources or gains … What people are fighting about is a fundamental question in conflict analysis, but there is another equally fundamental question that remains poorly understood, namely, who is fighting whom and why? (Schlee 2004: 135) This chapter examines the resource dimension of the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. The basic argument of the chapter is that competition for natural resources is relevant in Anywaa–Nuer conflict but cannot be taken as the sole cause of ethnic conflict. One of the objects of the Anywaa–Nuer struggle is access to and control over the riverine lands. Riverine lands in Gambella form a minimal proportion of the total land surface but have an outstanding agricultural and pastoral value. This has created scarcity of a specific type of land. Indeed, the Nuer expansion into Anywaa-inhabited territories is primarily driven by the attempt to gain access to and control over the riverine lands. But the same is true of the conflicts among the various Nuer tribes. Identifying the riverine land as a bone of contention does not imply that all Nuer are antagonistic towards all Anywaa. On the contrary, there are internal divisions in each of the groups, and there are groups occupying a buffer zone and maintaining links to both sides. To speak of the Anywaa–Nuer conflict strictly as a resource conflict is therefore an oversimplification. In fact, with regard to natural resources, intra-ethnic competition is even more severe than inter-ethnic competition. After briefly recapitulating the long anthropological debate on the Nuer expansion, I proceed by outlining key natural resources and their distributional pattern. The stark imbalance in the distribution of such resources firmly establishes the resource dimension in Anywaa–Nuer conflict. The following two sections, however, serve to complicate the link between resource and ethnicity, showing that not all resource conflicts are fought at the inter-ethnic level or involve ethnic mobilization. I argue that there are two intervening variables between resource conflicts and ethnicity, i.e., the diverging Anywaa and Nuer schemes of interpretation and the ethnopolitical structure in Ethiopia. The diverging schemes of interpretation of Nuer expansion emanate from the contrasting identity formations of the Anywaa and the Nuer, which is discussed at length in the previous chapters. The Anywaa scheme of interpretation converts individual Nuer economic motives into a Nuer ‘ethnic conspiracy’. The consolidation of ethnic boundaries in the context of institutionalized ethnopolitics in post-1991 Ethiopia also links up with local resource conflicts and often leads to an ethnic representation of those conflicts.

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On the Nuer Conquest The reasons for the nineteenth-century Nuer expansion have long been a subject of academic debate. The Jikany and Lou Nuer migrated to the east from the original Nuer homeland (Bentiue) in present-day southern Sudan, ultimately forming large settlements that are now referred to as Eastern Nuer (Jal 1987; Hutchinson 1996). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Nuer were confined to the area west of the Bahr el Jebel River (Jal 1987: 36). Successive waves of Jikany migrants appeared on the Sobat in the 1830s, and by the end of the century, they advanced as far east as the escarpment of the Ethiopian highlands. Several scholars have remarked on the dramatic expansion of the Jikany Nuer at the expense of Anywaa territories in the second half of the nineteenth century. According to Evans-Pritchard (1940b: 8), ‘a century ago the Anuak had occupied what is now Jikany Nuer land to the north of Sobat, parts of which are now Jikany and Lou Nuer country to the south of that river, the banks of the Pibor to its junction with the Sobat, and the banks of the Sobat to within a few miles of Abwong’. Jal (1987: 125) also describes the scale of Nuer territorial expansion in a similar way: ‘It is clear from their traditions that when the Nuer migrants arrived on the Sobat, they found the Anuak in possession of the country immediately along the banks of the Sobat, from Abwong in the west to the mouth of the Khor Jokau in the upper reaches of the Sobat in the east, the whole of the Wading along the Pibor in the south and the Adura island in the triangle country’. Perner (1997: 145) also mentions the extensive territorial loss of the Anywaa to the Nuer, the area that extends ‘from Tobai on the Sobat to Thor in the west of Kigible to the Adare and Obela (Mokwai) rivers in the south’. Based on the magnitude of the territorial losses described by Evans-Pritchard, Kelly (1985: 1) estimates Nuer territorial gains as fourfold of what they had before the expansion: ‘Nuer displacement of the Dinka (and Anuak) represents one of the most prominent instances of tribal imperialism contained in the ethnographic record’. Generally speaking, there are five explanations for the dramatic Nuer expansion to the east at the expanse of Dinka and Anywaa territories in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first is structural functionalism. Propounded by EvansPritchard (1940a), structural functionalism identifies the Nuer’s segmentary lineage system, built on a ‘structural antagonism’ between the Nuer and their neighbours, as a basis for the Nuer’s ethnic mobilization and subsequent successful expansion. The second explanation is evolutionary, mainly associated with the works of Marshall Sahlins. Sahlins (1961) elaborated on Evans-Pritchard’s analysis of the ‘segmentary lineage’, situating it as a ‘tribal’ type within a typological sequence of evolutionary stages of political organization, beginning with the band and proceeding to the tribe, the chiefdom and the state (Sahlins 1963; 1968). In a widely read article, ‘The Segmentary Lineage – An Organisation of Predatory Expansion’, Sahlins (1961) analysed the Nuer social organization and its expansion as a form of adaptive mechanism developed by tribal groups invading territory already occupied by other tribes: ‘The segmentary lineage system is a social means of intrusion and competition in an already occupied ecological niche. More, it is an organization confined to societies of a certain level of development, the tribal level’ (1961: 323). A third explanation is ecological: the population pressure that resulted from high floods, particularly in the Nuer-inhabited areas (Southall 1976; Johnson 1989;

In the Riverine Lands 79 Hutchinson 1994). According to Hutchinson (1994: 644), ‘periodic and sustained flooding is highly significant in the nineteenth century advancement of the Nuer eastwards across the White Nile’. Kelly (1985) proposes a cultural explanation. The key to the dramatic Nuer expansion at the expense of their neighbours, he suggests, is the difference in their bridewealth systems: ‘Nuer bridewealth requirements are roughly twice as large as those of Dinka … Both the larger size and particular composition of Nuer herds imposes significantly greater grazing requirements on Nuer local populations than those of the Dinka’ (Kelly 1985: 112–13). The link between Nuer expansion and their bridewealth system, argues Kelly, is through grazing land requirements and the recurrent shortage of dry-season pasture. Hutchinson (1985) and McKinnon (2000) suggested a different type of cultural explanation for Nuer expansion, the tension within the agnatic structure, which is discussed at length in Chapter 3. To recap the thrust of the argument, the struggle over cattle inheritance and competition over community leadership among the agnates generated the assimilationist drive both intra-ethnically (significance of matrilateral ties) and inter-ethnically (assimilation of ethnic strangers). In a fifth and final explanation, competition for political leadership provides the impetus for the Jikany expansion (Johnson 1982; Pal 2006). According to Johnson (1982: 185), ‘the best-known Nuer migration, that of the Jikany under Latjor early in the last century, was the outcome of political disputes caused by land scarcity under conditions of the expansion of swamplands in the Jikany homeland … Latjor came into conflict with the existing leaders of the Jikany and decided to migrate’. Pal (2006: 2) also describes the Jikany expansion in a similar way: ‘Latjor had minimal chances to ascend to the Nuer leadership due to the fact that he belonged to a minority group that could not succeed in competing with other dominant figures of the community’. In the Nuer oral traditions I collected from Gambella, the role of Latjor in the expansion of the Jikany is also a central theme, but other factors such as a search for better land and discrimination of the Jikany by the ‘original’ Nuer are also indicated. The following is one of these oral accounts: The land was not enough for all of the Nuer in Bentiue. Together with his Dinka friends, Latjor went out to explore new lands. A person called Padiel Gakgak was sent by Latjor to faraway places to check the area. He wondered why the birds, which came from the east, were fat. He went in the direction where the birds came from. On the way, he met a lot of lät [a Nuer term for a subhuman creature1] in the Toch, Uriem and Lare areas. Padiel discovered Yom, the only dry place in the area that was not flooded. Padiel managed to kill the lät and took the tail of a giraffe with him to show Latjor that the place was very good. Latjor was very much impressed by the richness of the area. But his people were not willing to leave their area and go to unknown places. Then Latjor wanted to consult a ghok [prophet] to convince the people to follow him. In order for him to know which ghok was stronger, he planned a trick.

1.

In the Nuer belief system, the term ‘subhuman’ refers to beings that are half-human and half-animal.

80

Playing Different Games He hid his jeop (axe) in his hair. Latjor’s hair was very long. He pretended that he had lost his axe. He went to many ghok. They all told him that someone had stolen it and he should be careful of evildoers. Finally, he met a powerful woman ghok named Nok.2 She immediately recognized his trick and said to him, ‘Why are you lying? Didn’t you hide the jeop in your hair?’ Latjor was so impressed by her knowledge that he told her all his secrets. He wanted to marry her, although she was very old. He paid hundreds of cattle. Nok persuaded the people to follow Latjor. Latjor’s people went in the direction of Malakal. When they reached Kakak, they prayed to Kir and said, ‘Kir, show us the way to cross the river’. There was a big mountain called Cham Kuntar. It broke by itself. It made a bridge so that the people could cross the river. Nok collected some human faeces, which she miraculously turned into a canoe. But Latjor’s people did not know how deep the river was. In the middle of the river they saw a ngok (blue heron) standing. Then they realized that the river had become shallow and they could easily cross it. After crossing the river they reached a place called Maluts. They called it was-ngok, named after the bird. In Maluts they found the Dinka. The Nuer fought with the Dinka, but they were defeated. Nok advised Latjor to half-kill some important Nuer in order to deceive the Dinka. The Dinka came and killed the wounded. They were very happy that all the important Nuer were killed. The Nuer then attacked the Dinka and the Anywaa, but some of them became Nuer after they made gar [male initiation mark]. The Anywaa were then living in Malakal (Thiang Louny, Gaat-Jok Nuer elder, Gambella town, November 2000).

All of these explanations indicate in one way or another that access to and control over natural resources was an important factor in the nineteenth-century expansion of the Jikany. The land factor is particularly prominent in Nuer’s expansion into Anywaa areas.

Key Natural Resources and Their Distribution Pattern in the Gambella Region The rangeland in Gambella and the adjacent Upper Nile region of southern Sudan are subject to severe flooding from three major rivers: the Baro (Openo), Gilo and Akobo, which together form the Sobat River basin, itself a tributary of the White Nile. Flooding is caused by the high amount of rainfall that flows into the rivers of Gambella from the western Ethiopian highlands. These highlands, where the rivers originate, receive some of the heaviest rainfall in Ethiopia. The floods cover the fields for months, finally leaving behind a fertile (alluvial) soil. This soil can support continuous cultivation in both rainy and dry seasons due to the annual replenishment. Agricultural production on the riverbank is stable and fruitful, affected by neither drought nor soil exhaustion (Kurimoto 1996: 44–45). The banks of the Baro River ‘are lined with some of the richest and most coveted agricultural lands … because

2.

In a similar myth documented by Jal (1987: 37), this diviner is called Nyagueach.

In the Riverine Lands 81 they yield lush crops of maize and tobacco during the height of the dry season with only the moisture that rises from the river’ (Hutchinson 1996: 114). Though detrimental when they are intense, the floods nevertheless create and regulate the distribution of key natural resources in the Gambella region. The flooded land is crucial for cultivation and pasture during the early period of the dry season. These key resources are scarce. Although there are vast amounts of arable land in Gambella, currently only 2.4 per cent of it is being cultivated.3 Exploited through hoe cultivation, rather than with the plough, as in most other regions of Ethiopia, landholdings in Gambella are, on average, 0.5 hectares. Cultivation in the region involves three farming systems: sedentary rain-fed cultivation, flood-retreat cultivation along the banks of the rivers, and shifting cultivation. Of the total cultivable land, sixty-five per cent is savannah, thirty per cent forestland and 4.5 per cent marshland. Only 0.5 per cent is suitable for flood-retreat cultivation, but nevertheless it supports a significant percentage of the farming population (Ellman 1972: 12). Nearly sixty per cent of this moisture cultivation is concentrated along the Baro River, largely in Anywaa-inhabited areas in Itang district.4 Thus there is a severe shortage of riverine land. The plain of Gambella is one of the most suitable areas for raising cattle (Dereje 2006b). The region’s livestock population is largely restricted to two of the nine districts, Jikaw and Akobo, accounting for over eighty-five per cent of the livestock.5 Ellman (1972: 13) classified the range vegetation into three major categories: seasonally flooded pasture, pastures on the plain, and pastures on the piedmont and adjoining uplands. The major sources of livestock feed are the open woodlands, riverine forest and woodland during the wet season, and savannah grassland, riverine forest and woodland during the dry season. No other food supplement is provided to livestock. Savannah grassland, a relatively scarce type of pasture, nonetheless provides the main source of animal feed during the dry season. Settlements near the major rivers are best positioned to access these lands, involving shorter transhumance than villages far from the rivers. Of the total land area classified as natural grazing area in Gambella, only sixty-four per cent is currently utilized by livestock.6 The best rangelands are located along the Baro and Gilo Rivers. These rivers have a high overflow capacity, which creates suitable conditions for dry-season grazing lands and flood-retreat cultivation. For this reason, the Baro basin, most of which is inhabited by the Anywaa, has been a pastoralist magnet, drawing towards it what Sahlins (1961: 63) once referred to as the Nuer version of the Drang nach Osten.7 Towards the west, the alluvial strip is narrower and gradually fades. The scarcity of key natural resources is accentuated by the distri3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Cf. Bureau of Planning and Economic Development, Gambella Regional State, 2000. Cf. Disaster Prevention and Preparedness, Gambella Bureau. Cf. Livestock Research Report, Pastoralist Livelihood Programme, Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development, 1999. Cf. Conservation Strategy of the Gambella Region, Bureau of Planning and Economic Development, Gambella Regional State, 2000. Drang nach Osten is a German expression for ‘Drive towards the East’, a term first used by ‘19th century intellectuals, and later by Nazi propaganda to explain Germany’s desire for land and influence in Eastern Europe’ (Carlson 1937: 233).

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bution pattern. At first the idea of land scarcity in Gambella sounds contradictory, because Gambella exhibits one of the lowest population densities in the country.8 A close examination of the settlement pattern by district, however, reveals a different picture. The population density of the districts varies from the lowest (2.8 people per sq kilometre) to the highest (25.5 people per sq kilometre) as shown in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 Land size and population density of districts District

Area (km²)

Population

Density

Inhabitants

Claimant

Itang

1,837.04

25,175

13.7

Anywaa Nuer Opo

Anywaa

Gambella

2,859.85

41,867

14.6

Anywaa Highlanders Nuer Komo Majangir

Anywaa

Abobo

3,515.78

18,618

5.3

Anywaa Highlanders Majangir

Anywaa

Gog

7,138.60

20,285

2.8

Anywaa

Anywaa

Jor

2,488.13

9,181

3.7

Anywaa

Anywaa

Akobo

3,830.47

32,862

8.6

Nuer Anywaa

Nuer

Jikaw

2,192.82

55,922

25.5

Nuer Anywaa

Nuer

Godere

1,939.32

45,090

22.2

Majangir Highlanders

Majangir

(Source: Central Statistics Authority, 2005. National Statistics: Gambella Region, supplemented in the column with the header ‘Claimant’ by data from the authors’ field notes)9

The variation in population density becomes even more acute if we divide the districts by ethnic group. Of the nine districts, five are inhabited by the Anywaa and two by the Nuer. Itang is a mixed-settlement area with a roughly equal population of both groups. However, the 1994 census put the Nuer population at forty per cent and the Anywaa at twenty-seven per cent, indicating a stark imbalance in the ethnicbased land-people ratio. As a result, the two Nuer districts, Akobo and Jikaw, show the highest population densities in the region compared to districts inhabited by the Anywaa. The situation is further complicated because the population pressure is cur8.

9.

According to the Ethiopian Central Statistics Authority, the national population density in 2005 was 70/km2, which contrasts sharply with the population density of Gambella, which was 9.57/km2. This does not include the population density of the Anywaa-inhabited district of Dimma.

In the Riverine Lands 83 rently concentrated in the Itang district, which has a relatively high Anywaa density. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the major site of conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer is in and around this district, which combines the best rangeland with the riverine lands. Table 4.2 Distribution of animal population by district District Itang Gambella Abobo Gog Jor Akobo Jikaw Total

Number of cattle 13,100 5,100 1,500 1,300 6,600 135,000 187,000 349,600

Number of sheep 62,000 6,000 1,000 1,000 4,400 324,000 410,000 808,400

Number of goats 11,000 1,400 1,100 1,700 7,100 43,700 36,300 102,300

(Source: Bureau of Planning and Economic Development, Gambella Regional State. Conservation Strategy of the Gambella Region 2000: 33)

The distribution of the animal population is also uneven, as shown in Table 4.2. According to the Bureau of Planning and Development of the GPNRS, the natural grazing area of Gambella covers an area of 1,804,800 hectares. Slightly more than half of that area is extended over the eastern part of Gambella (Abobo, Gambella, Gog and Jor districts), which supports a minimum livestock population. The other forty-seven per cent, on the other hand, is utilized and seasonally overstocked as the transhumant herds range over the area, trekking from the rivers during the wet season to use the accessible upland grazing area and, during the dry season, moving back to the perennial rivers for drinking water and the new supply of sprouting grass.10 Of the cattle-rearing districts, Jikaw and Akobo have the highest cattle densities, and there is continuous pressure on the relatively less-populated district of Itang. As indicated in Tables 4.1 and 4.2, the highest human and animal densities are in Itang, Jikaw and Akobo districts, where the majority of the pastoralists live. Currently human and cattle population pressure gravitates towards the Baro River in and around Itang district, for it has the ideal combination of prime rangeland and riverine lands suitable for flood-retreat cultivation. The various groups of Nuer use different strategies to gain access to these vital natural resources, most of which are located in Anywaa territories.

Inter-ethnic Conflict: an Overview of Past Resource Conflicts The Anywaa have responded to the Nuer territorial expansion in different ways. Initially the Anywaa resisted, but they were eventually overwhelmed by the Jikany 10. Cf. Bureau of Planning and Economic Development, ‘Conservation Strategy of the Gambella Region’ (2000: 33).

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Nuer. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, however, political and military fortunes reversed in favour of the Anywaa, who, thanks to their geographic proximity to the highlands, took advantage of the arrival of the representatives of the Ethiopian state and the resultant access to firearms. This led to the emergence of powerful nobles, and ‘the Anywaa were catapulted from near extinction to ascendancy’ (Bahru 1976: 107). In 1911–12 the Anywaa carried out a series of large-scale raids against the Jikany and the Luo Nuer. Although the Gaat-Jak Nuer ultimately prevailed over the Anywaa in 1912 at the Battle of Biot, they learned the important lesson of modifying their strategy from violence to inter-ethnic negotiations to gain access to resources. Prior to the 1990s, Biot was the last instance of total mobilization in the conflict between the Openo Anywaa and the Gaat-Jak Nuer. After the battle, the Anywaa–Nuer conflict was localized, and various groups of the Gaat-Jak Nuer made peace with the Openo Anywaa at the Baro River. The first initiative was taken by the Thiang Nuer, who negotiated a peace agreement with the Pinyman Anywaa, cemented by inter-ethnic marriages and economic ties. The socioeconomic ties between the Thiang Nuer and the Openo Anywaa are described by a Nuer elder in the following narrative: Peace was made between the Thiang and the Anywaa at Tiengdeng [an important lagoon along the Baro River near Pinyman village in Itang district]. The Anywaa women from Pinyman village were sent to Tiengdeng to give the Nuer maize flour as a peace gesture to end the conflict. Thowat Gac, the leader of the Cieng Jenyang, took half of the flour and gave the remaining half back to the Anywaa, saying ‘as we share this food, may we always live together in peace’. The Cieng Jenyang Thiang renamed Tiengdeng as Banubdak, which, in the Nuer language, means ‘dividing the flour’. Thowat Gac and kwaaro Deng Cuia of Pinyman village became friends. Thowat gave kwaaro Deng a black ox and kwaaro Deng allowed the Cieng Gac to come to the Baro during the dry season. Thowat also made contact with the kwaaro of Pinymoo. After the Banubdak agreement, the Pinymoo kwaaro gave his daughter Abang to Thowat as his wife. The Nuer named her Bonge. Thowat gave the Pinymoo two oxen and a feast was made in Pinymoo village. (Elder Gatluak Choul, Wechdeng village, August 2000) Since this time the Thiang Nuer have managed to establish and maintain closer links with the Anywaa than have any other Nuer tribe. The two have developed not only social and economic ties but also forged politico-military alliances. The traditional Anywaa political system tied people closely to particular villages. Warfare was the mechanism through which the Anywaa constructed their village identity. In intervillage warfare, the kwaari sought military alliances with Nuer clans. In such warfare among the Openo Anywaa, for instance, the Thiang Nuer participated by supporting one or the other of the villages depending on the existing socio-economic ties. The following narrative illustrates these ties across ethnic boundaries: A long time ago a group of Gaat-Guang Nuer migrated to an unknown place in Anywaa country but they did not know that they were near to the Anywaa.

In the Riverine Lands 85 One day their bull went to a place called Walo where he ate the maize harvest. His Nuer owner realized from its faeces that his bull had eaten maize and wondered where it had got the maize from. The Anywaa owner of the maize also wondered what was eating his maize. The Nuer followed his bull and discovered the garden from where it got the maize. The Nuer told the Anywaa that they were staying in the nearby bush. The Anywaa offered to let the Nuer come to Walo and settle near them. The Nuer went to Walo and settled there. One day there was war between the Walo and Pekade [Pokedi]. The Nuer sided with the Walo Anywaa and together they defeated the Pekade Anywaa. The neighbouring Pol Anywaa heard about the victory of the Walo and asked the Nuer to help them fight their Anywaa neighbours. The Walo kwaaro refused but the Nuer went on their own and fought on behalf of the Pol Anywaa. The kwaaro of Pol offered to let the Nuer be his people in return for the land which he gave them to cultivate. The Nuer accepted the offer and they went to Pol. During the time of Litgach [the age-set initiated in the 1920s], the kwaaro of Pol, Jiokdwor and a Cieng Mek Nuer called Lee Ruey became friends because they were both good hunters. One day, Lee went to Pol and stayed for few days. While he was in Pol, a war broke out between Pol and Malwal. Lee participated in the war and he managed to kill many of the enemy because he was a sharpshooter. For that reason kwaaro Jiokdwor blessed the relationship between the Cieng Mek and the Pol Anywaa. After Lee left, a second war broke out with Malwal when Jiokdwor was killed. Before his death, Jiokdwor reminded the Pol Anywaa to keep the relationship with Lee’s people and demanded that Lee sacrifice a cow on his grave. Jiokdwor also said ‘in case you [Pol Anywaa] leave the land, give it to the Cieng Mek because we do not have any relatives other than them’. After the death of Jiokdwor, a Cieng Mek man called Bol Juc married an Anywaa woman from Pol who already had two children from another Anywaa. Bol took them to the Nuer village and they were renamed Maker and Dol and they became diel. (Elder Tut Gatwac, Wechdeng village, November 2000) In the politico-military alliances that have emerged, the Anywaa have also regarded the Thiang Nuer as a buffer zone sheltering them from less familiar and often more aggressive groups of Nuer, while the Thiang consider all ‘unoccupied’ Anywaa land in Itang district as their hinterland, which they call nyamdoar. Following the Thiang, various groups of the Gaat-Jak Nuer made similar peace agreements and exchange networks with the neighbouring Anywaa villages along the Baro. In the first half of the twentieth century, the interaction was seasonal. The Nuer went to the Anywaa areas along the Baro River at the height of the dry season (February to April), and during the wet season (May to March) they occupied camps in the upland areas. This seasonal movement was regulated in such a way that it clearly featured the symbolic ownership right of the Anywaa over the rangelands around Itang. A kwaaro would tell the Nuer when to come, where to temporarily settle, and how far to keep their cattle from the Anywaa fields. In fact, as long as the Nuer recognized the authority of the kwaari and their presence did not cause any trouble, their seasonal movements

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to the riverine lands provided the Anywaa with both an economic opportunity and a military power resource; consequently, the Nuer’s coming was something to look forward to. With an incipient ethnosystem based on symbiotic exchanges along the Baro, the zone of tension gravitated along the Gilo River to the Jor district, where other groups of Nuer put pressure on Anywaa villages due to the scarcity of land. Some groups of the Gaat-Jak such as the Cieng Nyajani, the Cieng Reng and the Gaat-Guang were relative latecomers to Gambella. As such, these groups of Nuer, finding most of the fertile land along the Baro already occupied, oriented their expansion towards the Gilo River, the home of the Jor Anywaa. By the time the Cieng Nyajani came to Jikaw, most of the dry-season settlements along the Baro River had been largely occupied by the Thiang. A group of the Cieng Nyajani settled southwards in the direction of the Gilo River, where they encountered the Jor Anywaa, some of whom they displaced. Given the acute desire to gain access to the rivers, the Cieng Nyajani used various strategies, from local economic exchanges, inter-ethnic marriages and the use of occult power to translocal political networking. During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936–41), the Cieng Nyajani leaders, for instance, appealed to the Italians for help in their fight against the Jor Anywaa (Ojullu 1987: 43).11 In 1965, nine Cieng Nyajani Nuer leaders also appealed to the Ethiopian government to support their claim for access to the Gilo River.12 They did not get as much support as they had expected. When they were unable to manipulate the translocal political networks, the Cieng Nyajani resorted to an effective internal mobilization. To that end, a famous Cieng Nyajani prophet, Nyachay Nuer, organized a military campaign. Nyachay was killed by the Jor Anywaa in 1976. The Cieng Nyajani then organized another force led by a well-known elder, Yang Thuan. Yang was also killed by the Jor Anywaa. The death of these two prominent figures angered the entire Cieng Nyajani community, which launched yet another attack on one of the resource-rich Jor Anywaa settlements at Angela village on the Gilo River. The Cieng Nyajani took over Angela and drove the Anywaa deeper into the Jor hinterland. In 1977, the Anywaa of Angela village, with the support of other Jor villages, recaptured Angela, losing forty of their number (Kurimoto 1997: 806). In 1978, the Ethiopian government intervened by putting pressure on both sides to end the conflict. With increased government intervention in local conflicts, direct military confrontation became costly. In the changing ‘rules of the political game’ set by government power, the Cieng Nyajani had to reorient their strategy. A section of them entered into peaceful economic exchanges with Anywaa villages in Jor district, and another group settled in Itang district along the Baro River. The violent expansion of the Lou Nuer into the Akobo region of Ciro Anywaa in present-day southern Sudan is another example of the Nuer forcibly occupying Anywaa lands after the nineteenth-century Nuer expansion. Originally the Lou Nuer settled in the Waat area, which is far from Akobo and poorly drained. The first 11. Evans-Pritchard also reported on the Italian support for the Nuer in their fights against the Jor Anywaa (1947: 72–73). 12. Letter written by the Ministry of Interior to the Governor of Gambella District, Metu Archive: 2066/1, 2/8/1949, Ethiopian calendar, C/1957.

In the Riverine Lands 87 encounter between the Ciro Anywaa and the Lou Nuer was in 1911–12, during which the famous Anywaa king, nyiya Akwei Cham, checked their territorial expansion and raided their cattle. The British intervened to protect the Lou Nuer from Anywaa raids by establishing an administrative centre at the confluence of the two tributaries that form the Akobo River (Collins 1971; Bahru 1976). Driven by their perennial desire to access the rivers of the Akobo region during the dry season, and placed by the British in the same administrative district with the Ciro Anywaa, the Lou Nuer gradually expanded into traditional Ciro Anywaa territories. Initially the Lou paid tribute to the nyiye for the use of the Akobo River. Some sections of the Lou also bought land from the Ciro Anywaa. In due time, the socio-economic exchanges resulted in the complete occupation of western Akobo by the Lou Nuer. The Ciro Anywaa were not happy about this territorial loss, and resisted Lou expansionism through all possible means.13 Since the 1960s, the Ciro Anywaa hold over the Akobo region has been further undermined by the Sudanese civil wars. During the first civil war (1955–83) most of the Anywaa villages around Akobo town were burned to the ground by the Sudanese Government Army, which considered the Ciro Anywaa ‘collaborators’ and supporters of the southern Sudanese rebels. As a result of these military campaigns, many Ciro Anywaa crossed the border and resettled on the Ethiopian side. This state of affairs facilitated further expansion of the Lou into Anywaa territories. The outbreak of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005) brought more repression of the Anywaa by the government of the Sudan. This was followed by a major conflict between the Ciro Anywaa and the Lou Nuer in 1983. The Lou Nuer used their connections with the Sudanese army to insure access to the Akobo River. As a result of these two wars, Akobo became de facto Lou Nuer land, which they now claim on the basis of the right of conquest, known in Nuer as camun nak. The Anywaa were left with two options: assimilate or vacate. Nearly all the Anywaa vacated and joined their kin on the Ethiopian side of the border. The rise of a Nuer-led politico-military organization in the 1990s, the Southern Sudanese Independence Movement (SSIM), and its connection with the Lou Nuer further pushed the Anywaa out of the Akobo area.14 The SSIM ultimately joined the government of the Sudan after the 1996 peace agreement between the two. The military power and the political standing of the Luo Nuer in the Akobo region were thereby greatly enhanced. It is to be noted, however, that neither the conflict between the Cieng Nyajani Nuer and the Jor Anywaa, nor between the Lou Nuer and the Ciro Anywaa, led to total ethnic mobilization. These conflicts were localized and, in fact, resulted in a more severe intra-ethnic resource conflict than an inter-ethnic conflict. The expansion of the Lou into the Ciro Anywaa areas brought them closer to the Gaat-Jok Nuer. Relying on their connections with the SSIM, the Lou encroached into GaatJok grazing lands. The Gaat-Jok responded by forging closer political ties with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which was in conflict with the SSIM. This

13. This includes putting spears in the river to discourage Lou movements (Jal 1987). 14. For a fuller account of the impact of the Sudanese civil wars on Anywaa–Nuer relations, see Chapter 9.

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brought about new local power relations. The Lou claimed the entire Sobat basin as a lasting solution for their uncertain access to vital natural resources. The tension between the Gaat-Jok and the Lou escalated into a major war in 1993, commonly known as the Lou–Jikany war. The Gaat-Jok were overwhelmed by the Lou. Over a thousand people are said to have been killed in this conflict (Wal 1992), which also produced a massive displacement of the Gaat-Jok, most of whom resettled in the Anywaa-inhabited district of Itang.

Contemporary Inter-ethnic Resource Conflict: a Case Study The 1990s saw intense resource conflicts between the Openo Anywaa and various groups of Gaat-Jak Nuer along the banks of the Baro River. In January 1998, there were a series of clashes between Anywaa and Nuer villagers in Itang district that lasted over a period of six months. The crisis threatened to escalate into an all-out ethnic confrontation at the regional level. Sixty people were killed, more than ten villages were burned, and around three thousand people, largely Anywaa, were displaced. The conflict came to an end in June 1998 after a state of emergency was declared by the government and the ‘ringleaders’ of both sides were imprisoned. The trigger of the conflict was an inter-ethnic divorce case. A Cieng Nyajani man who was married to an Anywaa asked for the return of the bridewealth after their divorce. The Anywaa family either refused or was unable to pay it back. In response, the Nuer killed his father-in-law, igniting the conflict between the two communities. The resource dimension of the conflict is obvious. There was, however, more to the conflict than mere inter-ethnic resource competition. For one thing, resource competition is stronger intra-ethnically than inter-ethnically. When the conflict took an ethnic turn, political factors featured prominently. Whereas the politicization of the conflict toned down in due time, the pattern of alliance in the continued conflict took a non-ethnic form once again. For a better understanding of the resource conflict, the following discusses the four sets of actors involved in the 1998 Anywaa–Nuer conflict in Itang district. One set of actors was the Cieng Reng Nuer from Makot village. The Cieng Reng is a section of the Gaat-Jak Nuer who live mainly in Yom, a locality in southern Sudan. In 1984, a small section of the Cieng Reng came to Itang district and established a new settlement known as Makot. This was partly due to the Cieng Reng’s perennial desire to gain access to the Baro River. This group of the Cieng Reng was led by a local leader called Kong Diu. With the intensification of the civil war in southern Sudan in the 1990s, the Cieng Reng settlement at Makot grew considerably. By 1998, Makot village was the biggest Cieng Reng settlement in Ethiopia. Over time, the Cieng Reng managed to create links with the neighbouring Anywaa communities and were able to obtain access to riverine land through inter-ethnic marriages, exchanges of gifts and purchase of land. Towards that end, Kong himself established alliances by marrying extensively, not only with local Anywaa, but also among the various sections of the long-time Nuer residents.15 As a result, the Cieng Reng in Makot village became very

15. Kong married sixteen wives from the various Nuer clans, the Anywaa and the Dinka.

In the Riverine Lands 89 prosperous, combining their pastoral economy with increased rain-fed and floodretreat cultivation, as well as developing new market outlets in Itang and Gambella towns. In 1998, the population of Makot village was estimated at three thousand. Initially the local Anywaa did not feel the Nuer presence as a threat because it did not result in any Anywaa displacement. Although Makot village falls within a traditionally Anywaa territory, the Cieng Reng established their settlement by clearing a forest. In addition, the local Anywaa benefited from the Cieng Reng Nuer in terms of the flow of cattle wealth (bridewealth) as many Cieng Reng married into the Anywaa. For these Anywaa, economic considerations took precedence over symbolic or political concerns. The wealth and demographic expansion of the Cieng Reng in Makot village attracted, instead, the attention of the long-time Nuer residents of the area. For this group of Nuer (the Thiang), the new Cieng Reng settlement at Makot village meant competition for a vital natural resource, namely, riverine land. The problem was compounded when a group of land-hungry Thiang, the Cieng Dung, put in a claim for the areas now settled by the Cieng Reng by reactivating their older alliances with the neighbouring Anywaa. The second set of actors in the conflict was therefore the Thiang Nuer. The Thiang felt threatened by the Nuer migrants to Anywaa areas that they considered as their hinterland. It is against this background that the Cieng Dung became extremely hostile to the Cieng Reng, whom they envied because of the latter’s cattle wealth and access to the Anywaa’s riverine land. In the resource competition between the Cieng Reng and the Cieng Dung, the Anywaa supported the Cieng Dung on the basis of their longer familiarity with the Thiang and their desire to buffer the steadily growing Cieng Reng community at Makot village. Having outmanoeuvred the Cieng Reng, the Cieng Dung adopted an exclusionary political discourse in their quarrel with the Cieng Reng. Like the Anywaa elites in the regional power game, the Cieng Dung labelled the Cieng Reng ‘foreigners/Sudanese’. Authorized by their demotion of the Cieng Reng to noncitizens, groups of Thiang and Anywaa raided Cieng Reng cattle. In this local pattern of alliance, the Cieng Reng found themselves increasingly vulnerable, more so because they had faced an increasingly hostile local administration. The Itang District Council was dominated by the Anywaa power elites, who were apprehensive about the demographic growth of the Cieng Reng that ultimately threatened the Anywaa’s political domination of the district in particular and the region at large. The third set of actors was thus the aforementioned Anywaa power elites. The Cieng Reng settlement at Makot dates back to 1984 but has been politicized only since the introduction of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia in 1991. On the basis of the new national political structure, Anywaa and Nuer political parties were established, competing fiercely for political power in the newly created Gambella Regional State. Itang district was one of the most politically contentious districts. The number of Anywaa and Nuer in the district were about the same, but the distribution of the kebele, the smallest unit of government administration, was disproportionate. Because they could claim plausibly to be the original inhabitants of the area, the Anywaa were allocated fourteen of the district’s twenty kebeles. They insisted fervently that Itang district was their territory and considered the Nuer in general to be

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latecomers. As a pre-emptive move, the Anywaa politicians in Itang district took various administrative measures to discourage the growth of the Cieng Reng population in Makot village. Above all, they defined them as refugees, thus denying them access to administrative justice. They also discouraged the local Anywaa from entering into social and economic exchanges with the Cieng Reng, thereby denying them access to the riverine land that the Cieng Reng had managed to obtain through various forms of social networking and payment. The Cieng Reng were even prohibited from using the Baro River for drinking water, and attempts were made to relocate them to a refugee camp. In reaction, the Cieng Reng developed two counter-strategies. First, they sought new local allies, in particular forging military alliances with other groups of recent Nuer immigrants such as the Cieng Nyajani. It was against this changing background of local alliances that the Cieng Reng swiftly became involved in the conflict on the side of the Cieng Nyajani when the latter fought the Anywaa because of the divorce case. Second, and with wider repercussions, the Cieng Reng made contact with the Nuer power elites, who readily responded to their plight and showed interest in their case regarding issues related to the demographic politics in the regional power game. The Nuer power elites, vying for political power with their Anywaa counterparts, constituted the fourth set of actors. These power elites in Itang district and in the regional council took the Cieng Reng case seriously. A number of Nuer officials visited Makot village and lobbied for the recognition of Makot as a kebele. The final link between the Cieng Reng villages and the Nuer power elites was found in the political discourse of the Anywaa, whose own power elites used the same discourse vis-à-vis the Cieng Reng and the Nuer power elites in the politics of exclusion: as with the Cieng Reng, the Nuer power elites were defined as noncitizens. Virtually all of the Nuer officials and civil servants had been educated in the southern Sudanese refugee camps in Gambella. It was the involvement of these power elites that turned the resource conflict into an ethnic conflict. Encouraged by the Nuer officials, the Cieng Reng demanded six kebeles ‘in proportion’ to their demographic size. Having a kebele thus became both a symbol for citizenship and a code word for resource entitlement. At the height of the conflict, Kong Diu and other ‘ringleaders’ were imprisoned for a year. Attempts were made on Kong’s life. After the issue became deadlocked at the district and regional levels, it was elevated to the federal level. When the Anywaa-dominated regional council produced a document to prove the ‘noncitizenship’ status of the Cieng Reng, Kong Diu travelled from Makot village to Addis Ababa, the national capital, to appeal to the federal government. The federal authorities compromised by granting the Cieng Reng a ‘residence permit’. Kong was told to return to Makot without further ado. From this case study, the resource dimension of the Anywaa–Nuer conflict is evident. The Cieng Reng’s politics of recognition centres on ensuring access to the riverine lands and seeking legal protection for their property. In the economy of relative scarcity, however, some groups of Nuer such as the Thiang are strategically positioned to benefit from inter-ethnic peace. As described in the case study, the competition between the Cieng Reng Nuer and the Thiang Nuer over the riverine lands was one of the underlying reasons for the conflict. The non-ethnic roots of the

In the Riverine Lands 91 resource conflict in Itang became even more evident during the 2002 conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer power elites in Gambella town and in how these same roots acted themselves out in the resource conflicts in the villages of Itang district. In the struggle for power at the regional level between the largely Thiang power elites and the Anywaa, the pattern of alliances at the local level once again changed. Until 2002, the Thiang had dominated Nuer politics in the GPNRS. Keen on repairing the strained relations with the Anywaa, the Cieng Reng kept aloof from the conflict. In fact, the Cieng Reng and the Cieng Nyajani gradually disassociated themselves from the Thiang and made a separate peace agreement with their Anywaa neighbours in return for their renewed access to the riverine lands. This brought about a new round of hostility between the Cieng Reng and the Thiang that erupted into a major conflict in February 2004.

Divergent Schemes of Interpretation as a Complicating Factor It is true that the Nuer covet the Anywaa riverine lands along the tributaries of the Sobat, but access to and control over these lands can be sought by various strategies. Mobilizing ethnic identity is just one possibility. What transforms the resource conflicts into ethnic conflicts is the way in which politics is organized in post-1991 Gambella as ethnopolitics and the contrast between the two identity formations. In the following I discuss how the divergent modes of ethnic identity formation of the Anywaa and the Nuer are acted out in the resource conflicts. Resource conflicts assume an ethnic dimension partly through the use of a similar strategy of accessing resources by individual Nuer. At this level, ‘Nuerness’ emerges as a cultural model. These strategies of resource extraction are the instrumental use of inter-ethnic marriages and the manipulation of kinship ties. The Nuer also employ a similar cultural mode of legitimizing resource claims. This gives the impression of there being an organized pan-Nuer economic interest. The Nuer instrumental use of interethnic marriages is eased by the gap between the Anywaa identity discourse and its social practice. The Anywaa identity discourse ideally prescribes ethnic endogamy. Inter-ethnic marriage is discouraged for fear of corrupting ‘ethnic purity’ (luo). In reality, however, pragmatism occasionally compromises ideology, the first such compromise being made by Anywaa leaders who had a political incentive to make a military alliance with groups of Nuer in the inter-village fights. In so doing, the kwaari and the nyiye anticipate the flow of cattle wealth to their treasury. This compromise is called bilo (exchange marriage). Through bilo, a kwaaro gives one of his daughters to a Nuer in return for cattle, forming a basis for interpersonal friendship or a Cieng/village-level alliance between the two. The commoners followed the kwaaro model and entered into socio-economic exchanges with the Nuer. As marrying a Nuer girl is hardly possible for the Anywaa because it requires a bridewealth payment of twenty-five cows, over a period of time the Anywaa have been reduced to ‘wife-givers’. Asymmetrical marriages at the individual level produce a pattern, for each individual Nuer shares the same cultural model. Where a Nuer cieng and an Anywaa village are intertwined in kinship relations and economic ties, the Anywaa tend to be drawn into the Nuer cultural orbit. There are also cases when Anywaa (foreigners in general) are helped to marry a Nuer girl in order to hasten the process of assimilation. This often involves economic and

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social incentives: a reduced bridewealth payment and the provision of food for needy foreigners. These acts of Nuer ‘generosity’ are attractive particularly to the poorest section of Anywaa society. In the long term, inter-ethnic marriages have brought about the economic and cultural expansion of the Nuer (Dereje 2005). In most cases a Nuer man marries an Anywaa woman. This is initially beneficial to both parties. For the Nuer, it is cheaper to marry an Anywaa as the bride wealth payment is lower, and for the agrarian Anywaa, the marriage ensures the flow of cattle wealth. The Nuer anticipate additional gains from such exchanges: marriage ties are used as a legitimizing discourse to establish settlements in Anywaa territories. These settlements gradually serve as a nucleus for more immigrants; over time, Nuer immigrants outnumber the Anywaa, who are then left with the option of either joining the Nuer kinship and political structures or leaving their villages in order to maintain their ethnic identity. The intentionality and instrumental nature of Nuer marriages operate at the individual level. Individuals apply the model as much at the intra-ethnic level as they do inter-ethnically. The birth and growth of Nuer settlements in Makot and Ochom amidst the Anywaa territories in Itang and Gambella districts is related to these social dynamics. Kong married not only a Dinka and an Anywaa but also many women of the neighbouring groups of Nuer. Riek Tuany, the founder of Ochom subvillage in the Anywaa village of Pinykew, married an Anywaa ‘in order to create social ties with the neighbouring Anywaa’, as he explicitly put it. I arrived in Ochom subvillage shortly after Riek’s Anywaa wife had left him because of a personal disagreement. I talked to Buk, Riek’s Nuer wife, about what she felt about Riek’s Anywaa wife. She answered me in strongly pragmatic terms: Nyapini is a very bad person. She is often drunk and even insults Riek. A Nuer woman would never do that. I also had problems with her. But it is good that Riek married her. Had it not been for Nyapini, Riek would not have become the dil of Ochom. Nyapini’s father also gave us a plot of land to grow tobacco.16 Similar intentionality and pragmatism are attributed to inter-ethnic marriages by a Nuer elder from Akobo district. When you marry or give your daughter to an Anywaa, you know that they will all belong to you. The idea is to be a big cieng in order to be able to defend yourself. No cieng wants to be small. It strives to be bigger. If these two boys [my Nuer research assistants] were my children, when they grow up they would compete to form their own cieng and become bigger. They may even quarrel. The smallest cieng might be defeated. So you recruit followers from different places with different means. You foresee in the future that a problem might happen somehow, so that you make sure that they will remain loyal to you. (Thiang Louny, Gaat-Jok Nuer elder, Ochom village, July 2000) 16. Tobacco grows on the most fertile part of the bank of the Baro River. It is also the most lucrative cash crop.

In the Riverine Lands 93 The Anywaa conflate the economic interests of individual Nuers with the idea of an ‘ethnic conspiracy’. This can be understood through the diverging schemes of interpretation that the Anywaa and the Nuer employ to define the interactional situation. Here, I draw on Robert Merton’s concepts of motive and function. Merton (1968) makes the distinction between motive and function while establishing the link between motive and action. He defines motive as ‘the subjective aim-in-view’ and function as ‘the objective consequence of action’ (1968: 51). He then goes on to identify two kinds of function: manifest and latent. Manifest functions are ‘objective consequences that contribute to the adjustment or adoption of the system that are intended and recognized by participants in the system’, whereas latent functions are ‘neither intended nor recognized, are unanticipated consequences of action which are functional for a designated system’ (ibid.: 51). Applying Merton’s concepts to Anywaa–Nuer relations, one might say that the motive of a Nuer man who marries an Anywaa girl or gives his daughter to an Anywaa man, without demanding that bridewealth or the full amount of bridewealth be paid, is to secure economic benefits and physical safety. This motive corresponds to a manifest function, insofar as it is intended and recognized by the actors involved (note the statements by Riek, Buk and Thiang Louny above). Merton’s notion of function applies, in this case, to the individual level. Simultaneously, however, the Anywaa tend to view the same act, an individual inter-ethnic marriage, at the level of inter-groups relations, interpreting it as an expression of Nuer expansion. In Merton’s terms, a latent function is mistaken for the motive. In Merton’s model, the fine distinctions between motives, manifest functions and latent functions does not, however, encompass a further aspect of social reality: the grey area in between them. Beyond the individual level, inter-ethnic marriages and the recruitment of outsiders do have a manifest function for members of Nuer local communities: creating a bigger and stronger cieng, as Thiang Louny put it. According to Merton, therefore, this is not latent because it is intended and recognized. It is latent only where it leads to the displacement of Anywaa and to ethnic conversion, i.e., to Anywaa becoming Nuer. It is common to hear a Nuer arguing as follows: ‘It is the fault of the Anywaa to abandon their culture and adopt the Nuer culture or leave their villages when a Nuer comes. We are not forcing them to believe in Kuoth, speak our language, make gar or become cattle keepers. This happens because they do not have confidence in their culture and their culture disintegrates when it makes contact with other people’s culture’. Given the increased emphasis on identity politics under the new Ethiopian constitution, contemporary Nuer seek to convert the ‘latent’ to the ‘manifest’; for even if inter-ethnic marriages have unintended consequences – that is, even if they are not expressions of a ‘conspiracy’ – it is recognized that they contribute to the expansion of the Nuer. The Nuer openly acknowledge their expansion and take pride in it. The growing interest of the contemporary Nuer power elite in demography is also likely to close the gap between the manifest and the latent, as their active involvement in the Cieng Reng’s quest for kebele in the case study above shows. Nuer microprocesses, on the other hand, are made intelligible by an Anywaa macroscheme of interpretation. The demographic and political implications of

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micro-economic practices between individual Anywaa women and Nuer men led to the ethnic framing of interpersonal and intergroup relations. It is this microlevel dynamic that has eluded the Anywaa political actors who operate at the ethnic level. Despite their attempts and occasional campaigns to stop the socio-economic exchanges between the ordinary men and women of Anywaa and Nuer, business often continues as usual at the local level due to the gap between individual and group interest. Group interest is not always served by the pragmatic flow of the individual’s everyday concerns. Nuerness emerges not only as a strategy for gaining access to resources but also a key element in post-hoc modes of legitimizing claims. When the Anywaa say ‘the land is ours’, the Nuer reply ‘there is enough land for us all’ – a discourse that resonates with the colonial discourse of ‘waste land’, i.e., land not ‘properly’ utilized by indigenous peoples and, therefore, inviting exploitation by settler capitalists (cf. Lester 2002: 30–40). The Nuer claim is, however, embedded in their notion of property, itself related to their contrasting ethnic identity formation. Indeed, the Nuer have a sense of individual and collective property, but property rights are tightly defined. For instance, effective occupation is needed to make a claim on land. Anything that is not possessed either pertains to Kuoth (God) or is there for the taking. This obviously has potential for conflict. For the Anywaa, the land is as much an economic as a symbolic resource. For the Nuer, areas that are not actually settled by the Anywaa are considered as part of ‘the economy of the commons’. In the 1970s, there were only a few pockets of Nuer settlements between Jikaw and Itang districts. By the end of the 1990s, Nuer settlements along the banks of the Baro River extended as far as the Anywaa villages of Pinykew and Abol in Gambella district. The Nuer have also established a very large settlement in Gambella town, popularly known as Newland. From Newland, the Nuer have continued their expansion to the east in the Bonga area, in close proximity to Tier Agak, the last Anywaa settlement at the foot of the highlands. This large-scale territorial expansion of the Nuer has become a source of concern for the Anywaa. Facing continual Nuer territorial and cultural encroachments, the Anywaa have contested Nuer hegemony both discursively and more directly. In the aforementioned discussion, it has been shown that access to and control over natural resources play important roles in the Anywaa–Nuer conflict. Nevertheless the link between resource competition and ethnic conflict is mediated by two intervening variables: first, the contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation and the divergent schemes of interpretations they have generated; and, second, a political structure that puts a premium on ethnic identity as unit of political action. On one hand, the Nuer’s strictly economic interest in land clashes with the symbolic significance that the Anywaa attribute to it; and, on the other hand, within the framework of ethnic federalism, resource conflicts tend to be interpreted as ethnic conflicts. In the following chapter the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer is examined in the cultural domain in order to show how the contrasting ethnic identity formations are implicated in the conflict situation and how they interact with the resource and power variables.

Chapter 5

The Cultural Contestation In the previous chapter we have seen how contrasting formations of ethnic identity mediate between resource competition, on one hand, and ethnic conflict, on the other. In this chapter we discuss the ways in which these contrasting formations themselves may cause ethnic conflict, particularly in processes of ethnic conversion. The constructivist ethnic identity formation of the Nuer is inherently expansionist. It not only allows ethnic membership for outsiders but it also actively encourages and supports the process of becoming Nuer, for example, by providing material incentives. Ethnic conversion is especially common in those situations in which the Nuer enjoy military and economic advantages, in comparison with their neighbours. Thus, in some areas of contact with the Nuer, the Anywaa are unable to sustain their primordial imagination of ethnic identity and, as a result, they undergo a process of ethnic conversion. This has embittered Anywaa in other areas, who persist on defending their way of life; and it has generated a cultural contestation, in which both the Anywaa and the Nuer reflect on their contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation and promote their respective worldview, while demonizing and criminalizing the other’s way of life. The Anywaa have responded to the territorial and cultural encroachments of the Nuer in various forms: avoidance, ethnic conversion and resistance. Some Anywaa have coped with the situation in the first manner, by leaving their villages and establishing new villages with the old names. Ideally an Anywaa would prefer to remain in his natal village, but living with the Nuer or having the Nuer as nearby neighbours is felt to constrain their way of life. For these Anywaa, animal husbandry is not desirable – ‘cattle do not mix with maize’. Others recognize the existential needs of the Nuer and tolerate them on moral grounds. This is possible as long as there is enough vacant land for resettlement. What this category of Anywaa does not like, or what angers them most, is when these ‘acts of generosity’ are taken by the Nuer as a statement of weakness, and thereby encourage further encroachment. Another section of Anywaa society has responded differently by conforming to the precept, ‘If you cannot beat them, join them’. Anywaa assimilation in Nuer society is facilitated by the Nuer identity discourse, which actively encourages becoming Nuer and only requires cultural competence. For this category of Anywaa, becoming Nuer implies an enhanced way of life, as this also involves conversion to a different means of livelihood, an agropastoral economy. Unlike other instances of identity switching that can be reversed (Leach 1954; Barth 1969), becoming Nuer involves a process of ethnic conversion and a lifelong commitment to the Nuer mode of identification such as through gar, the physical manifestation of male Nuer identity discussed in Chapter 3.

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Processes of Ethnic Conversion In some areas Anywaa–Nuer socio-economic exchanges have resulted in identity change. Nowhere is this process of ethnic conversion epitomized more than in the district of Akobo. Originally, Akobo district was Anywaa territory, but today only a few pockets of Anywaa settlements have survived. Even these pockets are being increasingly drawn into the Nuer cultural orbit. The three Anywaa villages of Jingmir, Burbey and Pone, for instance, have recently joined the three primary Gaat-Jok Nuer tribal sections of Cieng Wang, Cieng Nyanjiok and Cieng Kuek, respectively. The assimilation process started in the 1940s when the Gaat-Jok Nuer from the Nasser area made contact with the Ciro Anywaa along the Akobo River during the dry season. As the number of Nuer coming to the Akobo area increased, many Anywaa started moving out, while others resisted, mainly in the form of surprise attacks on those Nuer who went to Anywaa villages to buy grain. Repeated attacks resulted in serious battles between the Gaat-Jok Nuer and the Akobo Anywaa, as a result of which many Anywaa were displaced and resettled in the neighbouring Jor district and others concentrated in the district’s capital, Tiergol. The kwaari of the three Anywaa villages of Jingmir, Burbey and Pone decided not to get involved and remained in Akobo, where they were immune from attack by the Nuer. This group of Anywaa intermarried with the Nuer, initially Nuer men marrying Anywaa women, but later on Anywaa men were also given Nuer girls, either freely or for reduced bridewealth in order to strengthen the social ties. As they were cut off from other groups of Anywaa, the Burbey, Jingmir and Pone villagers were drawn into the Nuer cultural orbit. The following two examples illustrate the process of ethnic conversion, one from Pone (Tut Obang) and the other from Jingmir Anywaa (Ochiere Oruach) villages. Tut belongs to the first generation of ‘Nuerized’ Anywaa from Pone village. Tut’s father, Obang, and Dong, a Cieng Kuek Nuer from a neighbouring village, were friends. Dong offered his daughter to Obang as his wife, with whom Obang subsequently had five children. Dong, like so many other Nuer in Pone village, followed his daughter and lived with Obang’s family. In the company of his Nuer in-laws, Obang became competent in Nuer culture, a competence that became even higher among his children. Obang now speaks perfect Nuer and has initiated (gar) his sons, who all bear Nuer names. Tut, the most successful of Obang’s sons, owns the biggest cattle byre in Pone village and has married two Nuer wives. Pone is still recognized as an Anywaa kebele in the now Nuer-dominated Akobo, but for all practical purposes social life in these pockets of Anywaa settlements is effectively ‘Nuerized’. By August 2000, there were seven hundred and fifty families in Pone village, out of which six hundred and fifty were Nuer. An even more dramatic process of ethnic conversion has occurred among the Jingmir Anywaa: a change of ethnic identity among individuals with only Anywaa parentage. Take the example of Ochiere Oruach. Ochiere, a Jingmir Anywaa, is an Anywaa on both his father’s and mother’s sides. Like his counterpart Obang in Pone village, Ochiere’s father, Oruach, brought him up in a Nuer cultural milieu. Ochiere changed his Anywaa name to a Nuer name, Wako, went through the Nuer male initiation, although he was not even half Nuer, and married a Nuer. Wako, as Ochiere

The Cultural Contestation 97 prefers to be called, narrated his personal experiences to me, which sheds light on the incentives and ambiguity that surround the assimilation process: The first Nuer who made contact with the Jingmir Anywaa was Wangkech. He was a Gaat-Jok. Wangkech was a friend of a Jingmir Anywaa called Pokunya. That was during the time of the Litgach age group. Wangkech’s son, Lual, married the daughter of Pokunya called Dul. The children of Lual and Dul formed the Cieng Pokunya lineage. When the kwaaro of Jingmir died, the Burguany Anywaa wanted to take the kwaaro of Jingmir. That was the problem between the Jingmir and the Burguany. The daughter of Lual’s brother, Nyajok, married Wal. They had three children: Diu, Buk and Tar. They are called Cieng Nyajok. The Cieng Nyajok were allowed by the Jingmir Anywaa to permanently settle in their village because of the marriage between Lual and Dul. The Cieng Pokunya joined the Cieng Nyajok. The Burguany Anywaa left the area when a conflict broke out between the Luo Nuer and the Gaat-Jok Nuer in 1992. We, the Jingmir, remained because of our relationship with the Cieng Nyajok. As a result, we were cut off from the Burguany and other groups of Anywaa. Some Jingmir people tried to keep their Anywaa identity by keeping dimui and marrying Anywaa. Two of my sisters were married to Anywaa. My father thought that one day we might go to the Anywaa areas. He hoped that all of his three sons would marry Anywaa girls. One of my brothers married an Anywaa and went to Malakal and the other two of us married Nuer. The first Anywaa generation after the contact with the Nuer did not have gar. Gar started with my generation. I am the only one in the family who has gar. I asked my father whether we would go to the Anywaa areas or not. When he said no, I was initiated. It was a bit late for me. I was already twenty. I wanted gar because I could not marry otherwise. All my friends were Nuer. One cannot marry a Nuer girl in Akobo if he does not have gar. When I went to Utalo village to visit my Anywaa relatives, they considered me as Nuer and they said I should go back to the Nuer, which I did. (Wako Oruach, Pinyudo refugee camp, 4 May 2001) The genealogical location of the Jingmir Anywaa within the Gaat-Jok Nuer is shown in Figure 5.1. The Jingmir Anywaa in general and the Cieng Pokunya in particular (to which Wako belongs) identify themselves as Nuer. When I asked Wako how he identifies himself he replied to me in evaluative terms: Those Anywaa who became Nuer would not leave the Nuer because the conditions of living are good. If the Nuer see that you are a good person, they give their girls freely. You do not have to cultivate for anybody if you want to marry as a poor person. That is the case among the Anywaa. Those who do not have dimui cultivate the land of the kwaaro in order to be able to marry. If you offend somebody, the Nuer will collect cows for you so that you can pay compensation. The Nuer give you food if you go to them. The Anywaa do not do

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Figure 5.1 Jingmir Anywaa within the Gaat-Guang Nuer genealogical structure (source: author’s notes compiled from Wako Orauch’s narratives)

that. My father compared the two people and decided to stay with the Nuer. The Anywaa also have a culture of beating (utak). The Nuer marry with cattle, but the Anywaa marry with dimui. But dimui is not food. The Nuer marry with cattle and cattle bring you food. Now the Anywaa [in Akobo], too, have realized how important cattle are. Even if the Anywaa become rich, we will remain Nuer because we married Nuer girls and have gar. Wako is not alone. Similar stories can be heard from other Nuer of Anywaa origin, even among the educated and among those from urban settings, where the ethnopolitics in Ethiopia has generated a greater degree of reflection on origins. The following statement by an Anywaa with a mixed parentage who nevertheless identifies with the Nuer is a case in point: My mother is an Anywaa from Pukumu village. She married a Nuer from Luel village. He met my mother when they came to Pinymou during the dry season. Both my Nuer father and grandfather died when I was a child. I grew up with my mother’s relatives in Pinymou [Anywaa] village. I speak both Anywaa and Nuer, but I identify myself as a Nuer. I do not have gar but this

The Cultural Contestation 99 is not because of my Anywaa background but because my father is from Luel. Luel village is a Christian village [Seventh-day Adventist]. Many Nuer from Luel do not have gar. I like the Nuer because they are richer and stronger. As long as the Anywaa continue to be poor, the children of mixed parents prefer to be Nuer. The Nuer are so rich that they can even buy RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. An RPG costs fifty cattle. It can destroy an aeroplane. (Uchan Omot, elementary school teacher, Birhaneselam village, May 2001) Uchan is half Anywaa and grew up in an Anywaa cultural milieu, and yet he identifies himself as Nuer. To him, one of the main attractions of being Nuer is the economic status it confers, the scale of which is given in terms of the affordability of RPGs.1 Examples of ethnic conversion abound in comparative ethnographic literature: Fur becoming Baggara in the Sudan (Haaland 1969), Pathans becoming Baluch in Pakistan (Barth 1969), Kachins becoming Shan in Burma (Leach 1954) and Gunga becoming Hausa in Nigeria (Salamone 1974). This process of ethnic conversion has recently been disputed by Gil-White (1999), who argues that most of these ethnographic examples represent signalling, not switching, of ethnic identity. Gil-White instead proposed an ethnobiological model which he calls ETAM (Ethnic Transmission and Acquisition Model), a model that attributes a primordialist conception of an ethnic group to ethnic actors. Reworking Barth’s data on the Swat Pathans, Gil-White argues: ‘In Swat, considerable “playing” with the ethnic labels is allowed, so those who wish to articulate with particular networks may use the labels that signal the expectations associated with them. But if ethnic actors are in general primordialists, and also essentialists, that is, one’s ethnicity implies an inalienable “essence”, then I would expect the Barthian flexible signalling system to be the exception, and to find that in most times and places, one cannot simply “grab” a new ethnic label and begin interfacing with another community as a full member’ (GilWhite 1999: 812). Doubting the efficacy of the Nuer assimilation system as described by EvansPritchard, Gil-White further noted that ‘Dinka absorbed by the Nuer are not “real Nuer” – they have a special name: Jang Nuer … [likewise] Nuer who marry into the Dinka ethnic are not considered “real Dinka” either and are called Nuer-da, “our Nuer”’ (ibid.: 811). Certainly, ethnic conversion occurs transgenerationally and ideas of origin might survive for a while. Nevertheless, Gil-White should have taken the Nuer as yet another ‘exceptional case’, which, I suspect, together with many other assimilationist societies, undermines his generalized primordial thesis. None of the Nuer with Anywaa or Dinka backgrounds to whom I spoke showed any interest in a hybrid identity or resented assimilation. Nor are they categorized by the Nuer as not ‘real Nuer’. The Nuer refer to the Jingmir Anywaa as Bär Jingmir. Unlike GilWhite’s reference to the Nuer idea of ethnic purity, however, Bär Jingmir are not putative Nuer, but ‘Nuer under construction’. By calling them Bär Jingmir, the Nuer are making a distinction between ‘kinds’ of Anywaa, the others being generally 1.

Weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are acquired by Nuer villagers from the various rebel groups in southern Sudan.

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referred to as luuch naath (murderous people). Although they are still referred to as Bär Jingmir, they are also addressed as Cieng Nyanjiok or Cieng Pokunya. The prefix ‘Bär’, the Nuer name for the Anywaa, is not used here in a derogatory sense. It is rather the gradual but complete ethnic inclusion, such as in the case of Wako becoming Nuer, that is discursively negated by the contemporary Anywaa, who are engaged in the struggle for cultural identity. The one-way process of ethnic conversion undermines the Anywaa’s status claim as ‘better than’ the Nuer, the basis of this being a local discourse on civilization that refers to the ‘superiority’ of the agrarian life and the prestige derived from their political organization, an organization that produced nobles and headmen. The Anywaa contrast their ‘orderly’ political system with the ‘chaotic’ social and political organizations of the Nuer. The Nuer, on the other hand, take pride in their integrationist social system. Unlike other assimilationist systems, Nuer assimilation has not produced ‘internal others’.2 Neither an assimilation gap nor elements of class are observable. The Nuer do not make status distinction between the internal strangers (rul) and the ethnic strangers (jaang). Ethnic strangers could be either adopted into a dominant lineage, or attached to it through affinal or matrilateral links, just like the rul are. Contemporary Nuer are aware of their diverse ethnic backgrounds and for that reason they are keen on emphasizing the inclusivity of ‘Nuerness’. Assimilation among the Nilotes might appear to be relatively easy, given their shared origins and phenotypical similarities; but assimilation to the Nuer way of life occurs even across ‘racial’ boundaries. In the 1980s, the Nuer incorporated some Highlanders (the ‘red’ people) who were forcibly resettled in Gambella as part of the government’s policy of combating the recurrent problem of draught and famine in the highlands. The appalling living conditions and the high degree of coercion by the Ethiopian government that characterized the resettlement programme caused many such Highlanders to flee to the Sudan. Some of these Highlanders, particularly women and children, were captured by the Nuer and, over time, effectively became Nuer.3

Anywaa Discursive Resistance to Nuer Cultural Hegemony For those Anywaa who are outside the Nuer cultural orbit there is strong bitterness towards that which Hutchinson (2000: 9) called ‘the sticky grasp of the Nuer on their neighbours’. The Anywaa are well aware of the assimilation process and lament for their people ‘lost’ to the Nuer. Commenting on this social fact, an Anywaa elder once said to me, ‘All short Nuer are Anywaa and all tall Nuer are Dinka’. The assimilation process undermines the Anywaa status claim that their way of life is as good as, or even better than, their neighbours. This disjunction between the Anywaa self-image and the realities of inter-ethnic relations has magnified their ‘fear of extinction’, an anxiety that increasingly develops into the form of a political project of containment.

2.

3.

Even the much-acclaimed Oromo assimilation contains within itself ‘internal others’, such as the Wata and the Gabra among the Boran Oromo (Fekadu Adugna, personal communication) or the Omotic and the Nilo Saharans among the Wellega Oromo (Tesema 2006). I met some of these assimilated Highlanders in Jikaw district. Many of them showed no interest in me as a Highlander; while others ran off so as not to be taken away from the Nuer.

The Cultural Contestation 101 The Anywaa resistance to the contemporary territorial and cultural expansions of the Nuer has taken different forms. The first is a discursive resistance. This is expressed by ‘demonizing’ the Nuer cultural form. While commenting on the nature of ‘being Nuer’, the Anywaa often start by searching for ‘the hidden agenda’: The problem between the Anywaa and the Nuer is that the Nuer take other people’s land and steal their children. I have also heard that part of the Anywaa’s land belonged to other people but we do not know who these people are and they are not around these days. But the Nuer found us when they came to Akobo. The people who were there before the Anywaa were encouraged to join their relatives elsewhere instead of being assimilated into the Anywaa. But the Nuer take other people. God gave each people a language, a land and a system. The Anywaa have a system called kew [boundary]. There is kew between neighbours, between brothers and even between father and son. But the Nuer just move and take other people’s land. The Nuer have no system. The Nuer move like the Felata [Fulbe] and the Kibabish. The Nuer, the Felata and the Kibabish have no system. The problem with the Nuer is their behaviour. Nuer for the Anywaa means something which is not good. Maybe God created them like that, just like He created black and white people. In tribes like the Murle and the Nuer, if you steal and bring something, you are considered brave and get respect, but for the Anywaa such things are bad. We call thieves kuruach. A kuruach will not get a wife and he will be cursed. (Pastor James, head of Anywaa congregation in Akobo, Presbyterian Church of Sudan, Khartoum, 17 August 2002) A similar interpretive scheme was employed by an Anywaa church leader in Gambella: ‘How is it possible that I give you my daughter or even my wife free if it were not for ulterior motives? That is what the Nuer are doing. This is part of the Nuer master plan to eradicate the Anywaa’.4 Interestingly there seems to be little disagreement between the Anywaa and the Nuer regarding the form that Nuer culture takes. The Anywaa recognize, sometimes to their bewilderment, how ‘democratic’ and powerful the Nuer are. The difference lies in what it is meant for: The problem with the Nuer is too much democracy. Anybody can go to a Nuer village and live with them, and become Nuer. That is what happened with the Jingmir Anywaa. Jingmir were originally Anywaa but now, kalas, they have already become Nuer. Some even have goro [gar]. Their Anywaa culture is gone and they behave like the Nuer. They know that they are Anywaa and still speak Anywaa, but they prefer to speak in Nuer. They dance like the Nuer. We are fighting with the Nuer in Akobo, but the Jingmir support the Nuer. If I go now to Bentiue, I will get a wife free. The Anywaa look down on those

4.

An extract from an informal talk with Omot Agwa, ex-president of the Eastern Gambella Bethel Synod, Gambella town, 12 February 2002.

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who leave their villages. Only those people who are not good or have problems leave their villages. That is because the Nuer have no system and that is why they do not respect systems where these exist. We got our system from our kings. We respect our kings; wives respect their husbands. Other people say the Anywaa are selfish and do not want to live with others. That is not true. We respect system because we do not want to create problems. The Anywaa got their system from nyiye. Kings bring system, and you find kings in the Bible as well. There were kings in Israel. Jesus came from the house of King David. Haile Selasssie was called the King of Kings of Ethiopia, just like our nyinya which means nyiya of the nyiye. (Pastor James) Anywaa traditional leaders, particularly the nyiye, are expected to provide ideals of social behaviour. They are considered the repository of the ideology of ethnic purity.5 Ideally the nyiye do not marry wives from other ethnic groups. In the nyiye origin myth, Ucuudho, the divine ancestor of the nyiye, is represented as the ‘legal mentor’ of Anywaa society. The pre-Ucuudho period is viewed as a time marked by chaos, when people took the law into their own hands: Before Ucuudho, Cuai was the leader of the Anywaa. He did not govern the people properly. In fact, when people asked his advice, he used to tell them to solve it on their own. One day a person came to Cuai to complain about a neighbour who troubled him. Cuai told him to ‘spear him in his stomach’. That person went to his neighbour and speared the offender. But Cuai did not mean it literally. He rather wanted to say ‘take his cattle’. The family of the deceased in turn speared one of Cuai’s sons. Anywaa law remained an eye for an eye until the coming of Ucuudho. (nyiya Adongo Agada, Utalo village, Pochalla, 3 April 2001) As the legal mentor of Anywaa society, Ucuudho is well expressed in the origin myth of kingship. In this myth, Ucuudho, son of the river god, put an end to the perennial dispute among Anywaa boys over a fish catch. According to Reh (1996), who extensively documented the myth, Ucuudho suddenly appeared from the river during one of these disputes and asked, ‘Who caught the head, and who caught the tail?’ to which he added, ‘You holding the head, take your hand off it’. The person holding the head took his hand off and the fish slipped away. When the person holding the tail did so, the fish died. ‘The person who catches the head owns the fish because the strength of a fish is in its head’. When the villagers heard about Ucuudho’s judgement, they wanted to make him their leader. Ucuudho was ‘captured’ and brought to the village. He was given a wife. Ucuudho ‘went back to the river’ after his wife became pregnant and gave birth to the first nyiya, Gilo. Gilo is said to have continued his father’s judicious rule and helped the Anywaa construct a new social order (Reh 1996: 498–503).

5.

The nyiye do not always live up to expectations. One of the wives of the late nyiya Agada Akwei, for instance, was a Nuer from whom he had a son.

The Cultural Contestation 103 The political subtext of this myth is the legitimation of the power of the nobles as the descendants of Ucuudho, who introduced the Anywaa to the basic principles of social justice. Because of his ‘enlightenment’, Ucuudho’s relics became symbols of Anywaa identity, sovereignty, cohesion and power. His necklace, ucuok, is one of the royal emblems. The constant reference to ‘system’ in Pastor James’s narrative above ultimately goes back to the social order established by Ucuudho. Ucuudho’s son, Gilo, became the first nyiya and continued to govern the Anywaa in a more orderly way than the ‘chaotic’ administration of Cuai. The contemporary Nuer are likened by the Anywaa to the ‘primordial chaos’ of Cuai’s time. Nuer cultural hegemony is also contested through scriptural references. Pastor James’s reference to the Jewish kings of the Old Testament and to Emperor Haile Selasssie of Ethiopia, who legitimized his power through a mythological connection with King Solomon, is a discursive link with what Redfield (1955) called ‘great traditions’, whereas the Anywaa’s repeated references to the Nuer’s lack of a ‘system’ reduce the latter to people of ‘small traditions’. Other forms of Anywaa discursive resistance to Nuer territorial and cultural expansions explain Nuer power by attributing intrinsic strength to its cultural form: The Nuer are dangerous people. Even those Tigreans [resettled Highlanders] who fled to the Sudan during the girgir [the turmoil during the regime change in 1991] became Nuer and have gar. If you are smart or intelligent, the Nuer want a son from you but they become the father. This is possible among the Nuer. Look at the case of Joshua. He was originally Anywaa from Akobo, but he became completely Nuer. His brother and relatives are still Anywaa. The Nuer have the skill of deceiving people. (Okello Obang, Anywaa NGO worker, Gambella town, 15 July 2000) Okello is referring to the process of ethnic conversion among the Jingmir Anywaa in Akobo district, which was described earlier. Specifically Okello refers to the family of Lual. Lual is a Jingmir Anywaa, with two sons, Opal and Odol. While Odol retained his Anywaa identity, Opal became Nuer and changed his name to Joshua. Growing up in a Nuer cultural milieu, Opal was initiated and became fluent in the Nuer language. Here is an interesting case of one family with two ethnic identities. This process of ethnic conversion has produced conspicuous evidence supporting the Anywaa discourse of ethnic extinction. For all practical purposes, Opal, renamed as Joshua, identifies himself and is identified by others as Nuer. Fear of extinction, thus, is not the mere rhetoric of political mobilization, but an overarching theme among the ordinary Anywaa and their political leaders. The descriptions of the conflict situation between the Anywaa and the Nuer by two of the principal Anywaa political actors in the 1990s bear this out: The Anywaa and the Nuer conflict has always been there. It will continue in the future. Whatever alliance existed, it was tactical when the Nuer were numerically weak. I speak the Nuer language fluently but I will never let them know that I speak their language. There are only two ways of solving our problem. Either the Anywaa will cease to exist [when they abandon their lan-

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guage and culture completely] like the Opo and other people, or the Anywaa will become strong enough to resist the Nuer. The Nuer are born aggressors. It is in their blood. The Anywaa will not go the Opo way because we like to keep our culture. The only difference between the Anywaa political system and the modern state is that the Anywaa kwaari do not pay salaries to their followers. Everything else is the same. We do not have any inferiority complex. Why should we adopt other people’s culture? The Opo now speak Nuer and they have started adopting Nuer names. (Opamo Obaya, former head of Bureau of Education in Gambella Regional State, Uriru, Kenya, 27 August 2002) The Nuer come as guests, very humble, and become the hosts [the leaders]. The Nuer come to a new place, they marry into that area, and the area becomes Nuer. The Anywaa do not like such things. In the years to come there will be no Anywaa left in the Gambella region. Nasser [Sudan] was ours, but the Nuer took it. Jikaw and Akobo were ours, again the Nuer took them. Wherever we go, they will follow us. They take our land, they take our rivers, and they take our people. Now they want to take Gambella town. Where else should we go? We should stop them doing so. The Nuer behave like that because they think that they are many and it is their nature to be aggressive. For us the term Nuer means something bad. (Abula Obang, former head of curriculum department and founder of Gambella Peoples Democratic Congress, Uriru, Kenya, 28 August 2002) Opamo’s and Abula’s narratives reveal the tension between the two dominant motifs in Anywaa identity politics: the status claim that the Anywaa are ‘better’ than the Nuer and the fear of extinction because of Nuer expansion. These are vividly expressed in Opamo’s ‘ban’ on the Nuer language that he speaks fluently, and the constant reference to the Opo, a numerically small ethnic group in Gambella who have also come under strong Nuer assimilationist pressure in recent times. Although he bitterly resents it, Abula, like Pastor James, recognizes the assimilation process, but admitting that to an external audience would be self-defeating. From Opamo’s and Abula’s remarks we also learn about the subtleties of Nuer expansion, a social process that evokes suspicion and hostility among the Nuer’s neighbours. The Anywaa share this scheme of interpretation of Nuer expansionism with their Lwoo ‘cousins’. Centuries of separation, war and displacement from Ethiopia and southern Sudan, as well as civil war in northern Uganda, have driven various groups of the Lwoo into Kenya: the Anywaa of Ethiopia and the Sudan, the Shilluk of the Sudan and the Acholi of Uganda. In Nairobi, the Anywaa have ‘re-encountered’ their ‘cousins’, the Luo of Kenya. Much to the regret of the Anywaa, the Lwoo are the most widely dispersed of the western Nilotes. They regard the dispersion of the Lwoo as a result of Nuer expansionism. In Nairobi, I had the opportunity to discuss the issue of Nuer expansionism with some Sudanese Anywaa and Shilluk refugees and their leaders. In their narratives, like so many other Anywaa narratives on Nuer expansionism, the Lwoo sense of order, justified in reference to the kingship of the Anywaa and the Shilluk, was contrasted with the Nuer ‘chaos’. Nairobi offers a new

The Cultural Contestation 105 venue of ‘Lwoo networking’ where the Kenyan Lwoo, the Luo, are one of the major power blocs in the political landscape of Kenya.6 The following is a summary of narratives by a Shilluk and a Sudanese Anywaa resident of Nairobi:7 Nuer expansion and assimilation is not sustainable. Look at the Arabs. They have used Islam as a vehicle of Arabization. This is failing because those who are the object of Arabization are resisting it. All people who became Arabs are going back to their origins. As far as the Nuer are concerned, it is even worse because they have nothing to offer. Culturally the Nuer are zero. Assimilation, if it works at all, is into a higher culture, the backward into a developed culture. That is why the Nuer were assimilated into kingdoms such as the Shilluk when they met cultures higher than theirs. Agrarian cultures are more developed than nomadic cultures. You still find many Nuer going naked, wealthy as they are. They still paint their face with ashes. Above all, they have no sense of order. For a Shilluk, a Nuer is anybody who is chaotic and an outlaw. There is a Shilluk saying: Yi ba Onwar, which means ‘Are you a Nuer?’ when someone is not behaving well. An unruly child is also referred to as ‘Nuer’, ‘cie nwar to bie tuokto’. There is a famous decree by a Shilluk king: ‘There are two living animals that should not go to Puchudho [the royal centre] – a live chicken and a Nuer girl’. This is because during the time of Latjor, a Nuer girl was married to a Shilluk prince. Her child turned out to be not of a royal nature. Like the chicken, the Nuer tamper with royalty. The Nuer are expanding not because they have a higher culture, but thanks to their raw power (foolhardy) and their connections with state power. They managed to annex most of the territories from Dinka and Anywaa thanks to the support they got from the Sudanese army. Governments like Nuer chaos because they can be easily manipulated. The Nuer are like bubbles. You can blow them easily. They are changing sides like nobody’s business. Is there any society which has developed horizontally? The Nuer system is in a primordial form, the idea that people are all equal. Some people should lead. The Nuer have been caught up in a situation where they cannot evolve. The concept of state is not in their heads. (Peter Adwok, Shilluk SPLA veteran, Nairobi, August 2003) The Nuer contest the Lwoo representations of them as ‘chaotic people’. In fact they take pride in their constructivist mode of ethnic identity formation. The Anywaa have a certain problem in dealing with outsiders. They tend to be suspicious with foreigners. With us it is different. We take everybody as long as they are good people. We even favour outsiders in leadership posi6.

7.

In August 2003, a delegate of the Anywaa diaspora in the US made contact with Reila Odinga, a major Luo political actor in Kenyan politics, in order to secure political and financial support on the basis of Lwoo solidarity. In 2006, the Anywaa diaspora hosted a meeting with Reila in Minnesota as part of the wider Lwoo political networking. I received permission from both to use their narratives in this book.

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tions. To be a dil is not enough to be a leader. During the election in Gambella in 1987, for instance, Gatwech Pal and Getachew Mulat competed in the local election in Jikaw district. Gatwech was the district’s administrator and was a dil from Cieng Cany. Getachew was the district’s secretary and was an Oromo [Highlander]. The Nuer elected Getachew because he was a more able leader than Gatwech. The Nuer value people who can unite them and lead them to victory during war. As a good leader, Getachew had no problem collecting taxes and implementing government policies. (Bichok Wan, former Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia in Jikaw district during the election, Nairobi, 25 August 2002) Contemporary neighbours of the Nuer, however, have a different view of Nuer assimilationism. Educated Anywaa even refer to Evans-Pritchard’s description of the Nuer as ‘ordered anarchy’; however, when doing so, they conveniently omit the adjective ‘ordered’ and replace it with the more derogatory ‘chaotic’. Nuer chaos is then contrasted with the Lwoo sense of order. Above all, Nuer power is discursively negated by attributing it to state power, such as in the statements by the Shilluk above. Thus, the microprocesses by which most of the contemporary Nuer expansion has occurred are reinterpreted as ‘favours’ granted by governments in return for Nuer ‘subservience’, a logical outcome of the lack of a ‘system’. In this scheme of interpretation, the Nuer appear not as a powerful people, but as ‘a people without culture’. Even while the Anywaa acknowledge the success of Nuer assimilationism, its vitality is attributed to those who assimilate to Nuer ways: The reason for the success of the Nuer is simple. Those who assimilate go with the power. The assimilated Anywaa are given power by the Nuer, because they are the only people in Nuer society who have a sense of justice. That is why the Nuer system works. It is also because of the gar which locks you inside the Nuer culture. Once you are marked you are lost as an Anywaa, but not because you believe in the cultural superiority of the Nuer. The Nuer instead should be assimilated into the Shilluk or the Anywaa, just as the Amharas did to the Oromo. Unfortunately, the Anywaa prefer to be committed to so many things that make us vulnerable to our neighbours, such as the idea of jur and the value we give to dimui. The Nuer are solitary. Those who live near the Shilluk are becoming Shilluk. The Dinka and the Nuer have no home. The luak [cattle byre] is their home. They do not bury their dead, just like the Murle, who are really wild. It is the Anywaa who introduced farming and burying the dead to the Murle. The Nuer have become strong by taking other people and by connecting with state power. In southern Sudan, the Arabs established the Nuer militia to fight the southerners. The Nuer used that power to take land from their neighbours. In Ethiopia, President Mengistu gave power to the Nuer in Gambella, while he turned the Anywaa into a sea of unrecognizable community. It is one thing to claim power but quite another to live up to it. There are two famous sayings in the Sudan: ‘Don’t give power to the Nuer, he will prove a disaster. Don’t give the Dinka the right to divide the food, he is

The Cultural Contestation 107 not likely to share it with others’. (The late Ambassador Philip Obang, a southern Sudanese Anywaa, Nairobi, August 2003) The preceding statement was made by an Anywaa who is sceptical of his own culture. When he says that ‘the Nuer instead should be assimilated into the Shilluk or the Anywaa’ and when he reprimands his own people for not incorporating others, he is deviating from the ‘ethnic purity’ argument of the dominant Anywaa identity discourse. In fact, the indispensable bridewealth system and the ideology of ethnic purity are mentioned by Philip as examples of a cultural trap that has undermined the demographic standing of the Anywaa in the contemporary inter-ethnic relational scene. In that sense, what Philip contested is not assimilation per se but rather, like Peter above, who assimilates whom. In Peter and Philip’s definitions of the situation, we find a lamentation about the course local history has taken. For the Anywaa, the ‘uncivilised’ Nuer do not deserve to assimilate other people. That is why they believe that history has taken an unusual course and needs to be reversed or put back on track. This mindset has morally energized their project of containment. The discursive struggle between the Anywaa and the Nuer is also embedded in their respective belief systems and cultural practices. The radical difference in the imagination of the supernatural between the Anywaa and the Nuer is reflected in their diverging discourses on issues of entitlement over natural resources. Whereas the Anywaa draw on their notion of a first-comer (more binding and inflexible) to legitimize their rights over natural resources, particularly on the question of land, the Nuer draw on a different tradition of knowledge that bestows ultimate ownership of natural resources to Kuoth. Unlike the Nuer Kuoth, the Anywaa Jwok is not the ultimate owner of ‘earthly resources’. At its most instrumental, religious discourse is used by the Nuer as an exit strategy against the Anywaa exclusionary practices. This value disagreement is noticeable in their debate over access to and control over natural resources. The following narrative by an elder from Makot village sheds light on the nature of the debate: The Anywaa do not like other people and they say all the land of Gambella is theirs. This Baro River, is it the Anywaa who dug it? Is it not from Kuoth? Who owns the rivers? Humans can drink, cattle can drink, and animals can drink water from the Baro River because Kuoth gave us all these things. If somebody says do not go to the river, is that person a Kuoth?8 You [the author] came from Gambella town. Have you seen many people living in all the areas [between Gambella and Itang]? The Anywaa live only along the banks of the river. Where does Ethiopia start? You cannot finish the land. The land is bigger than the people. (Tap Manytap, Nuer elder from Makot village, 3 February 2001) Tap’s reference to Kuoth on the debate over access to and control over natural resources needs to be embedded in the contrasting notions of the supernatural 8.

The reference here was to the prohibition of the Cieng Reng from access to the Baro River by the Anywaa officials in Itang district during the 1998 conflict.

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between the Anywaa and the Nuer. The relationship between humans and Jwok in Anywaa cosmology is confrontational. The Anywaa fix responsibility for the existence of evil squarely on the activities of Jwok. For the Nuer, Kuoth is a gwandong (grandfather) or intimate friend (madh). Evans-Pritchard (1951b: 4–5) described Nuer imagery of the supernatural in the following way: ‘God the creative spirit is the final Nuer explanation for everything … The heaven and the earth and the waters on the earth, and the beasts and the birds and reptiles and fish were made by him, and he is the author of custom and tradition … God is thought as of the giver and sustainer of life’. Where the Nuer show humility towards God, the Anywaa assert humanity and claim purity vis-à-vis God. If God is an ‘ally’ of the Nuer, it – the impersonal pronoun is used intentionally – is a ‘problem’ to be managed for the Anywaa. Thus defiance, not humility, is the central theme in Anywaa imagery of the supernatural. Here can be seen a fundamental difference between the Anywaa and the Nuer worldviews. While the Anywaa believe life is a paradox and a plot authored by Jwok, against whom they must defend their existence, the Nuer try to surmount the human predicament through the spiritual agency of Kuoth in which the sacrificial rite plays a central role (Evans-Pritchard 1956; Meeker 1989). The emphatic rejection by the Anywaa of the Nuer religious framing of the debate should also be contextualized in these contrasting worldviews. In fact, the Anywaa consider this as a Nuer excuse to take their land. Whereas land belongs to God in the Nuer religion, it belongs to the human being in the Anywaa belief system. After all, they resist their own God’s territorial encroachments, exemplified by the Pö symbolic rebellion discussed in Chapter 2.

Anywaa Practical Resistance against Nuer Cultural Hegemony The Anywaa and the Nuer developed their worldviews independently of each other, but in contact situations the contrast is reinforced. This has created a definite potential for a ‘clash of cultures’. The Anywaa are often angered by the ‘participation’ of the Nuer gods in inter-ethnic conflicts. The aggression against Mut Wiu, the sacred spear of the Jikany Nuer, by Obang Uriem, the Anywaa governor of Itang district from 1995 to 2000, is a stark illustration of the different perceptions of the role of the supernatural in inter-ethnic relations. The trigger for the incident was a quarrel between two Nuer men in the district where Dhol Koryom, the guardian of Mut Wiu, lives. One of the disputants was killed, and the issue was settled with cattle compensation according to the customary Nuer law. When Obang, accompanied by government soldiers, reached the area where the incident occurred, the case had already been settled, but he nevertheless confronted Dhol Koryom. Obang accused Dhol of being a troublemaker and labelled him an ‘evil magician’. In the fight that followed this act of ‘humiliation’, five Nuer and two government soldiers were killed. Fearing for his life, Dhol Koryom, carrying Mut Wiu, left his village for the NuerJikaw district for protection, where he stayed for a year. After strong efforts by the Nuer officials to exert their influence in the regional council, the district’s budget was frozen. The civil servants staged a demonstration in Itang town because of the sanctions. Obang was eventually imprisoned, but later released and reinstated to his position. Obang turned his attention to the project of the Anywaa irredentism begun in

The Cultural Contestation 109 1998 – that is, to push for deportation of the Cieng Reng, who as recent migrants from southern Sudan represented a living example of the ‘foreignness’ of the Nuer. In fact, he made several attempts to deport them back to southern Sudan or to the refugee camps. Obang’s political project is typical of a group of Anywaa who still harbour an irredentist sentiment towards the territories lost to the Nuer, a sentiment kept alive and nurtured by the continuous pressure of the Nuer towards the Itang area, which threatens to upset the demographic balance and power relations between the two in the district. The Anywaa still dominate politics in Itang district, although there is a sizeable Nuer settlement. Thus, any move towards proportional politics could be viewed as a threat. In the context of the increasing link between politics and demography, the settlement of the Cieng Reng Nuer at Makot village has become politically visible. The Obang administration began to take political measures to make the settlement illegal, the first of which was to refuse the tax the Cieng Reng Nuer were paying to the local authorities. The neighbouring Anywaa villagers were also advised not to enter into any form of exchange, particularly an exchange involving land and fishing rights. On a more personal level, Obang came from an Anywaa family that was displaced by the Nuer. His father’s name, Uriem, means ‘one who is chased’. Obang’s engagement with the Cieng Reng, therefore, had a biographical dimension. Practical resistance by the Anywaa to Nuer expansionism is also evident in a practice known as chirawiya, which serves to disrupt Nuer expansionism through interethnic marriages. The more the Nuer use marriage as a means of expansion, the more aware the Anywaa become of its political implications. Nevertheless, in the last instance ‘the cow wins the day’ – the individual Anywaa still enters into socio-economic exchanges with the Nuer for economic reasons. There is a gap here between ideology and the rigours of everyday life. In the realm of pragmatism and economic imperatives (the Anywaa’s relative poverty), no matter how hard the Anywaa try to block asymmetrical inter-ethnic exchanges, policing individual members across the ethnic boundary would be futile. Economic realities encourage inter-ethnic marriages. The Anywaa compromise the ideology of ethnic endogamy by marrying Nuer in order to ensure the flow of cattle wealth. Although a Nuer does not pay as many cows for an Anywaa girl as he pays for a Nuer girl, the minimum payment (up to five cows) goes well beyond the average Anywaa bridewealth, whether in the form of dimui or in terms of cows or money.9 For a Nuer, marrying an Anywaa is an economic rationality not only because he pays less, but also because it allows him to gain access to natural resources. In the process of coping with their strategic dilemma, the Anywaa have devised a mechanism that will enable them to simultaneously have their cake and eat it. An individual Anywaa who marries into a Nuer family is entangled with kinship responsibility and moral obligations. He will not attack his Nuer in-laws nor the multitude of other Nuer who become his guests. Guests are highly respected in both the Anywaa and Nuer cultures; hosts have strong moral obligations to ensure their safety. Even those Anywaa who acknowl9.

The Anywaa economy was forcibly monetized by the Ethiopian state in the late 1970s. This issue is further explored in Chapter 6.

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edge the hospitality of the Nuer consider them as ‘good hosts but bad guests’, when they reflect on how Nuer guests gradually dominate their hosts. The Anywaa seem to have redesigned chirawiya to ‘discipline’ the Nuer into being good guests (welo). In the Anywaa language, chirawiya means (literally) ‘lifting up the hands’, but it is also used as a metaphor for withdrawing one’s protection. Thus, when an Anywaa says ‘chirawiya’, he means, ‘I am not in charge’. Originally the concept of chirawiya was used in the context of dispute settlements in which a mediator enters the scene as an arbiter for the conflicted parties.10 While the case was being handled by the arbiter, neither of the parties was supposed to antagonize the other. As a last resort, when the disputants failed to reach a negotiated settlement, the arbiter withdrew his protecting role, signalling the seriousness of the problem. The withdrawal of an arbiter often resulted in bitter fights. Later, chirawiya was adopted as a form of resistance to undercut the expansion of the Nuer by means of microprocesses. The Anywaa who hosts a Nuer is asked to ‘lift up his hands’ in order that the non-related Anywaa can kill the Nuer. Applied in this context, therefore, chirawiya becomes a ‘face-saving’ formula for the Anywaa host in managing competing loyalties. The objective of chirawiya is to deny the vitality of the Nuer cultural form, for if fewer Nuer marry non-Nuer, this would mean a reduction in the expansion of Nuer culture. It took a while for the Nuer to recognize the Anywaa ‘plot’. Over a period of time, such practices have caused growing irritation on the Nuer side. While the Anywaa ‘demonize’ the Nuer cultural form, the Nuer ‘criminalize’ the Anywaa means of resistance. They interpret chirawiya as allowing ‘cold-blooded’ and ‘indiscriminate’ killings and use it as evidence for the ‘morally corrupt’ nature of the Anywaa. It is for this reason that the Nuer call the Anywaa ‘murderous people’ (luuch naath). Chirawiya is contrasted with the Nuer’s more ‘humane’ notion of hospitality (neekä). Among the Nuer, all guests, including the rul and the jaang, are categorized as members of a minority group, and the host has a strong moral obligation to protect all of his guests. For the Nuer, their ‘minority policy’ allows them to stand on a ‘high moral ground’ that legitimizes their cultural form while it ‘criminalizes’ that of the Anywaa as the following summary of a statement by a Nuer suggests: We do not like some of the things the Anywaa do, such as killing secretly. Of course, the Nuer also kill but we do not simply kill. We do not attack women, children or a man who is not in a group. But the Anywaa kill indiscriminately. They are all the same wherever they are, even those in the towns. When there is conflict in Gambella town, the Anywaa go to the forest and kill the Nuer women who collect firewood. This would never happen with the Nuer! Nothing happened to those Anywaa who lived with us in Jikaw throughout all these years of conflict. During the girgir killings the Nuer became very angry and told the Anywaa, ‘If you want to fight with us there is no problem. Let us go to a place where there are no government soldiers to see who will win!’ (Nuer civil servant, Gambella town, 28 October 2000)

10. Chirawiya is particularly common in the district of Jor.

The Cultural Contestation 111 What the Nuer call ‘indiscriminate killing’ is not only chirawiya but encompasses all Anywaa surprise attacks. The killing of Nuer women in the forests illustrates the level of anger on the side of the Anywaa, who use unseen violence as a communicative act intended to hurt the enemy. The Anywaa ‘cold-blooded’ killings to which the Nuer refer could also be an evasive strategy to escape the observational gaze of the state. No matter what the intention(s), the very act of killing unprotected Nuer women feeds into a moral debate. In the Nuer conception of warfare, an open and regulated battle, the indiscriminate violence of the Anywaa appears an act of cowardice: The Anywaa kill weak people. A Nuer is killed by a Nuer; but he would tell the parents not to look for the victim and would confess that he killed him. If a death is not reported, it could only be a murder by the Anywaa. This is one of the main reasons that create conflict between us. The Anywaa of today have the same behaviour as the Anywaa in the past. They murder, and do not fight openly. The Nuer are angry because of these killings by the Anywaa. The Anywaa are also not good to one another. They kill each other by cursing. (Gatwech Gatluak, Nuer elder, Ochom village, 8 November 2000) These statements by the Nuer make sense if they are placed in a cultural context. The Nuer make distinctions between different kinds of conflict: dwac (individual duelling), ter (intra-tribal feuds), kur (tribal wars) and pac (cattle raiding). In all these conflicts there is a ‘code of conduct’. Categories of enemies are clearly demarcated. The only unpredictable fight is biem. Biem is the ‘cooling-off ’ period after a feud, in which it is culturally tolerated for relatives of the deceased to kill any relative from the enemy side as an act of compensation even after an agreement has been reached. Individuals from the enemy side normally take all necessary precaution not to run any such risk. If anybody is killed through biem, it is his own responsibility. The institutionalization of conflict enhances predictability and the preparedness to deal with it. In addition, the Anywaa are not recognized by the Nuer as enemies, for this implies a certain degree of equality. In the Nuer definition of an enemy, parties to a conflict are of the same status. For the Nuer, ‘the real enemies’ are the Dinka and the British. From the Nuer perspective, the Anywaa are ‘too small a group’ to be considered as such. Here the self-images of the Anywaa and the Nuer are in collision. They derive ethnic honour from different sources. Anywaa self-esteem is built on the basis of a discourse on civilization, whereas Nuer self-esteem is on the basis of effective assimilation, heroism and military exploits against their neighbours. In contemporary Gambella, being an Anywaa or a Nuer implies being a particular kind of person in the eyes of the other. Thus the Nuer are principally defined as ‘born aggressors’ by the Anywaa, while the Anywaa have become ‘murderous people’ to the Nuer. Both abstractions are premised on a particular way of looking at the world, ways which have produced their own rationality. Nuer ‘chaos’ appears incomprehensible to the ‘orderly’ Anywaa, whereas the Anywaa seem to be xenophobic in Nuer eyes. The mutual feelings of anger characterizing relations between Anywaa and Nuer have thus induced a moral contestation over definitions of humanity. This has the effect of a new ‘primordial game’ in inter-ethnic relations. By fixing a ‘sub-

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stance’ on Anywaa nature, the Nuer have begun to enter into the Anywaa conception of an ethnic group and, thereby, have also started to compromise their own assimilation ideology, an ideology which has always been based on the assumption of a certain degree of sameness. Here we find the Anywaa and the Nuer starting to play the same ethnic language game. The conflict situation is having the effect of further defining them, of producing similarity through opposition.11 The cultural differences and the divergent schemes of interpretation between the Anywaa and the Nuer are further illustrated in their contrasting notions of host and guest. For the Anywaa, being a guest (welo) is a permanent status, a concept that is also used in intergroup (inter-village) relations within Anywaa society. It is contrasted with the term jobur (first settlers of a village). For the Nuer, being a guest is a temporary status, a phase in the localization process, and a concept that is also applied intra-ethnically. The notion of a first-comer among the Nuer (dil) is a framework of inclusion for newcomers, Nuer and non-Nuer alike, within which localization occurs through adopting the lineage name of the dil. For the Anywaa, the Nuer immigrants to their villages, now related through affinal ties, are defined as welo no matter how long they stay. On a long-term basis, however, the Nuer have largely managed to establish their definition of being a host or guest through economic incentives, demographic power and the manipulation of kinship ties. This instrumentalization of inter-ethnic exchanges, coupled with flexible ethnic recruitment and elaborate assimilation ideology, has resulted in the oneway process of ethnic conversion and the expansion of Nuer cultural space, a process which has created different categories of Anywaa with different concerns. In the context of such profound cultural differences, the Anywaa interpret the Nuer expansion as an ethnic conspiracy. The Anywaa definition of the inter-ethnic conflict situation as such a conspiracy can be made intelligible by regarding folk conspiracy theories as theories of power (Waters 1997). Conspiracy theory is a theory of power of a particular kind – invisible power. People have a need to come up with explanations when situations become complex and abstract. Facing complex power systems such as the effectiveness of Nuer assimilationism, the Anywaa consider that this power has to come from somewhere and that there must be individual agents who carry it. The power of the Nuer involves a certain degree of invisibility, inasmuch as it is a power without a centre. This power is manifest in the expansion of the Nuer, but this expansion occurs through microprocesses at the level of the individual. The Anywaa, on the other hand, are used to a different kind of power, that of centralized power, i.e., village kingship or headmanship. The invisibility of Nuer power makes it difficult for the Anywaa to resist it. The Anywaa are therefore forced to reflect on the situation and piece together the fragments of this power and its mechanisms in order to make sense of the conflict situation. In doing so, they attribute an element of directionality and mission to ‘Nuerness’. At the heart of the complication lies the units of reproduction of the Nuer social system: the microdemographic processes. These microprocesses – inter-ethnic marriages

11, For a comprehensive analysis of ‘integration through conflict’, see the comparative study by Horstmann and Schlee (2001).

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and friendship networks – are social strategies used by the individual Nuer to both widen his resource base and ensure his physical safety. It is through extensive marriage ties and the resultant social networking that the bulk of Nuer expansionism at the expense of Anywaa territories since the conquests of the nineteenth century has occurred. This is seen as ‘ethnic’ in the eyes of the Anywaa because the individual Nuer draws on the same cultural model of resource extraction and social security with more or less the desired effect. But attributing intentionality to the Nuer is an external definition, a retrospective reading of an objective consequence (a latent function) to a subjective motivation, which is already explained in Merton’s terms. Each individual Nuer has a stake in the cultural model, aka Nuerness, because it is functional in solving their everyday problems. In that sense, the Nuer cultural form is a form of power whose frontier is expanding on the basis of its efficacy for the individual Nuer who practices it. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the Nuer cultural form for the individual Nuer has created apprehension for the Nuer’s neighbours. This is evident in their modes of resistance, such as chirawiya, which targets, at a microlevel, the very basis of the reproduction of the Nuer cultural form.

The Anywaa in Search of the Nuer ‘Hidden Agenda’ The Anywaa elites seek evidence for their definition of the conflict situation as a Nuer conspiracy in order to enhance its plausibility. They have found two convenient pieces of ‘evidence’: the Nuer song of the Tier Agak, composed in 1912, and a ‘confidential letter’ that circulated in Gambella town from 2000 to 2002. In the following, this Anywaa ‘evidence’ of a Nuer conspiracy is discussed, as well as the extent to which it has a bearing on Anywaa–Nuer relations.

The Tier Agak song and the ‘Nuer conspiracy’ Song in Nuer

Translation in English (1) Diu came by his own (2) Majak, son of Tinpe gar their servant boy Diu Majak (3) Diu will curse you and you will have no testicles and the curse of Anywaa will match the Nuer curse (4) Majak is in trouble like the fire of a burning pipe or like burning wood (5) When Thoch was discovered they all werecieng of Gaat-Jak. (6) Our Gaat-Jak, if you defeat the Highlanders, if you defeat the red people, who else in the world will face up to you?

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(9) Hawk bird, this is country of all Jikany, all Jikany of bush. Bush of Kedol, good bush (10) I don’t want to go back through wath Ngok. The force of Wudol Anywaa was driven back by Nuer (11) Oh, Anywaa, we will make you shit and chase you up to Tier Agak. Between you and us there would be no stopping of war. Those cattle can not be stolen by the Anywaa. We will destroy the Anywaa unity. (12) What do the Anywaa want from us? What do foreigners want from us? We will fight until the dust covers us. (13) Wiu help me, spear of Mathiang help me. We always killed Dinka, we Gaat-Jak, we always killed Anywaa (14) The people of this country have always talked about war; that they will fight with the Pinykew. (15) All children of Anywaa will see the flame of gun and we will drive the Anywaa into the pool. Don’t be afraid, we know it is not good to die but a nation survives on the strength of the youth.

The song grew out of the Battle of Biot fought between the Gaat-Jak Nuer and the Openo Anywaa in 1912. For the contemporary Anywaa, a revelation of particular importance is verse 11, which provides evidence for the ‘hidden’ Nuer agenda. Bär is a Nuer derogatory name for the Anywaa, primarily signifying people without cattle. Bia lac is an abusive word (‘to make somebody shit’), and Tier Agak is the easternmost settlement of the Anywaa, near present-day Bonga town, some forty kilometres east of Gambella town. In this verse, therefore, the Anywaa read not only of their humiliation, but also of Nuer arrogance, aggression and the ultimate objective of Nuer expansionism: the displacement of the Anywaa from all their lands. As Bonga is the last Anywaa settlement at the foot of the highlands, the reference to Tier Agak in the song is interpreted as a code word for the ultimate extermination of Anywaa

The Cultural Contestation 115 society.12 Contemporary Anywaa often refer to the song of the Tier Agak when envisaging the future as an ‘impending danger’: The Anywaa were living in Jikaw. The Nuer defeated them and took Jikaw and renamed all the Anywaa villages. The Nuer will not stop until they take over all the Anywaa lands. They even have a song for their plan. We get angry when we hear this song. (Anywaa civil servant, Gambella town, 22 June 2000) The Nuer, not surprisingly, have a different reading of the circumstances which led to the Battle of Biot and the composition of the Tier Agak song: There was a very famous Anywaa kwaaro called Diu Majak. His wife once said to him, ‘If you want to remain as my husband, fulfil my dream. I want to bath with Nuer milk’. Diu organized a bunam [mobilization of all the youth]. Then a very big war broke out between the Anywaa and the Nuer. The Anywaa defeated all the Gaat-Jak Nuer except the Cieng Wau. They chased them all the way to Biot where Diu was killed. The Nuer were very angry and they wanted to defeat the Anywaa up to Tier Agak. (Riek Tuany, Nuer elder from Ochom village, Pinykew, 14 October 2000) For the Nuer, the Tier Agak song signifies two things: justice and pride. The emphasis is on Anywaa aggression and the decisive victory the Nuer scored afterwards. According to the Nuer version of the song, verses 6–8 are references to the 1911 conflict between the Gaat-Jak Nuer and the Ethiopian state: ‘We defeated the red people even if they are powerful’. Verse 4 compares the spiritual powers of the Anywaa and the Nuer, whereas verse 10 ‘ratifies’ the nineteenth-century Jikany conquest of Anywaa lands. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, however, the Nuer were weaker militarily than the Anywaa because of the Anywaa’s earlier access to firearms. Viewing the balance of power of the day, it would seem that the Tier Agak song was sung to discourage the Anywaa from attempting to reclaim territories lost to the Nuer at the end of the nineteenth century. The contemporary Nuer describe the Tier Agak song more as propaganda than an actual plan, whereas the Anywaa refer to the song to validate their belief in the Nuer conspiracy of dismembering the Anywaa’s existence.

12. The Tier Agak song is also constantly referred to by the Anywaa diaspora in North America. In one of the peace debates in a Southern Sudanese Discussion Board, referred to as Gurtong, an Anywaa made a reference to Tier Agak to indicate the Nuer agenda: ‘To this day the Nuer follow wherever the Anywaa go. They have reached Gambella region in Ethiopia and want to take the town itself. “We have reached Tier Agak; we must go to Pochalla and round up the whole land”. That is the goal. It has always been a fight and death along the way to that goal.’ The full exposition can be read on the Gurtong website: ‘The Anywaa Need Peace and Happiness’, posted by J. Ojoch, 3 April 2003, www.gurtong.com.

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The ‘confidential letter’ and the Nuer ‘conspiracy’ In June 2000 an educated Anywaa gave me a two-page letter written in English so that I could ‘learn about what the Nuer are doing to the Anywaa.’ The ‘confidential letter’, entitled ‘The Nuer Invasion and Colonization Plan for Anywaa Lands,’ was allegedly written by Nuer youth in the Sudan and Gambella. The letter contains sixteen points that elaborate on ‘the colonization plan’. It begins with the statement, ‘Every Nuer must know that the Anuak [Anywaa] are his traditional enemy and that our colonization, invasion and assimilation plan must be applied to all Anywaa regions both in Ethiopia and Sudan’ (#1). The letter addresses two audiences: villagers and intellectuals, who are connected through the overarching ‘Blood Exchange Pact’ (#7) and ‘cold policies’ [Nuer marriage practices] (#2). The following is a direct quotation from the text: With regard to conquering the Anuaks you [the Nuer] must use the ‘Blood Exchange Pact’ in which the Anuak foolishly believe. Haven’t we desecrated it several times with impunity? We must fight the Anuak and their leaders who oppose our interests in their fertile land. Avail yourselves of the Anuak greed. They do not want to live with us but we must keep on with our invasion policies. When they leave the land for us, we will continue going after them until we finish their race… In the past our invasions and colonization plans were not written on paper as today. It was simply in our heroes’ minds. We are, however, proud of our people because they have always cooperated and were occupiers. If we apply the above principles, we are sure that the great Nuer kingdom will be established and we will assimilate all of this small [Anuak] tribe (##1,2). With reference to the nineteenth-century Nuer conquest of Anywaa territories, the contemporary conflicts between the Anywaa and the Nuer are understood in terms of ‘ancient hatreds’. On that basis, the future is envisaged in terms of impending danger, as seen in this additional excerpt from the ‘confidential letter’: To remind young Nuer about what your national heroes have done in the past, here are some of the important deeds they did: we are originally from Banteu, but our heroes found the fertile land of the Anuaks that was Nyium Abiel (Nasser) and they invaded in 1850 and have colonized until now. We defeated the Anuaks and Dinkas in that fertile land and we assimilated those who did not want to move. Our heroes did not stop there. They went on to Akobo and colonized it. Here they applied cold policies. They carried out those invasions when there was no money and no education; so what about now when you are all intellectual? As we said above, it is your duty to finish the unfinished job that your heroes left behind (#2). The Nuer reject the Anywaa allegation that a Nuer wrote the letter. They refer to the way the Nuer place names are spelled and the mentioning of the ‘Nuer Kingdom’ in the text as proof that the letter was written by an Anywaa in order to overcome the bitter division of the Anywaa elites in the run-up to the 2000 regional election. Putting aside the difficult task of identifying the author, it is more revealing to engage

The Cultural Contestation 117 with the political life of the letter. Above all, the ‘confidential letter’ has helped the Anywaa to focalize and objectify the Nuer ‘hidden agenda’. As W.I. Thomas reminded us in his famous theorem, if people believe something is real, it becomes real in its consequences. The first political effect of the letter was felt among those Anywaa who are living in the diaspora in the US. The Anywaa Community Association in North America (ACANA) held a meeting in Minnesota in March 2000 to seek ways to deal with the Nuer ‘colonization plan’. A fund-raising event was organized to generate funds to build up the military capacity of the Anywaa in Gambella. In this meeting, the level of concern was so dominant that even indications that the ‘confidential letter’ may have been forged by other interest groups became reasons for increasing political awareness of the ‘impending danger’ of the Nuer: In this meeting, an Anywaa raised his hand and asked, ‘How do we know that it [the “confidential letter”] was written by a Nuer?’ Then the organizers of the meeting replied, ‘Whoever wrote the confidential letter, the content is true. If an Anywaa wrote it, he could only be a patriot, because he alerted us to the threat from the Nuer.’ Many of the participants agreed with the organizers’ position. I also believe that the issue is not new and that the paper merely made us aware of its present conditions [aneqan, an Amharic term meaning ‘to be awakened’]. We, the Anywaa, believe that the Nuer are exterminating us silently, through marriage and friendship (Amharic: Nuer dimtsun atifto naw yemiyatefan). The concern was rather, ‘What if the [“colonial”] project started 10 years ago? These days, Anywaa leave their lands to other people instead of confronting them. It was not like this before. Now the Anywaa just sell their land for 300 birr. What would happen in the future if Anywaa continue loosing their land?’ Then the discussion focused on the issue of ‘how the Anywaa can best deal with the Nuer threat?’ Finally it was decided that the only way is to strengthen militarily those Anywaa who live next to the Nuer. After the meeting we came to know that the secret was exposed by a half Nuer and half Anywaa who knew about the plot. (personal communication with Ariat Ochalla, an Anywaa woman living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 12 June 2007) The ‘confidential letter’ was also an escalating factor during the 2002 conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. At the height of the conflict, an Anywaa political organization convened a unilateral extraordinary session of the regional council to discuss the ‘confidential letter’. In the minutes of that meeting, the letter was mentioned as the official Nuer position that drove the conflict in the region. Subsequently, Anywaa politicians actively discouraged inter-ethnic marriages and economic exchanges while alerting the villagers about the Nuer ‘peril’.13 13. Schlee (2008) discussed a similar issue in inter-ethnic relations between the Garre and the Boran-Gabra alliance – how a sketch map used by an academic to show the approximate settlement pattern of the Garre in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya was perceived by the Boran and Gabra as a graphic manifestation of the Garre’s territorial ambition on their lands. This map fuelled the conflict between them in 2000.

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The preceding discussion has shown how contrasting ethnic identity formations are implicated in the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. This is expressed in various ways: the unidirectional process of ethnic conversion and its discontents; conflicting narratives of property relations; the collision of self-images; constrasting power regimes; and the Anywaa’s search for the ‘hidden agenda’ of the Nuer . It has also been shown that the identity variable operates through the resource and power variables to generate ethnic conflict. The resource variable is linked with the identity variable, insofar as the need or desire for resources leads the Nuer to elaborate their constructivist mode of ethnic identity formation. This, in turn, leads to the continual territorial and cultural expansion of the Nuer. The gains from the resource expansion are then invested in ethnic recruitment. The link between the identity and power variables is expressed in the renewed interest that the Anywaa have shown in resisting Nuer expansion, especially during their short-lived politico-military empowerment in post-1991 Gambella. The following chapters show how the power variable generates ethnic conflict in the context of the state system, and trace the interaction of the power variable with the resource and identity variables in the escalation of Anywaa–Nuer conflict. It is a story about the fluctuation of inter-ethnic power relations within the political arenas organized by the state.

Chapter 6

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the Anywaa and the Nuer have been incorporated into the Ethiopian state in two successive regimes. The basic premise is that different patterns of incorporation into an ethnically stratified state and corresponding fluctuations in inter-ethnic power relations may themselves be viewed as causes of ethnic conflict. In keeping with the fundamentally multicausal approach advocated in this book, however, the power variable will be viewed in its interaction with the resource and identity variables. One of the main features of contemporary inter-ethnic relations is the role of the state in shaping the context of interaction. In a relatively recent addition to his previous insights on ethnic phenomena, Barth (2000 [1994]) explains why this is so: ‘Firstly, it is essential to recognize that a modern state provides a vast field of public goods, which it may allocate to categories of persons, or leave open to competition. Secondly, the state also deals directly with groups and categories of people, regulating their lives and their movements … Valued resources are arbitrarily allocated, or denied, by bureaucratic action, thereby creating communities of fate – which will next tend to emerge as social, self-aware groups – from formal legal categories’ (2000 [1994]: 19). Elaborating on the organizational effect of the state on ethnic processes, Barth continues as follows: So as to integrate the level of statehood successfully into our analysis, we need to see the state as an actor, not merely as a symbol or an idea. To do this we must employ analytical procedures that differentiate rather than lump states in terms of their structures and the patterns of action they pursue. I suggest that we must start by analyzing these policies of each state by linking the policies to features of the regime, that is, the state’s policy-making core. We are then able to depict the power represented by the state as a specifiable third player in the processes of boundary construction between groups, rather than confound the regime, and its powers and interests, with the more nebulous concepts of state and nation. (Barth 2000 [1994]: 19) In making sense of the contemporary conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer, I rely throughout the remainder of this book on this analytical framework, which identifies the state as a ‘specifiable third player’ in inter-ethnic relations. This necessarily entails a discussion of the role that the Highlanders, who are closely identified with the Ethiopian state, have played and continue to play in the Anywaa–Nuer conflict.

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The modes of incorporation of the Anywaa and the Nuer into the Ethiopian state differ significantly, although both Anywaa and Nuer were incorporated into an ethnically stratified state system. The Anywaa were hit hard by the territorial and cultural expansion of the Ethiopian state, whereas the Nuer ‘benefited’ from neglect. This introduced unequal power relations at the inter-ethnic level. Living in outlying districts far from administrative centres, the Nuer were not subjected to the same level of political control as were the Anywaa. The Nuer’s larger cross-border settlement pattern between Ethiopia and the Sudan was also a diplomatic resource that had kept colonial Britain and imperial Ethiopia at bay. Neglect also meant less social disruption for the Nuer. While the Anywaa political organization was abolished and their local economy forcibly monetized, the Nuer managed to cushion themselves from the Ethiopian state and market forces due to the continued use of cattle in creating and maintaining social relationships. These various modes of incorporation resulted in different identification strategies of the Anywaa and the Nuer vis-à-vis the Ethiopian state. Incorporation into the state system also created a new regional power structure within which the Anywaa and Nuer elites competed for political power. The Anywaa–Nuer conflict, however, is not merely a reflection of the state’s political behaviour. The state is also an arena where older patterns of hegemonic struggles are acted out and elaborated on, and where the microlevel social struggle increases and becomes more contested and legitimized. There is, in short, local agency. The expansion of the Ethiopian state at the local level has also meant changes in the quality of inter-ethnic relations. The political and economic decline of the Anywaa has encouraged the Nuer to change their regulated seasonal settlements along the banks of the rivers, which were established with the consent of local Anywaa leaders, into permanent settlements with or without the consent of the latter. Nuer settlements in Anywaa territories have dramatically expanded since the 1960s, and some of the Anywaa villages have been renamed in the Nuer language, thus signifying the change from access to control of the riverine lands. The expansion of the Ethiopian state at the local level, on the other hand, was not backed by an ‘integrative revolution’ in the Geertzian (1963) sense of the term. The ethnic and racial character of the Ethiopian state has precluded the positive integration of the Anywaa and the Nuer into the national identity. The ethnicities of the Anywaa and the Nuer emerge at the local level then as reactions to the integrative failures of the Ethiopian state. Ironically, the local expansion of the state has meant a change in the framing of inter-ethnic relations. Viewing the state as a new and powerful actor at the local level, Anywaa political actors have reframed their troubled relations with the Nuer in national terms: a conflict, respectively, between Ethiopian and Sudanese citizens. The expansion of the Ethiopian state has also meant changes in the demographic structures of the region. As late as 1984, the Anywaa were a demographic majority. A decade later they had been surpassed by the Nuer and nearly matched by the Highlanders. The first section below discusses the incorporation of Gambella into the imperial Ethiopian state system in the late nineteenth century and its impact on the local identification process up until 1974. The following section focuses on Anywaa–Nuer relations during ‘socialist’ Ethiopia (1974–91). In doing so, the chapter provides the background against which the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations in contemporary Gambella since 1991 – the object of analysis in subsequent chapters – can be understood.

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The Anywaa, the Nuer and Imperial Ethiopia Gambella was incorporated into the Ethiopian state at the end of the nineteenth century (Bahru 1976: 25). In 1898, Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia pre-empted British colonial interest in the region by extending his dominion as far west as the Sobat basin in the Upper Nile region in present-day southern Sudan in connivance with the French, who were simultaneously advancing into the region (Jal 1987: 183–84).1 Imperial Ethiopia had two major stakes in the Gambella and Upper Nile regions. Economically it was interested in safeguarding the lucrative ivory and cattle trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Johnson 1986: 222–24). The main sources of this merchandise were the newly conquered regions in the south, west and east of present-day Ethiopia. In fact, it was control of the trade routes that enabled King Menelik to turn his small Shewan kingdom in central Ethiopia into an empire that became the modern Ethiopian state (Bahru 1976: 24). Gambella was one of the main sources of ivory and cattle for imperial Ethiopia. Ivory was obtained both in the form of tribute and through trade with the Anywaa and Nuer leaders (Johnson 1986: 224–30). The quest for ivory led to a flourishing gun-forivory exchange, as more guns were needed to hunt more elephants. This economic activity brought imperial Ethiopia into strong competition with the British, who had a wider political, economic and strategic interest in the region. The overriding British strategic interest in Gambella was their preoccupation with safeguarding the waters of the Nile (Collins 1971). One of the main tributaries of the White Nile, the Sobat is also fed by major tributaries, the Baro, Gilo, Akobo and Alwero Rivers, that descend from the western Ethiopian highlands and flow through the plains of Gambella. The British also had an ambitious economic scheme. They aspired to tap the natural resources, coffee and rubber, of the western Ethiopian highlands, and for that they needed a commercial enclave linking these regions with the Sudan (Bahru 1987: 80–81). They were also in competition with the French, who had forged close diplomatic and economic ties with Emperor Menelik, evident in the construction of the railway that connected Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, with the French colony of Djibouti. In order to undermine the growing French political and economic influence in Ethiopia, the British negotiated with the Ethiopian government to establish a trading station in Gambella on the Baro River, the only navigable river in Ethiopia. According to Article IV of the subsequent 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Agreement, the British were allowed to establish a trading post on the Baro River, in the western part of Gambella town, which came to be known as the Gambella enclave (hereafter the enclave). On the basis of the agreement, Gambella town emerged as an important economic centre in the first three decades of the twentieth century, handling seventy per 1.

As part of the Franco-Abyssinian expedition to the Upper Nile region, also called the Bonchamps mission, Emperor Menelik sent military units to the Sobat basin; they arrived earlier than the British and planted the Ethiopian flags at the Nuer-inhabited areas along the south bank of the Sobat (Jal 1987: 184). Bahru (1976: 74) mentions that ‘You, the Nuer chief, had signed a treaty – presumably of submission – and received two Ethiopian flags and some clothes. The Nuer had also been given strict orders to have no dealing with anyone but Ethiopians’.

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cent of Ethiopian foreign trade with and via the Sudan (Bahru 1987: 77). British sovereignty over the enclave, however, was conditional on their rule over the Sudan, and thus ended in 1956 when the Sudan became independent. For the preceding halfcentury though, Gambella, with a parcelled sovereignty, occupied a unique status as somewhat of a political anomaly in the context of independent Ethiopia.2 In addition to British attentions, the enclave was highly favoured by Menelik as an inlet for salt and cloth imported from Port Sudan and an outlet for coffee, hides and beeswax from the newly conquered western highlands (Bahru 1987: 82–83). The 1902 Boundary Agreement also defined the national identities of the Anywaa and the Nuer. Except for a section of the Jikany Nuer, the majority of the Nuer were placed within the Sudan and except for the Adongo and Akobo Anywaa, the majority of the Anywaa were placed within Ethiopia.3 The Anywaa and the Nuer were thus differentially incorporated into the two states.

The Anywaa under imperial Ethiopia The Anywaa interacted with the Ethiopian state system earlier than the Nuer because of their proximity to the highlands and their new nationality as ‘Ethiopians’. The Anywaa village states were initially better connected with the local representatives of the Ethiopian state. The nyiye and kwaari responded to the new political opportunities, which above all ensured them earlier access to firearms than the Nuer, a new form of dominance that decisively changed the balance of power in Anywaa–Nuer relations in the former’s favour (Bahru 1976; Johnson 1986). Three powerful nyiye emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century: Udiel, Ulimi, and Akwei of, respectively, the Abobo, Akobo and Adongo regions. The most powerful among the kwaari were Adiu Nyigwo of Edeni village and Urubolo of Pinykew village, both on the Baro River. In contrast, the placement of the Nuer under the more politically assertive British administration put them at a disadvantage. With access to firearms and a new form of political centralization that went beyond the traditional village constituency, the Anywaa took the offensive and, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, had the upper hand over their once powerful pastoralist neighbours. The balance of power during these decades contrasted sharply with the Anywaa–Nuer power relations during the second half of the nineteenth century. Various travellers and historians reported that by the end of the nineteenth century the Anywaa were said to be on the verge of extinction after waves of displacement by the Nuer. Jessen (1905: 5) wrote: ‘There is no doubt that these people, who, sad to say, are gradually becoming extinct, are greatly influenced by their surroundings and the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed. Shut in on one side by the giant Abyssinian Mountains and on the other by the warlike and ever-aggressive Nuer tribes, their existence is not much better than that of the 2.

3.

Ethiopia is the only African country that was not colonized by the European countries, except for the brief occupation by fascist Italy (1936–41). The Gambella enclave was administrated first by the British Custom Inspector and later on as part of the Upper Nile region. As late as 1931 there were only two thousand Gaat-Jak who were permanent residents of Ethiopia, whereas forty-five thousand Jikany crossed the border annually on their way to dryseason grazing grounds (Hutchinson 1996: 112).

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 123 flying fish’. Collins (1971: 203) concurred: ‘They [the Nuer] left the Anuak shattered. Many had died opposing the Nuer advance. Others had perished from the famine which followed, and all suffered the loss of cattle. At the end of the century, the Anywaa appeared near extinction. They were saved by a technological revolution’. This ‘technological revolution’ was the acquisition of firearms through the ivory trade with imperial Ethiopia. As Bahru (1976: 112) noted, ‘About 1911, the total number of rifles in Anywaa possession was estimated at between 10,000 and 25,000’.4 In 1911, the Anywaa, led by nyiya Akwei of the Adongo region, launched their famous raids against the Nuer in the Akobo region.5 In the first raid, the forces led by Akwei killed thirty-five Nuer and captured forty cattle; in the second raid, five Nuer were killed, three hundred cattle were captured and a hundred women and children taken as captives; in the third raid, two thousand cattle were captured (Bahru 1976: 116–17). Akwei’s forces raided both the Lou and the Jikany Nuer and penetrated as far west as the Bahr el-Zaraf (Collins 1971: 203–04). In 1912, kwaaro Adiu Nyigwo of Edeni village organized a massive attack on the Gaat-Jak Nuer (Jal 1987: 269–70). Initially Adiu and his forces managed to drive all the Gaat-Jak from Gambella. The Gaat-Jak struck back and at the Battle of Biot (the present-day Jikaw district in southern Sudan), Adiu was killed. Since then, Edeni village has been under Nuer cultural and political influence and was renamed Majak by the Nuer. The Battle of Biot is the historical context within which the Tier Agak song (analysed in the previous chapter) is situated. The rise of Anywaa military power threatened the British and the Ethiopian state interests in the region. In the early decades of the twentieth century both governments had multiple economic and diplomatic stakes in Gambella.6 The British were the first to try to contain the Anywaa. With vital strategic interests to protect and an imagined economic eldorado to pursue, the British were increasingly nervous about the rise of Anywaa military power. ‘Disarm the Anywaa’ was the British political preoccupation in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1912, the British carried out a military campaign against the Anywaa of the Adongo region. Although the Anywaa were no match for the British in conventional battles, their guerrilla war inflicted heavy damage on the British military. In the confrontation with nyiya Akwei, the British lost four commissioned and thirty-seven non-commissioned officers (Bahru 1976: 120). The Anywaa also captured firearms from the British (Zerai 1971: 9). 4.

5.

6.

According to Johnson (1986: 34), around 1912 a large elephant tusk could be exchanged for ten rifles. The types of rifles used during this period were senadir (Remington), wujigra (Fusil Gras), mascob (Russian gun) and muzzle-loader (Kurimoto 1992: 13). Akwei Cham was the most powerful of the nyiye. Thanks to the abundance of elephants in the Adongo region, as well as his ability to recruit shifta (bandits) from the highlands and defectors from the Sudan army, nyiya Akwei built a very powerful army that successfully contested regional power with the Ethiopian and British governments as well as with Anywaa’s pastoralist neighbours (Bahru 1976: 109–10). The political and economic significance of the Gambella region to Ethiopia in the early twentieth century is evident in Emperor Menelik’s rejection of the British proposal to exchange territories, first, Zeila in British Somaliland for the Baro salient (Bahru 1976: 112) and, later, the British-controlled Illemi triangle at the junction of the Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia for the Baro salient (Collins 1983: 104).

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Embittered by the humiliating defeat, the British determined to resolve ‘the Anywaa problem’. To that end, they launched a diplomatic offensive to corner the Anywaa by arguing for a joint military operation with the Ethiopian government.7 The plan did not materialize except for a reconnaissance trip along the Gilo River. The Anywaa problem assumed such a high political profile that it provoked a parliamentary debate in London on whether the Anywaa country was worth the trouble (Bahru 1976: 128). Imperial Ethiopia was initially hesitant to curb Anywaa military power. It preferred to pursue a non-confrontational approach towards the Anywaa in order to create a buffer between itself and the British, but more importantly it had a stake in the ivory–gun trade. As Bahru (1976: 131) noted, ‘a vigorous policy of disarming the Anywaa would have been tantamount to financial suicide’. However, as the political influence and military muscle of the Anywaa leaders grew, political measures were taken against the Anywaa by imperial Ethiopia. Both nyiya Udiel and nyiya Akwei were imprisoned briefly to curb their growing military power and political influence (Bahru 1976: 111; Johnson 1986: 226). In 1913, the Anywaa demonstrated their political insubordination by killing Lij Kasa, the imperial agent of Gambella (Zerai 1971: 24). The death of Lij Kasa provoked a strong punitive campaign by the Ethiopian state. Four thousand spearmen and one thousand riflemen were sent under the command of fitawrari (Commander of the Vanguard) Solomon, the son of dejazmach (Commander of the Gate) Jote Tulu, governor of Sayyo, western Wellega. Fitawrari Solomon lost more than one hundred of his followers, further boosting the spirit of Anywaa resistance (Zerai 1971: 25). Subsequent to their military victory, the forces of Akwei Cham managed to take control over the trade routes along the banks of the Baro and Akobo Rivers, as far as Gambella town, Bure and Dembidolo in the highland, taxing all commercial goods that were coming through these areas (Zerai 1971: 10). The British officials in the enclave appealed to the Ethiopian government. Nyiya Akwei gave an ultimatum to the Highlanders in Gambella to be confined to an area within a kilometre of the town. In 1914, the ambitious qenyazmach (Commander of the Right) Majid Abud, a Druze Syrian in the service of the imperial Ethiopian government, was sent to force the Anywaa into submission. In 1916, qenyazmach Majid launched a major military offensive against the Anywaa in what came to be known as the Battle of Itang. The Anywaa put up strong resistance but ultimately succumbed to the forces of qenyazmach Majid – they lost five hundred and thirty-two men, and five hundred men were castrated (Zerai 1971: 26). As Bahru (1976: 142) described it, ‘in a sordid feat of carnage, he [Majid] asserted [Ethiopian] government authority’. The Anywaa nevertheless continued their resistance to the British colonial state and the Ethiopian government, as well as their counter-offensives against their once powerful pastoralist neighbours, the Nuer and the Murle. In 1931 the Anywaa once again raided the Gaat-Jak Nuer, and in 1932 they launched two extensive raids on the Murle in the Akobo area. The Anywaa killed twenty-seven Murle and captured eighty women and children and eight hundred head of cattle (Bahru 1976: 156). The Anywaa escaped British reprisals by crossing the inter7.

The British went as far as employing the service of the Abun, the Egyptian Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, to lobby the Ethiopian state to join the campaign (Bahru 1976: 125).

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 125 national boundary into Ethiopia. These Anywaa raids provoked a major diplomatic crisis. The British demanded that the Ethiopian state govern the Anywaa and also pay compensation for the losses. As a result, qenyazmach Majid undertook two major campaigns against the Anywaa in the Akobo region during 1932–34 in order to reassert Ethiopian government authority. The Anywaa call these campaigns laegnmajid, the wars of Majid (Ojullu 1987: 42). They tenaciously resisted Majid, and in 1934 his forces were annihilated by the Openo Anywaa in Pol village, and Majid himself sustained serious injury (Zerai 1971: 32). After a series of subsequent military campaigns, however, the Anywaa were finally subdued, and entered into a long military and political decline. The corollary to imperial Ethiopia’s campaigns against the Anywaa was the commencement of the slave trade, which left a permanent stigma on the peoples of the borderland who were forcibly integrated into the Ethiopian state. The pejorative term bariya (slave) originates in the borderland people’s experience of slavery. Gambella was one of the main sources of slaves in south-western Ethiopia. B.H. Jessen, a British traveller who visited south-western Ethiopia in 1904, described the plight of the Anywaa as follows: ‘The Abyssinians [Highlanders], though officially their protectors, make yearly raids on them, ostensibly to collect their tribute, but incidentally taking away boys or women for slaves … The Nuer on the other side make inroads on their land, in order to gain larger pasture-grounds for their cattle’ (Jessen 1905: 163). Apart from the cultural differences used to justify slavery, the general characteristics of a slave were dark skin and very short and curly hair. On the basis of oral history, Birhanu documented the inhumane practices of slavery and the slave trade in western Ethiopia: After their capture, slaves were beaten and roped together, and gags put in their mouth to prevent them from making loud noises. Their legs were also tied tightly so that they wouldn’t escape, or run away. [In the markets] they sat in rows on stones in what was called daga garba and [the slave quarter] was called dabigarba. Their faces were painted with butter and a type of grass called soso was put around their necks…to make them look healthy. If their skins were not dark enough, they would be warmed beside a fire for long time in order to change the pigment of their skin before taking them to the market (Birhanu 1973: 14). The political status of the Anywaa was no better during the brief Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936–41) prior to and during the first two years of the Second World War. The Italians supported the Nuer for strategic reasons (Collins 1983: 386). The Ethiopia–Sudanese border was one of the theatres of the Second World War. The Italians’ plan to attack the British in the Sudan counted on Nuer ‘heroism’. The Anywaa political leaders were targeted and deposed by the Italians, who then actively supported the Nuer in their fight against the Anywaa in Jor district.8 8.

Evans-Prichard (1947) reported on the Italian involvement in the Nuer–Anywaa conflict in Jor district with their policy of supporting the Gaat-Jak and Gaat-Guang tribes’ claim over Anywaa lands. He also reported that the Italians deposed the nyibur (representative of a kwaaro) of Pinyudo village, one of the largest Anywaa settlements along the Gilo River (EvansPritchard 1947: 72–73).

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Imperial Ethiopian authority over the Anywaa was further consolidated in the post-liberation period. Police stations were established to enforce this authority and state demands were changed from tribute to tax. As dimui was the traditional currency, the Anywaa could not meet the tax demands in monetary terms. Some Anywaa responded to the demand through seasonal wage labour on the coffee farms of the neighbouring highlands, particularly in western Wellega. Others responded through military resistance. By the 1950s the Anywaa were once again politically restive. During 1952–58, they raided police stations in Gog, Itang and Pokumu districts. These raids posed a serious threat to the Ethiopian government, as they did to the British commercial establishment in Gambella.9 The state of rebellion lasted until 1960, when it was finally quelled by an army sent from Gore, the provincial capital. Pokumu village, the centre of Anywaa resistance, was burned to the ground by the Ethiopian government troops and renamed Birhaneselam, which in the Amharic language means ‘light of peace’. The Anywaa spirit of resistance spread into other districts such as Akobo and Gog in the late 1960s. The main items of contention between the Anywaa and imperial Ethiopia in the 1950s and 1960s were the legitimacy of state authority and the inability of the Anywaa to pay tax in cash because their economy was non-monetized (Ojullu 1987: 43). The double pressure from imperial Ethiopia and colonial Sudan greatly affected the viability of Anywaa society. Politically their ‘enlightened’ nyiye were reduced to mere collaborators. Some Anywaa kwaari and nyiye were made balabats (local imperial officials), but real political power was exercised in Gambella throughout the imperial period by officials sent by the central government who, in the eyes of the Anywaa and the Nuer, ‘belonged’ to the category of Highlanders. In fact, the people of Gambella were referred to at the national level as lemma, named after the imperial governor of Gambella in the 1960s, General Lemma. The Anywaa and the Nuer were addressed as ‘People of Lemma’, as if they did not exist before the arrival of the general. The appointment of General Lemma as the governor of Gambella was characteristic of the way in which the Ethiopian state related to its periphery. Most imperial governors of the peripheral regions were sent there as a form of ‘exile’. General Lemma came to Gambella because of his participation in the failed 1960 coup against Emperor Haile Selasssie. The choice of Gambella for his governorate served as a dual vendetta against him. On a personal level, the general had problems with the governor of Illubabor province, Enquselassie, and his assignment as governor of Gambella thus placed him under the authority of a rival. On a symbolic level, the general was subjected to a different form of slight. Though he was an ethnic Amhara, he fell on the black side of the colour spectrum. In the Ethiopia of the day, when the discourse about ‘purity of race’ played a prominent role in national identification, associating him with the ‘black’ Anywaa and Nuer was intended as symbolic violence against him. The arrival of the imperial Ethiopian state in Gambella also heralded the economic decline of the Anywaa. Until that time, there had been reciprocal socio-eco-

9.

‘Security Situation in Gambella’: a report by the British officer of the enclave to the administrator of Gambella, 13 February 1952, Metu Archives.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 127 nomic exchanges between the Anywaa and the Oromo of the neighbouring highlands. The main trading items were cotton from the Anywaa side and beads and grain from the Oromo (Kurimoto 1992: 14). The masculine ritual of buffalo killing by Oromo men in the lowlands of Gambella also introduced a nascent form of positive social integration. The Oromo and the Anywaa hunted the buffalo together, the former taking the horns and the skin, the latter taking the meat. With the establishment of the enclave, cotton, one of the main Anywaa export items to the highlands, became redundant. Cotton goods constituted the most important import item from the Sudan, amounting to 15,029 out of a total of 27,962 pounds sterling in 1911 (Bahru 1976: 253). The military campaigns also caused the farmlands to be left unattended; as a result, the Anywaa started to buy grain from the highlands, a trend which ultimately led to the change in their position in the regional economy from subsistence producers to consumers of highland products. Socially, the Anywaa assumed a ‘spoiled identity’, reduced from luo to bariya and lemma. Above all, with the political and military decline, the Anywaa villages were no longer able to contain territorial encroachments by their pastoralist neighbours. In fact, it was this decline that undermined negotiated access to resources between the Anywaa and their neighbours, with the latter being increasingly encouraged to adopt violence as part of a strategy of resource access.

The Nuer under imperial Ethiopia Unlike the Anywaa, the Nuer occupied remote areas where imperial Ethiopia lacked the administrative resources to govern them. Besides, imperial Ethiopia and colonial Britain were vying to win over the political loyalty of the Nuer on economic grounds (cattle wealth). Who should tax which Nuer section was a serious bone of contention between the two states (Johnson 1986: 230). In fact, ‘there was a brisk struggle for Nuer allegiance between the respective frontier agents of the two governments’ (Bahru 1976: 163). This created a wider political agency for the Nuer to manipulate alternative centres of power by instrumentalizing the international boundary because the militarization of the Anywaa posed a threat to both states. As Anywaa power waned, Nuer power waxed. Acutely aware of the new military might of the Anywaa, the Nuer caught up with them in the local arms race (Bahru 1976: 146). After the Battle of Biot in 1912, the Nuer began to establish trade networks with the neighbouring Ethiopian highland towns, exchanging cattle for firearms. It was virtually impossible to secure arms from the British, who sought to maintain the ‘monopoly of force’, while Ethiopian imperial power was constructed through a strategic co-option of local power structures provided that they remained loyal (Johnson 1986: 228–31). Prior to the Italian occupation, the British toyed with the idea of a quid pro quo with the Ethiopian government in order to claim all the Nuer and their lands and enforce a ‘Pax-Britannica’ along the frontier (Collins 1971: 104). In fact, the British proposed to redraw the 1902 border through an exchange of their territory, the Illemi triangle, a triangular piece of land joining Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia, with the Gambella region of Ethiopia (Collins 1983: 390). When this failed, the British pressed for a grazing agreement in 1933, in which they were prepared to pay fees for the use of the Gaat-Jak Nuer dry-season grazing lands inside Ethiopia (Johnston

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1986: 230). The British viewed this as a first step that ultimately would lead to an exchange of territories, but by 1935 British frontier officials realized that the idea of territorial exchange was not feasible, with imperial Ethiopia succumbing to fascist Italy a year later. As the colonial and imperial states vied for the grazing and taxing rights of the Nuer, the Nuer learned that there were multiple claimants to the land, and that the Anywaa’s land rights claim was just one of many. In the 1930s, Koryom Tut, a Thiang Nuer from Kurtony in Jikaw district, became the first Nuer to attain the high-ranking imperial title of fitawrari (Collins 1983: 378).10 Koryom, in league with qenyazmach Majid, encouraged the permanent settlement of sections of the Nuer who had cross-border settlements. The Nuer were better integrated into the Italian colonial establishment in the Gambella region than were the Anywaa. As part of the Second World War military strategy, the Italians sought to play the Nuer ‘card’ against the British East African colonies, employing the Nuer ‘as the shock troops of a new Italian African army’ (Collins 1983: 390). The Italians’ preference for the Nuer was based on the latter’s numerical advantage, their larger settlements in the Sudan and their ‘warrior’ identity. Italian Nuer policy was articulated by Major Colacino, Italian commander in the Gambella region: It is necessary to protect and cherish our Nuer as well as the Sudanese Nuer. It is necessary to carry out this policy … so that it will keep alive in the Nuer the lighted torch of sympathy towards Italy with their political future in the hands of God and our Duce. Involved in a war with the English we should have the sympathy of a quarter million Nuer on our frontier to safely advance into enemy territory. We should enrol under our banner thousands and thousands of these magnificent Nuer … warriors at heart, frugal, dignified, solid, faithful, and grateful. (Report by Major Colacino, 23 February 1940, quoted in Collins 1983: 386) The Italians, on the other hand, perceived the Anywaa as ‘unreliable’ (Collins 1983: 386). Some groups of Nuer instrumentalized the Italian attraction to them to gain access to the Anywaa riverine lands. This is certainly true for the Cieng Nyajani, who appealed to the Italians for military support in their fight against the Jor Anywaa (Ojullu 1987: 43). Gambella was occupied by the combined forces of the British East African army and the Belgian Congolese soldiers on 22 March 1941 (Collins 1983: 400). As part of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), the British exercised power over Gambella and sought to annex it to the Sudan. The guilt associated with the British policy of appeasing fascist Italy, which included the ‘sacrification’ of Ethiopia, made the military occupation of Ethiopia morally unattainable. After four months of rule under the OETA, Ethiopia regained sovereignty over 10. Qenyazmach Koryom Tut travelled to Addis Ababa where he was hosted and given presents by the emperor so that he could serve as the agent of the Ethiopian government in the Nuerinhabited areas of Gambella.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 129 the Gambella region (Collins 1983: 403). Post-liberation Ethiopia continued its policy of political integration of the Nuer in its diplomatic competition with the British. More Nuer imperial title holders appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, creating new spaces for individual Nuers to assume formal leadership positions, whereas the traditional power bases of the Anywaa leaders were weakened.11 The political autonomy of the Nuer, however, also meant a benign neglect, leading to their marginalization in the distribution of state-mediated goods and services, particularly access to education. Indeed, the pattern of incorporation of the Anywaa and the Nuer into the imperial Ethiopian state was affected by this differential access to modern education, which created an imbalance among the newly educated power elites. The first school in Gambella town was established in 1942. At that time Gambella town was predominantly Anywaa, with no Nuer residents except for intermittent cattle traders. In 1952 the American Presbyterian Church opened a better-equipped mission school at the Anywaa village of Akedo on the Baro River. In 1960, a second mission school was opened in the Anywaa settlement at Gilo. It was not until 1962 that the Nuer had their first modern school, established by the missionaries in the village of Adura. Five additional government schools were established in Anywaa and Nuer areas in 1964. The few Nuer who attended elementary school at the mission station and government schools went to Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, to continue their high school education or to seek employment opportunities, particularly after the establishment of the autonomous Southern Sudanese Regional State in 1972. When the revolution broke out in Ethiopia in 1974, there were more educated Anywaa who were ready and willing to participate in the state than there were Nuer. The imperial political space in Gambella, however, was dominated by the Highlanders. All the imperial administrators were ethnic Amhara or Oromo, two of the main groups who constitute the category of Highlanders. These were not resident Highlanders of Gambella but rather Highlanders from the capital. Nonetheless, in the eyes of the Anywaa and the Nuer, they fell readily into the general category of Highlanders. The imperial regime was Orthodox Christian in its belief, Amharic in its tongue, Highlander in its geographic base, and ‘red’ in its colour, hardly capable of carrying out what Geertz (1963) called the ‘integrative revolution’, particularly in border regions such as Gambella where none of its features had local resonance. The Anywaa and the Nuer were thus not incorporated into an ideal and integrative state, but rather into a state represented by and identified with certain categories of people. It is for this reason that the Anywaa and the Nuer referred to the Ethiopian state with 11. Apart from one instance, the imperial administration received no major political or military resistance from the Nuer, in contrast to the Anywaa, who resisted strongly throughout the first half of the twentieth century. For a short period of time, the vigorous extension of imperial authority in the 1910s caused Nuer–Highlander relations to become tense. In June 1912, the Gaat-Jak Nuer clashed with dejazmach Gorfu, governor of the neighbouring highland district of Gidami, who raided their cattle and killed more than a hundred. Dejazmach Gorfu himself sustained heavy casualties. The hostility was brief. Dejazmach Gorfu was replaced by a new imperial leader who resumed the economic exchanges: the cattle for gun trade (Bahru 1976: 146–47).

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the same terms they used to refer to the Highlanders as a category of people, namely, gaala and buny, respectively. The Ethiopian state, however the political regimes have differed, has been perceived by the Anywaa and the Nuer in the same racial and ethnic terms ever since.

The Anywaa, the Nuer and Socialist Ethiopia In September 1974, the imperial regime was overthrown by a popular uprising and replaced by a ‘socialist’ regime that lasted until 1991. The socialist regime, popularly known as the Derg, was characterized as ‘garrison socialism’ (Markakis 1987: 202), denoting its military background and Marxist ideological orientation. Clapham defined the nature of the Derg regime as ‘Jacobin’, including a project which he refers to as encadrement: ‘It amounted to a project of encadrement, or incorporation into structures of control, which was pursued with remarkable speed and ruthlessness. It sought to intensify the longstanding trajectory of centralized state formation by removing the perceived sources of peripheral discontent and espousing an ideal of nation-statehood in which citizens would equally be associated with, and subjected to an omnipotent state’ (Clapham 2002: 14). In a centralized one-party system, the Derg sought to ‘remap’ Ethiopia along modernist lines (James et al. 2002). The process of encadrement was pursued in earnest in social, economic, political and cultural fields. Above all, the Derg carried out social engineering in the context of a ‘high modernist’ project (Scott 1998: 4), known in Ethiopia as zemecha (‘Development through Cooperation Campaign’). Under this campaign, students from urban centres were sent to revolutionize the countryside by liberating the rural masses not only from the yoke of the ancien régime but also from the ‘tyranny’ of local tradition (Donham 1999: 29–35). This was to be achieved through the Ethiopian version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Economically, encadrement took the form of attempts to gain total control of the peasantry through villagization and resettlement programmes. Fourteen million peasants were forced to settle in new villages (Tadesse 2002: 117), and another half a million peasants were resettled (Pankhurst 2002: 133) – classic examples of a state’s attempt to ‘capture’ the peasantry in order to promote national development (Hyden 1980). In the political arena, the project of encadrement meant not only a one-party system but also a violent repression of other modes of governance, through the elimination of opposition parties and the abolition of traditional authorities.

The Anywaa under the Derg Various groups of people experienced this project of encadrement at differing levels. The Anywaa were politically visible because they had a relatively higher form of centralized political system (the nobles and the headmen). Both the nyiye and kwaari were labelled ‘reactionary’, ‘anti-revolutionary’ and ‘feudal’, as if they were an imperial system writ small. Anywaa traditional leaders certainly had privileges of office, but they hardly qualified as the kind of strong authority that the term ‘feudal’ implies. Among their privileges, they had exclusive rights over some hunting trophies; they did not observe wudo, the ceremonial respect for various categories of rel-

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 131 atives observed by ordinary men; and they did not appear barefoot because the removal of sandals was a sign of inferiority in status. The nyiye and the kwaari were greeted with gungi, the ceremonial low-bowing posture adopted when approaching them. Nevertheless, as Evans-Prichard (1940b: 137) remarked on the ritual kingship of the Anywaa, ‘it is kingship, not kings, which is sacred’. Lienhardt (1957) also described the Anywaa headmen in a similar way: the courtesies were to the office, not to the incumbents. The avant-garde of the cultural revolution were the zemach – high school and university students who ‘would be sent, like an army, to reconquer the country side … not with force, but with knowledge’ (Donham 1999: 29). On the basis of this ‘enlightenment’ project, five hundred zemach were assigned to the districts of Gambella, Itang, Abobo, Gog and Jikaw.12 The zemach campaigned against the balabats (generic term for imperial office holders). Both the Anywaa and the Nuer had balabats, but attacks on the Anywaa balabats resounded like an attack on Anywaa society because it was the kwaari and the nyiye who had been converted into imperial agents, whereas the Nuer balabats were largely self-made and more of an individual project. The zemach taught ordinary Anywaa men and women about the existence of social classes among the Anywaa. The Anywaa traditional currency (dimui) was also forcibly monetized and labelled a ‘backward’ cultural practice. A monetized system of bridewealth was imposed. Some of the revolutionary cadres confiscated the dimui of various villages and threw them into the river, while others profited by smuggling them to the Sudanese Anywaa. Other ‘backward’ cultural practices such as naak (dental evulsions) and utak (the beating of a husband by his in-laws for failing to take care of his wife) were banned. For all practical purposes, however, the cultural revolution meant the articulation of a particular culture in the name of progress. The Derg reinforced the cultural hegemony of the Highlanders (the ‘national’ culture) in Gambella, for the Derg was still perceived as gaala or buny. Despite their revolutionary rhetoric, the Derg drew on the cultural infrastructure of the ancien régime. For the Anywaa, therefore, being ‘not backward’ and becoming ‘modern’, meant participation in a particular (Highlander) culture thinly disguised as ‘progressive’. The Anywaa bore the brunt of the cultural revolution as they were near the administrative centres and made visible by their political system.13 These impositions and state encroachment into the Anywaa cultural world provoked a discontent which was reflected in the popular song that captures the spirit of the time:

12. The Jikaw post was cancelled for security reasons, and the Gog-Jor post was also transferred to Abobo because of transportation problems. As a result, more than four hundred students in Gambella demonstrated against being deprived of their right to participate as zemach. In the end, only the Gambella and Itang posts were operational. 13. An Anywaa village on the Baro River, Nyikwo, was selected by REYA (Revolutionary Ethiopian Youth Association) as a model village. Nyikwo village was visited by Hailu Tujuba, the chairman of REYA, in 1978.

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Translation in English

Paap beete lääy ni wär jøwi wí juuru wäri ni rany paaní këëdö aa, Dërgi ba bwøk

As the forest is recognized as the home of the animals we fight against those [Derg] who come to take our home

Ngøøm löö keeri pøø timø ni kare caarø

The land will sue you

Böö carru Opääl o Lwal ni bang pogi keeta Ajuna ngø no dööng ni bang pogi, jöör pogi nyoodhe,

Joshua [the Nuer administrator of Gambella who had an Anywaa background] is a man without land, show him where he belongs

Cänga tïme ni räny pinynyi ngati man kamo pogi o cïppe ji ciik mo nyään,

Everybody is leaving his own land to be part of a new system

Ajur man Okäla kaa ni rwänge ni kwua bare ngwieny wäägi gïï leth pøthgi pøththø jaak

Where have all these foreigners come from? They do not recognize the problem they are creating for us.

The Anywaa discontent ultimately led to a rebellion, organized in the remote village of Utwol in Jor district. The abolishment of dimui provided a cultural justification for the nyiye and kwaari, who fought not only to retain their political power but also in defence of ‘tradition’. The new ‘revolutionary’ socio-political order was referred to by the nyiye and the kwaari as kwec gel, leadership legitimated by acquisition of money, in which accountability is not to the people governed but to the ‘paymasters’, a reference to the salaries the new leaders received from the government. The new leaders elected by the Derg, the liqemembers of the peasant associations, were contrasted with the kwaari and the nyiye, who drew on tradition and patrimony to legitimize their power. The abolishment of dimui was perceived as socially disruptive. In fact, the increasing incidence of divorce in the 1970s was attributed to the sudden and forceful shift from dimui to money. Unlike dimui, which was difficult to repay in cases of divorce because a brother or another relative could have already married using the sister’s bridewealth dimui, money could be paid back relatively easily. Contemporary Anywaa also relate the beginning of prostitution among the Anywaa to the introduction of money as a medium of social and economic exchange. Dissatisfaction with the new social order was described to me by a member of a kwaaro family: Educated Anywaa and some gaala [Highlanders] came and told us that the problem was because we, the kwaari, got power through family heritage. They said the new system is for all, that anybody can be a leader. They said, ‘You kwaari, you do not know how to administer, give the power to us’. We could not say anything. It was like somebody trying to show you how to make porridge which you know already. Finally you realize that their porridge is no better than the one you already know. You know that this way of doing things [imposition] does not work but you cannot do anything, for it is not you who made the porridge in the first place. What can you say? We gave

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 133 them the power but they did not bring us the better life they promised us. Yours [referring to the author’s generation] is the world of money. We [the elders] just see you using money. It has not brought any change. If you do not have money, you are nobody. It was not like that during the kwaari. The kwaari did not discriminate against anybody, poor or rich. If you did not have dimui, you would just go to a kwaaro and ask him to help you marry. Yours is a tiqim [benefit] system. (Omot Uchala, brother of the kwaaro of Gog, 26 December 2000) The Anywaa rebellion against the Derg was led by kwaaro Omot. In 1978, Omot chased the teachers (Highlanders) from the adult education centre in Jor and burned all the books. The vice-administrator of Jor district (a Nuer) was also forced to flee. In 1979, ten ‘revolutionary guards’, as the armed Derg cadres were called, were killed and seven were wounded. The rebellion spread into other areas. In 1980, three more Highlander teachers were killed in Cham village (Jikaw district) and the cooperative shop in Pukumu village was robbed and more schools were burned. The rebels took control of eight villages in Jor district and made contact with the Sudanese Anywaa.14 Nyiya Agada Akwei in Pochalla district in southern Sudan was active in giving moral and material support to the rebels.15 Emboldened by this, the rebels caused more damage to government forces, killing twenty-nine and wounding thirty. In February 1982, the Derg organized a large-scale military campaign to put down the Anywaa rebellion, and after a fierce battle, the defence of ‘tradition’ was broken. The campaign ended in a symbolic act. One of the rebel leaders, kwaaro Batade Ulaw, was beheaded and the ‘political trophy’ taken to the district’s capital (Gog) for public display. The Derg were surprised to witness resistance from a minority group who it claimed to represent in the popular revolution against the imperial regime. It had expected enthusiastic support for the abolition of the ‘oppressive’ traditional political system. In order to ‘liberate’ the broad masses from yetesasate niqatehilina (the Amharic translation of the Marxist notion of ‘false consciousness’), Highlander peasants were ‘imported’ to help create awareness among the Anywaa farmers and persuade them to rise up against their leaders. This revolutionary discourse can be elicited from the ‘History of the Broad Masses’ manuals that the Derg cadres produced for the various peoples of Ethiopia. In the ‘History of the Broad Masses of Gambella Awraja’, Anywaa resistance against the revolution is described thus: Although there was exploitation by the local balabats, the broad masses were not aware of its existence. Besides, there were no mechanisms which could have served as an outlet to vent grievances. That was why the peasants struggled to restore the balabats to power. (Author’s translation from the document titled ‘Ye Gambella Awaraja Sefi Hizb Tarik’, ‘History of the Broad Masses of the Gambella District’, 1977: 18)

14. These villages were Ulawo, Gony, Angela, Amedho, Iranga, Pakang, Ulang and Ujalo. 15. Interview with nyiya Adongo Agada, son of nyiya Agada, Utalo village, April 2001.

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The manual further describes how difficult it was to convince the Anywaa to be revolutionary: Because the district was large and the people were few, there was no shortage of land. The technique of production was primitive, but this did not create land shortage. Because their rulers were not capable of or interested in surplus production, there was little economic exploitation on the scale we have in other parts of Ethiopia. It was also difficult to convince them of the benefits of the land proclamation act. In order that the people of Gambella would become aware of the exploitation and take up arms against the balabats, ninety peasants were brought to Gambella from the highlands. It took three years to prepare the people of Gambella to start the struggle. (ibid.) On the basis of the nature of its incorporation into the Ethiopian state (namely, the context of diplomatic rivalry and political competition between imperial Ethiopia and colonial Britain), coupled with the lack of economic incentives because of the unattractiveness of the lowland plains, the Gambella region was spared from land confiscation such as that which occurred in the newly conquered regions in the southern and western parts of Ethiopia during the imperial period. Towards the end of the 1960s, the Amhara local governors appealed to the central government for land in Gambella, either as a gift or through purchase. By the time the revolution broke out, sixty noble families had acquired land for large plantations, but none of them had started to develop it. The cultural revolution received a mixed reception among the Anywaa. While the Anywaa who had a stronger stake in tradition (kwaari, nyiye and the elderly) felt threatened, others, particularly Anywaa youth, viewed it as an opportunity, because the abolishment of the ancien régime meant not only new political space but also positions of leadership in the new government bureaucracy as opposed to the hereditary mode of governance. With the ban on dimui, the youth felt ‘liberated’ from the elders as this allowed them more freedom of marriage. In the mid-1970s, there were many sisterless bachelors (bouth) who were unable to marry because of the scarcity of dimui. The plight of these bouth is recounted in a popular song of the time: ‘If I do not have a sister, I go to Dambala’. Dambala is a gold mining centre on the upper Akobo River, where many bouth went to earn enough to pay the requisite bridewealth.16 Others went to the highlands as wage labourers to work on the coffee farms. The youth therefore welcomed the revolution now that their social advancement was not governed by either the scarcity of dimui or the authority of the elders. With the monetization of bridewealth, it became possible for young Anywaa to hasten their social advancement as long as they could afford to pay for their wives. Above all, the revolution was viewed as an opportunity by certain Anywaa to participate in ‘progress’. The Derg ideology of Ityopiya tikdem (‘Ethiopia first’) appealed 16. According to Kurimoto (1996: 49), it takes a week on foot to reach Dambala from Gambella town. In the mid-1980s, there were more than three thousand men permanently engaged in gold panning.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 135 to the first generation of mission-educated Anywaa, who saw in the revolution an opportunity to take their own people along this road. A significant number of educated Anywaa joined the revolutionary camp. Many of them were sent to Addis Ababa and Eastern Europe for political training. Anywaa elites actively campaigned against traditional dietary practices, which they believed provided conspicuous ‘evidence’ of the backwardness of the Anywaa. An increasing number of Anywaa became culturally competent in the Highlander culture.17 There was also a gender dimension to the Anywaa reaction to the revolution. Anywaa women were receptive to the revolutionary rhetoric of chiqona (exploitation). Commenting on the spirit of the time, an Anywaa woman from Pijwo village (Jikaw) proudly described the revolution in this way: ‘We [the women] deposed the kwaari and we can now talk freely in front of men.’ She refers here to the gender inequality in Anywaa society, still expressed in the code of honouring men, in which women approach their husbands on their knees. The building of infrastructure, particularly the construction of the highly prized Baro Bridge in Gambella town, the opening of schools and the employment opportunities in government bureaucracy were received as a welcome gesture by ordinary Anywaa men and women, who hitherto had experienced incorporation into the Ethiopian state as a form of stigma characterized by political exclusion and economic marginalization. Commenting on the prevailing Anywaa mood of the period, Kurimoto (2005: 341–42) writes as follows: ‘For the first time in history the Anywaa were fully integrated into the Ethiopian rule … Generally speaking the local people welcomed the development of infrastructure and education, appreciating the fact that they were enjoying more opportunities than ever before’. For a brief period, at least, relations between the Ethiopian state and one of its historic minorities were expressed positively in kinship terms. The head of the Derg regime, Mengistu Hailemariam, was addressed as Wora Ariat, the son of Ariat (Ariat was the name given by the Anywaa to the firstborn daughter). This sense of kinship with Mengistu echoed his self-portrayal as the black leader in the national public sphere. Although Mengistu’s autobiography mentions his Amhara and Oromo ethnic origins, political resentment to his brutal military dictatorship was often framed by the general public in ‘racial’ terms. Like the Anywaa and the Nuer, he too fell on the black side of the colour spectrum in the discourse about Ethiopian national identity. To what extent Mengistu played with such imagery is hard to ascertain, but for the Anywaa his frequent official visits to the strategically important Gambella were physical proof of his ‘connections’ with the people of Gambella. However, high expectations soon bred disappointment as the Anywaa elites found themselves competing with the ‘upstart’ Nuer elites. The first generation of educated 17. The highest manifestation of this cultural competence was eating tiresega (raw meat), hitherto taken as a sign of the Highlanders’ own backwardness. In fact, in their early encounters with the Highlanders, both the Anywaa and the Nuer were disgusted, and indeed frightened, by the eating of raw meat, which appeared to them to be no less than ‘cannibalism’. Tiresega is one of the three major dietary symbols of Ethiopian national identity; the others being injera (the Ethiopian pancake-like bread) and the coffee ceremony.

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Anywaa and Nuer started participating in regional power politics in 1978. At that time Gambella was still a district within the highland province of Illubabor, and the seat of the provincial capital was the highland town of Gore. A Highlander was the provincial administrator, and he appointed an Anywaa and a Nuer as vice-administrators of Gambella. In order to promote political integration after the 1976–77 bloody conflict between Anywaa and Nuer in Jor district, Anywaa administrators were assigned to Nuer districts and vice versa.18 The political careers of the vice-administrators were intimately connected with the emerging symbolic ethnopolitics between the Anywaa and the Nuer. Largely owing to his character and effectiveness in giving service to the state, the Nuer administrator, Joshua Delual, rose to prominence, whereas the Anywaa representative, Philip Opiu, showed relative weakness and was ultimately transferred to a highland district at his own request.19 Without a competitor, the Nuer vice-administrator built up his political base, and through him the political standing of the Nuer was enhanced. The fact that Joshua was an ‘ex-Anywaa’ (Bär Jingmir) was an additional factor that fuelled ethnopolitics. In him, the Anywaa saw their status claim undermined. Joshua was later joined by another Nuer self-made politician, Thowat Pal.20 Having demonstrated his efficiency in crushing the Jor rebellion during the so-called cultural revolution, Thowat was appointed as the regional security head. When the WPE (Workers’ Party of Ethiopia) was established in 1985, Thowat was appointed regional party secretary. In 1987, the Derg introduced a limited regional autonomy in response to the steadily growing ethno-national liberation movements that demanded self-determination. Gambella was one of these newly created administrative regions and Joshua was promoted as the administrator. With the occupation of the two most senior political offices by Joshua and Thowat, the Anywaa identification of the Nuer with the Derg regime solidified. This created resentment among the Anywaa elites in two ways: first, there were more educated Anywaa than Nuer; second, the Anywaa considered themselves to be the indigenous people of Gambella and viewed the Nuer as foreigners and upstarts. Consequently, the unprecedented rise of Nuer elites into political pre-eminence introduced the conception of first-comers/latecomers into the regional political debate. Drawing on their settlement history and their relative competence in mainstream Ethiopian national (Highlander) culture when compared to the Nuer, the Anywaa had higher expectations of political advancement. Their educated elites found the political advancement of the Nuer incomprehensible at best and a plot at worst. Affronted by the ‘upstart’ Nuer, they tried to undermine the growing influence of the Nuer elites through personal political networks. The Anywaa sent a delegate to the office of the prime minister to bring to the attention of the central government the

18. Cham was the first Anywaa administrator of Jikaw district, followed by James Uthow. Of the Nuer, Mark Chuol was assigned to Abobo and Thowat Pal to Gognajor district. 19. Many Anywaa admit, and in fact regret, the weakness of the Anywaa representative, whereas Philip Opiu explains his transfer to the highland district of Sornageba (Illubabor) as a result of the increasing insecurity he faced after the establishment of an Anywaa liberation front (Philip Opiu, interviewed on 13 October 2000). 20. Thowat is the son of a Nuer imperial official, fitawrari Pal Chay.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 137 imbalance in power-sharing in the Gambella administrative region.21 Although this resulted in the re-appointment of an Anywaa vice-administrator, their continued subordinate political position bred strong discontent. By the early 1980s, the educated Anywaa also took up arms against the Derg regime, thus mending their differences with the ‘traditionalists’ whom they had been busy fighting only years before. With this rapprochement between the ‘modernists’ and the ‘traditionalists’, Anywaa discontent crystallized into the establishment of a liberation movement. In about 1980, Anywaa people who were living in Khartoum organized the Gambella Liberation Front (GLF), which was renamed as the Gambella People’s Liberation Movement (GPLM) in 1985 (Kurimoto 2005: 342). Other projects of control by the Derg regime encroached on Anywaa territories and damaged Anywaa ethnic sensibilities. In the wake of the Ethiopian famine of 1984 and 1985, the Derg organized a controversial resettlement scheme and planned to relocate more than a million people into so-called land-abundant areas, particularly in western Ethiopia.22 As part of this programme more than 60,000 peasants from the northern and southern Ethiopia highlands (Highlanders) were forcibly resettled in Gambella, thus increasing the population of the region by about at least one third – previously, the total population of the region had been between 100,000 and 150,000 (Kurimoto 2005: 338), of whom, according to the 1984 census, about 28,000 were Anywaa. Four resettlement sites, designed exclusively for Highlanders, and an integrated resettlement scheme were launched along the Baro and Gilo Rivers and around Abobo, without first securing Anywaa consent (Kurimoto 2005: 339). The task of the Anywaa was to cater to the needs of the Highlanders, which meant, above all, the appropriation of some Anywaa lands and the exaction of corvée labour. In the integrated resettlement scheme, the Anywaa were forced to join the Highlanders and were organized into five kebeles.23 With regard to the impact on the host peoples and the difficulties faced by the settlers, the resettlement programme was a miserable failure. While a significant number of Highlanders did remain in Gambella as permanent settlers, both Anywaa and Highlanders fled from the resettlement villages in great numbers, going to the Sudan or, after the regime change in 1991, back to their home areas. In Seeing Like a State, Scott (1998) uses the example of the villagization and resettlement programme of the Derg to illustrate the follies of high modernism and to show ‘how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed’. According to Scott (1998: 4), high modernism is characterized by ‘a strong, one might even say

21. This was done through an Anywaa-adopted son of Fikre Selasssie Wogderes, the Derg prime minister. In 1984, when Mengistu Hailemariam visited Akedo village, an Anywaa boy offered to translate from Anywaa into Amharic. Mengistu, head of the Derg and thus president, was impressed by this Anywaa boy and he instructed the prime minister to educate him in Addis Ababa. It was through this Anywaa that the political elites presented their grievances to the Derg. 22. More than a million people are said to have died because of this famine (de Waal 1997). 23. This was known as the Baro-Abol Integrated Resettlement Programme Abol Village. The total population of the area after resettlement was ten thousand, of which thirty per cent were Anywaa and seventy per cent Highlanders.

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muscle-bound version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, and above all the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws’. Similarly, Donham (2002: 35) describes the underlying premise of Derg policies as ‘a kind of irrational faith in rationality, an ideological use of science’. ‘By the end of the 1980s’, Donham (2002: 35) continues, ‘the state had created new villages laid out in ninety-degree grids for close to half of all rural cultivators’. Derg social engineering, like so many other high modernist development projects, failed; but what Fergusson (1990) termed ‘the effect of failure’ permeated different domains of social life. In Gambella the resettlement programme was intimately related to the emergence of a militant Anywaa ethnicity and the consolidation of their primordialist form of ethnic identity. In addition to giving Anywaa lands to the resettlers and causing ecological degradation through large-scale deforestation, the resettlement programme created demographic anxiety among the Anywaa, who felt sandwiched between pastoral expansion and state-sponsored resettled farmers.24 The new demographic imbalance had political significance, for the Anywaa found themselves reduced to a minority in their own land. For ordinary Anywaa men and women, the resettlement programme also brought with it socio-economic decline. In resettlement areas, the Anywaa were removed from their rivers, aquatic food sources and fruit trees. More importantly, the Anywaa were reduced from being subsistence producers to being consumers of highland products and food from the refugee camps sold in the local markets. The resettlement programme was connected to the state farms and refugee camps, whose combined production drastically depressed the price of Anywaa agricultural products. Kurimoto (1996: 48–49) described his observation of the economic decline of the Anywaa: ‘Between December 1988 and January 1989, I stayed for six weeks in the vicinity of the refugee camp. There, a 90 kg of maize was available for only five birr or even less’. As if this were not enough, additional grain was imported from yet another state farm, Anger, in the neighbouring highland region of Wellega. In short, the Anywaa could not protect themselves from state and market encroachment, nor could they positively integrate into the new order (cf. Kurimoto 2005: 338). Because the Anywaa lacked entrepreneurial skills, the market economy was destined to be dominated by the resettlers and refugees. Some Anywaa sought to regain economic agency by adopting new income-generating activities such as distilling local spirit (araqe), which they learned from the resettlers. But the resettlers still enjoyed a comparative advantage in such activities, and the araqe produced by the Anywaa was no match in quality for that of the resettlers. Consequently, the Anywaa began to consume Highlanders products, rather than producing and exchanging their own. This resulted in a long period of economic decline, culminating in the 1980s. By this time, at the latest, all business activities in the Gambella region had come to be dominated by the Highlanders, as those few Anywaa who strove to participate in 24. According to a 1999 UNICEF census of Abobo district, sixty-four per cent of the district’s population of 31,700 were resettled Highlanders. Abobo district was one of the main resettlement sites and a centre for state-mechanized farming.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 139 the business sector could not withstand competitive pressures from the Highlanders or, for that matter, the disincentives that they experienced within their own society. On a more fundamental level, and with longer-term effect, the resettlement programme took a social toll on the Anywaa. Alcoholism spread in the villages, weakening both the work ethic and productivity. Social stability in the villages was further undermined by an increase in theft and by migration to the towns, which depopulated the villages and left them more vulnerable to land encroachment by the Nuer. Educated Anywaa elites refer to this social decline as the ‘four Ks’: kac (hunger), kwac (begging), kap (prostitution) and ku (theft). The ‘four Ks’ are attributed to the arrival and expansion of the Ethiopian state, identified with and represented by the Highlanders (Kurimoto 2001: 267). Against the backdrop of political marginalization, demographic anxiety and economic decline, the GPLM resorted to armed rebellion, attacking in particular the resettlement sites. In 1986, the GPLM launched military operations in Nyikwo and Pinykew villages in Gambella district. This was followed by severe political repressions by the Derg, now represented by the Nuer, in which more than eighty Anywaa were killed. Although they were forcibly resettled in Gambella, the resettlers were coopted by the Derg to form local militias. Dependent on the state, and sharing its insecurity in the new lands, the resettlers (Highlander farmers) became the national ‘flag bearers’ and increasingly adopted the nation-state discourse to which they owed their very presence in the region. Armed by the Derg, they ‘defended’ the revolution not only in the service of the national state but also as stakeholders in their own right. At this point, the Anywaa and the Derg parted company. For the Anywaa, Mengistu was no longer the Wora Ariat but part of a wider ‘conspiracy’ mounted against their very existence as a people. The Derg, whose priority was no longer equality and progress but regime survival, defined the Anywaa as wonbede (pejorative Amharic term for rebels) and thus unreliable, as shown in the following archival material: ‘The main security problem in Gambella is the Anywaa bihereseb [nationality]. They are now receiving military training in the Sudan. The only solution is punitive measures’.25 By defining the GPLM as an Anywaa movement and indiscriminately categorizing the Anywaa as wonbede, the Derg drove more and more Anywaa from its fold. As the Derg became increasingly embroiled in the multiple wars against opposition forces at the national level, they embarked on large-scale forcible recruitment of the youth into the army. This pushed many Anywaa youth into the GPLM camp. The Anywaa were targeted for conscription more than the Nuer because their settlements were nearer to the administrative centres. They were also perceived by government officials as ‘more Ethiopian’ than the Nuer. Because the agent of recruitment was the Nuer leadership, this was seen by the Anywaa in ethnic terms. Many Nuer youth, however, preferred to join the southern Sudanese refugee camps or to live far away.26 Thus, many

25. Quarterly Report, Gambella Awraja Administrative Office, 7 April 1986, File Number 2494/2-68/2, Gambella Archive. 26. The same discourse of discrimination can be heard from the Thiang Nuer, who were closer to the administrative centres and complain that the Cieng Cany/Derg leadership deliberately targeted them. The WPE secretary in the Gambella Administrative Region, Thowat Pal, is of the Cieng Cany clan.

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Anywaa perceived an imbalance in the relationship of the two peoples to the state: ‘the Anywaa give more to the Ethiopian state but gain less than the Nuer, while the Nuer give less but are rewarded more’. The GPLM, whose leaders had previously been the avant-garde of the revolution in Gambella, sought military, financial and diplomatic support from various sources.27 With support from other anti-Derg organizations based in the Sudan, ‘they [the GPLM] began to broadcast underground radio and launched a small scale military operation against government’ (Kurimoto 2005: 342). The Sudanese government was receptive to the appeal and gave the GPLM a military training centre within its territory; but its attempt to fully control it (absorption into the Sudanese army) alienated the GPLM leadership.28 The Sudanese government hoped to make use of the GPLM in its war against the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), which was supported by the Derg. As a result, the GPLM sought internal allies. By the late 1980s, there were more than twenty ethnic-based and regional political movements opposing the Derg regime (Tadesse 2002: 130). Of these, the strongest militarily were the EPLF (Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front), the TPLF (Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front) and the OLF (Oromo Liberation Front). Although the OLF initially gave military support to the GPLM, the OLF’s similar attempts to control the GPLM as a satellite organization led to a brief confrontation between the two movements.29 As a result, the GPLM contacted the TPLF, which, in 1989, transformed itself into the EPRDF (Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front), an ethnic coalition consisting of Tigrean, Amhara and Oromo–based political organizations. In fact, the GPLM was invited to attend the founding conference of the EPRDF, and on condition that it would support regime change, it was promised political power in post-Derg Gambella. As a result of the EPLF’s and EPRDF’s shift of military operations from northern to western Ethiopia in the late 1980s, the GPLM emerged as an important politico-military organization in Gambella in the 1990s.30

The Nuer under the Derg The Nuer experience of the revolution differed significantly from that of the Anywaa. The Nuer were not subjected to political control and cultural revolution because, from the government’s perspective, they ‘lacked’ leaders. Unlike in other 27. One of the prominent leaders of the GPLM, Agwa Alemu, a member of the Woz League (a Marxist group allied to the Derg), was sent to Cuba for political training. After he returned from Cuba, Agwa was assigned as an administrator of Jikaw district. He was briefly imprisoned during the infighting within the Derg that pitted the Woz League against the Revolutionary Seded faction. Upon his release, Agwa joined the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Before he joined the GPLM, Agwa was reappointed administrator of Jikaw district. 28. Interview with Uchan Okello, a major in the GPLM, Pochalla, 16 August 2003. 29. J. Young (1999: 326) mentioned the hegemonic aspirations of the OLF toward the neighbouring border people such as the Anywaa, whom they refer to as Oromo guracha, ‘black Oromo’. 30. The GPLM attended the EPRDF’s conference held in the Sudan in 1990 to build a common front against the Derg regime. As a result, five hundred GPLM soldiers were sent to Mekele, the Tigrean capital in northern Ethiopia, for military and political training.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 141 pastoral areas, the ban on traditional resource management practices was not thoroughly implemented in those of the Nuer.31 On the contrary, the few educated Nuer elites were integrated into the regional administration and party structure of the Derg regime. What started as ‘buying’ individual services by the state had taken an ethnic turn, as the Anywaa were increasingly defined as wonbede. The genesis of the ‘Derg-Nuer alliance’ was initially incidental. Effective service and loyalty, rather than ethnicity, were given priority in making political alliances by the Derg (Teshale 1995). When the idea of vice-administrators was proposed in 1978, both the Anywaa and the Nuer were perceived as not being ‘ready’ to fully exercise political power. They were instead placed under Highlander administrators. The rise to preeminence of Joshua as the governor of Gambella in the mid-1980s was as much due to his own personal strength as it was to the weakness of the Anywaa vice-administrator. Like his counterpart Joshua, Thowat, the regional WPE Secretary, was originally a self-made politician. He made himself relevant through his contributions in crushing the Jor rebellion in the late 1970s. From the perspective of the Derg regime, the stakes in Gambella were high and the situation demanded people who were capable of dealing with its multiple problems. At this stage of their regime, the Derg systematically opted for allies. The Anywaa believed that the imbalance in the distribution of administrative power facilitated Nuer expansion into their territories. Notable evidence produced by the Anywaa for this link was the resettlement of famine-affected Nuer from Akobo district (Gaat-Jok Nuer) during the Baro-Abol integrated resettlement programme. After the dissolution of the programme in 1991, this group of Nuer remained at Abol and currently form one of the largest Nuer settlements near Gambella town. According to senior SPLA officials, the Derg-supported SPLA also encouraged the resettlement of Nuer – Gaat-Jak sections from Jikaw – near the Itang refugee camp in order to inflate the number of refugees and thus ensure the uninterrupted flow of resources from the aid agencies. A joint communal farm was established for the refugees and the locals.32 Most of these ‘citizen-refugees’ later returned to their villages, but some managed to stay in the neighbourhoods of Itang town. It was also during this time that spontaneous migrations from southern Sudan occurred, such as the Cieng Reng settlement at Makot village in Itang district. For the vast majority of ordinary Nuer men and women, however, neither the revolution nor administrative power brought improvements in their living standards. Like their Anywaa counterparts in the villages, the Nuer also suffered from the SPLA’s atrocities (see Chapter 7), which led many to abandon their villages for the 31. See Ayalew (1997) and Getachew (2001) for a thorough discussion of the impact of the government development policies on the Kereyu and the Borana pastoralists, respectively. Both the Kereyu and the Borana suffered from restrictions on mobility and because of the ban on traditional resource management practices such as burning during the dry season, a widely practiced form of pastoral resource management carried out to combat the problem of bush encroachment. 32. This scheme was sponsored by the World Lutheran Federation (Peter Adwok, ex-SPLA senior officer, interviewed in Nairobi, 29 August 2002).

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apparent safety of the refugee camps. At the political level, fixing the international boundary was an overriding policy of the Derg that adversely affected the Nuer’s transhumant livelihood strategy. Two of the Gaat-Jak sections, the Cieng Cany and the Cieng Wau, straddle the boundary during the wet and dry seasons, but a 1978 decree outlawed such movement and encouraged permanent settlement either in Ethiopia or the Sudan.33 For most ordinary Nuer, therefore, the Derg period meant insecurity and restrictions on pastoral mobility. As a result a significant number of the Ethiopian Nuer joined the refugee camps, attracted by their safety and the availability of social services, particularly education. Nearly all of the current Nuer civil servants and politicians in Gambella were educated in the refugee camps under the auspices of the aid agencies. Although the Nuer were not subjected to the Ethiopian state’s projects of control to the same extent as the Anywaa, due to the location of their settlements in outlying districts where the Ethiopian state lacked the administrative resources to ensure political control, this also meant greater neglect in terms of access to basic social services than in areas inhabited by the Anywaa. It was this marginality that led to the Nuer political opportunism, expressed in the form of alternative citizenship between Ethiopia and the Sudan. Subjected to neglect rather than control, however, the Nuer did not take up arms against the Derg. On the other hand, emboldened by its political recognition and military support from the advancing EPRDF soldiers, the GPLM intensified its struggle against the regime. As the EPRDF approached the western highlands, there was political excitement and euphoria among the Anywaa, who now threw in their lot with the GPLM.34 This chapter has shown how fluctuating inter-ethnic power relations, generated by the state, may themselves be viewed as causes of conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. Before the arrival of the Ethiopian state in the region, power relations among ethnic groups were, by and large, generated internally. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Nuer became the most powerful group among neighbouring Nilotic peoples not because of military power generated externally but because their system of segmentary lineages was well-adapted to ‘predatory expansion’ (Sahlins 1961). In contrast, since the early twentieth century, inter-ethnic power relations have depended largely on the degree of articulation between the interests of various ethnic groups and the interests of the state. The emergence of the Anywaa as a regional power in the first three decades of the twentieth century was related to their privileged access to firearms provided by the Ethiopian state. If, during that period, the Nuer reoriented their strategy in seeking to gain access to resources through peaceful inter-ethnic social networking, it was partly because they lagged behind the Anywaa in the local arms race. The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of the Nuer as a political and military power and the decline of 33. Joint Ethiopian–Sudanese Jikaw meeting, report submitted to Gambella District Administration Office, dated 17 November 1978, File Number 218, Identification number 1, Gambella Archive. 34. In the curfew that was imposed on Gambella in the early 1990s, no Anywaa was allowed to walk around after 8 pm; to do so meant to be regarded with suspicion as a possible wonbede.

Differential Incorporation into the Ethiopian State 143 the Anywaa. This is, again, directly related to the dispossession and disempowerment of the Anywaa by Ethiopian state projects and the Anywaa’s unfavourable integration into the market economy. The progressive decline of the Anywaa has, in turn, encouraged members of some sections of the Nuer to be increasingly predatory, once again changing their strategy for gaining access to resources from inter-ethnic social networking to territorial occupation. The last decade of the twentieth century brought a new opportunity structure for the rise of Anywaa political power. The following chapter shows how the Anywaa have sought to gain political power in the context of ethnic federalism, why they have failed to sustain their power, and how this has affected Anywaa–Nuer power relations.

Chapter 7

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism At the end of the twentieth century, inter-ethnic power relations – which have been identified above, together with differing modes of ethnic identification and competition for natural resources, as one of the three causes of ethnic conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer – were altered once again, initially in favour of the Anywaa. In May 1991, the Derg was overthrown by the EPRDF. Upon seizing power, EPRDF leaders and activists restructured the Ethiopian state according to ethnic federalism. The 1995 constitution explicitly recognized ethnicity as the official state ideology and the ethnic group as the legitimate unit of political action. Sovereignty now rested on ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ (Art.8), which were granted not only the right to self-rule but also the right to secession (Art.39). On this constitutional basis ethno-regional states were created. Some of these ethno-regional states were allocated to and named after resident ethnic majorities. These states include Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, Somali and Afar. Others were organized as multi-ethnic regional states with various levels of political entitlement for the nations and nationalities living there. These include the Gambella Peoples National Regional State (GPNRS), the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional State (SNNPRS) and BGPNRS (Benishangul-Gumuz Peoples National Regional State (BGPNRS). The Ethiopian experiment in ethnic federalism has generated intense scholarly interest. Its admirers have hailed it as an expression of the democratization of state and society (Kinfe 2001) and even as a model for other multi-ethnic African societies (Chabal and Daloz 1999). Its detractors see behind it a Machiavellian design, i.e., a strategy of ‘divide and rule’ which allows an ethnic minority – the Tigreans – to dominate the majority (Vestal 1994). In a similar vein, other analysts emphasize the hegemonic aspirations of the Tigrean elite, the main political actors of the new regime (Merera 2003). In one way or another, all of these views address dimensions of the new political order. In this chapter I discuss the practice of ethnic federalism with reference to its ideological underpinning and to the contradictions that it has generated. Specifically, my ethnographic data raise questions as to why a policy with the declared objective of promoting inter-ethnic harmony and enhancing a new sense of national belonging has resulted in just the opposite, i.e., the escalation of ethnic conflict and greater contestation over national identity. Attempts to form wider political communities on bases that were not ethnic did not materialize, partly because of limitations imposed by the hegemonic EPRDF definition of what constitutes a group (namely, ethnic identity) and partly because the prevailing ethno-politics activated a particular form of social memory nation-wide –

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in the case of the Anywaa a narrative of loss in the context of interethnic relations, particularly with the Nuer. Attempts by some leaders of the Anywaa political organization, the GPLM, to create a political community on a wider basis of solidarity (‘the black people of the border land’) were discouraged: We tried to get the Mao and other Nilotic people in Anfillo [‘black’ minorities in western Oromia] to join us. Initially the EPRDF supported us because they wanted us to help them control the OLF, which was then active in the region. Together with the Benishangul people [a north-western region that borders on the Sudan], we had discussed the possibility of forming a political organisation that would include all the black people in the border regions from Gambella to Benishangul, Amhara and Tigray – all the way to Eritrea. The EPRDF did not like the idea. Nor would the EPLF let that happen. We sought, as a last resort, to merge with Benishangul, but we both were too busy with internal problems to pursue such a higher goal. (Okello Oman, Ex-president of Gambella Regional State, interview May, 2001) Burdened with a historical mindset (i.e., the memory of Nuer conquest of Anywaa lands), blocked by political imposition (the EPRDF’s hegemonic definition of what constitutes a group), and excited by the promises of ethnopolitics, GPLM leaders seized regional power, and their subsequent attempts to redress past injustices and the resulting dramatic changes in the balance of power between the Anywaa and the Nuer have largely shaped political processes in post-1991 Gambella. In the new political space created by ethnic federalism and regional empowerment, the Anywaa and the Nuer have found themselves to be variously positioned, and they have employed different political strategies of entitlement, following new avenues of social mobility and new strategies in the politics of recognition. In the context of ethnic federalism, the GPNRS was conceived as the homeland of ‘indigenous’ peoples or ‘Minority Nationalities’.1 The EPRDF has classified five national minorities in Gambella: the Anywaa, the Nuer, the Majangir, the Opo and the Komo. The Highlanders are neither politically recognized as a group nor differentiated along ethnic lines as Oromo, Amhara or Tigreans. In fact, in this new political dispensation, the Highlanders appear to have been reduced to the status of ‘guest workers’.2 Under ethnic federalism, the peripheral region of Gambella suddenly

1.

2.

According to the 1995 Election Law of Ethiopia, ‘“Minority Nationality” means a community determined, by the House of People’s Representatives or its successor, to be of a comparatively smaller size of population than that of other nations/nationalities’ (National Election Board of Ethiopia, ‘Election Law of Ethiopia 1995’, Proclamation No.111/1995). This is despite the criteria of candidature specified in the Election Law. According to this law (Art.38/1.b), ‘Any person registered as an elector shall be eligible for candidature, where he is versed in the vernacular of the regional state of his intended candidature’s election law’. There are many Highlanders who are fluent in Anywaa and/or Nuer languages, but the incongruity between constitutional theory and practice is justified on the basis of protecting the political rights of the national minorities.

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 147 became a regional state and thus a new political centre. Thus, both Anywaa and Nuer elites enjoyed the prospect of new leadership opportunities, including the chance to fill up the regional ministries dominated hitherto by the Highlanders. New political offices, most notably the regional presidency and vice-presidency, were created, and for the first time Anywaa and Nuer elites occupied ministerial positions at the national level.3 In the competition to dominate the new political space created by ethnic federalism, ethnic groups are variously positioned according to their degree of ‘localness’ (Dereje 2006a: 217). This is determined in part by differences in settlement history, settlement patterns, demography and in degrees of incorporation into the national centre; but at the national level the politics of entitlement are not based on an explicit standard. One has to read between the lines to get a feel for the modus operandi of Ethiopia’s post-1991 political structure. Which particular ethnic group is qualified for which political status and on what basis is not spelled out. The haphazard way in which the EPRDF applies the terms ‘nation’, ‘nationality’ and ‘people’ to the various groups gives the impression that demographic size is the defining criterion. The five regional states that are designated as ‘mother states’ of the five largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia seem to have been formed according to this principle. But the allocation of a regional state to the Harari, one of the smallest ethnic groups in the country, is, as Vaughan (2003: 229) describes it, a ‘constitutional oddity’ that seems to contradict this generalization.4 In the three multi-ethnic regional states, including the GPNRS, the various groups of people compete for dominance. In the context of this competition, however, the Anywaa and the Nuer have adopted different strategies.

The Anywaa Project of Containment The GPLM seized state power in Gambella in 1991, and consequently the Anywaa dominated political processes in the GPNRS throughout the 1990s. This is evident in their disproportionate political representation in the regional council, in ministerial posts and among civil servants in the regional bureaucracy (see Tables 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3). These new relations of dominance had a direct effect on the nature of inter-ethnic relations, insofar as political representation in the regional council determined access to new objects of struggle: employment opportunities in the regional bureaucracy and access to modern goods and social services delivered by the federal government.

3.

4.

Anywaa and Nuer politicians have served as state ministers and Ethiopian ambassadors to Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Japan for the first time since the incorporation of Gambella into the Ethiopian polity at the end of the nineteenth century. Out of Harari Regional State’s population of 131,139, the Harari constitute only fifteen per cent. This is ‘officially justified with reference to the unique historical and religious significance of the holy city of Harar’ (Vaughan 2003: 229). This ‘constitutional oddity’ is often referred to by larger ethnic groups in other multi-ethnic regional states in their attempts to legitimate their claim for the status of a regional state.

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Table 7.1 Political representation in the GPNRS regional council, 1991–2000 Group Anywaa Nuer Majangir Opo Komo Highlanders Total

1992 19 12 5 1 1 – 38

1995 25 10 5 1 1 – 42

2000 29 19 4 1 1 1 55

(Source: author’s field notes)

Table 7.2 Allocations of ministerial posts in the GPNRS Year Number of positions Anywaa in regional ministries 1992 20 15 1995 19 14 2000 19 13 2002 18 11

Nuer

Majangir

Opo

Komo

Highlanders

3 4 5 6

1 – – –

– – – –

1 1 1 1

– – – –

(Source: author’s field notes)

Table 7.3 Ethnic profile of civil servants in the GPNRS in 2000 Ethnic group Anywaa Nuer Majangir Opo Komo Highlanders Total

Male 1053 205 29 7 1 1476 2,771

Female 344 38 5 3 – 684 1074

Total 1397 243 34 10 1 2160 3845

Percentage 36.3 6.3 0.9 0.2 0.02 56 100

(Source: Bureau of Civil Service, Gambella Regional State)

Gambella’s political representation at the national level has also shown an imbalance. Until 1995, the GPNRS was represented in the national House of Representatives solely by the GPLM. There was an internal debate within the GPLM regarding the extent to which the Nuer should be excluded from political power. Extreme elements within the GPLM advocated a total exclusion; others opted for strategic co-option of some of the Gaat-Jak clans, especially the Thiang. This resulted in the limited inclusion of ‘Ethiopian’ Nuer in the GPLM, though in a subordinate political position. As is indicated in the tables shown above, Anywaa political dominance found expression in their hold on the office of the presidency and their presence in upper

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 149 echelons of power in the regional council. The Anywaa have interpreted the seizure of power by the GPLM and the placement of one of their own in the office of the president as a symbolic confirmation of their ownership rights over Gambella and thus a validation of their claim to indigenous status. The resulting pattern of power distribution has remained unchanged: an Anywaa president, a Nuer vice-president and a Majangir secretary. Reserving the upper echelons of power for the Anywaa further dramatized the subordinate political status of the Nuer in regional politics. Thus, political power not only increases access to material rewards; it is also useful as a means of renegotiating group status. As Horowitz (1985: 217) notes, ‘when uncertainties exist, efforts are made to obtain authoritative allocations of prestige’. On the basis of their de facto political empowerment and with reference to various ideologies of entitlement, the Anywaa dominated political processes in the GPNRS throughout the 1990s.

Contribution to regime change and Anywaa empowerment Anywaa political actors legitimized their dominant position in the GPNRS through the language of liberation. In doing so, they mimicked the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front’s (TPLF’s) own ideology of power at the national level. The TPLF is the main political force within the EPRDF. It has dominated the political process in Ethiopia since 1991, despite having a much smaller constituency than political organizations that claim to represent the Oromo and the Amhara, two of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups. One of TPLF’s ideologies of power is its ‘greater’ contribution to regime change during the armed struggle against the Derg. TPLF/EPRDF’s consent to GPLM’s seizure of power in the GPNRS was granted on the same basis. The Nuer were excluded from the regional power structures because they did not participate in the armed struggle. In fact, they were identified with the defunct regime.5 The new political order has markedly changed the existing power relations between the Anywaa and the Nuer. The seizure of power by the GPLM was perceived by both Anywaa and Nuer as the empowerment of the Anywaa. Shortly before the GPLM occupation of political power in Gambella, the Nuer Derg officials and all of the Sudanese refugees left the camps in Gambella, embarking on a long and arduous ‘exodus’ to southern Sudan. The refugees were joined by Ethiopian Nuer citizens who were persuaded to leave Gambella for fear of an ‘Anywaa reprisal’ (Kurimoto 2005: 352). With the elimination of the Nuer in the regional power game during the transitional period (1991–95), the Anywaa elites monopolized power in the new regional state, seizing all the key offices from the presidency to the regional ministries and the security apparatus. In the period from 1991 to 1992 there were a series of violent conflicts among various interest groups. Radical GPLM members committed atrocities on the remaining Nuer civilians in Gambella town and Itang district. Nuer-based southern

5.

A similar pattern of political alliance was evident in the Benishangul-Gumuz Regional State, where the Berta-based Benishangul Peoples Liberation Movement was initially rewarded by the EPRDF (Young 1999: 335).

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Sudanese rebel groups, in concert with the Nuer ex-Derg officials who fled to Nasser, launched counterattacks on the GPLM/EPRDF establishment and burned Anywaa villages in Jikaw and Itang districts. An independent and objective account of the number of casualties on both sides is hard to come by. The Nuer version of events puts the count of the dead as high as a thousand, and refers to the period as the ‘masskilling’ of the Nuer. The Anywaa casualties are often measured in terms of the number of villages burned and people displaced. According to Anywaa accounts, nearly all of the Anywaa villages between Itang and Jikaw districts were burned twice by the Sudanese-based armed Nuer groups. The conflict also involved elements of symbolic violence, epitomized by an incident in Itang town. In 1991, GPLM soldiers killed a Nuer civilian and then ‘crucified’ him with maize flour in his mouth: this was meant to represent a hungry Nuer who came to Anywaa areas in search of food, and thus to serve as a symbolic act of group humiliation. The Nuer regrouped in Nasser where they established a political party called GPDUP (Gambella Peoples Democratic Unity Party) in 1992. Supported, during the regime change, by the EPRDF, emboldened by the new discourse of ethnic equality, and encouraged by the EPRDF’s own primordialist concept of identity, the Anywaa power elites sought to control the new regional state of Gambella. Politically excited by the sudden turn in the balance of power, they seriously contemplated an irredentist project, laying claim to what they regard as traditionally Anywaa territories that are now de facto occupied by the Nuer. Seeking to capitalize on their initial promotion by the EPRDF to new forms of administrative power, the Anywaa aimed to renegotiate their asymmetrical local power relations with the Nuer.

Settlement history and the indigenous claim The Anywaa political actors also justified their dominant political position in the language of indigeneity. They advanced their political ownership right over the Gambella region on the basis of settlement history. The exact time when the Anywaa settled in present-day areas is not yet well established. Various scholars have suggested that the process of ethnogenesis within the Lwoo conglomeration might have occurred from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century (Crazzolara 1950; Collins 1971). Perner (1997: 138) places the genesis of the Anywaa kingship in the seventeenth century. Nor do we know who the pre-Anywaa inhabitants of Gambella were. Anywaa oral tradition makes reference to the Burun-speaking people at the time of their settlement. It also suggests that parts of their present-day settlement areas were formerly occupied by the Majangir, particularly in the south-east in present-day Gog and Abobo districts (Evans-Pritchard 1947; Kurimoto 1994). Evans-Pritchard (1947: 73) described the relationship between the Anywaa and the Majangir of the 1940s as patron and vassal, respectively. Apart from allusion and gradual incursions, ‘there is practically no proof that the immigrants [the Anywaa] should ever have met military resistance and taken the land by force’ (Perner 1997: 138). The Anywaa deny, play down or defend their migration because it did not result in the large-scale displacement of other groups of people. Nor are there groups of people who could contest the Anywaa land claims.

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 151 Table 7.4 1984 Census result of Illubabor province Major ethnic groups Anywaa Amhara Bencho Dizi Guraghe Keffa Majangir Mocha Nuer Oromo Sheko Tigrawi Others N/S Total

Rural population 25,486 34,522 1,712 1,010 2,171 28,724 10,748 44,303 26,406 705,144 6,910 1,362 12,333 1,129 901,960

Per cent 2.8 3.8 0.2 0.1 0.2 3.2 1.2 4.9 2.9 78.2 0.8 0.2 1.4 0.1 100

Urban population 2,558 19,628 90 31 4,913 1,770 5 2,002 668 32,357 62 1,938 2,189 72 68,283

Per cent

Total

3.7 28.7 0.1 0.1 7.2 2.6 0.1 2.9 1.0 47.4 0.1 2.8 3.2 0.1 100

28,044 54,150 1,802 1,041 7,084 30.494 46,305 10,753 27,074 737,501 6,972 3,300 14,522 1,201 970,243

Per cent 2.9 5.6 0.2 0.1 0.7 3.2 4.8 1.1 2.8 76.0 0.7 0.3 1.5 0.1 100

(Source: Office of the Population and Housing Census Commission, Population and Housing Census, 1984: 32)

The Nuer settlement history in Gambella, on the other hand, is less disputed. It was part of their massive migration from southern Sudan to the east which started in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, groups of Jikany Nuer (Gaat-Jak) settled in present-day Jikaw district. In the 1960s the demographic size of the Nuer in Gambella continued to increase, partly due to the influx of Nuer refugees from southern Sudan, some of whom managed to settle as Ethiopian citizens. As shown in Table 7.4, the Anywaa held a very slim margin over the Nuer in Illubabor province as of the 1984 national census. By the mid-1990s, however, the Anywaa were overtaken by the Nuer; this is evident from the 1994 census, which established the Anywaa as twenty-seven per cent and the Nuer as forty per cent of the region’s population. This disparity has further pushed the Anywaa to re-introduce the historical and citizenship cards in the politics of entitlement. The more the Nuer emphasize their political status as an ‘ethnic majority’, the more the Anywaa frame their power claim in the language of indignation. Anywaa political domination is also legitimated by the number of districts they control. In the new regional states, political representation is district based. Of the nine districts of Gambella in the 1990s, six were inhabited predominantly by the Anywaa, only two by the Nuer. Adopting the language of indignation in the politics of entitlement has activated a particular kind of collective Anywaa memory that centres on the narrative of loss. As a result, actual peaceful socio-economic exchanges and shared cultural features are neither remembered nor acknowledged. For example, forms of inter-ethnic integration, such as the socio-economic exchanges and politico-military alliances between the Openo Anywaa and the Thiang Nuer, are played down by the Anywaa power elites,

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except when it serves their purposes to magnify the political divisions among the Nuer by glossing the Thiang as ‘real’ Ethiopians, in contrast to other ‘Sudanese’ clans. The event which serves as an historical validation of the Anywaa narrative of loss is the nineteenth-century Nuer expansion at the expense of Anywaa territories. In the politics of memory, ancient hatreds are invoked in the form of songs and sayings from past conflicts in order to produce evidence of loss. When the past is thus reconstructed, the future emerges as inherently dangerous. It is in this atmosphere that the Anywaa political actors have presented the Tier Agak song, discussed in Chapter 5, as evidence of the Nuer hidden ‘colonial’ agenda. Here we find the Anywaa seeking political power not only for material rewards but for collective preservation, an agenda that features prominently among the ordinary Anywaa as well. As indicated in previous chapters, Nuer expansion occurs largely at the individual level through microprocesses. To the Anywaa, this Nuer expansion becomes the expansion of a life world, a cultural form and a speech community rather than solely an organized political movement or concerted military effort, except in places like Akobo where violence has periodically erupted. In the post-1991 identity politics, Nuer demographic trends (assimilation and associated practices) are represented as ethnic conspiracy. Every Nuer man and woman suddenly appears to be an ‘ethnic soldier’. Here is a clear interplay among the resource, identity and power variables in Anywaa–Nuer conflict. The new political process has brought local forms of power and asymmetrical integration into what Verdery (1994: 46) termed ‘the realm of notice’: ‘We might … see state- making as a process that raises “difference” from the realm of doxa, the assumed, into the realm of notice, where disputes could occur between the orthodox and the heterodox, the normal and the strange’. With the increasing relevance of settlement history and who came where and when, the Anywaa even fix dates and personal names to assert their ownership right over Gambella: The Nuer started coming to Gambella in 1976. The first person who settled in Newland [Nuer neighbourhood in Gambella town] was a person called Tumoro. Tumoro settled at a place called Aba Joro veranda. At that time the Nuer used to come to Gambella, stay for couple of days, sell their cattle and go back to Jikaw. (Okello Akwei, resident of Gambella town, 3 June 2000) In this and other similar narratives the word Gambella refers to the town and the region. For the Anywaa who do not border the Nuer, such as in Abobo and Gog districts, their contact with the Nuer is indeed recent, as late as the 1970s when an incipient form of urbanization started in the region. For this group of Anywaa the ‘latecomer’ status of the Nuer is very conspicuous, more so because Gambella town itself is regarded as an Anywaa territory, an extension of the neighbouring Pinykew village. For the Anywaa who have a longer contact with the Nuer (the Openo Anywaa), the generic use of the name Gambella and the recentness of the Nuer is at times used as a rhetorical device to mobilize the other sections of Anywaa society to participate in the project of containing the Nuer.

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 153

Framing local concerns in national terms Settlement history has also introduced the issue of national identity into the political debate, where the Anywaa emerge as ‘more Ethiopian’ than the Nuer who are labelled as Sudanese. The Anywaa’s evidence for their definition of the Nuer as foreigners comes not so much from oral history or history books as from the Nuer practice of alternative citizenship: switching between Ethiopian and Sudanese national identities. This was particularly true in the 1980s, when being a refugee was more advantageous than being a citizen in one’s own country. The multiple aid agencies that operated the relief industry provided a variety of goods and services to Sudanese nationals and those Ethiopians who could claim a refugee status. At that time, the Ethiopian Nuer could pass as southern Sudanese more easily than the Ethiopian Anywaa, because more Nuer than Anywaa lived in southern Sudan. On that basis, the aid agencies accepted the Ethiopian Nuer as refugees prima facie, while the Ethiopian Anywaa had to undergo tight screening procedures. In the 1990s, when claiming Ethiopian citizenship became materially rewarding, this state of affairs enabled the Anywaa to frame their exclusionary political practices in national terms. Despite differences in settlement history, some groups of Nuer had already arrived in the Gambella region at the beginning of the twentieth century; but the Anywaa elites have defined nearly all the Nuer as Sudanese and thus as foreigners, creating a new homogenizing element in the consolidation of Nuer ethnicity. The genesis of this debate, however, goes back to the colonial period when the British proposed a division of subjects with the Ethiopian state, claiming all the Nuer and offering all the Anywaa to be placed within Ethiopian domain on administrative and economic grounds (Collins 1983). This, coupled with the differential access to NGO-mediated resources, created a certain envy on the Anywaa side in the 1980s, and made the Nuer vulnerable to the politics of exclusion in the 1990s. Cognizant of the cross-border settlement pattern of their competing neighbour, the Nuer, the Anywaa constantly refer to the state border as a frame of reference to define the parameters of inclusion/exclusion in the GPNRS. The state border as a reference point has enabled the Anywaa to frame an ethnic concern (fear of extinction) in national terms, in which the Nuer do not just encroach on Anywaa lands but become ‘outsiders’ – ‘foreigners’ troubling ‘citizens’. Framed this way, the Anywaa anticipate mobilizing the Ethiopian state in a local struggle, and invoke the state discourse (sovereignty) more than the state itself does. Their call for a rigid state border serves, however, as a catalyst to talk about ethnic security. Principal Anywaa political actors extend the discourse of an ‘impending danger’ to the Ethiopian state itself, to which they hope Nuer pastoral expansion will appear as a ‘national security threat’: The Nuer are now taking over our lands. Tomorrow they will go to the highlands. They are already in Dambidolo, even Addis Ababa. What do they do there? During the SPLA time [in the 1980s] the Nuer commanders used to say Gambella was southern Sudan because there were no black Ethiopians. The Nuer are not just expanding into Anywaa territories. They have a hidden agenda of annexing Gambella to southern Sudan as well. If the Nuer do not

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stop pushing us, we will also finally go to Bure, even to Gore [the two nearest highland towns]. Where else could we go then? What makes Ethiopia a country if it does not secure its border? (Opamo Oboya, Ruiri, Kenya, 12 August 2002) Although the Anywaa were politically dominant in the GPNRS throughout the 1990s, they did not manage to determine the international border as much as they would have liked. Management of the international borders is currently a federal mandate, and in securing the border areas, the Ethiopian state has multiple concerns rather than focusing solely on a show of sovereignty. Lack of interest by the federal government in policing the international border so that Nuer border-crossing could be checked is interpreted by the Anywaa as evidence of their own status as ‘second-class citizens’. Some borders are well protected and the government provides security to the border people. Hasn’t the entire nation gone to war with Eritrea [1998–2000] because of Badime? The government swiftly declared war on Eritrea because the people who live in the border town of Badime are the Tigreans; the same people who also rule the country. The Gambella border is 360 degree open. Sudanese Nuer could cross the border any time and take over Ethiopian land. (Abula, Nairobi, August 2002) The Ethiopian government, however, remains ambivalent towards the Anywaa’s call for rigidification of the border. More generally, Ethiopia has often seen itself as surrounded by potential enemies, and worried about the extent to which its minorities would be loyal in the event of war with its neighbours, a classic example of what Kymlicka (2006: 39) called ‘the securitization of ethnic relations’. The regional states in the border areas are more susceptible to geopolitical dynamics. In fact, the extent to which the EPRDF manages to integrate these states into the new political order is the real test for the viability of the risk-laden ethnic federalism. Two of these border regional states – the Somali and the Benishangul – pressed for secession in the mid1990s on the basis of political grievances and in reliance on the Constitution (Young 1999; Hagmann and Khalifa 2006). With a larger cross-border settlement of the Nuer in the Sudan, the EPRDF is also wary of actual and potential cross-border political networks. This source of concern can also be regarded as a diplomatic asset, as it offers the possibility of influencing the politics of neighbouring states by way of the same cross-border settlement. A clue to EPRDF’s ambivalent position can be found in the following narrative by a government cadre. As part of a policy to enhance political legitimacy, the EPRDF opened a political indoctrination school at Tatek, some seventy kilometres west of the capital, particularly for elites in the peripheral regional states such as Gambella who were not directly governed by the EPRDF. During the political training of Anywaa and Nuer cadres in 1998, the issue of citizenship was addressed: One of the issues which we discussed in this training was ‘What would happen to Gambella should Southern Sudan become independent?’. The

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 155 Nuer cadres said, ‘We will remain as Ethiopian citizens’, but the Anywaa said, ‘No, the Nuer will be the first to go to the Sudan because even now they identify as Sudanese’. After a long debate, the EPRDF told us the answer: ‘It is not right to say the Anywaa are Ethiopian and the Nuer are Sudanese. Both of you come from the Sudan [in reference to Nilotic migrations] and nothing will change the fact that Gambella is an Ethiopian territory. Both the Anywaa and the Nuer have the right to live in Gambella’. The EPRDF cadre then posed this question to us: ‘But what is this Nuer Christian prayer which says “May God liberate our land”? Are you not living in an already liberated land? Why should you pray for Southern Sudan?’ We told them that we pray like that because the Nuer church came from the Sudan and we simply adopted their prayer. (Peter Kayier, GPDUP cadre, Nairobi, August 2002) A similar ambiguity is observable among the Highlanders, who are categorically identified with the Ethiopian state by the Anywaa and the Nuer. Represented as such, the Highlanders emerge as ‘significant others’ in evaluating the depth of Anywaa and Nuer commitment to Ethiopian national identity, although they have been politically marginalized in post-1991 Gambella. The following narrative by a Highlander from Gambella town illustrates how the Highlanders position themselves in the citizenship debate between the Anywaa and the Nuer: The Anywaa are familiar to us. We have a history of living together. You can trust them as Ethiopians. The problem with the Anywaa is their politics. They claim Gambella and regard all the other people as outsiders. The Nuer, on the other hand, are foreigners [Sudanese]. But the good thing about the Nuer is that they are hard working and they don’t discriminate against people. Economically they are also useful. We don’t get anything from the Anywaa. At least we see the Nuer cattle in the butchery. But you cannot trust the Nuer. Their heart is with the Sudan. You do not find them in Ethiopian history books. How can you trust somebody whom you do not know? (Highlander civil servant, Gambella town, July 2000) In the context of very volatile relations with the Sudan, the Nuer are occasionally regarded by the Ethiopian government as a ‘security threat’. In 1997, for instance, the two countries were on the brink of war, with Ethiopia accusing the Sudanese government of ‘exporting’ Islamic fundamentalism to Ethiopia (Medhane 2007). With a Sudanese Nuer rebel leader (Riek Machar) then allied with the government of Sudan, the Ethiopian Nuer were considered a security threat in the event of a war with the Sudan. As a result, the Ethiopian government, allied with the Anywaa, undertook a tight screening procedure to distinguish between Nuer ‘citizens’ and ‘refugees’. Towards that end, the Newland, the Nuer settlement in Gambella town, was raided by the federal army and the regional police dominated by the Anywaa. For their part, the Anywaa present themselves to the Ethiopian government and the Highlanders as ‘genuine’ Ethiopian citizens who represent the national interest better than the Nuer. In return, they expect government protection from the cross-border Nuer

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territorial expansion and, in their eyes, the ultimate ‘extinction’ of Anywaa society. In effect, the Anywaa have appealed to the Ethiopian government to live up to their expectations of it, by determining and policing the international border. Throughout the 1990s the Anywaa in Gambella, desiring enforcement of the international border to help them contain further Nuer territorial expansion and to act as a guarantee of their ethnic survival, overstated their Ethiopian national identity and were conspicuously silent about their own Sudanese connections, at least until they fell out with the EPRDF in 2002. The Anywaa’s appeal to the Ethiopian state, and by implication to the Highlanders, has brought them mixed results. Although many of the Highlanders were resettled involuntarily by the Ethiopian government in Gambella in the 1980s, they have, in due course of time, developed local interests, which they defend vis-à-vis the Anywaa. Because of the strengthening of Anywaa rights to land and their political empowerment in post-1991 Gambella, the Highlanders feel insecure on the land that they have appropriated. Highlanders enjoyed a hegemonic political position in pre-1991 Gambella, and many of them have not yet come to terms with the subsequent political empowerment of the ‘indigenous’ peoples, whom they look down on. Highlanders also resent the reverse discrimination and insecurity that their new status as a regional ‘minority’ has bestowed upon them. The tension between the Anywaa and the Highlanders erupted in two major violent conflicts in 1991 and 2003. Kurimoto (1994:16), who has reported extensively about the incidents leading to the 1991 Ukuna massacre of the Highlanders by groups of Anywaa in Abobo district, provides the following description: Soon after the capture of Gambella town at the end of May 1991, fleeing former government soldiers passed through Ukuna, an area to the east of Abobo district where 770 Anywaa and 3,000 resettlers [Highlanders] lived. A few days before their arrival, a notorious Anywaa outlaw killed members of a settler family. Settlers brought the case to the soldiers [Highlanders] and the chairman of the Anywaa peasant association was shot dead by soldiers. After the soldiers fled, Anywaa villagers started to attack settlers, setting fire to their houses and killing them indiscriminately with rifles and spears. The Anywaa targeted all the ‘red people’ whom they met in Ukuna, as they were perceived to be the same people as the soldiers who killed their leader. The exact number of human casualties is unknown, but Kurimoto (2005: 352) mentioned that ‘it was later estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 settlers were killed, and numerous villages were completely devastated’. In the aftermath of the Ukuna massacre, many settlers left their villages and re-settled in Gambella town, where they expected that some security would be provided by the federal army, which was garrisoned in the town and manned entirely by Highlanders. Local representatives of the federal state – all of whom were (and still are) Highlanders – put pressure on the regional government, at that time, manned entirely by Anywaa, to bring the culprits to justice. Through the Ukuna incident, the federal government learned of its ‘need’ to limit regional autonomy and to curb the ‘excesses’ of local empowerment. The violent conflict between the Anywaa and the Highlanders in 2003 was of an even greater magnitude. The events leading to the massacre of Anywaa by

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 157 Highlanders on 13 December 2003, in Gambella town was related to the complex and changing political relations between the EPRDF and both the Anywaa and the Nuer. Shortly after the EPRDF had helped the GPLM to gain regional political power in 1991, the two political organizations clashed on issues relating to regional and organizational autonomy. As part of the EPRDF’s wider effort to ensure total political control nationwide, it disarmed all liberation fronts, including the GPLM, in 1992. The GPLM bitterly resisted and briefly confronted the EPRDF on the issue of disarmament. In response, the EPRDF replaced the GPLM leaders with more pliant members, especially after the GPLM was reconstituted as a political party, the Gambella Peoples Liberation Party (GPLP) in 1995. Anywaa political power was also seriously compromised by the Office of Political Advisors, EPRDF functionaries who ruled the regional states as de facto ‘king-makers’, if not as kings (Dereje 2006a: 224). Although this office was resented by both the Anywaa and the Nuer, the Anywaa power elites found it to be especially threatening. The fact that all the political advisers were ethnic Tigreans (Highlanders) also exposed the ethnic roots of the EPRDF regime. In 1998, in what was considered by the Anywaa to be yet another ‘plot’ to weaken their power, the EPRDF imposed a merger between the GPLP and the Nuerbased Gambella People Democratic Unity Party (GPDUP), forming a new ruling front called the Gambella Peoples Democratic Front (GPDF). The merger signalled a certain degree of parity between the Anywaa and the Nuer in regional power politics. This was, however, seriously contested by members of the more educated segment of Anywaa society, whose discontent finally led, in 1998, to the establishment of a regional opposition party known as the Gambella Peoples Democratic Congress (GPDC). Although the GPDC assumed a regional name and included some Nuer and Majangir, as had been the case with the GPLM which preceded it, it was, for all practical purposes, dominated by the Anywaa. The establishment of the GPDC heralded a bitter intra-ethnic power struggle, with a split developing among the Anywaa power elites on which strategies to follow in the project of containing the Nuer. Styling itself as a party of the educated Anywaa, the GPDC not only challenged the ‘uneducated’ and ‘docile’ GPDF, but also exposed the undemocratic nature of the ruling EPRDF in a national political debate in the run-up to the national and regional elections in 2000. In the regional election, the GPDF and the GPDC fought a fierce political battle, which was often characterized by violence. Threatened by the growing popularity of the GPDC, particularly among its Anywaa constituency, the Anywaa power elites in the GPDF threw in their lot with their Nuer ‘partners’ in a desperate bid to maintain political power. They labelled the GPDC as anti-Nuer and anti-Highlanders and promised a greater inclusion of both in the politics of the region should they be re-elected. Nevertheless, the GPDC won in most of the Anywaa districts, and some of the electoral results were initially recognized by the national election board. In what was eventually exposed as one of the most serious frauds in the 2000 national election, however, the result in Gambella was rigged, and the GPDF, under the auspices of the EPRDF, was accorded a ‘landslide’ victory. The intra-ethnic rivalry among the Anywaa continued until 2001, when two political events resulted in rapprochement among the competing Anywaa power

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elites. The first event was the split of the ruling TPLF/EPRDF in March 2001 and the ultimate removal of the Office of Political Advisers. This created a new political space for inter-ethnic competition and added to the growing fear among the Anywaa that the Nuer would ultimately usurp their political power. The second event was related to the issue of succession to the office of the regional vice-president. In May 2001, the Nuer vice-president died. For more than a year afterward, the office of the vice-president, a de facto Nuer position, was vacant because the two parties that comprised the ruling GPDF – the Anywaa-based GPLP (the former GPLM) and the Nuer-based GPDUP – could not agree on their respective nominees. Rejecting the GPDUP’s candidate, the GPLP nominated their own favourite within the GPDUP. At the height of the political rivalry, the Anywaa helped to establish a new Nuer party, known as the Gambella Peoples Democratic Union (GPDU), which opposed the GPDUP and fielded its own candidate for the vice-presidency. The political confrontation only needed minor stimulation to cause it to escalate into the bloodiest conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer in recent years. It began with a personal quarrel between an Anywaa and a Nuer in Itang district on 7 July 2002, which swiftly degenerated into violence that left more than forty people dead from a single engagement. In the days that followed, at least twenty-one villages were burned, hundreds were killed and tens of thousands of people were displaced. The conflict soon spread to Gambella town, where isolated incidents gradually turned to systematic killing on both sides, ranging from surprise attacks and stabbings to bombings. From Gambella town, the conflict spread into the neighbouring Pinykew/Ocham village, a mixed-settlement area for Anywaa and Nuer communities, hitherto known for its inter-ethnic peace and symbiotic exchanges. In August 2002, refugees became a new target; the Anywaa in Abobo district massacred more than thirty Nuer refugees in retaliation for the Anywaa killed in Itang district in June. In November 2002, the Anywaa of Pinyudo district killed thirty-three Nuer refugees in the Pinyudo camp. Schools were closed for months, and the two communities were virtually locked in their respective neighbourhoods. The economic activities of the town were brought to a standstill, and people fled the region seeking safety. The regional government utterly failed to contain the situation. Indeed, some of the main political actors fomenting the conflict were identified as high-ranking leaders in the regional council. As the situation deteriorated, the federal government intervened and took measures to calm the situation: Gambella was placed under a state of emergency; federal police and the army took control of the regional government; the ruling GPDF was dissolved, and its leaders who were involved in the conflict, including the Anywaa regional president, were imprisoned; members of the regional police (largely Anywaa) who were accused of inciting and participating in the violence were jailed or dismissed from their jobs; and the contentious multiethnic district of Itang was abolished and its territories divided between the Nuer district of Jikaw and the newly created Anywaa district of Openo-Alwero. The federal government also identified the ‘root cause’ of the conflict situation in Gambella as the existence of ‘too many political parties’. On that basis, all existing parties were abolished in early 2003 and replaced by new ethnic parties modelled on the EPRDF’s style of governing regional states through subordinate ethnic PDOs

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 159 (Peoples’ Democratic Organizations). These Gambella PDOs were the Anywaa People’s Democratic Organization (APDO), the Nuer People’s Democratic Organization (NPDO), and the Majangir People’s Democratic Organization (MPDO), which were organized by the EPRDF into a new umbrella political organization called the Gambella Peoples’ Democratic Movement (GPDM). The political measures taken by the federal government alienated a large segment of Anywaa society. What was initially referred to as Anywaa shifta (bandit) activity, and which gradually evolved into an armed rebellion, was largely organized by exAnywaa police who had been dismissed from their jobs. Unable to support their own families and claiming to represent Anywaa discontent, the shifta resorted to violence against both government establishments and civilian Highlanders, due to the Highlanders’ ‘guilt by association’ with the Ethiopian state. In September 2003, for instance, six Highlander road construction workers were killed, and this incident was followed by a series of indiscriminate killings of other Highlanders. Such killings were justified by the shifta as ‘killing’ the EPRDF. Furthermore, on 13 December 2003, eight Highlander government officials were brutally killed, and their severely mutilated bodies were conveyed openly in a vehicle to the regional council offices for public display before being taken to the hospital mortuary. Assuming that the murders were committed by Anywaa shifta – ‘it was widely assumed both by the Highlanders and the government that the ambush was the work of an armed Anywaa group or Anywaa shifta’ (Human Rights Watch 2005: 12) – and agitated by the gruesome display of the mutilated bodies, the Highlanders went on a rampage later that day, indiscriminately killing Anywaa males with rocks and machetes. Some locally deployed members of the federal army, who were exclusively Highlanders, also participated in the killings, using automatic weapons. Estimates of the casualties vary. Anywaa sources and international human rights organizations put the Anywaa death toll as high as four hundred and twenty-four (Human Rights Watch 2005; Anuak Justice Council 2006), whereas the government acknowledged only sixty-seven. A spiral of revenge killings on both sides ensued. Aggrieved by the complicity of government agencies in the massacre, feeling vulnerable to more attacks, and disappointed by the lack of protection from or public apology by the government, about a third of the Anywaa populace crossed the border to southern Sudan, where the various Anywaa armed groups were brought together and formed into a politico-military organization known as the Gambella Peoples Liberation Front (GPLF). From its base in Pochalla in southern Sudan and the adjacent Anywaa territories on the Ethiopian side of the border, the GPLF has fought against the Ethiopian army with varying degrees of success. In October and November 2005, for instance, the GPLF raided the police stations in Gambella and Abobo towns. In the ensuing gun battles between the GPLF and government soldiers, the regional police commissioner was killed and the GPLF were able to set Anywaa prisoners free. The existing political tensions between the Anywaa and the EPRDF were further compounded by the prospect of discovering strategic resources in Gambella and by related issues of economic control. The Gambella basin is one of the major potential petroleum producing areas in Ethiopia. Currently, a Malaysian oil company, PETRONAS, is undertaking exploration of the entire expanse. The Anywaa, spear-

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headed by the diaspora in North America, describe the events that led to the 13 December 2003 massacre and its aftermath in the language of genocide, claiming that it was the culmination of the genocidal intent of both the Anywaa’s neighbours and the Ethiopian state. The Anywaa believe that they are targeted by the Ethiopian government because of the riches of Gambella, which they regard as their home (Dereje 2007: 18).

Anywaa Ethnicity – Protonationalism? In his seminal work, Marxist Modern, Donham (1999) introduced the concept of ‘catching up’ and urged scholars to engage with local projects of modernity: ‘Have anthropologists or historians yet appreciated the consequences that flow from the apparently simple fact that some actors view their societies as “behind” and therefore in need of a way to “catch up”’? (Baker 1990, quoted in Donham 1999: xv). The local discourse on inequality and the need to catch up is conceptualized differently in various societies. Among the Anywaa there is a growing reflexivity about their declining group status that underpins the discourse on the fear of extinction. One of the means through which the Anywaa have sought to contain the Nuer and catch up with the Highlanders is through ‘capturing’ the regional state of Gambella. Here we view the Anywaa quest for political power not only instrumentally (competition for leadership) and as part of the project of containment (the struggle to maintain cultural identity) but also in terms of statism as an ideology and mechanism of transforming society. By ‘statism’ I refer to ‘the belief in the form of government that involves significant state intervention in personal, social or economic matters’ (Soanes and Hawker 2005: 1014). Contemporary Anywaa statism has two sources of inspiration. First, it draws on the experience of ethnic groups who the Anywaa perceive to have used state agency to transform their societies. The primary reference group for the contemporary Anywaa elites, and for the elites of other ethnic groups in Ethiopia, is the Tigreans, whose political leaders (the TPLF) are believed to have used not only the regional state of Tigray but also the national state to turn a resource-poor region into a success story: ‘If the Tigreans made it, why not us?’ is a standard remark the contemporary educated Anywaa elites make while talking about the agency of the state.6 The sense of relative deprivation is more acute among the Anywaa elites because they regard their society as not only in need of transformation but also in urgent need of being ’rescued’ from social atrophy. There is a growing reflexivity on the progressive decline of Anywaa society, as evidenced by widespread village alcoholism, depopulation of villages due to a higher death rate and an exodus to the towns, and the increasing peripheralization of the Anywaa in the regional economy. Such introspection has also generated nostalgia, the second source of inspiration. In their quest for transformation, contemporary Anywaa draw on the memory of their own ‘village states’ and proudly use terms from the modern state functionaries to describe their own traditional political system. Translated into the language of modern state functionaries, nyinya becomes ‘king of kings’, nyikugu a political adviser, nyibur a vice-president. 6.

Such reflexivity is reinforced by the working visits of officials of the regional states to Tigray. The Anywaa and the Nuer officials were impressed by the developmental achievements of the regional state of Tigray. The imbalance they saw has added to their acute sense of relative deprivation.

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 161 The Anywaa have sought various explanations for their growing impoverishment and their limited access to modernity. For the majority of the ordinary Anywaa men and women in rural settings, the discourse on inequality (between them and the Highlanders, or between them and the Europeans) is placed in a wider cosmological scheme: it is understood as yet another ‘plot’ in the long confrontational drama between the Anywaa and Jwok, as attested in the following extracts from the origin myth documented by Godfrey Lienhardt and Conradin Perner. Lienhardt (1962: 78) refers to an Anywaa myth ‘which explains why the white (or red) men are more prosperous than the Anuak’: The white men and the black men and all people were created at one time. Divinity gave the Anuak a Dog. Divinity became sick, and said to the black people ‘Give me a skin to be laid in when I die’. The black people said, ‘but what can we do with a person who is going to die just now?’ [that is, what is the use of bothering about a dying person?]. Divinity pleaded with black men, but they were adamant. And divinity said ‘go from me, for you have refused me this. And all the people were dressed in skins, both Anuak and white men’. Divinity said ‘You ugly, bad white people give men a skin‘. They did so. Divinity said ‘Good my son, you gave me a skin for death that I will die on’. He said to the black people ‘You did not give me a skin for death, so you shall be poor all your lives. And that skin you would not give me, you will now buy from my white son. You belong to the dog’. Divinity’s dying wish (gweth) to white men was that they should travel on the river in boats, and in the air. That is why white people have received everything, because it was divinity’s dying wish. The Anuak were left with haunting of the dead (acyeni). Perner documented a similar myth that resonates with Lienhardt’s: While God in the beginning had had no liking for the humans, he finally started to become interested in the Anywaa, found them beautiful and intelligent. As time went on, God began to like them, and one day he asked them to lick his ass! The Anywaa were filled with indignation and they refused categorically: ‘you may be great God but we are pure human beings, and we never agree to such insanity, not even on your demand!’ God got angry. He poured water and sand in the eyes of the people to make them blind, to be sure that they would never see, never discover anything … Then he left, he went to the north, to the red (Highlanders and Arabs) and the white people (Europeans). Those people fulfilled all his wishes, and he gave them everything in return. (Perner 1994: 113–14) In these myths, the Anywaa’s lack of modernity is conceptualized as deprivation by the ‘evil’ God, but also as defiance against God’s imposition. The modernity (or material advancement) of other people (including the Highlanders) is thus perceived to have been gained at the expense of their dignity. Referring to a different myth, Kurimoto (2001) discussed the Anywaa’s perception of their lack of modernity in

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terms of seizure of knowledge and technology by the white people with whom the Anywaa had once shared it, which Kurimoto calls ‘primordial modernity’:7 In ancient times when white and black men lived together, knowledge and technology symbolized by ‘iron’ (nyuwei) and ‘paper’ (warakata) already existed. When the white men left, they took the knowledge and technology, leaving the black men without them. When white men appeared in Anywaaland around the turn of the century, they ‘returned’ with the lost iron and paper. In other words, during the primordial period, the Anywaa once had access to modernity, and then lost it. Therefore, modernity is not something to be gained, but to be re-gained. Finally it was brought back by the British, but access to it has been limited. (Kurimoto 2001: 270) As the lure of modernity grew stronger, the Anywaa quest for it shifted from a discursive modernity to a more practical engagement. The Anywaa conversion into a ‘modern’ Church – Christianity – was not so much an ‘exit strategy’ from an oppressive tradition or attraction to a new system of knowledge as it was an opportunity to participate in modernity. The first Christian church, the American Presbyterian Mission, was established among the Anywaa in 1952. The APM was originally valued by the Anywaa as an agent of modernization, an example of Donham’s (1999) ‘paradox’: a revolution (missionary Christianity) that started as a rebellion against modernity in the West turned out to be an agent of modernization in Africa. When the church opened one of the early modern schools, established the first clinic in Gambella and charted a plane from the Sudan to bring in modern goods necessary for the evangelization programme, at a time when even the national capital was new to such signs of modernity, the Anywaa saw conversion as a vehicle by which to modernize. Christianity itself was identified with the missionaries and their modern gadgets. It is no coincidence that the Anywaa used to call the Christians ‘the McClure people’, named after the American missionary who established the first church in Akedo village. Akedo village, now renamed by the missionaries as Pokuwo (‘village of hope’), became a magnet for Anywaa of the various villages, who were attracted by the school, health and agricultural facilities that the mission station provided. The materialist dimension of conversion is aptly described by a missionary-cum-anthropologist who visited Akedo village in the 1970s: The loss of shamanistic services of the witchdoctor holds up some conversions to Christianity. This is why a Christian mission spends its money more judiciously by establishing ten clinics rather than one centralized hospital. Some simple, local, personal, medical service is required as a functional substitute for the shamanistic works of the witchdoctor. This service must get as close to the village level as possible and should have a religious dimension. The missions should train a huge army of dressers who can go forth with medical knowledge and clear faith. (Tippet 1970: 197–98) 7.

For a similar local discourse on deprivation of and ‘expulsion’ from modernity see Fergusson (1999), Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copper Belt.

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 163 The Akedo mission church produced the first generation of educated Anywaa elites. But as an institution of delivering modern goods and services, the church created rising expectations that it could not meet. In fact, the low profile of the missionary life and its material asceticism (the mission compound was a mere hut) failed to sustain its appeal, particularly after the establishment of government schools and clinics, which broke the missionary’s monopoly over symbols of modernity. The failure of the APM to meet the growing expectations of modernity led to the emergence of breakaway churches, as described by an Anywaa leader of such a church: I left the Presbyterians because the Presbyterians were not interested in development. The Americans wanted to keep us as we were. The Norwegians came recently but they have done a lot for us. One of the first modern buildings [the church’s guest house was furnished with Ikea] was built by the Norwegians, while the Americans lived like the Anywaa [in a hut]. When they left Akedo in 1978, they threw all their utensils into the Baro River. They educated only few Anywaa. Look what the Catholic Church is doing now! They came to Gambella recently but constructed a very big church, they bought tractors for the people of Gambella and now they are teaching English language. Had the Catholics come earlier, Anywaa could have progressed much earlier. (Okok Ujulu, leader of the breakaway Unity Church, 4 August 2000)8 Disenchanted with ‘mission-modernity’, the Anywaa sought alternative strategies. Migration was one option. In the 1950s some Anywaa were already involved in wage labour in the coffee farms of the neighbouring highland region of Dambidolo, not only to be able to afford the rare and expensive dimui, but also to earn enough money to participate in modernity by acquiring its media and symbols. By the 1970s and 1980s the attraction was gold mining, which promised a shortcut to modernity through the relative ease with which one could make a fortune because of the favourable national and international gold markets (Kurimoto 1996). In this instance, the Anywaa needed the money not only to acquire the signs and symbols but also the means for modernity: paying for their education in the towns and gaining independence from family support in the villages. When the Ethiopian revolution broke out in 1974, therefore, the first generation of educated Anywaa elite were already ready to join the road to ‘progress’, which for them meant catching up with ‘the immediate moderns’: the Highlanders. However, despite the euphoria that accompanied the revolution, the Derg failed to deliver and meet these local expectations. The 1990s opened up new avenues of social mobility, and the possibility of gravitating toward the perceived home of modernity – the Western world. Adopting the Nuer strategy of alternative citizenship to cope with marginalization, and making use 8.

With the term, ‘Norwegians’, the narrator is referring to the Norwegian Church Aid, an ecumenical organization that is actively engaged in community development in many African countries; and by ‘Catholics’ the narrator means the Catholic Church in Gambella and the Salesians of Don Bosco fathers. In the eyes of the narrator, however, there is little difference between these organizations – both have a ‘modernist’ drive.

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of the escalation of conflict in the Anywaa-inhabited areas in southern Sudan, a group of Ethiopian Anywaa tried to join refugee camps in Ethiopia by ‘passing’ as Sudanese. Even then it was difficult to manipulate the aid agencies. As a last resort they went to refugee camps in Kenya, from where some managed to emigrate to America, Canada and Australia through the UNHCR resettlement programme.9 The 1990s also brought new possibilities for local modernism at home as well. Decentralization in post-1991 Ethiopia promised local empowerment in which statism became the latest edition of the modernity project. If some Anywaa went to the West where modernity ‘originated’, others sought to achieve modernity at home. This was perceived to be possible for the Anywaa only if they had a state of their own, or at least used the new regional state of Gambella as a vehicle to rehabilitate and transform Anywaa society along modernist lines. In the anthropological literature on modern elites, however, they are often represented as utilitarian manipulators and instrumentalists (Brass 1999). Elites rarely feature as actors genuinely interested in social progress. The instrumentalist approach is helpful to understand a certain portion of social reality, but it does not tell us everything about the multiple projects of the elites. We should allow for the possibility that the elites have a genuine interest and belief in progress. Societal concerns such as ‘progress’ partly inform the political practice of a section of Anywaa elites, as the following commentary by an Anywaa politician suggests: ‘Society cannot develop without a state. Above all the state makes the people work. The Anywaa will disappear because they no longer work’.10 The belief in the agency of the state to transform society is more evident among the Anywaa than the Nuer, who are engaged in individualist strategies to achieve the same end. Drawing on their own experiences in village-states, but increasingly aware of their inadequacy in the changing economic and political realities, the Anywaa nevertheless believe in the transformative power of the state: Life was better during the British [enclave] period. Agriculture was flourishing, trade was expanding. Ships were coming from the Sudan. There were even [trading] companies. British horticultural sites are still remembered by the Anywaa as agelgacher [sic, meaning agriculture]. The British soldiers used to export vegetables from Gambella to Dambidolo. The Anywaa were then hard workers. Not like now. In fact, they were also hard workers before the British. They used to have very good harvest all the year round because the

9.

Members of the Anywaa diasporas held meetings with the American Presbyterian Church, whom they reprimanded for failing to bring the Anywaa to the United States where living conditions are regarded to be much better than they are in Gambella. 10. Extracted from informal discussions I had with Abula Agwa, senior official of the Gambella Peoples Democratic Congress. Abula is an ex-Derg soldier, aged 45. He served in the Ethiopian army for fifteen years and lost his leg fighting the EPLF in Eritrea. He came back to Gambella in 1992 after the Derg army was disbanded. Abula then started a small business in Gambella town. He has travelled widely in Ethiopia and has a particular liking for the city of Asmara, which he admires for its cleanliness and for being ‘modern’.

The Anywaa Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 165 kwaari made the people work. Things started changing after the refugees and the safara [resettlers] came. Fifty kilograms of maize used to be sold at 15–20 birr but then 1 quintal was sold at 4–5 birr!! The Anywaa bought the maize and started selling borde [local beer]. Anywaa stopped working and the women became like slaves. As borde was profitable, selling 100–200 birr from a quintal of maize, the women started overworking, pounding all the day. Production reached its lowest because there was no incentive. Those who did not have cash to buy the maize started catching some fish for food and selling it to buy maize. The main problem in Gambella is neglect by the state. The federal government is not treating all the regions equally. There is more development in Tigray. Take the case of the Alwero dam. Why is it difficult to build canals and complete the dam, whereas many development projects were completed in Tigray after Alwero dam? That is why Okello Oman [the first Anywaa president of the GPNRS] once angrily said, ‘We do not need dams for crocodiles and fish!’ We need our own state, free from control. During the transitional period Gambella was more advanced than Benishangul and other regional states because it was governed by educated Anywaa. They have now all left and been replaced by incompetent people by the federal government. (Anywaa NGO worker, Gambella town, July 2000) Statism is not only adopted as a means of modernization by the educated elites but it is shared by ordinary men and women, who also reflect on the socio-economic decline: What Anywaa need is a strong state of their own ruled by educated people who could initiate transformation. It is only then that we could avoid the death of Anywaa society. The British were strong and life was in order during their time. No Anywaa from the villages was allowed to roam around the town, and they were encouraged to work hard. They came to the town to buy goods and went back to the villages. Now you hardly find a diligent Anywaa farmer in the village. They are all here in Gambella town, leaving the land for the Nuer. (Ariat Abala, Anywaa woman from Gambella town, aged 60, September 2000) It is in this social context that the urge to ‘capture’ the Gambella regional state by the Anywaa should be placed, for it serves different purposes. It is the converging point for the multiple concerns of the various categories of Anywaa. For the elites, it creates an ideology of power as well as expressing their societal concerns. For the ordinary Anywaa men and women, it is perceived as a guarantee to contain the Nuer and a promise for their rehabilitation. In inter-ethnic terms, it has implied a certain apprehension in power-sharing with the Nuer, for the discourse has inserted a zero-sum game: either the Anywaa keep the status quo or the Nuer will progressively corrode their hard-won political guarantee that ensures the continuity and revitalization of Anywaa society. As the aforementioned narratives illustrate, there is a growing anxiety and concern about the continuity of Anywaa society, the vitality of which has been sapped not only by external pressures (specifically land encroachments by their

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pastoralist neighbours and the adverse impact of state expansion) but also by internal strains, i.e., the breakup of social control, the depopulation of villages and the decline in work ethic. This statism, coupled with a reference to settlement history, settlement patterns and contributions to regime change, provides the Anywaa elites with political justification in claiming the GPNRS as an Anywaa regional state at best or, at worst, to claim their status as a political majority in a multi-ethnic regional state. In the eyes of the Anywaa this is a legitimate demand. If the Amhara, Tigreans, Oromo or the Afar are each allocated a regional state in their respective ‘homelands’, then the Anywaa also deserve the same political rights in a region that they regard as their home; or, at the very least, they deserve to occupy a dominant political position in a region that is defined as multi-ethnic. It is no wonder, then, that whenever a new power-sharing arrangement has been proposed by the federal government in addressing the issue of proportional political representation, the Anywaa have interpreted it as a usurpation of their legitimate dominant political status. To sum up, the long-term dispossession of the Anywaa by the previous regimes had created among the Anywaa a sense of relative deprivation, which they sought to redress in symbolic terms as well as through practical politics. This is particularly the case in their attempts to take advantage of the new political order in post-1991 Ethiopia. In this context, the Anywaa have claimed political ownership of the Gambella region and formulated exclusivist discourses that are in harmony with the ethnopolitics of the EPRDF. Although territoriality has deep roots in the Anywaa cultural world, its radical manifestation in recent times is related to the exclusive claims that have been generated within the new political structure in Ethiopia. Outnumbered by the Nuer and dealing with the growing number of Highlanders, the Anywaa have invoked autochthony as the only available political language to justify their power claims. This has brought them into a multi-dimensional conflict with the Nuer, the Highlanders, and the EPRDF. 13 December 2003 is a landmark in the new process of Anywaa political decline in the regional power politics. The Anywaa’s attempts to regain political power through guerrilla warfare against the EPRDF, though initially successful, further undermined their political standing in the Gambella region. As Anywaa power waned, that of the Nuer waxed. The Anywaa political decline has made Nuer access to natural resources easier, to which the Anywaa react begrudgingly. In the following chapter the Nuer response to ethnic federalism is discussed with special reference to the way in which they have contested Anywaa political dominance and have sought to establish connections with the Ethiopian state. In both cases the Nuer have drawn on the cultural repertoire in which their political strategies are embedded.

Chapter 8

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism Building on Chapter 7, this chapter elaborates further on the power variable, specifically on the ways in which relations with the Ethiopian and also the Sudanese state may be viewed as causes of ethnic conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer. It emphasizes Nuer contestation of Anywaa political dominance in the GPNRS in the 1990s through the formulation of counter-claims to power based on creative ideologies of ethnic entitlement.

The Nuer Politics of Inclusion Political domination of the Gambella regional state by the Anywaa in the 1990s gave rise to resentment and created solidarity among the Nuer. Anywaa dominance produced three levels of concern for different categories of people. Nuer elites were concerned mainly about their exclusion from positions of political leadership and from the rewards of office. For ordinary Nuer men and women in urban areas, Anywaa dominance meant exclusion from or marginal access to modern goods and services. For the ordinary Nuer men and women in the villages, it brought with it the politicization of their livelihood strategy, pastoral mobility. Within the opportunity structure that was created by the new Ethiopian constitution of 1994, the Nuer sought to assuage their grievances by pursuing a particular form of identity politics. While commenting on the altered political status of Gambella in post-1991 Ethiopia and on the trickle-down effect of the decentralization project, an educated Nuer, employing a pastoralist metaphor, described the situation of the Nuer within the new structure as bi jile duoth (‘we are given the leftover’): Duoth is what remains after you make butter out of milk. It is given to children who are still happy getting something. Bi jile duoth means to give somebody a small thing without offending him. The receivers are even surprised that they get something, because they do not know that others get bigger and better things. It is the same with ehadeg [EPRDF]. The Tigre, the Amhara and the Oromo got many things [from the state], and the people of Gambella were given what remained. But the people of Gambella were happy that they got something that they had never had before. Now the Nuer and the Anywaa have become ambassadors, ministers and have their own kilil [regional state]. (Gatluak Choul, Nuer civil servant, Gambella town, 23 May 2001) A more positive view of the new opportunity structure was expressed by another educated Nuer from Gambella town:

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As late as 1995, many Nuer were not interested in becoming Ethiopians, partly because at that time there were security problems in Gambella and perhaps partly because they all like to be southern Sudanese! Now the Nuer are enrolled in the Ethiopian Federal Army. We have three army officers, a police force, and all the Nuer districts are manned by Nuer police, and the senior provincial commissioners of Akobo, Itang and Jikaw are from the Nuer. All the Tigreans, Amharas and Oromo [Highlanders] are excluded from political positions, except perhaps for the political advisers. For the first time in a hundred and fifty years [since the eastward migration of the Jikany], the Nuer have accepted that they are Ethiopians. The notion that ‘buny cie turuk’ is not valid any longer! (educated Nuer, Gambella town, 27 January 2002) Literally, buny cie turuk means ‘the Highlanders are not modern’. Metaphorically, it is a negation of the Highlanders’ self-image as more ‘modern’ than the Anywaa and the Nuer. Turuk is a generic term for state power and modernity, originally used to refer to the Ottoman Turks, the first ‘modern’ people the Nilotes encountered in southern Sudan early in the nineteenth century. In the eyes of the Nuer, the Ethiopian state failed to deliver as much as it ought to have. The Nuer also used to describe the Highlanders as turuk mi thil kade (‘civilization without salt’), in reference to the introduction of salt to the Nilotes by the Turks and Egyptians, whereas the Highlanders could not deliver it to the Nuer in Gambella before the 1990s. Unlike the Ottoman Turks and the Anglo-Egyptians in southern Sudan, imperial Ethiopia was short on salt supplies, particularly in the western parts of the country. Salt becomes a metaphor for the failure of expected deliveries of goods and social services by the state.1 The 1990s, however, promised new reward structures for Gambella. As the relief regime declined, the establishment of the Gambella regional state opened new avenues of social mobility and individual advancement for those who could claim Ethiopian citizenship. Marginalized by the Anywaa from the distribution of these new rewards in the 1990s and increasingly aware that in the new political game administrative power mattered most, the Nuer contested Anywaa political domination through ethnic counterclaims and creative strategies of entitlement. Against the backdrop of such expectation, the political exclusion of the Nuer elites by the Anywaa elites in the regional state produced a sense of relative deprivation, which became especially acute because the reference group (the Anywaa) was perceived as a political minor in the traditional rules of the game. This sense of deprivation created a social energy that resulted in the intense Nuer politics of inclusion from 1991 to 2002. Since then, however, as the federal government has delivered more than ever to its peripheral areas, the Ethiopian state, in the eyes of the Nuer, has ‘joined’ the club of ‘moderns’. In this new context of changing perceptions, buny cie turuk is no longer valid. The second level of concern was characteristic of ordinary Nuer men and women for whom the object of the struggle was access to modern goods and social services, par1.

This is an interesting local criticism of maqinat, Ethiopia’s version of the ‘civilizing mission’. Maqinat was used to justify the conquest of territories in the southern, eastern and western parts of the country in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 169 ticularly education and health facilities. For this category of Nuer, identity politics determined who was and was not allowed access to the new resources delivered by the state. They took an active interest in ethnopolitics, inasmuch as their respective political parties claimed to represent and articulate their demands. In line with the ‘roadside’ bias of development in the so-called Third World countries, social services in Gambella were concentrated in and around the towns. As a result, urban areas, where the few social services were concentrated, became the places where crucial economic networks were established and where people engaged in politics. Consequently, there was a heavy influx of people into the two regional towns, Itang and Gambella. Towns in Gambella region exhibited an annual growth rate of thirteen per cent, the highest being in Gambella town itself. According to the 1994 census, fifty-seven per cent of the urban population and twenty-nine per cent of the rural population in the GPNRS were migrants. Ruralurban migration involved all groups, but Nuer migrations to the urban areas (nearly all in Anywaa territories) gained increased political visibility. Here again, the previous references to Merton’s concepts are useful where we have different interpretive schemes: the manifest function – the subjective motivation of individual Nuer movements to the towns to have access to social services – is interpreted through its latent function – Nuer expansion at the expense of Anywaa territories. The Anywaa even planned to change the regional capital from Gambella town to Abobo town on the grounds that Gambella town was very close to Nuer settlements. For the Anywaa, the rural-urban migration produced further evidence of the Nuer ‘hidden agenda’. For the ordinary Nuer men and women, migration to the towns was part of their quest for modernity: Towns are not Oromo, Amhara, Anywaa or Nuer. People mix and something more comes out of it. It is only the Anywaa who prevent people from coming to the towns because they want to have the good things in the town for themselves alone. The Nuer like to go to the towns because there is no peace and development in their areas. The only town we have is Kurgeng, and even that is only three to four years old. But the Anywaa have Gambella, Itang, Abobo and Pinyudo towns. (James Tut, a nuer law student in Civil Service College, Addis Ababa, March 2001) Part of this quest for ‘the good things in the town’ was the growing realization that individual and group advancement was no longer measured and defined by tradition alone, but also by new means of social mobility, particularly modern education and connection with the state system. This is best illustrated in the decline of gar in defining social status. In the context of integration into national identities and in the context of the diaspora, gar (like other initiation marks) was increasingly seen as a sign of backwardness. Hutchinson (1996: 270) discussed the emerging debate among the Sudanese Nuer concerning gar as follows: ‘During the early 1980s there was a tremendous debate brewing among Nuer concerning the ultimate significance of male initiation, the historical conditions that gave rise to this rite, and its contemporary socio-political relevance … Is gar primarily a means of ethnic identification during a period of intense inter-tribal warfare that is now no longer necessary? What distinguishes the Nuer as people? Is garring an indispensable element of this distinction or not?’

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According to Hutchinson (1996: 270–71), the first move away from gar began among the western Nuer in south Sudan in the 1940s in situations of increased contact with Arabs and others, who do not prescribe the same kind of initiation marks. In this new contact situation, gar came to be viewed as a badge of backwardness. The introduction of modern education and the spread of literacy also produced a new generation of uninitiated, literate Nuer who competed for local political power (chieftaincy) with initiated, non-literate traditional elites. In this new political context, having gar or not having it became a means of inclusion or exclusion from the power game. The initiated, non-literate Nuer called adult males who were uninitiated and literate tuut dhoali – in Hutchinson’s (1996: 270) words, ‘a marvellous oxymoron that clearly conveyed their liminal status’. The term may be translated as ‘adult-boys’ or, as Hutchinson suggests, ‘bull-boys’. The ‘social deficiencies’ of the tuut dhoali, as described by the initiated, were manifest in three crucial domains: wut (the ideology of masculinity); rich (membership of an age set on the basis of the generation of the initiated), and mut (the lineage spear that is transferred from father to son at the time of initiation). The tuut dhoali have managed to renegotiate their ‘social deficiencies’ through the growing realization in the general public that education now serves to buffer the arbitrariness of the state and allows people to enjoy its rewards. The social position of the tuut dhoali was strengthened in the 1980s during the second Sudanese civil war. In their quest to transcend ‘tribal divisions’, some of the leaders of the southern Sudanese liberation movement attempted to ban initiation marks. This was championed by none other than Dr Riek Machar, a prominent Nuer commander of the SPLA and himself a tuut dhoali (Hutchinson 1996: 296–97). A similar debate, drawing first on the discourse on ‘backward cultural practices’ of the imperial period and then on the revolutionary rhetoric of the socialist period, arose among the eastern Jikany Nuer in Gambella, beginning in the 1960s. The definition of the non-Amhara, non-Christian cultures of Ethiopia, particularly of the border regions, as ‘backward’ led to self-deprecation and low self-esteem among those local elites who internalized the hegemonic discourse. In fact, in their drive to ‘catch up’ with the ‘cultures of the advanced people’, some educated Nuer campaigned door-to-door to discourage the practice of gar. The local administration of the Jikow district even went as far as prohibiting those Nuer who were freshly initiated from entering the district’s capital. Caught between the modernist pressures of the state and their own educated people, the ordinary Nuer men and women came up with an ideological ‘exit option’ that mediated the transition. One of these ideological ‘exits’ was the representation of gar as an imposition by colonialists. In fact, a myth circulated among educated Nuer that gar was a British invention to make a distinction between Nuer and Dinka. An extreme version of this myth took the form of a conspiracy theory and trickled down to the villagers: Gar is to be wut [man]. But what is wut if a Nuer cannot match the Anywaa or the buny [Highlander]? If a Nuer fights with a buny, the buny could defeat the Nuer, though he does not have gar. Who is wut then? I say that gar is nothing, it is useless. It is possible to be wut without gar. Why can we not make turbil

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 171 [car] or nhial bany [airplane] if we are wut? People who made all these things do not have gar. Gar started with the British during the age-set of Rok. Their mothers did not want their children to have gar. They thought their sons would die. When the British started gar, the Nuer did not know about the objective. The British deceived us while they were sending their own children to schools. If I were to be born again, I would never have gar because it is possible to be wut without gar. Our forefathers did not know anything. That is why they took other people [assimilation]. Rather they should have formed their own kume [government]. We do not have our own kume because we are not educated. The milwal [red/Highlanders] and mibor [white/Europeans] have boum [power] because they have their own kume. During the time of gar, we did not know about cloth. Now our children are wearing clothes because they are educated. We are just following them. (David Doup, Christian Nuer elder from Nipnip village, Addis Ababa, 23 November 2000) David is a well-known Cieng Cany elder in Jikaw district. I met him in Addis Ababa while he was waiting for the remittance that the Cieng Cany community in the US was sending to fund the building of a school in Nipnip. With the term ‘kume’, David is referring to the role of the state in distributing goods and services, which were lacking, however, in his remote village. The desire ‘to have what other people have’ had generated a sense of relative deprivation expressed, in this instance, in the form of differential access to education. Underlying the changing attitude towards gar was the role of modern education as a new avenue of social and personal advancement, which, at the same time, provided an alternative discourse on manhood. There is an overarching air of realism in the above narrative by David, in that the educated [the Highlanders] have better conditions of life and are politically dominant at the national level. David and his contemporaries saw sending their children to school as the way to catch up with the powerful. The Nuer quest to ‘catch up’ has also resulted in attraction to the urban centres. The Nuer influx to the towns was paralleled by the emergence of settlements in the nearby Anywaa villages. The emergence and expansion of the Nuer settlement at Ochom in the Anywaa village of Pinykew is a case in point. In 1985, Riek Tuany, a Cieng Cany Nuer from Nipnip village, made contact with Anywaa leaders in Pinykew village. Riek initially came to Ochom because his child was ill with back pain. The child was admitted to Gambella hospital, but Riek could not stay in the town for a follow-up visit because he was unable to cover the medical expenses. Instead he thought he could settle in Gambella town, only to realize that life there was very expensive and not suitable for keeping cattle. As a last resort, he returned to Ochom, with which he was already familiar as a transit stage for the cattle trade in Gambella town. Riek was well received by the Pinykew Anywaa. He rented land for cultivation to support his family and, a little later, brought some of his cattle there from Nipnip village in Jikaw district. Riek was soon joined by his close relatives, out of which a small Cieng Cany settlement emerged in Pinykew. The successful establishment of the Cieng Cany encouraged other sections of the Gaat-Jak to settle in Ochom. Both the Anywaa hosts and the Nuer guests defined the

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situation in moral terms: the legitimate right to have access to the social services in Gambella town. In addition, the settlement of the Nuer in Anywaa territories was received partly as an opportunity by the local Anywaa. For the ordinary Anywaa, it meant access to cattle wealth, either in the form of bridewealth payment or by rearing cattle in sharing arrangements with their Nuer friends. For the Anywaa local leaders, it meant increased political power. It was a great relief for the Anywaa leaders in Pinykew village not to have to force their fellow Anywaa to pay tax, which was covered instead by the Nuer. Besides this, the fines collected as a result of Nuer court cases in Ochom village were shared by the Anywaa and Nuer leaders. The Nuer in Ochom left Pinykew in 1991 during the regime change and the unrest that followed. Riek returned to Ochom in 1993. In order to re-establish ties and develop confidence with the Pinykew Anywaa, Riek married an Anywaa woman. Other Nuer followed suit, particularly the representatives of each Nuer clan. The marriage ties facilitated socio-economic exchanges, encouraging more immigration. In the new context of ethnopolitics dominated by the Anywaa power elites, the Nuer combined local strategies with new forms and ideologies of ethnic entitlement, in order to gain advantages in the regional power game and to stake claims on local resource.

Projecting the local onto the national Confronting the Anywaa exclusionary political practices, the Nuer first looked inward to make sense of their new situation. When the Anywaa said ‘the land is ours’, the Nuer replied ‘there is enough land for us all’, setting up a distinct ‘clash of cultures’. For the Anywaa, land is as much an economic as a symbolic resource in identity construction. For the Nuer, land that is not actually settled and effectively occupied by the Anywaa is considered to be part of the economy of the commons. The Anywaa settlements concentrated along the banks of the rivers are largely respected by the Nuer; in most cases, the Nuer use peaceful strategies to have access to the Anywaa’s riverine lands. Beyond the riverine area, however, the Nuer do not consider themselves to be encroaching on other people’s land. In the resulting entitlement debates and contestation of values, the Nuer impose their pragmatic and situational identity discourse and their concepts of land rights on the Anywaa, and they also project them onto and contrast them with the state’s fixed concept of citizenship. This is evident in the way that the Cieng Reng formulated their claim to Ethiopian citizenship, as the following narrative extract suggests: When I first came to Makot, it was forestland. There was nobody living there. [Note: Traditionally, the Makot area has been part of the Anywaa village of Pinyman.] When the other Cieng Reng heard that the area was good, they came to Makot. That is how Makot became a big village. Now it has already been eighteen years since we settled at Makot. It has become our wech [village]. It is not only we who move. Many people are going to America: the Dinka, Anywaa, Nuer, and buny. But the America kume does not say ‘Go back to your country’. And if we leave Yom and come to Makot, this should be allowed. You can change kume as you like. If Ethiopians want to go to Sudan and stay there, the Sudan kume cannot prevent them. That is the case I am

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 173 representing. We left the Sudan when that kume took our cattle and forced us to make roads [corvée labour]. That is why people are now coming to the buny kume. If the people of Yom want to be Ethiopians, they can, as other Nuer did. It is also the same with the American kume. They accept people because they want to be many. If we are Sudanese and want to be Ethiopian, what then is the problem? The kume still accepts people. Our children left Sudan when the problem started with the Jalab [Arabs]. Previously the Nuer were with the British kume. But later on they were divided. Part of the Nuer became buny. That is why we supported the British and the buny when they fought the Italians [during the Second World War]. When the British left, we became Sudanese. When the war with the jalab [Sudanese Arabs] started, we became Ethiopians. We got education and food from the buny. We are happy because our children are getting education in Gambella. The Ethiopian kume has become responsible for our children. Up to now, we are happy. That is what I know. (Kong Diu, Addis Ababa, November 2000) One of the arguments put forward by Kong in the Cieng Reng’s politics of recognition is the eighteen years of residence in Ethiopia which, in Nuer terms, is ‘more than enough’ to claim local identity. This pragmatic current of flexibility in identification is well expressed in Kong’s narrative: ‘If we are Sudanese and want to be Ethiopian, what then is the problem?’ There is no fixation in Nuer identification that contains a strong demographic bias: one can change tribal identity as the situation demands. In this identity discourse, immigration is something to celebrate, not a threat. This contrasts strongly with the apprehensive attitude of the Anywaa towards immigration. The Anywaa justify their immigration concerns by referring to the European model of the nation-state and the resilience of its border: It is migration which is affecting politics in Europe. The German and the French are angry because a lot of people are going there and disturb their system. They are concerned because if more and more people go there, who would the land then belong to? They fear that they would be a minority in their own country. That is exactly what we are saying. We are not saying that Nuer should not be allowed to use the land and the water or even live together with the Anywaa but they should respect that the land belongs to the Anywaa. Germany and France are concerned with immigration because they know that democracy favours majorities and more foreigners would mean more power to them. Once they are in, you cannot say no because they start claiming. Even after the EU was established the state borders are still valid in Europe. (Abula Obong, senior official of the Gambella Peoples Democratic Congress, Ruiru, 22 February 2002) Among the Nuer, national identification, like tribal and ethnic identification, is perceived to be a matter of individual choice, rather than an ascription: At the beginning there were two kume: the British were with the Nuer, and the buny kume was with the Anywaa. That was the difference. Then some

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Nuer became Sudanese, others became Ethiopian. The Nuer who live with the buny are buny. Those in the Sudan call themselves Sudanese. The kume likes everybody. They dislike only those people who work against them. If the buny kume and the Sudanese kume fight, if the Sudanese kume rejects us, if they treat us badly, and if we come to the buny kume, the Sudanese kume cannot follow us because we are no longer Sudanese. If the buny do the same, we will be men of Sudan. (Kong Diu) In Kong’s narrative, the Nuer project their concept of localization onto the nationstate, as if the latter were characterized, like the Nuer, by a constructivist mode of identity formation, but on a larger scale. The Nuer attribute paramount importance to localities with an expressed interest in newcomers. By the same token, the Ethiopian state is expected to ‘celebrate’ when new people join, since, for the Nuer, politics is essentially viewed as number politics: the bigger you are, the stronger you become.

Myth as an ideological resource at the local level Confronted with the new Anywaa political power, the Nuer, particularly those in the new settlements in Anywaa lands, have overstated a narrative of self that enhances relatedness with the Anywaa. If the Anywaa political discourse is organized along the narrative of loss and separateness, the Nuer are engaged in a selective memory that enhances connectedness: with the accent being on the shared. Towards that end, the Nuer draw on the mythohistory that fits their inclusive strategies. The reinforcement of Anywaa territoriality in the context of the ethnopolitics organized by the Ethiopian state has generated a greater reflexivity on ideas of origin. If the ethnogenesis of the Nuer was a subject of an anthropological debate decades ago, it has now become an imperative in everyday inter-ethnic interaction. In order to familiarize themselves with the local setting, and as a counter-argument to the Anywaa’s exclusive strategies, the Nuer often refer to their mixed background and show a keen interest in myths that connect them with the Anywaa. One such myth is the Jikany origin myth discussed at length in Chapter 3. Whereas in many versions of the Kir mythology the connection between Kir and the Dinka is emphasized (Evans-Pritchard 1940a; Johnson 1982), currently the Jikany Nuer in the Gambella region highlight Kir’s connection with the Anywaa. This is particularly true in Makot village where the Kir mythology offers areas of relatedness between the Cieng Reng and other Jikany Nuer, as well as with the Anywaa. It is as part of the Jikany Nuer that the Cieng Reng have renegotiated their ‘foreignness’, both vis-à-vis the Anywaa and their economic competitors, the Thiang Nuer, in their politics of recognition, as discussed in the case study in Chapter 4. In the Kir mythology, the Nuer in general and the Cieng Reng in particular have found a discursive resource. When, during the 1998 conflict in Itang, both the Anywaa and the Thiang Nuer framed local politics and the local struggle for the control of resources in national terms by defining the Cieng Reng as Sudanese, the Cieng Reng countered this attempt to exclude them by invoking ‘shared origins’ with the Anywaa and various types of relatedness with the Thiang Nuer. The Cieng Reng believe that Tik, the mystical ancestor of the Cieng Reng, was originally an Anywaa. Jal (1987: 18) also established the link between the Cieng Reng and the Anywaa. The Cieng Reng construct

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 175 relatedness with the Thiang not only through reference to the history of friendship between Kir and Tik, which is discussed in Chapter 3, but also through kinship links with Thiang through the Cieng Nyaruny, the secondary division within the Cieng Reng. The founder of the Cieng Nyaruny lineage is a Thiang called Gil. Gil left the Thiang after his mother inherited Mut Wiu, Kir’s Divinity Spear, from his halfbrother, Tär, on the basis of the latter’s heroic act of avenging the killer of Gil’s full brother. Gil married a Cieng Reng named Nyaruny and his descendants are called Cieng Nyaruny. In the eyes of the Cieng Reng, the ‘Sudanese’ label that was invoked by the Anywaa and the Thiang to justify denying them access to resources and political power lacks historical legitimacy. They are all so closely related, argue the Cieng Reng, that it makes no sense to call some Ethiopian and others Sudanese.

Myth as an ideological resource at the national level Another myth currently invoked by the Nuer that serves as an ideological linkage to the Ethiopian state is what I call ‘the tale of the tail’. This is a story about how a Nuer prophet, Ngundeng, gave the Highlanders cattle when they were starving. Ngundeng advised the Nuer to cut off the tail of the black-and-white brindled bull, tut kernyang, and give it to the Highlanders, as evidence to which the Nuer could point when they became in need of the Highlander’s support. This myth connects the Nuer with the Ethiopian state via a discourse of reciprocity between Ngundeng Bong, the renowned Nuer prophet, and Emperor Haile Selassie. The full account of the myth is given by Johnson (1986: 242–43), which was taken from a conversation between a prominent Lou Nuer politician and the grandson of Ngundeng: It was said that the Ethiopians were coming from Fashoda … they went to a place called Jiör [Jor]. They were dying of starvation and people were suffering from malaria in the water. They did not reach the village ... Their leader (kuar) came through Jiör and found that the Dinka were coming … to the Mound [of Ngundeng]. He followed the people until he reached the Mound … Ngundeng said, ‘Why do you look at him? He was brought by Divinity (Kuoth). What he came for, he will tell us. Give him something to eat’. A cow was killed, and he was given other things to eat … Then Ngundeng told the Lou that the Ethiopian should be given some cattle. He gave him about eight oxen to feed them. [The Lou said] ‘Waa! Son of Nyayiel … how can we give the Lou’s cattle to someone who comes from a place we do not know? He may kill people because of those cattle one day’. ‘Sons of my mother’s brother,’ [Ngundeng replied,] ‘you will follow those cattle one day. If you give a person a good thing, one day, sons of my mother’s brother, if something happens you will join with those people’ … Ngundeng said, ‘I will give him the … tut kernyang and four other oxen’… He said, ‘Do you know why I give him the tut kernyang?’ ‘No’. ‘You will one day follow it’. The historical background of the ‘tale’ is the 1898 Fashoda incident between the British and French colonial forces, which were competing for control of the Upper Nile region (Bahru 1976: 74). Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia sent his own small contingent, ostensibly as diplomatic support to the French, but also to try to extend his

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own political influence in the area (Jal 1987: 184). The small Ethiopian contingent might have met Ngundeng’s people in their difficult journey on the way back home. The word buny, the Nuer term for Highlanders, was coined by Ngundeng in reference to a misunderstanding between him and fitawrari Haile. When fitawrari Haile met Ngundeng, he considered him to be the ‘king’ of the Nuer, which he was not, and bowed down to him as a sign of respect, which was in line with the authority code in Highland Ethiopia. In ‘the tale of the tail’ it is indicated that Ngundeng wondered why Haile bowed down (a gesture that is called buny in the Nuer language), as this was alien to him and to the Nuer in general. This is the etymology of the word buny which the Nuer use to refer to the Ethiopian state and to the Highlanders. In what appears to be eclipsing an historical gap of more than two decades between Emperor Menelik (1889–1906) and Emperor Haile Selassie (1930–74), international and national history are locally interpreted to make sense of presentday political realities and to legitimize power and resource claims. Jal (1987: 188) throws light on the confusion of historical names. According to Jal, the leader of the Ethiopian contingent in Fashoda in 1898 was fitawrari Haile, one of the commanders under ras (head) Tassama, the governor of the western Illubabor province. The similarity of names between Haile and Haile Selassie, coupled with the Nuer’s close knowledge of Emperor Haile Selassie/Ethiopia during the Second World War, seems to explain the historical incongruity. Putting aside the burden of proof, the Nuer focus in this story is on how prophet Ngundeng (and through him the Nuer) ‘saved’ the Ethiopians/Highlanders during a difficult time. This mythohistorical event was first employed politically to include recent Nuer experiences related to the civil war in the Sudan and their influx into Ethiopia. As Johnson (1986: 244) put it, ‘the gift of survival [to the starving Ethiopian contingent] is repaid by survival [the influx of Nuer refugees into Ethiopia/Gambella]’. Historical authenticity aside, the myth has become an important ideological resource that discursively connects a local community with the national state. As contact with the Highlanders has increased, ‘the tale of the tail’ has incorporated new signs and symbols to further connect the Nuer with the Ethiopian state. A recent addition to the myth brings the Nuer to the centre stage of core national symbols – among the gifts that Ngundeng is supposed to have given to the buny is a lion: An Anywaa person called Werjegor gave a present to Ngundeng called tony [long, ivory-decorated pipe]. Ngundeng was happy and said, ‘You Bär [Anywaa], go and live with the buny where you will get lots of things’. When he slaughtered the ox for the buny and gave them a lion to help them hunt on their way, the Anywaa and the Komo were there. It was Werjegor who brought the buny to Ngundeng. When the Nuer took the tail of the tut kernyang as a remembrance of their relationship, Ngundeng said, ‘You Nuer, when you are in trouble, you should go to the Wer Jegor people [Anywaa] and the buny’. And because of the lion, which Ngundeng gave them, the buny became powerful. That is why Haile Selassie put the lion on the flag and on the birr [imperial currency]. You also find tut kernyang on the birr. (Thiang Luony, Gaat-Jok elder from Akobo district, Gambella town, December 2003)

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 177 In this narrative, the Nuer are not strangers to the Anywaa and the Highlanders. Even if it was the Anywaa who connected the Nuer with the Highlanders (the role of Werjegor), the relationship between the Anywaa and the Highlanders is, nevertheless, encouraged and blessed by the Nuer (through the prophet Ngundeng). The subtext of the narrative is how the Anywaa ‘owe’ the Nuer for ‘the better conditions of the life they enjoy’ by virtue of the latter’s living with and proximity to the Highlanders/Ethiopians.

The Nuer contesting Anywaa indignity When the mythological linkages failed to achieve the connectedness to which the Nuer aspired, they began to contest the Anywaa’s discourse about separateness. The history of migration of the Nilotes and the debate on shared origins created an opening for the Nuer to deconstruct the Anywaa claim of being the indigenous people of Gambella. The Nuer counter-arguments were based on two strategies, both of which served to relativize Anywaa seniority and to undermine their claims to autochthony in the Gambella region: first, negotiating the scale of Nuer foreignness and, second, emphasizing the common origins of the Anywaa and the Nuer. It has already been pointed out that the Anywaa sweepingly define the Nuer as newcomers. This is as much a political exaggeration as it is an aspect of the sudden encounters between groups of Anywaa and Nuer who do not have a history of living together. For the Lull (Anywaa who live in forested areas), the Nuer are people whom they first met in the 1970s and 1980s, when urbanization started in Gambella town. Even then, interaction was in the marketplace and ephemeral. This was also a time when hundreds of thousands of Nuer from southern Sudan came to Itang as refugees. Therefore, a certain margin of ‘error’ might be allowed in the Lull Anywaa’s definition of the Nuer as ‘foreigners’. But for the Openo Anywaa who border the Nuer, the foreignness of the Nuer is the rhetoric of political mobilization. The more the Anywaa emphasize settlement history, the greater the Nuer contest it: ‘We both came from the Sudan’ is a typical Nuer answer to the Anywaa claim of indignity. As an aspect of negotiating their ‘foreignness’, the Nuer are also engaged in new myth-making to counter the Anywaa’s exclusive ownership claim over Gambella. This is epitomized by the variants concerning the etymology of the word Gambella: The term Gambella was first coined by the Nuer. It originated from two words: Gam (half ) and bela (sorghum). After Latjor died, a group of Nuer travelled to Dambidolo. The leader told his followers to make sure that there would be enough food supply for the journey because they did not know how long it would take to reach Dambidolo. When they reached Gambella, he asked the keeper of the stores how much sorghum was left. He answered him gam-bel, half of the sorghum. That is how Gambella got its name. (Thiang Lony, a Gaat-Jok elder, Gambella town, 12 November 2000) One of the Anywaa versions of the etymology of the word Gambella is similar to that of the Nuer version:

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A long time ago there were no canoes or a bridge to cross the Baro River. It was difficult to cross it, especially carrying bell (sorghum). The Anywaa used to cross the Baro River by throwing their sorghum in it. One person waited at the other end of the river and the one who was crossing threw in the sorghum. That is how Gambella got its name, from ‘catching the sorghum’. (Ujulu Obang, Anywaa elder, Gambella town, 21 January 2001) Another Anywaa myth locates a different source: Bell in the Anywaa language means leopard. There were a lot of bell in Gambella. One day Morri [Morris, the British commissioner at Gambella Enclave] met a group of Anywaa who just captured a bell. Morris was very surprised that they could capture the bell. He called the area where the bell was captured gam-bella (the place where the leopard was captured). Gam in Anywaa means to catch. (Gilo Abula, Anywaa elder, Pinykew village, 3 March 2001) The terms of the debate on origin and settlement history complicate and obscure the real issues at stake: the Anywaa have framed their ethnic concerns in national terms, as if their conflict with the Nuer is an interstate conflict between Ethiopian and Sudanese citizens. When the Anywaa say the Nuer are foreigners, they use the term Ethiopia to mean Gambella, although many of the contemporary Anywaa political actors actually come from the Adongo region of southern Sudan. The citizenship debate is therefore not a statement of political fact in the sense of who is and is not Ethiopian, but exists because it helps to frame local concerns in national terms. Framing the entitlement issue in such terms serves the Anywaa in two ways: it provides rhetoric for mobilizing the Ethiopian state in their (the Anywaa’s) project of containment and it serves as a strategy of ethnic entitlement in the Gambella regional state. This double-edged discourse, however, backfires in some cases. It seems contradictory to say ‘the Nuer are Sudanese’ and ‘Nasser was ours’, which the Nuer are keen to capitalize on. As the Anywaa increasingly rely on the citizenship card, acknowledging their Sudanese connection appears to be politically incorrect. This has undermined their ability to create cross-border political networks as much as the Nuer have.2

2.

In March 2001, for instance, Adongo Ageda came from Canada to assume the position of nyinya in Utalo village. Nyiya Adongo was keen to meet the Anywaa president of the Gambella regional state in Addis Ababa. The president declined the offer for fear that this would be ‘politically embarrassing’ for the Anywaa in Gambella in general and, in particular, for the Anywaa officials who were busy framing the Anywaa concerns in national terms. As a result, nyiya Adongo had a very low-profile reception at Gambella airport, being met only by Anywaa church officials. Adongo’s attempts to contact the Anywaa political leaders in Gambella town were also in vain. Instead, he organized a meeting of ‘Anywaa intellectuals’, most of whom were members of the regional opposition party, the Congress (GPDC).

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 179

Party politics The political use of the inclusive myths can be seen as a self-serving discourse to present the Nuer as locals in the new areas of settlement. Aware of the significance of the number of districts in the politics of entitlement, the Nuer strove to increase their number of districts from two to at least four. Towards that end, in 1992, they established a political party called the GPDUP, the Gambella Peoples Democratic Unity Party. The GPDUP was delegitimized as a political organization by the GPLM because it was allegedly established by people from the defunct regime (the Derg) and noncitizens (Sudanese refugees). It was only in 1995, during the first regional election, when a Nuer was appointed vice-president, that the GDPUP obtained political recognition. The GPDUP proposed the creation of two additional districts for the Nuer (Nyinyang from Jikaw and Matar from Akobo) to add to the existing districts of Jikaw and Akobo. Neither the regional nor the federal government heeded their plea. Consequently, the Nuer resorted to alternative arguments for political empowerment, combining the struggle at the level of mythohistory with the appropriation of the state’s own discourse. Although a political minor in the regional government, the GPDUP capitalized on the 1994 census results. The census – the objective of which was to ‘generate data for designing and preparing the development plan and for monitoring and evaluating the impact of the implementation of the development plan’3 – estimated the population of Gambella at 181,862, of which the Nuer comprised forty per cent and the Anywaa twenty-seven per cent.4 Seemingly overnight the Nuer were transformed from a largely ‘foreign’ group into an ‘ethnic majority’. The census offered new capital for the Nuer political actors on the basis of a new ideology of entitlement: majoritarianism. Using democratic rhetoric, the Nuer challenged what now appeared not only as exclusion, but as ‘domination by a minority’: A glance at the 1994 national census reveals that there is a direct imbalance in resource allocation throughout the country. It was only in 1995 that the Nuer got the position of vice-president in the Gambella regional state. This arrangement did not take into account the numerical size of the ethnic groups, for had that been the case, the Nuer would have been given the top position in the region because they are numerically the majority in the region. The situation in Gambella is not different from that of Rwanda and Burundi where the Tutsi minority dominated the Hutu majority in all political spheres, and we all are aware of the consequences of that policy. (Nyang Baitiok, Nuer official in the regional council, Addis Ababa, 6 September 2001) The Anywaa seriously disputed the census results on several grounds. First, they perceived the census as having grossly undercounted the Anywaa areas, for most of the

3. 4.

The 1994 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia, Central Statistics Authority (1995: 1). The areas not covered by the census were parts of Akobo, Gog and Jor districts, whose estimated joint population was about twenty thousand.

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kebeles that were not counted fall within traditional Anywaa territories.5 More importantly, the Anywaa considered the size of the Nuer population to be inflated by the influx of refugees: The increase in the Nuer population involves political turmoil across the international border, producing a nonstop influx of refugees into neighbouring territories in the Horn of Africa. Since the birth of civil conflict in southern Sudan, Gambella has been hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees from across war-torn southern Sudan, the majority of whom belong to the ethnic Nuer. This makes it very difficult for the authorities in Gambella to differentiate between who is Ethiopian or not in the struggle for power and resources. Prior to the mid 1980s, only few Nuer lived in Itang and Gambella. (Nyigowo Oman, educated Anywaa, Gambella town, 14 October 2000) The Nuer have pursued majoritarianism as a counter-strategy to the Anywaa indigenous claim. The more the Nuer insist on majoritarianism, however, the more the Anywaa invoke the Nuer annexation of their lands since the nineteenth century. This also means a special interest in immigration issues, for they have a direct bearing on the demographic equation. It is against this backdrop of the politics of numbers that the GPDUP officials took an interest in the Cieng Reng quest for kebele as described in Chapter 4. The GPDUP managed to significantly increase Nuer political representation after the 2000 regional election. By 2005, the Nuer had achieved parity with the Anywaa in representation on the regional council. Out of the eighty-one seats in the regional council during the 2005 election, the Anywaa and the Nuer were allocated thirty-three each.

Going national to be local The more the Anywaa frame their resource and power claims in national terms (‘Anywaa are Ethiopian and Nuer are Sudanese’), the more national the Nuer become. Here we find the Nuer using constitutional arguments of entitlement; as much a perception as it is a real interpretation of the legal documents. The Nuer constitutional argument for inclusion draws on fragments of history: Ethiopia’s loose frontier policy during its competition with the British colonial forces in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as recent constitutions that have tended to recognize an inclusive argument. Ethiopia currently lacks a law or policy on refugee matters. During the imperial regime and the early period of the Derg, the trend was towards a more integrative approach to refugees and local people. Refugees needed only three years’ residence to claim Ethiopian citizenship (Klinteberg 1977: 2). It is this provision that is remem5 . Anywaa doubts concerning the results of the census were based particularly on figures from Akobo district where, according to the census, only one Anywaa was counted. My own village census in Pone kebele alone shows that there were more than one hundred Anywaa living there together with seven hundred Nuer, and that there were as many as six such mixed-settlement kebeles in Akobo district.

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 181 bered by contemporary Nuer as ‘the constitution’. The Ethiopian Electoral Law (1995), which states that citizens who reside for three years in a locality have the right to elect and to be elected, is also used by the Nuer as a ‘constitutional’ argument to claim Ethiopian citizenship. According to the new Consolidated Version of the Election Law (2005), ‘Any person who has been residing within the constituency for at least six months may be registered as elector [voter]’ (Art.19.1). It is also stipulated in this law that ‘a candidate is one who is versed in the vernacular of the national region of his intended candidature’ (Art.38.a) and ‘who has been regularly residing in the constituency of his intended candidacy for two years preceding the date of election’ (Art.38.d). In reality, the electoral law does not raise the citizenship issue; it takes it for granted that those who are eligible to vote are already Ethiopians. The constitution of the GPNRS is vague about land rights, although it adopts the land policy enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution, which asserts state ownership of land on ‘behalf ’ of nations and nationalities: ‘All rural and urban lands as well as natural resources belong to the regional state and its peoples. This is not subject to sale and it is the common property of nations, nationalities and peoples of the region’ (Art.34: 3). In line with the Ethiopian constitution, the regional constitution also explicitly recognizes the land rights of the farmers/pastoralists and the state: ‘The farmers of the region have the right to obtain land and protection from eviction’ (Art.34: 4); ‘the nomads of the region have the right of access to grazing and cultivation land and protection from eviction’ (Art.34: 5); and ‘with all due respect to the land ownership rights of nation, nationalities and peoples, the state has the right to allocate land to private investors with legally recognized payments’ (Art.34: 6). The mode of implementation of these constitutional articles, however, is to be ‘specified by law’. Despite the constitutional provisions, the state’s claim has not yet made an impact on customary laws. As a result, land sales and informal land exchanges continue to be unregulated. So far, only a small portion of land has been apportioned to private investors and two areas have been designated as parkland. The state discourse on the land becomes relevant at local levels only where it connects with the Nuer discourse. Aware of the scarcity of key natural resources in their own areas, now formally recognized as their districts (Jikaw and Akobo), and finding themselves vulnerable to the Anywaa’s politics of exclusion in the new settlements in Anywaa areas, the Nuer discursively empower the state as the ultimate owner of the land. This entails a switch of reference from God (Kuoth) to the state (kume). Commenting on the Anywaa exclusive land claim, Kong Diu said: As you know, land is owned by the kume. The kume is the father of all people. If there is no kume, those people who do not like Nuer [the Anywaa] say ‘the land is ours’. Everything is from the kume. If there is hunger, if there is no rain this year, the food comes from other places. You can contact the kume and it brings you food. The kume is like Kuoth. Everything belongs to the kume. Land is for the kume. The people are for the kume. That is why it asks for people [conscription] when there is war. Even this tree belongs to the kume. There is nothing that the kume cannot do. Nobody can take away the land of the kume. (Makot village, 17 November 2000)

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Such discursive empowerment of the state neither recognizes the state claim over the land nor represents a commitment to national identity, but rather serves as an argument to nullify the Anywaa’s exclusive claim over the land. This argument, however, has the effect of reproducing state ideologies at the local level, an aspect of what Joseph and Nugent (1994) called ‘everyday forms of state formation’. There is more in Kong’s narration. The word kume is used not only in reference to the Ethiopian state but also to the Highlanders who represent it. In fact, the Nuer often make the explicit statement that the alluvial soil, after all, comes from the highlands: Even all the Gaat-Jak cannot finish this soil. Anywaa and Gaat-Jak together cannot finish this soil. After all, this river [Baro] comes from the buny area. Pine [alluvial soil] is from buny. When it rains in the highlands, the rivers bring all the soil to us. It is red there, but when it reaches us, it becomes black. This soil is important for us all. Pine is for all, Anywaa, Nuer, buny. It is food. If we did not work on it, we would all be hungry. If we sat idle, like we do now, we would all be hungry. You cannot stop a hungry man. (Kong) The multiplicity of the land claims can be seen in Figure 8.1. The photo depicts a new Nuer village in Itang district, on land that historically has belonged to the Anywaa. The poles separating the Nuer village and the land in the foreground represent the boundary between the village and the land designated by the state as parkland, one of the two undeveloped parklands of Gambella.

Figure 8.1 To whom does the land belong? (photo: Dereje Feyissa)

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 183 Local legitimizing discourses are primarily relevant in animating actors to pursue their interests. The EPRDF’s response to the Nuer integrative rhetoric, however, has been ambivalent. On one hand, the EPRDF countered the growing political power of the Anywaa with progressive promotion of the Nuer in regional politics. On the other hand, the Nuer and their cross-border social and political networks are not regarded positively. Nuer resentment of EPRDF’s political favouritism on behalf of the Anywaa in the early 1990s and its alignment with the Sudanese government against the SPLA resulted in violence in 1992. In fact, the massacre of Highlanders in 1992 and the attempt by a Nuer prophet to engage militarily with the EPRDF are often referred to as ‘evidence’ for the ‘unreliability’ of the Nuer as Ethiopian citizens. The extreme violence in Itang in 1992 was related to the activities of Wutnyang Gatkek, who was at that time one of the most powerful Nuer prophets in southern Sudan. Wutnyang sought to legitimate his prophetic claim through the ‘revelations’ he had, as well as through establishing a spiritual link with Ngundeng Bong, the greatest of all Nuer prophets. Wutnyang’s mission to and his military operation in Gambella are still shrouded with obscurity. Some Nuer, Anywaa and Highlander eyewitness accounts suggest that he combined a personal project (building up his prophetic career) with political objectives (promoting an alternative form of southern Sudanese nationalism). Though accompanied by SPLA soldiers, Wutnyang came to Itang on a personal or religious mission – to collect a sacred axe at a place called Rewmenyang, a village near Itang town. This sacred axe is called jiop naath. Ngundeng is believed to have hid the jiop naath on the branch of a tree in Itang. Wutnyang paid visits to various smaller prophets in Jikaw and Itang districts to persuade them that he was possessed by the Ngundeng spirit. Wutnyang also attracted a big following, thanks to the miracles he was believed to have performed, such as detecting thieves and dazzling the enemy. Wutnyang’s religious mission was not successful, despite his popularity, as he failed to collect Ngundeng’s jiop because of a military clash with Ethiopian troops. It was, rather, Ngundeng’s political project that left a lasting imprint. By 1992 Wutnyang had raised his own personal army, known as the ‘white army’, consisting of several thousand loyal Nuer recruits, who inflicted heavy damages on the Sudanese army. Referring to Wutnyang’s attempts to promote solidarity among various southern Sudanese peoples, Johnson (1994: 348) describes him as ‘a renowned peacemaker who had repeatedly sought to defuse intra- and inter-ethnic conflicts that had been developing during the first decade of the second civil war between the various Nuer communities and between them and their Dinka, Anywaa and Uduk neighbours’. Similarly, Hutchinson (1996: 339) writes that ‘as an unswerving advocate of political independence for the South, Wutnyang had played an especially crucial role in uniting and galvanising continued Nuer military resistance against the Khartoum government’. Wutnyang delivered a divinely sanctioned call for greater peace and cooperation among the southern Sudanese (including the Nuer and the Anywaa), whom he urged to regain their pride as jinubni (southerners) and as black people (nei ti caar) capable of progressing by their own right. Wutnyang explained his coming to the Anywaa and Nuer in Itang, Gambella, in racial terms, i.e., as part of the struggle against the ‘red’ people (the Arabs of the

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Sudan and the Highlanders of Gambella). His first step in this struggle was to organize a peace ceremony between the Anywaa and the Nuer, who were then locked into violent conflicts. Not only Nuer and Anywaa, but also Highlanders attended. The Anywaa sat on the eastern side and the Nuer on the western side, reflecting the geographical location of the two peoples. The Highlanders sat beside the Nuer. Wutnyang then said, ‘We shall bless ourselves so that there will be no more fighting. We are all black people. We are one and brothers.’ Then two oxen, a black and white, were put between the Anywaa on one side and the Nuer and the Highlanders on the other. Wutnyang continued his speech, ‘When I spear the ox, and if it falls down with its head eastward, I would say that the fighting between the Anywaa and the Nuer is caused by the Anywaa. If it falls down with its head westwards, I would say that the fighting is caused by the Nuer and the Highlanders.’ Wutnyang first speared the white ox and then the black ox. Both the white and the black ox started falling eastward but suddenly they turned around and fell down with their heads westwards. Wutnyang announced that the Nuer had caused the fighting. In the afternoon of the same day, a truck arrived from Gambella town carrying flour to Itang town. It was stopped by Wutnyang’s followers, who took the goods and then went on rampage in Itang town, where they looted the shops of the Highlanders. The small EPRDF contingent in the town attempted to stop the looting, but Wutnyang‘s followers prevailed and annihilated all fifty-eight of the EPRDF representatives, all of whom were Highlanders. The next day, Wutnyang proceeded to Gambella town and then openly declared his mission to be the liberation of Gambella from the Highlanders. Halfway from Itang to Gambella town, EPRDF forces, well armed with sophisticated weapons including a helicopter gunship, clashed with the forces of Wutnyang. Finally, Wutnyang managed to flee back to southern Sudan safely, although his followers sustained significant losses. The Wutnyang incident had long-term repercussions for inter-ethnic relations in the region. Subsequently, the Highlanders in Gambella town took reprisal measures, indiscriminately killing ‘black’ people, some of who happened to be Anywaa. Above all, the incident deeply scarred the resident Highlanders who felt threatened not only by the Anywaa but also by the Nuer. It also set a precedent in the distribution of military power in the region. Ever since then, the army has consisted exclusively of Highlanders, whereas the regional police force is manned by Anywaa and Nuer. Ostensibly, the exclusion of Anywaa and Nuer from the army serves to establish its neutrality, but, when conflicts arise in the region, the army, like other state institutions, is in fact identified with the Highlanders. This was amply demonstrated, for instance, when the army sided with the Highlanders during the Anywaa massacre on 13 December 2003. Given the strained relations between the Nuer and the EPRDF, and due to the latter’s geo-political considerations, Nuer could not obtain a national audience for their demands for political inclusion until something changed. The EPRDF began to respond to the citizenship debate between the Anywaa and the Nuer only after a national event that significantly altered the status quo of regional politics: the outbreak of the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea in May 1998. In a throwback to ‘trench warfare’, the outcome of which was largely decided by sheer numerical

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 185 strength (Negash and Tronvoll 2000), Ethiopia prevailed over the Eritrean forces in the war to ‘restore’ its sovereignty. Towards that end, the Ethiopian government needed ‘popular participation’ to offset the fortified positions of the Eritreans. In the context of extensive mobilization, peripheral regions such as Gambella entered into the national limelight. Both Anywaa and Nuer were recruited into the army. The GPNRS contributed money from its annual budget, as well as ‘volunteers’ and cattle during the war preparations.6 Twelve people joined the army from Makot village, three of whom died on the battlefield.7 Consequently, the Cieng Reng politics of recognition were connected with the Ethio-Eritrean border conflict. The Nuer ‘enthusiastically’ joined the army, partly as an employment opportunity and partly because the rhetoric of mobilization fed into GPDUP’s politics of inclusion. The GPDUP cadres campaigned in the villages, including the Cieng Reng village of Makot, to persuade them to join the army should they hope to gain political recognition. Above all, the Ethio-Eritrean border conflict produced new local heroes. One of these heroes was Bil Puk, a Gaat-Jak Nuer from Jikaw district. Bil was credited with killing many Eritrean soldiers in one of the critical military engagements in the first phase of the war and subsequently decorated for his contribution to the victory. As a political reward, four Nuer were promoted, becoming palace guards.8 A victory poster and music cassette called Wufer, featuring a photo of Bil, were produced by the EPRDF for the ‘Badime Heroes’ (see Figure 8.2). The Badime victory poster was auctioned in Gambella to contractors for 30,000 birr. The winner of the bid donated a large framed copy of the poster to the Anywaa leadership of the ruling regional party. Some of these posters reached the villages, and were later reproduced manually. The Nuer were hailed for their heroic performance in the ‘restoration’ of sovereignty. In turn, the Nuer instrumentalized a translocal political process as a new argument for their politics of recognition – i.e., they ‘went national’ before they fully became ‘local’. Such actions had immediate political repercussions in inter-ethnic relations. Contributions to the lualawinet, ‘war for sovereignty’, in concert with the Nuer claim to majoritarianism based on the 1994 census, became important discursive resources for the Nuer to contest the Anywaa historical argument for political entitlement. The Nuer power elites and ordinary people claimed: ‘We are Ethiopians because we, too, have shed our blood for Ethiopia’, a reminder of the axiom that war makes nations, and nations make war. Kong Diu used the same argument for citizenship when he appealed to the federal government in Addis Ababa in November 2000: ‘Why should the 6. 7.

8.

In fact, contribution in kind was one of the distinct features of the war, which made it appear to be a ‘popular’ war. The Nuer, like other pastoralist communities, contributed cattle to feed the army. The National Army, which was identified with the defunct Derg regime, was disbanded in 1991, and the new army was reduced in size from one hundred sixty thousand to a modest ninety thousand troops. When the war broke out, there was a sense of urgency to increase the army to two-hundred and fifty thousand (Negash and Tronvol 2000). That partly explains the openness in recruitment procedures. Bil is a relative of Kong Diu. One of the palace guards was also a Cieng Reng from Makot village. Many Nuer in Gambella proudly recount such stories to legitimize their ‘Ethiopianness’. As far as the Nuer are concerned, their selection as palace guards confirms their political recognition.

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Figure 8.2 Bil Puk – a national hero (Source: Wufer cassette cover)

Anywaa say we are not Ethiopian? Did not we fight for Ethiopia as well? Even our cows have become Ethiopians. They went to Badime. Okay, we go back to the Sudan, but let them give us our people who died in Badime.’ The sympathy that Kong Diu received from the federal government, discussed in Chapter 4, becomes intelligible when viewed against this translocal political process. The Anywaa countered the Nuer power claim on the basis of national heroism by recalling their own national heroes who predated the Nuer. A case in point is James Uchan, an Anywaa who was promoted by Emperor Haile Selassie for his heroic performance during the 1960s Ogaden war with Somalia: ‘James fought against the Somali during the Ogaden war. Haile Selasssie gave him a kokeb [medal] for his heroic performance. He was also appointed by the emperor as the traffic officer of Addis Ababa. That was in the 1960s!’9 The Nuer claim for power on the basis of national heroism was warmly received by EPRDF officials in Gambella. As they grew more confident due to a sense of legitimate entitlement, the Nuer demanded the creation of two more districts, which became a reality following the 2005 election. The whole of Ethiopia knows what the Nuer achieved at Badime. You are great people. Not only for yourselves have you proved what you can do at the national level. You should be proud of your son, Bil Puk. Now demonstrate 9.

Interview with Philip Opiew, vice-administrator of Gambella in the 1970s, Gambella town, October 2001.

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 187 your greatness by making peace between yourselves. We are saddened by the scale of destruction caused by the conflict between the Cieng Nyajani and Cieng Wau. On behalf of my party, the EPRDF, I urge you to work for peace and develop your areas. (Yohannes, EPRDF representative and political adviser to Gambella Regional State, extract from speech given at a peace meeting in Nyinyang village, 12 February 2000) Public pronouncements by EPRDF officials, such as this one concerning the ‘Nuer contributions’ to the war for sovereignty, emboldened the Nuer political actors, who became more politically assertive in the years following the victory at Badime. From the council to the schools and villages, Bil Puk became the new ethnic hero and a code word for entitlement. In 2000, circumventing the district-based political representation, the Nuer gained nine additional seats in the regional council through the ‘grace’ of the federal government. It is against the backdrop of this national political event that Kong had the courage and legitimacy to travel all the way to Addis Ababa to appeal for citizenship. Although he was not given all that he asked for, ‘going national’ at least earned him a ‘residence permit’. As could be expected, the success of the Nuer politics of inclusion increased Anywaa anxiety: In every election, Nuer representation has increased. At the beginning there were no Nuer in the council. But, by 1995, all of the representatives from Jikaw and Akobo were Nuer. Who will represent the Anywaa that are still living in these districts? In the 2000 election, the Nuer even got one of the five seats from Itang district. If they can claim representation of Itang, what will stop them from claiming Gambella district? There are already a lot of Nuer who are living there! (Opamo Obang, Nairobi, August 2002) One of the new areas of contention in the political struggle between the Anywaa and the Nuer was education. During the period 1996–2001, there were a series of incidents and occasional violent clashes between Anywaa and Nuer students in both schools and institutions of higher education. The first incident occurred in 1996, when a group of Nuer students applied to the Teacher Training Institute. They were rejected by the Anywaa officials in the regional bureau of education on the grounds that the applicants were Sudanese refugees, not Ethiopian citizens. This was protested by the Nuer students, not by denying their education in the refugee camps, which was stated in their certificates, but by challenging the ‘double standard’ that the Anywaa officials employed by accepting Sudanese Anywaa students and Ethiopian Anywaa who studied in the Sudan. This particular incident revealed the distribution of power in the regional government. Embittered by their rejection, the Nuer students established a student union and appealed to the Nuer officials in the regional council, turning a sectional interest into an ethnic issue. After a bitter political struggle between the GPDUP and the GPLM, the Nuer students were admitted to the institute. In 1999, schools once again came to the political forefront, this time on the question of language choice, i.e., who should be taught in which language and where. According

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to Article 39 of the 1995 constitution, ‘Every nation, nationality and people in Ethiopia has the right to speak, to write and to develop its own language; to express, to develop and to promote its culture; and to preserve its history.’ Multi-ethnic regional states such as Gambella have adopted Amharic as the language of regional government, but they use the vernacular in local government and schools. This was partly favoured by the federal government in order to avoid the contentious issue of language choice. In implementing the vernacularization of the educational system, however, a complication occurred in Gambella town. The Anywaa were not only allocated more schools than the Nuer, but one of the schools was Ras Gobena Junior Secondary School, the only junior secondary school in the town. Upon finishing elementary school, all Nuer students from Gambella town had to attend this junior secondary school, where the Anywaa language was both a medium of instruction and a subject. In the first educational cycle (years 1 to 4), the medium of instruction in the school was Anywaa, and Amharic was taught as a subject from the third year on. In the second educational cycle (years 5 to 8), the medium of instruction was English, and Anywaa was taught as a subject. This meant Nuer students who joined the school had to learn Anywaa. In fact, Nuer students were obliged to declare their willingness to learn the language. Some of the Nuer students either refused to sign the declaration or started dropping out of lessons. They demanded to be taught in Nuer, not Anywaa. The Anywaa defended the measure by asserting ownership rights over Gambella town, which they considered to be an extension of the neighbouring Anywaa village of Pinykew. Overall, this created a generalized sense of deprivation among the Nuer, reminding them of who was in charge politically in the GPNRS. A similar problem occurred in the same year in Itang town, where earlier the Anywaa language had been introduced. When the Nuer asked for their own school where they could develop their own language, the Anywaa officials gave them a room outside the school compound in the former clinic for refugees, a symbolic action that emphasized the underlying political assertion by Anywaa officials that the Nuer were Sudanese. The Nuer believed this was an attempt to make the Anywaa language the regional language, and hence to reinforce the political marginalization of the Nuer. As the political crisis escalated, people were confined for weeks in their respective ethnic neighbourhoods. ‘Ancient hatreds’ between the Anywaa and the Nuer were invoked and traditional war songs were chanted to inject a sense of continuity with past enmities. The crisis was abated only after a general public meeting was convened under the auspices of the federal authorities, which looked into the root causes of the problem. After a heated debate, it was decided to teach in both languages in Ras Gobena Junior Secondary School. The new language and educational policy has had various impacts on the multiethnic regional states. In Gambella it has magnified the already-existing political competition between the Anywaa and the Nuer. Which language is taught where has raised the question of the political ownership of the GPNRS. The Anywaa’s attempt to promote their language in the regional capital, Gambella town, which they consider as their territory, was contested by the Nuer on constitutional grounds. Once again the Anywaa and the Nuer drew on different sources of legitimizing claims and diverged in their schemes of interpretation. For the Nuer, the struggle to participate in the vernacularization of the educational system was part of their politics of recog-

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 189 nition and quest for modernity. For the Anywaa, it was a manifestation of the Nuer ‘hidden agenda’. Over time, the Nuer managed to renegotiate their subordinate status in the changing political alliance between themselves and the Ethiopian state. This gave rise to a renewed sense of betrayal and feelings of relative deprivation on the part of the Anywaa, whose authenticity discourse (i.e., the Anywaa are more reliable citizens) was increasingly being corroded by the state’s own pragmatism. Once again, as Anywaa political power waned, Nuer political power waxed. This new situation, which favoured the Nuer over the Anywaa, became more pronounced after the violent conflict between these two groups in 2002, especially in the context of the new power-sharing arrangement introduced subsequently by the EPRDF. The advancement of the Nuer both in political power and in education, however, has made them more competitive vis-à-vis the Highlanders, who hitherto had made up more than fifty per cent of the region’s skilled labour. The increase in the number of educated Nuer in the regional bureaucracy has also meant the emergence at the regional level of a new ‘critical mass’ that is less amenable to EPRDF’s directives and is capable of raising the issue of EPRDF’s accountability for its failures of governance in the region. As might be expected, this has not been well received by the EPRDF and has produced new tensions between the Nuer, on one hand, and the EPRDF and the Highlanders, on the other. To sum up, the discussions from Chapters 6 to 8 have examined the significance of opposition in the transformation of ethnic categories into political communities within recent and contemporary state systems. In Gambella, this transformation initially occurred among the Anywaa, because they were the first to experience opposition both from the Nuer and later from the Ethiopian state. At the same time, the reactive, primordialist ethnicity of the Anywaa, and the monopolistic closure that it entails, have evoked a new form of identification among the Nuer, compromising their constructivist identity discourse. This can be inferred, for example, from Nuer attempts to affix an ethnic ‘substance’ to the Anywaa, which, by implication, leads them to essentialize the ‘natural’ differences that set them apart from each other. The significance of opposition as a condition for ethnic consciousness can be illustrated with reference to contemporary Anywaa and Nuer ethnicities. Anywaa ethnicity features territoriality (expressed in a land-based political strategy) and the politicization of cultural forms (demonizing the Nuer culture), whereas the Nuer tend increasingly to reconstruct their identity in contrast to a ‘normative other’, articulating their moral contestation in response to the exclusionary political practices of the Anywaa. As a result, the Nuer in contemporary Gambella grasp their own ethnicity in terms of their exclusion from political participation and power; and their political practice gravitates towards inclusive strategies of ethnic entitlement. Contemporary Anywaa ethnicity is significant for various categories of people occupying different positions within a stratified political order. Employing ethnicity as an ideology of power, the Anywaa elites have sought to exclude the Nuer elites from the new structures of rewards in the state system by politicizing the settlement history of Gambella. The historical frame of reference for the Anywaa’s expression of (in their view) justified indignation is the Nuer migration into and conquest of

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extensive Anywaa territories since the second half of the nineteenth century. This selective memory reduces complex inter-ethnic relations to a narrative of victimization and loss. As an ideology of power, then, ethnicity has been translated into a political practice through which the Anywaa elites, aspirants to the modern sector (‘elites in the making’), have sought to capture the regional state of Gambella. The other, perhaps more inclusive, aspect of contemporary Anywaa ethnicity is what I have called the project of containment. With the institutionalization of ethnicity in the official Ethiopian policy of ethnic federalism, the Anywaa have sought to contain what they perceive increasingly to be the ‘Nuer peril’, i.e., territorial encroachments on the part of the Nuer and the corresponding expansion of Nuer cultural space. Here macro-politics meet micro-politics: the chirawiya of the Anywaa villagers is supplemented by the administrative power of the Anywaa officials. Still, there is growing anxiety about the diminishing political position of the Anywaa in the regional ethnospace. By capturing the Gambella regional state, the Anywaa have tried to contain the Nuer ‘tide’. In light of such narratives of loss and projects of containment, Anywaa ethnicity may be seen as a protonationalist project, an ethnic revivalist movement in changing socio-economic and political contexts. The global triumph of neoliberalism and the deconstruction of state agency in social transformation do not have local resonance here. What we can observe in Ethiopia, and perhaps also in neighbouring states, is an enchantment with the idea of the state and a belief in the ability of the state to realize local projects of modernity. The Anywaa elites are, however, not only manipulative maximizers but also visionaries engaged in articulating societal concerns. In their self-understanding, they are attempting to ‘rescue’ their society from decline and ultimate extinction through recourse to the agency of the state. But the actions of Anywaa elites do not always bring about the desired result. In some ways, the Anywaa project of containment has resulted in more ethnic insecurity, insofar as it has provoked a reactive and more successful Nuer ethnicity and has strained relations with the Ethiopian state. These two factors have combined to undermine the political standing of the Anywaa in Gambella. Framing the local political contest in national terms, the Anywaa have failed effectively to connect with and mobilize the Ethiopian state on their own behalf. The Nuer, on the other hand, have achieved greater gains by reframing their regional power claims in national terms. The consolidation and militancy of Anywaa ethnicity has produced a reactive Nuer ethnicity. Having an assimilationist social system par excellence, the Nuer were not the first ‘to go ethnic’. Their initial response to Anywaa exclusionary political practices was bewilderment. Subsequently, however, the inverted power relation, and the Anywaa attempts to exclude them and achieve closure, led the Nuer to develop strategies of usurpation that have drawn creatively on available means of gaining entitlement. Nuer ethnicity contains within it two levels of concern. For the elites, ethnic politics make it possible to share power and to get their share of the ‘federal pie’; for ordinary men and women, ethnicity has become the medium through which their quest for modernity can be realized. As the Anywaa were dominant in the distribution of political offices throughout the 1990s, and, thus, were able to wield more administrative power, the Nuer exerted more pressure in new avenues of social

The Nuer Response to Ethiopian Ethnic Federalism 191 mobility, particularly education, as a strategy of opening up political space. Educational institutions have thus emerged as new sites for contestation and negotiation of power relations, where the Nuer politics of inclusion collide with the Anywaa project of containment. This has created an explosive situation that erupts intermittently in violent conflict. The following chapter takes the power variable into a different political context: the civil wars in the Sudan and the impact that they have had on Anywaa–Nuer relations.

Chapter 9

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region The transborder settlement pattern of both the Anywaa and the Nuer has made their interrelations susceptible to wider geopolitical processes. The larger presence of the Nuer in southern Sudan and their affiliations with various centres of political power has enabled them to acquire greater military power than the Anywaa. In some cases at least, this imbalance in military power has led the Nuer to abandon the practice of negotiating with the Anywaa over access to natural resources in the latter’s territories, and it has encouraged groups of Nuer to resort increasingly to violence in inter-ethnic relations. Postcolonial Sudan has been plagued by civil wars because of contentious issues related to imbalances in regional development, to the narrow social base from which the ruling elite is recruited, to an exclusive nation-building process, and to the greed of the ruling elite in monopolizing the strategic resources of the country (Hutchinson 1996; Johnson 2003; J. Young 2007a). Most members of the ruling elite in postcolonial Sudan, coming from the riverine areas of central Sudan, ‘favoured the interests of those from the riverine core, and that in turn fostered dissent in the peripheries’ (J. Young 2007b: 6). The various political regimes in the Sudan attempted to overcome their narrow power base by imposing Arabism and Islam in a country that is marked by high cultural and religious diversity (Deng 1995). Political power has been exercised by these ruling elites within racial and religious frameworks. This has enabled them to conceal structures of inequality and cultural differences in the western and eastern parts of the country which, together with the central riverine lands, make up the so-called ‘Islamic and Arabic North’ as opposed to the ‘Christian and African South’. Until recently, the contradictions within the Sudanese state resulted in protracted armed resistance, coming predominantly from the southern part of the country, where none of the rhetoric of the ruling elites has local resonance. The various southern Sudanese armed struggles were waged from bases along the Ethiopian-Sudanese border. They were supported by successive regimes in Ethiopia, in response to Sudanese support for Eritrean liberation movements and for various dissident groups in Ethiopia (Johnson 2003). The doctrine of mutual intervention, that is, ‘the practice of governmental or other forces supporting opposition groups in neighbouring states’, is a hallmark of conflicts in the Horn of Africa (J. Young 2007a: 5). This is double-edged. On one hand, ‘local conflict in the Horn’ tends to pose ‘a threat to inter-state relations and security’ (J. Young 2007a: 5); and, on the other hand, ‘neighbouring states use [local] disputes to pursue broader political objectives’ (J. Young

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2007a: 2). The ethnic and racial nature of the Sudanese and the Ethiopian states produces domestic identity-based conflicts, which can also be exploited by adjacent states seeking to gain advantages by meddling in the internal affairs of their neighbours. These domestic conflicts become interwoven with interstate conflicts because of the transnational political ideology of the Sudanese state. Successive regimes in the Sudan have supported Islamic political groups in Ethiopia (Medhane 2007). This was the case, for instance, with their active support of the Eritrean liberation movements, as they considered Eritrea to be a part of the Arabic and Islamic world. In recent times, the Sudanese government has also sought to export political Islam to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government has reacted by actively supporting armed struggles in southern Sudan. The interplay between local disputes and interstate tensions has created a dynamic configuration of power structures and system of alliances between peoples of the borderland on the one hand, and the Ethiopian and Sudanese states on the other (J. Young 2007b). Both the Anywaa and the Nuer have cross-border settlements that are intimately related to the ethnic process in Gambella. This can be seen in a full range of developments, including the following: the refugee phenomenon and the problem of differential access to NGO-mediated resources; changes in the demographic structures of Gambella; differential access to the transborder military power of the rebel groups and the Sudanese government; the militarization of society and the corresponding decline in inter-ethnic negotiated access to natural resources; and the significance of the international border in framing the political debate in the Gambella region. What is more, the Sudanese civil wars have encouraged the development of new primordialist tendencies among the Anywaa and the Nuer as well. In the following sections, I discuss the impact of the two Sudanese civil wars on the identification strategies of the Anywaa and the Nuer in Gambella.

Anywaa–Nuer Conflict in the Context of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955 to 1972) The Anywaa–Nuer conflict in Gambella is intimately related to political processes in southern Sudan. The first civil war produced a liberation movement called the Anyanya (snake venom), which waged a guerrilla war against the Sudanese state and its practices of religious discrimination and political exclusion (Nyaba 2001; Johnson 2003). The Anyanya was active in cross-border Anywaa and Nuer communities, for which integration into the Ethiopian polity largely meant loss of political autonomy, economic marginalization and social discrimination. Ethiopian Anywaa and Nuer community leaders worked closely with the Anyanya leadership; in fact, during the initial stage of the rebellion, the conflict was framed by the Anywaa and the Nuer in Gambella in racial terms: the ‘black’ against the ‘red’. The objective of the rebellion was said to be the creation of a new state – jenubi – that would include all ‘black’ people in the Sudan and Ethiopia.1 Transborder political networks were established, with ‘black’ jenubi as the imagined political community, in contrast to the ‘red 1.

The word jenubi means south in Arabic.

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 195 Muslims’ (the northern Sudanese Arabs) and ‘red Christians’ (Ethiopian Highlanders). This new identity discourse created political excitement among Ethiopia’s borderland population. The imperial government of Ethiopia, identified with the Highlanders and, thus, perceived to be on the ‘red’ side of the colour spectrum, initially defined the Anyanya rebels operating along the border as a national security threat.2 The first instance of political activity by the Anyanya in Ethiopia was led by a group of southern Sudanese students who had gone to Ethiopia ostensibly to pursue their education in institutions of higher education. Under the auspices of Nuer and Anywaa local leaders, the students established military bases in Gambella. These camps were located at various places in Jikaw, Itang, Jor/Gog and Akobo districts. The local Anywaa and Nuer imperial officials also helped the students to establish a local militia (bura). When the Ethiopian government took notice of this clandestine transborder political network, the students left Gambella for other African countries for their own safety. A section of them went back to southern Sudan. In 1962, the Ethiopian and Sudanese governments signed a treaty of mutual extradition of ‘criminals’ – the former had labelled the Anyanya as shifta – posing a direct threat to the political activities of the southern Sudanese students in Ethiopia. These political stirrings along the border became the first wave of opposition in the 1960s to Ethiopian imperial rule, based on an ethnonationalist and class platform (Addis 1975; Gebru 1991). The Eritrean Liberation Front was established in 1960, and the postcolonial Somali state advanced an irredentist project claiming the Somali-inhabited region of the Ogaden. Peasant rebellions were also rife in Tigray, Gojam and Bale provinces. Against the background of growing opposition to imperial rule, in 1963 the government established the ‘Gambella Security Study Group’, which recommended a comprehensive approach to thwart the imagined cross-border political community. The following archival material throws light on the securitization of state-society relations along Ethiopia’s western border: All over the world, we find trouble spots where people of the border area are mobilized on the basis of cross-border ethnic connections, linguistic affinity and culture, and challenge the lawful governments. We have seen similar troubles in the Ogaden. Before a second Ogaden is created in western Ethiopia, we should nip the political developments in the border region of Gambella in the bud. This should include various measures. For one, the armed force in the region needs to be strengthened. The armed personnel should be raised from the current 404 to 797. We should provide social services such as health facilities, schools, roads, motor boats, and occasional flights to Tiergol. In order to maintain the loyalty of the Anywaa and the Nuer balabats, they need to be salaried, like their fellow officials in the Sudan; occasional visits should be organized to bring the balabats to Addis Ababa and

2.

Letter written to the Ministry of the Interior by the Governor of Gore, 15 July 1967, obtained from the Gore Archives.

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show them big factories in order to impress upon them the grandeurs of imperial power. Also, to make them similar to the Ethiopian people, evangelists and teachers from the Orthodox Church should be sent, and the activities of the missionaries [the American Presbyterian Church] who sympathize with the shifta should be regulated. (Author’s translation from Amharic, The Gambella Security Study Group Report, 1963: 8–13) This state of affairs and the pattern of political alliance changed after it became clear to the Ethiopian government that the Sudanese government was giving political and military support to the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF launched an armed struggle in 1961 ‘against the regime of emperor Haile Selassie from bases in western Eritrea and eastern Sudan after the emperor eroded international agreements protecting Eritrea’s autonomy’ (J. Young 2007b: 3). The ELF, largely recruited from the Muslim populations of Eritrea, framed the liberation movement in religious terms and claimed Arab identity. This earned the ELF political and military support from the wider Arab world, particularly the Sudan. The Ethiopian government responded by befriending the same Anyanya that it had earlier considered a security threat. This mutual interference ‘would bedevil relations between the two countries for the next three decades’ (J. Young 2007b: 3). General Lemma, the imperial governor of Gambella in the 1960s, coordinated the logistic support to the Anyanya. The ELF enlisted the support of the Arab world via the Sudan, and the Ethiopian state turned to Israel for support, which it readily gave. Israel also gave support to the Anyanya (Johnson 2003). In that sense, Gambella became one of the regions where the Arab–Israeli conflict played out through proxy wars. With this new sponsor, the Anyanya delocalized its social base and became increasingly predatory towards the very people who had given it unconditional support. In Gambella, relations between Anyanya, on one hand, and both the Anywaa and the Nuer, on the other, began to deteriorate after 1965, when the rebels started demanding corvée labour and imposing taxes. Control over the flourishing gold mining in the Dambala region (lower Akobo) was also a bone of contention, particularly with the Anywaa. When Ethiopia strengthened its support for the Anyanya and Israel became involved in the conflict, the government of Sudan was keen to repair its strained relations with Ethiopia. For both the Sudan and Ethiopia, interference in the other’s internal affairs subsided, and in 1972 Ethiopia brokered a peace agreement between the government of the Sudan and the Anyanya rebels, popularly known as the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, that ended the first Sudanese civil war (Johnson 2009). This first civil war produced more than twenty thousand refugees who were hosted in various refugee camps in Gambella (Klintenberg 1977: 158). Some of these refugees, particularly the Sudanese Nuer, settled among their kin as Ethiopian citizens. The great influx of Nuer refugees into Anywaa territory had ‘shaken the whole micro political equilibrium along the Baro to such an extent that inter-ethnic and inter-group fighting has become a serious obstacle to settlement and integration’ (ibid.: 158). The semi-official boundary between the Anywaa and the Nuer in the Gambella region crossed the Baro River somewhere west of Odier, but the real border after the refugee influx became more vague. It was also during this time that

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 197 Sudanese Nuer refugee students established a settlement in Gambella town, near to the UNHCR compound, which they called Newland. The area where the settlement was established was previously an Anywaa settlement known as Chenquar. Currently, Newland is a burgeoning Nuer settlement of more than five thousand inhabitants. Nearly all the Nuer residents of Gambella town live in Newland. The change of regime in Ethiopia in 1974 renewed the mutual interference, with different stakes. The government of the Sudan reasserted its territorial claims on areas of Ethiopia, including Gambella. The idea of incorporating Gambella into southern Sudan was first entertained by the British colonial establishment in the Sudan as a means of securing the waters of the Nile – the major tributaries of the Sobat River, itself a tributary of the White Nile, pass through Gambella. According to the 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Agreement, the legal status of the Gambella trading post (the enclave) was conditional as long as the Sudan was under the Anglo-Egyptian government. As per the agreement, the enclave was returned to Ethiopia when the Sudan became independent in 1956.3 The Sudanese government retained a consul in Gambella for diplomatic and commercial purposes and obtained some concessions relating to the Baro River. According to the Gambella protocol of 1956, sovereignty over the enclave was officially transferred to the Ethiopian state, but the imperial government made available numerous houses for the service of the Sudanese consul in Gambella, including a twenty-year rent-free concession.4 Sudanese interest in Gambella continued unabated, however. This interest was translated into a political project when the government of the Sudan helped to establish a largely Anywaa-based political organization called the Gambella Liberation Front (GLF) in 1976.5 The GLF was politically active in the late 1970s and was linked to the Anywaa rebellion in Jor district against the Derg’s ‘cultural revolution’.6 The GLF was actively engaged in recruiting the youth on both sides of the international boundary from its military base at Galabal. The two principal Ethiopian Anywaa actors in this project were Uguta and David. David was later killed by the Sudanese police in the Sudan, and Uguta was imprisoned by them for failing to maintain order among his followers. Upon his release, Uguta surrendered to the Ethiopian authorities and later became instrumental in forming the GPLM.7 3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

Letter written by Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan, 2 June 1971, No. 13271/69/21, Metu Archive. According to the Gambella protocol, the Sudanese government was allowed to continue measuring the height of the Baro River until such time as Ethiopian hydraulic experts could assume the task. Anywaa leaders of the GLF included people who later emerged as prominent Anywaa politicians in the southern Sudanese politics of liberation: Philip Udiel (governor of the Upper Nile region); Paul Anade (MP in the Southern Sudan Regional Council); Simon Mori (minister in the Southern Sudan government); Agud Obong (general in the Sudanese army) and Philip Akiyu (administrator of Pochalla County). This was mediated through the late nyiya Ageda, who was active in giving moral support and protection for the kwaari who took up arms against the Derg in the second half of the 1970s. The late Okello Oman, ex-GPLM leader and the first President of the GPNRS, interviewed on 13 September 2001.

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By the mid-1970s Sudan was sliding into its second civil war. In March 1975, a new rebel force known as Anyanya-II was established, largely with Nuer leadership (Nyaba 2001). Anyanya-II was active in the Akobo region. Initially, Anyanya-II, which established one of its military bases at Bilpam in Itang district, received support from the Ethiopian government (Riang 2005: 6); but when, by 1983, attempts to unify the various Anyanya II factions had failed (Johnson 2003), the Derg promoted the founding of a new liberation movement known as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). The second Sudanese civil war officially began in 1983 and lasted until 2005.

The Anywaa–Nuer Conflict in the Context of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005) Given the link between the SPLA and the Ethiopian state, Anyanya-II turned to the government of the Sudan for military support. In response, the Ethiopian government gave the military camp in Bilpham, which had previously belonged to Anyanya II, to the SPLA (Riang 2005). Fearing, however, that the secessionist posture of Anyanya II would encourage a similar separatist movement in Gambella, the Derg put pressure on the SPLA to drop secessionism and adopt a unionist position (Hutchinson 2001; Johnson 2003). The Nuer found themselves divided between Anyanya-II and the SPLA, but an increasing number of them threw in their lot with Anyanya-II. Although the split was based originally on ideological differences (secessionist/unionist) and on internal power struggles, it was also framed in the language of the ‘resurgence of the ancient hatred’ between the Nuer and the Dinka (Hutchinson 2000). The rivalry between Anyanya-II (with Nuer leadership) and the SPLA (with Dinka leadership) played right into the hands of the Sudanese government, which attributed the southern Sudanese problem to ‘tribalism’. Heavily armed by the Sudan, the Anyanya-II attacked SPLA recruits on their way to the training camps in Ethiopia. In May 1984, more than three thousand recruits from northern Bahr el Ghazal were ambushed and massacred in the area of Fagak, and in 1986 over two thousand were massacred in the Lou area (Nyaba 2001: 49). In addition to Bilpham, the SPLA established bases in various places in Gambella. Four camps for southern Sudanese refugees – most of whom were Nuer and Dinka – were established in different parts of Gambella under the direct political and military control of the SPLA (J. Young 2007a: 21). All of these military and refugee camps were established in Anywaa territories. By 1990, the official number of southern Sudanese refugees in Gambella reached 355,000, the majority of whom settled in Itang and Pinyudo refugee camps (Kurimoto 1997: 799). By the mid-1980s Itang was one of the largest refugee camps in the world (Kurimoto 2005: 344). Although the official number of refugees was inflated, it far outnumbered the resident Anywaa and Nuer population, estimated at fifty-five thousand according to the 1984 census. The refugee community and the lucrative aid establishments attached to it created further networks of interest between the Derg and the SPLA. As Kurimoto (2005: 345) notes, ‘the refugee camps were administered by committees comprised of “representatives” of the refugees, who were invariably SPLA officials … Moreover, the entire

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 199 Gambella region was under a sort of informal joint administration of the SPLA and the Derg’. Some of the resources allocated to the refugees were used by the Derg to fight the war against armed opposition groups in the north. More such networks were created between refugee camps and state farms. Most of the aid (grain) for the refugees was bought from the state farms in Gambella and the neighbouring highlands. The 1980s saw a complex pattern of alliances among the various political actors operating along the Ethio-Sudanese border. The socialist orientation of the Derg regime and its strong Soviet military backing pushed the government of the Sudan into the arms of the Western bloc. The United States was additionally actively engaged in oil exploration in the Sudan (Johnson 2003: 68). This alignment of forces made the Horn of Africa one of the hotspots of the cold war. As discussed earlier, the Sudanese government and the Derg were at odds on the Eritrean question, the former supporting the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF), a splinter group from the ELF. The Sudanese government also supported the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), which in 1989 was transformed into the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The Derg retaliated by helping to organize the SPLA. The Gambella Liberation Front (GLF) fractured into various political groupings, with one section, under the auspices of the Sudanese government, joining the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a political organization which fought, and still fights, for the self-determination of the Oromo in Ethiopia. This section later became the nucleus for the Gambella Peoples Liberation Movement (GPLM), which was a response to the repressive policies of the Derg and continued to benefit from the Sudanese connections that increased its military power and political standing. As an autonomous political movement, however, the GPLM had to struggle to create its own political space vis-à-vis the political projects of the Sudanese government, the OLF and the EPRDF. The intensification of the proxy war between the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the government of the Sudan increased the political relevance of the GPLM in the geopolitics of the day. In fact, the GPLM was part of the coalition of armed opposition forces (EPLF, EPRDF and OLF) that launched a coordinated military offensive against the Derg from their base in the Sudan in the late 1980s. As part of the proxy war with the government of the Sudan, the Derg heavily armed the SPLA, which emerged as a powerful political actor in Gambella throughout the 1980s. However, with a strong patronage in Addis Ababa, the SPLA failed to cultivate an amicable relationship with the Anywaa and the Nuer communities in Gambella. From 1984 to 1987, the SPLA clashed with the Gaat-Jak Nuer, and in 1989 there was a major confrontation between the SPLA and the Anywaa. The first serious clash occurred in Jikaw district in 1984, beginning with a minor incident between SPLA soldiers and the Thiang Nuer in Dorong village of Itang district.8 Tensions between them had already reached crisis level, with only a spark

8.

This incident was triggered by a dispute between SPLA soldiers and Gaat-Jak fishermen over a fish. The soldiers wanted to confiscate the fish, then fired on the fisherman as they fled. Thereafter, there was an exchange of fire in which two fishermen and two soldiers were killed. The next day, the SPLA attacked the village of Palkoini. As Riang (2005: 6) put it, ‘This incident became the straw that broke the camel’s back and sparked off all-out war between the SPLA and the Gaat Jak.’

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needed to trigger violence. The issues of contention included the Gaat-Jak Nuer’s alleged association with the Anyanya-II, onerous taxation, cattle-looting by local commanders, conscription by force and interference in local leadership (Riang 2005).9 The conflict that erupted gradually spilled over to all Gaat-Jak sections, lasting for three years and costing thousands of lives on both sides. It is now remembered as the ‘Gaat-Jak/SPLA War’, and contemporary Gaat-Jak describe it as the SPLA’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Gaat-Jak.10 The ‘Gaat-Jak/SPLA War’ clearly revealed the regional power configuration.11 The SPLA enjoyed a higher political profile than the Nuer-led Gambella regional administration, who were too weak to stop the conflict because of their military services to and political linkage with the Derg. The SPLA was also a formidable military force in its own right because of its accumulation of high-tech weaponry. Apart from costing the lives of many people, the conflict had the effect of the massive militarization of the Gaat-Jak Nuer, who, in the context of a state that failed to give them the protection they needed, desperately took the law into their own hands. SPLA–Anywaa relations did not fare any better. The 1989 clash between the Anywaa and the SPLA is a case in point. Kurimoto (1994: 24–25) has documented events leading to the confrontation between the Anywaa and the SPLA as follows: On September 11, Ethiopians at Pinyudo were celebrating the Ethiopian New Year holiday. But the market place in the refugee camp was open as usual. An Anywaa secretary of the WPE (Worker’s Party of Ethiopia) went there with Anywaa militia and ordered it closed. Refugees refused the order. A quarrel developed into a fight. Militia shot in the air to stop the fight. Then a Dinka SPLA officer in charge of the refugee camp opened the store of guns and ammunition and distributed them to refugees. They went and attacked Anywaa militia at the market and surrounded the village. There was an exchange of fire between Anywaa militia and armed refugees. As the fighting escalated, the SPLA soldiers from a nearby camp joined the fighting. Outnumbered, the Anywaa militia was defeated and the refugees burnt the village. Dead bodies were buried in mass graves and the casualties were estimated at more than 120 Anywaa. In the eyes of the Anywaa, the Pinyudo massacre produced further evidence of a wider conspiracy that threatened their existence. Reflecting on the pattern of politi9.

The SPLA charged a per unit tax of 5 birr per day for a bottle of local beer and 20 birr per day for a cow. The sum total of the tax per family was around 9,000 birr per year. 10. SPLA sources contest the Gaat-Jak’s description of the conflict as ‘ethnic cleansing’. They mention Kuach Kang, the chief of the Thiang Nuer Mangok, as one of the main actors in the conflict. Kuach initially worked with the SPLA, but later on defected to Anyanya-II and the government of the Sudan (Riang 2005). 11. Thowat Pal, the WPE Secretary of Gambella, contacted Nuer SPLA commanders to stop the SPLA atrocities led by Commander Kerubino. Thowat also appealed to General Mesfin, commander of the Ethiopian army in Gambella, but in vain (Thowat Pal, interviewed in Frankfurt, 23 November 2005).

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 201 cal and military alliances among the Derg, the SPLA, the refugees and the Nuer leadership of the Gambella administration, the Pinyudo massacre and the non-accountability of the SPLA regarding the atrocity appeared to validate the Anywaa theory of conspiracy. Conflicts between refugees and the local Anywaa have been perceived through an ethnic prism ever since. For one, many of the refugees were ethnic Nuer. But, more importantly, unlike the first Anyanya movement, the Anywaa were very marginal in the SPLA leadership. The prevailing insecurity and the failure of the Ethiopian state to protect its own citizens induced a political practice that I call ‘refugization’, which occurs when citizens of one country attempt to pass as refugees from another country. In this case study, refugization refers specifically to Ethiopian citizens who claim to be Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, if this appears to be to their advantage. However, refugization, understood as a coping strategy, was not an option for all groups of people living in Gambella. It was the Nuer who were in the best position to make use of it. For one, the Nuer were perceived by the NGOs as Sudanese on the basis of their settlement pattern. The Nuer population in the Sudan is much larger than in Ethiopia. The Nuer were also aided by the SPLA’s political mobilization rhetoric. There was a sustained ‘Sudanization’ campaign by SPLA officials among the Ethiopian Nuer in order to enlarge their political constituency and military capacity. They propagated the idea of cie buny michar. In the Nuer language this means ‘there are no black Ethiopians’, a reference to the Sudanese origin of the Nuer. The SPLA used this saying to legitimate conscription of the Ethiopian Nuer into the SPLA. There seemed to be a tacit understanding between the Derg and the SPLA on the division of subjects, reserving the Nuer for SPLA and the Anywaa for Derg conscriptions. The Ethiopian Nuer influx into the Sudanese refugee camps in Gambella was thus not as much an issue for the Derg as it was for the Anywaa. There was concern on the side of the Ethiopian government, however, that an unchecked refugization would ultimately undermine the newly constituted peasant associations, which served, among other administrative controls, as agents of conscription for national military service in the regime’s war against the proliferated ‘liberation fronts’.12 The refugization chosen by individual Nuer as a strategy for coping with insecurity and marginality had, however, an impact on inter-ethnic relations. Access to quality education in the refugee camps enabled the Nuer to renegotiate their marginality in the modern sector and ‘catch up’ with their Anywaa counterparts. Dozens of NGOs, under the auspices of the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), operated in the refugee camps, providing social services, particularly health and educational facilities. As a result, many Ethiopian Nuer flocked to the camps to have access to these social services. The deteriorating security condition in the border district of Jikaw in the second half of the 1980s was also a compelling reason to switch national identity, with the refugee camps appearing safer than the villages. During the Gaat-Jak/SPLA war, all the schools except one were shut down in Nuer areas. In the refugee camps, on the other hand, it was possible to get an edu-

12. Tamirat Woldeyes, WPE cadre in Gambella, 12 March 2001.

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cation. The educational support package included a scholarship (food, shelter and allowance) all the way to college level. The UNHCR made an arrangement with church-based colleges to that effect.13 The Nuer were also attracted to the refugee camps by the UNHCR resettlement programme. Resettlement in a third country is one of the UNHCR’s durable solutions to ensure the security of the refugees in situations ‘when individual refugees are at risk, or when there are other reasons to help them leave the region’ (Patrick 2004: 1). Making use of this opportunity structure within the aid agencies, a significant number of Nuer have resettled in North America and Australia. The Nuer diaspora is estimated at ten thousand (Shandy 2001; Falge 2006), many of whom are from Gambella. The resettlement programme has legitimated the Ethiopian Nuer international migration, which would have otherwise been considered ‘illegal’ had they migrated on their own. The resettlement programme was appreciated not only for making the migration possible, but because of the benefit package that eased the process of adaptation during resettlement. For instance, unlike other categories of refugees in the US, resettled refugees received institutional support by the US government upon their arrival (Shandy 2001). Pushed by dire poverty and political turmoil, contemporary Africans saw international migration to the West as an exit option, but tight immigration policies and the high cost of self-sponsored migration made it impossible for the majority to migrate to the West. Neither the Anywaa nor the Highlanders managed to make use of the international border as much as the Nuer did. Through differential access to NGO resources in the refugee camps, the Nuer caught up with the Anywaa in the field of education and in the regional administration’s civil service sector. Not surprisingly, this was resented by the Anywaa, because the educational advancement of the Nuer threatened to undermine their status claim and to become a factor in the competition for political power, as the following testimonies from Anywaa interview partners indicate: It was difficult for us to join the refugee camps, whereas many Nuer from Jikaw and Akobo were allowed. In 1985, I tried to join the Itang refugee camp but I was screened out as an Ethiopian citizen by the UNHCR. After that I went to Gambella town to learn but I did not have any relative. Instead I worked for a Highlander in order to be able to pay for my education. It was my Highlander host who sponsored my education. I completed high school in Gambella town but did not get enough marks to join college. But for the Nuer it is different. Be hulet bila yibelalu [an Amharic saying which means ‘those who eat with two knives’ in reference to a double chance or opportunism]. They learn as Sudanese refugees and get jobs as Ethiopian citizens. (Ujulu Akwei, Gambella town, 18 April 2001) The Nuer are catching up with us [in Amharic eyederesubin naw] because of the education they got from the refugee camps. Previously only a few Nuer 13. These were Kuyira Adventist College in Southern Ethiopia and the Dongoro Boarding School in Wellega.

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 203 were educated. Then they joined the camps and some came from Nassir, and suddenly they became many in the schools. In the refugee camps, it does not take you long to finish high school. One can be promoted from one grade to the next if he is a good student. There are no such things in the schools in Gambella. The quality of education in the camps is also very good. We could not learn in the camps because ARA [Administration for Refugee Affairs] and the UNHCR knew that we were Ethiopians. Some Anywaa had tried to sneak in but they were screened out. (Ujulu Obong, Anywaa student in Gambella High School, 7 April 2001) The Nuer responded to the Anywaa accusation of ‘eating with two knives’ in pragmatic terms: ‘the Anywaa do not know what the border offers’. The Nuer rather sarcastically advised the Anywaa to eat with two knives as well. The Nuer also defended their political opportunism (switching citizenship) as a reaction to marginalization: It is not fair that we are accused of learning as Sudanese. For one, we did so because our areas were marginalized. There was no other alternative. The first school in the Nuer areas in the Sudan was established by the missionaries in 1922. When the missionaries were driven out by the government of the Sudan, they came to Adura where they opened a school in 1962. In 1977, the Ethiopian government drove the missionaries out of Adura. In the absence of services and facilities in our area, it is no wonder that we looked towards the Sudan. It is the same with the refugee story. What we did was very normal. All of a sudden, services were established near us for the refugees coming from the Sudan. As we did not have anything, we joined them. This is also good for Gambella. We were educated as Sudanese but work as Ethiopians. Most of the Nuer officials in Gambella were educated by the church or in refugee camps. Who would have assumed the administrative posts in Nuer areas, had it not been for our education in the refugee camps? (James Gadet, Nuer church official, Western Gambella Bethel Synod, Gambella town, August 2000) Fearing the military power and assimilationist drive of their pastoralist neighbours, the agrarian Anywaa invoked the state border to ensure ethnic security and attain a dominant political status in the border region of Gambella. The Anywaa, like the Nuer, live in both Ethiopia and the Sudan, but the majority of them live in Ethiopia. On that basis, in the 1990s, the Anywaa in Gambella viewed the rewards of this opportunity to be higher than the cost of separation by the international border. Through a reference to the 1902 Ethio-Sudanese border, the Anywaa sought to label the Nuer, except for few Gaat-Jak clans, as ‘foreigners’, because the demarcation of the border placed nearly all of the Nuer in the Sudan. There is more in the Anywaa invocation of the border than mere strategic thinking. It is embedded in their traditional model of political order, which features territoriality. The national state is perceived and experienced by the Anywaa through their compartmentalized idea of a political community. Apparently, the Anywaa idea of a fixed border connects with the nation state discourse, but the Ethiopian state has mul-

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tiple concerns about the border beyond merely enacting sovereignty. The gap between this discursive connection and political practice is one of the root causes of the trouble between the Anywaa and successive Ethiopian governments. The Anywaa ‘rebuke’ the Ethiopian state for failing to observe the foundational premise for modern states, i.e., that political sovereignty is identified with bounded territories. Although they were politically dominant in the GPNRS throughout the 1990s, the Anywaa had not managed to establish the border as much as they would have liked. Borders are federal issues. Lack of interest by the federal government to station the army to police the border was and still is interpreted by the Anywaa as evidence for the ethnic and racial characters of the Ethiopian state, in which they are ‘second-class citizens’. The Nuer, on the other hand, project their inclusive idea of a political community and flexible notion of localization onto the national state, and by extension on the concept of an international border. In the 1990s, however, the Nuer acceptance of alternating citizenship became a liability: Nuer refugee students were vulnerable to the Anywaa citizenship-based politics of exclusion in post-1991 Gambella, when the trend was to claim Ethiopian citizenship in order to make use of the trickle-down effect of ethnic federalism and the affirmative action programmes that were attached to it. The ethnopolitical developments of post-1991 Gambella were paralleled by the ethnicization of the southern Sudanese liberation movement. In 1991, the SPLA was split into two factions, the largely Dinka-based SPLA led by John Garang, and the largely Nuer-based Nasser faction, which later came to be known as the Southern Sudanese Independence Movement (SSIM), led by Riek Machar. The split was triggered by the regime change in Ethiopia. In May 1991, the Derg were overthrown by the EPRDF, and the SPLA lost its rear bases in Gambella. As an SPLA veteran described it, ‘this sent shock waves into the spinal chord and nerve centres of the SPLA’ (Nyaba 2001: 55). The split was also on the basis of both ideology and the power struggle. The SPLA’s vision of a new Sudan, ‘that encompasses both North and South and assumes their coexistence in a restructured state’ (J. Young 2003: 424), did not sit well with some of the commanders who still espoused a secessionist agenda and whose roots went back to the Anyanya movement. The split was also related to the narrow social base of the SPLA leadership. As J. Young (2003: 425) notes, ‘there is little doubt that the SPLA is, as its critics claim, “Dinka dominated”, or that Bor Dinka hold a disproportionately large number of posts in its leadership’.14 This is an interesting political irony, an instance of a counter-hegemonic project harbouring hegemonic aspirations. After all, it was the domination of political power by the Arab riverine core in the Sudanese state system that generated the liberation movements. In the struggle for power within the southern Sudanese liberation movements that ensued after 1991, both the SPLA and SSIM mobilized their respective ethnic constituencies. According to Hutchinson (2000: 6), ‘both Garang [SPLA] and Riek Machar [SSIM] eventually reached for the “ethnic card”… mostly targeting the civilian population along ethnic lines’. The extensive military campaigns by the SPLA and SSIM in the Nuer and Dinka areas, respectively, resulted in a tremendous loss of life as 14. According to J. Young (2003: 425), of the thirteen members of the SPLA leadership council in 2003, seven were Dinka.

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 205 well as the destruction of property on a much larger scale than the destruction inflicted on the south by the government of the Sudan (Jok and Hutchinson 1999: 126). This was followed by ‘the rapid polarization and militarization of Nuer/Dinka ethnic identities’, as a result of which ‘growing numbers of Nuer men and women began to reject a “performative” concept of ethnicity in favour of a more “primordialist” concept rooted in procreative metaphors of shared blood’ (Hutchinson 2000: 8). Thus, the new political process in southern Sudan and the conflict related to it are among the contexts within which ethnic identity among the Nuer has become more primordialist. Above all, the war led to the shifting ethics of Nuer/Dinka warfare. According to Hutchinson, ‘the purposeful slaying of a child, woman or elderly person was universally perceived not only as cowardly and reprehensible but, more importantly, as a direct affront against God as the ultimate guardian of human morality’ (Hutchinson 2000: 8). Hutchinson then went on to identify the factors that undermined the social restraints of intra- and inter-ethnic warfare. The first was the ideological campaigns of the SPLA geared towards the depersonalization of acts of homicide. The shift from spear to gun also undermined social accountability because ‘whereas the power of a spear issues, they reasoned, directly from the bones and sinews of a person who hurls it, that of a gun is eerily internal to it’ (Hutchinson 2000: 10). More importantly, the military confrontations between the SPLA and SSIM turned women and children from, in Hutchinson’s words, mobile assets to legitimate targets: ‘The purposeful killing of women and children necessitated a major reformulation of the presumed socio-physical roots of ethnic affiliations, particularly for Nuer combatants. The rationale of killing a Dinka child entailed an assumption, whether implicit or explicit, that the child would mature into a “Dinka”. That child’s ethnic identity, in other words, was presumed to be fixed to birth. The idea that such a Dinka child could potentially become a “Nuer” or vice versa was thus lost in the fury of “revenge attacks”’ (Hutchinson 2000: 11). The reconfiguration of the Nuer identity concept in reference to their Dinka neighbours in southern Sudan was relevant for changing inter-ethnic relations in Gambella. After all, many of the Ethiopian Nuer were politically mobilized by the SPLA and SSIM and had participated in their wars. The impact was also evident to the extent that the gun entered the sphere of bridewealth. The power of the gun and the new culture of violence associated with it greatly undermined inter-ethnic negotiations over access to natural resources. In the 1980s and 1990s, some groups of Nuer seized extensive territories from the Anywaa in the Akobo area and along the Baro River. The reconfiguration of Nuer ethnicity also occurred in the context of new power relations with their neighbours. After their extensive territorial losses to the Nuer at the end of the nineteenth century, the Dinka in the west and the Anywaa in the east renegotiated their subordinate status in the traditional power game through differential access to modern goods and services, particularly modern education. The educated elites of the Anywaa and the Dinka predate their Nuer counterparts in their incorporation into the state system. This was reflected in the earlier advancement of the Anywaa in the Ethiopian state system and the predominance of the Dinka in leadership positions in the southern Sudanese liberation movements. In the new ‘ethnoscape’ the social and political advancement of the ‘cattleless’ Anywaa (bär) and

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the ‘slave’ Dinka (jaang) accentuated the Nuer sense of relative deprivation. The SPLA atrocities against the Gaat-Jak Nuer was made intelligible through a new ethnic scheme of interpretation. Thus, facing the ‘SPLA-Dinka’ in southern Sudan and the politically dominant Anywaa in the GPNRS, the Nuer sought military and political support from politico-military organizations that claimed to represent them. By the mid-1990s, Riek Machar had emerged as one of the key political actors in the regional power game through the skilful manipulation of both the Nuer prophetic tradition and the politics of clientelism (Hutchinson 2001). Lacking access to international borders and a foreign backer, Riek developed a strategic special interest in the eastern Nuer (the Jikany and the Lou).15 He sought to establish links with the Jikany Nuer by capitalizing on the SPLA’s unpopularity among the Jikany. The rising political influence of Riek and his military power were promising for the Jikany as a means to ‘restore’ their masculinity. The Jikany felt ‘feminized’ by the Dinka, who they long despised and who they identified with the SPLA leadership. The gender discourse on inter-ethnic relations is evident in this song of praise, passionately listened to by the Nuer in Gambella in the 1990s.16 Riek Machar and Lam Akol Even if you do not do anything for us You made us men again Garang Mabior sent the Bor people abroad for education And kept us on the mouth of the big machine gun He thought that we would not see what he was doing But we saw it clearly The person who we are afraid of is not Garang But the Nuer [Commander William Nyony] who is behind Garang Had it been in olden times This [Nuer humiliation] would have never happened In the future [independent southern Sudan] we the Nuer will take up the following positions We will have the Prime Minister. Our major generals will be Ministers Nuer political actors, such as Dr Riek Machar, operate according to cultural assumptions that are reflected in the way they define the nature of inter-ethnic relations. In the interview that I conducted with Riek Machar in 2002, he framed the Anywaa–Nuer conflict in the following manner: There is something intriguing about Nuer culture. Had it not been for the British, the whole of southern Sudan and beyond would have become Nuer. Some cultures are strong, others are not. The Nuer are expanding not by 15. The Jikany occupy all the border areas from Jikaw to Akobo districts. 16 . Praise songs are one of the mechanisms used to create and build up personality cults among the rebel leadership in southern Sudan. SPLA recruits would spend eight to ten hours a day in songs of praise to John Garang (Nyaba 2001: 52).

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 207 force, but through peaceful exchanges with their neighbours. It is a human right for Nuer immigrants to ask for their political recognition. What is wrong if they ask to administer their own affairs? Let others also expand demographically and do like the Nuer. Why are the Anywaa not many? A lot of Nuer die in all kinds of wars, but they are still many. Whose problem is this Nuer expansion? Do the Nuer consider it as a problem? Not really. I do not consider it so either. Anyway, even if I want to stop them expanding, I cannot. They do it on their own. The Nuer also apply the same rules among themselves. There is a recent case in Pagak. The land is Thiang, but the majority of the people are the Cieng Reng. As the Cieng Reng have become the majority, they have asked for the position of a chief in Pagak. The issue was brought to me, and I endorsed the Cieng Reng demand, because this is how the Nuer system works. But the most important thing is not who the leader is but how the people are administered. The Nuer care for people, especially for minorities who live amidst them. During all the period of conflict in Gambella, nothing happened to the Anywaa who still lived in Jikaw. This was because the Thiang protected them. Would the Anywaa do such things? I doubt it. What we see is indiscriminate killing of the Nuer by the Anywaa. (Extract from interview with Dr Riek Machar, Nairobi, 26 August 2002) Riek then went on to locate the ‘root cause’ of the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer in their respective cultural forms: As I see it, the problem between the Anywaa and the Nuer is a problem of an open and closed system. The Anywaa need to open up their social system. I had hoped that this would be possible if the half-Nuer son of Agada [the late Anywaa king] become the king. Unfortunately he died prematurely. Perhaps their new king [nyiya Adongo] can make a difference because he is educated. This was basically a call for identity change for the Anywaa. From Riek’s perspective, ethnic worth is measured in terms of its expansionist capacity. In his definition of the conflict situation, Nuer culture is better than the Anywaa and this is evident in its capacity to assimilate and expand. Riek’s ‘cultural Darwinism’ echoes Peter and Philip’s contestation of Nuer assimilationism through ‘cultural evolutionism’, discussed in Chapter 5; both perspectives are, in effect, veiled justifications for cultural hegemony. The bulk of Nuer expansionism into Anywaa territories has occurred through the micro-demographic processes outlined in previous chapters. But there are also cases where groups of Nuer have expanded through violence by displacing Anywaa. This was partly possible thanks to their connections with various southern Sudanese rebel groups and the government of the Sudan. The expansion of the Lou into the Anywaa-inhabited areas of Akobo region, described in Chapter 4, is a case in point. The first attempt to resolve the conflict between the Lou and the Jikany Nuer was organized by Riek in what came to be known as the Akobo Peace Conference. Peace, or more accurately, a ‘suspension of hostilities’, entailed a negotiated access to natural resources for the resource-poor Lou Nuer. In order to allay the fears of the Gaat-Jak,

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the SSIM instead put pressure on the neighbouring Anywaa to accept the permanent resettlement of the Lou Nuer from their homeland in Wat to the Akobo region. Riek justified his partisanship with the Lou in cultural terms in the following manner: During the Akobo conference, the Nuer [Lou] brought thirty-five Anywaa families who were displaced by the war. I organized a meeting between the Anywaa and the Nuer. The Anywaa kwaaro agreed that the Nuer could live with the Anywaa peacefully, but the majority of the Anywaa said the Nuer should go back to Wat. The Nuer said the land is big enough for both of us, why should we go back to Wat, where there is not enough water? I finally endorsed the sharing proposal because you cannot displace them from Akobo any longer and send them back to Wat. They have lived in the area long enough. My Anywaa comrades [Simon Morris and Paul Anade] were disappointed and considered me biased. That is the Anywaa problem. They forgot that it was the Nuer in Akobo who elected an Anywaa [Paul Anade] as the Akobo High Executive. The Akobo Nuer elected him because he was more popular and able than the Nuer candidate. For his contributions in ‘resolving’ intra-ethnic resource conflicts at the expense of inter-ethnic peace, Riek received sound political support from the eastern Nuer in his bitter fights with the SPLA. The outcome of the Akobo conference, on the other hand, was resented by Anywaa members of the SSIM, who ultimately left the organization because of Riek’s favouritism towards the Nuer. For their part, the Ethiopian Nuer officials in the Gambella regional state lobbied for the recognition of the SSIM by the Ethiopian government, ostensibly on the basis of SPLA atrocities against the local populations, but also as an expression of ethnic solidarity, thus further alerting the Anywaa in Gambella of the ‘Sudanese’ dimension of their conflict with the Nuer. In fact, Riek was briefly imprisoned in 1996 by the Gambella regional government. Riek was arrested despite the fact that he had received permission from the federal government in Addis Ababa to cross the border through Gambella. Many Nuer from Gambella town expressed solidarity with Riek.17 This caused consternation on the part of the Anywaa, who were sensitized to the ‘Nuer plot’. Riek was promptly set free because of pressure from the Ethiopian government. The cross-border political networks widened the asymmetry in local forms of power. Above all, it increased the Anywaa’s anxiety that politics in southern Sudan was yet another site where the Nuer ‘plot’ was being orchestrated, whether in the form of refugee influx, or in Riek’s grand project of establishing a ‘Nuer kingdom’ extending from southern Sudan to Gambella. The Anywaa considered Riek and the leaders of his politico-military organization to be the masterminds of what they viewed as the Nuer ‘colonial project’, discussed in Chapter 5. Lacking a major patron on the Sudanese side, the Anywaa felt apprehensive about their political marginaliza-

17. Many Nuer requested the prison authorities to allow them to join Riek in prison. In a dramatic show of solidarity, some even brought mattresses with them.

Civil War in the Sudan and Ethnic Processes in the Gambella Region 209 tion in the regional power game. It was in this context that ‘capturing’ the regional state of Gambella was found to be the only available political space for the Anywaa. For the Anywaa, overstating their Ethiopian national identity was a way of preserving their own identity and attaining a politically dominant status in Gambella, which they considered to be their home. Southern Sudan was not only uncertain but also perceived to be an entity dominated by their larger neighbours, the Dinka and the Nuer. This ethnic interest was projected onto the national level in order to access and mobilize the Ethiopian state in a local struggle. Framed in national terms, the Nuer, had they identified with a southern Sudanese state upon its independence, would become not only threats to the Anywaa but to the Ethiopian state itself. The invocation of the international boundary by the Anywaa in their political struggle with the Nuer was an attempt to construct the type of discursive power resource that had brought them varying degree of success at various times. In the context of an increasingly marginalized position in the politics of liberation in southern Sudan, the Anywaa have taken a divided position. The atrocities of the SPLA in the late 1980s precluded any meaningful cross-border political network, whereas the Nuer officials in GPNRS openly advocated diplomatic recognition and military support for Riek Machar. There were attempts by some Anywaa leaders, though, to connect with the SPLA. This became possible after the resumption of the mutual intervention between the governments of Ethiopia and the Sudan in the mid1990s. The political alliance between the Ethiopian government (EPRDF) and the government of the Sudan (National Islamic Front) changed when the latter tried to export political Islam into neighbouring countries, particularly Ethiopia and Eritrea (de Waal 2004: 202–209). The tension reached crisis level when, in June 1995, Sudanese-based terrorists attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Husni Mubarak in Addis Ababa. Following this, the EPRDF began giving large-scale support to Sudanese armed opposition groups, including the SPLA. Ethiopia joined the anti-Sudanese alliance forged by the US, which was comprised of Eritrea and Uganda. In order to contain the Islamic fundamentalism of the NIF regime of the Sudan, the US provided the ‘frontline states’ with twenty million dollars in military equipment (de Waal 2004: 220; J. Young 2007a: 4). In this pattern of regional alliance, Riek Machar was allied to the government of the Sudan, which made the Nuer political standing in Gambella precarious. In 1996, the SPLA recaptured the Anywaa-inhabited Pochalla County from the government of the Sudan. This opened up new lines of political networks between the Anywaa and the SPLA. As Riek Machar drew ever closer to the Ethiopian Nuer and sought military assistance from the Sudanese government, the SPLA tried to regain the confidence of the Anywaa. The SPLA connived with the Anywaa officials in the regional council to deport five thousand Nuer ‘refugee-residents’ from Gambella town. What started as ‘screening’ refugees from citizens in the event of war with the Sudanese government and its affiliate SSIM ended as a full-fledged military operation in Newland, the Nuer neighbourhood in Gambella town. Nuer citizens and refugees alike were indiscriminately taken to the Sherkole refugee camp in the neighbouring Benishangul-Gumuz regional state. Among the ‘deportees’ were the families of Nuer officials in the regional council. This incident is narrated by the Nuer as an ‘experience of shame’

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never to be repeated. Aware of the growing connection between the Anywaa and the SPLA, as well as EPRDF’s backing of the Anywaa’s political dominance, albeit volatile, in the regional government, the Nuer politicians intensified their contacts with Nuer-based rebel groups in southern Sudan. The SPLA/EPRDF’s raiding of Newland was welcomed by the Anywaa, who considered the refugees part of the Nuer plot. The fact that nearly all of the current Nuer officials and civil servants were educated in the refugee camps as southern Sudanese refugees, and the ease with which people shuttled between refugee camps and villages, blurred the distinction between a refugee and a citizen in Gambella. It is no wonder, then, that more than thirty refugees were killed in Pinyudo refugee camp during the deadly conflict in 2002 between the Anywaa and the Nuer on issues related to political power. In fact, the trigger of the 13 December 2003 massacre of the Anywaa was the killing of eight Ethiopian government officials who were on their way to open a new refugee camp for southern Sudanese refugees in an area that the Anywaa considered as their territory.

Conclusion

Modes of Ethnic Identification Based on an in-depth analysis of ethnographic data, oral accounts and archival materials, this book includes systematic explorations of two central and interrelated questions in the field of identity studies. The first pertains to the definition of ethnicity or, more particularly, to the possible degree of variation in configurations of ethnic identities; and the second concerns the causes of ethnic conflict. In the two sections of this brief conclusion, I summarize my arguments, making general theoretical statements regarding the two problems that I set out to solve in this book.

Modes of Ethnic Identification Fredrik Barth is credited with having established an innovative paradigm in the study of ethnicity that problematized the link between culture and ethnicity. Prior to the publication of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969), ethnic groups were regarded as ‘culture-bearing units’. In his theory of ethnicity, Barth placed special emphasis on standards of evaluation with reference to which membership in an ethnic community can be determined. Accordingly, all one needs for ethnic membership is competence in the value standards set by an ethnic group. In this scholarly construct, ethnic boundaries are basically permeable, and ethnicity is understood as an interest-based system of communication. This interest takes two forms, corresponding to two different levels of social integration and differentiation. At the group level, ethnic differentiation occurs in the context of an ethnic division of labour that consists of complementary exchanges between people inhabiting different ecological niches. At the individual level, the permeability of the boundaries of ethnic groups allows pragmatic choices in identification – choices that may involve the crossing of boundaries, which nevertheless persist. Barth’s theory of ethnicity has inspired a number of studies and produced fruitful insights in some ethnographic regions. However, Barth’s approach does not allow for the various forms that ethnic boundaries might take. Some ethnic groups define their boundaries as permeable, but others do not. In this empirical and comparative study, I have attempted to demonstrate the relevance and also to indicate the limitations of Barth’s theory of ethnicity. Barth is at his best among the Nuer. In their constructivist imagination of an ethnic group, the Nuer even go beyond Barth. The ‘applicants’ to ethnic membership among the Nuer are actively assisted in acquiring the value standards and developing competence in relevant cultural practices. Once admitted, however, new members find Nuer identity to be ‘sticky’. For men, it is objectified bodily – in the initiation mark, gar – as a form of lifelong commitment. Thus, even the permeable Nuer ethnic boundary is only permeable in one direction. The Nuer seem to have elaborated on the constructivist imagination of ethnic identity to an even greater degree than the scholarly advocates of constructivism.

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Barth might feel uncomfortable among the Anywaa. There, the standards of evaluation and the criteria of ethnic group membership are based exclusively on biological descent. In Anywaa identity discourse, ethnicity is something one is born into, part of the ‘givens of social existence’ (Geertz 1963: 109). Here we find an example of an emic primordialist conceptualization of ethnicity, where Clifford Geertz would certainly feel at home. But, contrary to extreme formulations of analytical primordialism, the conditions under which such identity discourses and practices emerge need to be explained, rather than being assumed to be something ‘ineffable’, as in Geertz’s formulation. In this book, I have offered explanations for the construction of Anywaa primordialism by examining their relationship to their own traditions and to their social experiences in the world they inhabit. Thus, the ethnographic data presented in this book not only relativize Barth’s message but also challenge the common definition of an ethnic group as a form of collectivity based on a subjective belief in common origins. Not all ethnic groups construct their identity on the basis of origins. We have seen, for example, how the Nuer embrace the diversity of origins. By loosening the criteria of ethnic membership, the Nuer make it easier to absorb and effectively incorporate outsiders. These reflections on the models proposed by Barth and Geertz lead us to a choice between two options: We may favour one definition of ethnicity over the other and conclude on this basis that either the Anywaa or the Nuer do not form a real ethnic group, because they do not match our favoured definition; or we may adopt a more flexible definition of ethnic groups. Clearly, I am suggesting that we opt for the latter. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s idea of concept formation, I have argued that ethnic groups need not conform to a single definition listing invariable characteristics but may, instead, differ rather widely, while still bearing a ‘family resemblance’ to one another. When the problem is formulated this way, it is possible to accommodate various and variously constituted ethnic groups, without overlooking their structural comparability. What is more, it becomes possible to analyse the social and historical conditions under which an ethnic group with primordialist tendencies moves in the direction of assimilationism and vice versa. The Anywaa and the Nuer have differed in the trajectories of their ethnic identity concepts. Whereas the discourse of ethnic identity among the Anywaa evolved from an earlier emphasis on assimilation to the contemporary emphasis on the purity of origins, the Nuer discourse evolved in the opposite direction; and now, under changing circumstances, both discourses seem to be subject to further transformations. In both cases, however, the identity discourses have been constructed and reconfigured through a combination of variable social, economic and political processes. In the preceding chapters, I have followed the changing configurations of Nuer ethnic identity in various socio-political contexts. What seems to have been an earlier ideology of ethnic purity was transformed into an elaborate assimilationism in the context of migration and conquest. Competition for followers among various wouldbe leaders led the latter to augment their groups of followers by incorporating outsiders. What is more, group size became an important factor in securing access to and control of vital resources, and the intrumentalization of inter-ethnic marriages and friendship networks served similar purposes. Beneath the surface of the Nuer moral discourses on assimilationism, then, we find varieties of political and economic rationality.

Conclusion 213 Most recently, new socio-political contexts have led to a new reconfiguration of Nuer ethnic identity concepts. Their quest for modernity has corroded confidence in local culture and induced changes in the status system, expressed, for instance, in the decline of gar as a defining factor of intra-ethnic social status and as an ideological means for inter-ethnic assimilation. The Nuer encounter with ‘unmeltable’ neighbours has also made them realize the limits of assimilation. In fact, the Anywaa primordial reaction to Nuer assimilationism has introduced new primordial currents among the Nuer, reflected in the way in which the contemporary Nuer relate to the Anywaa in Gambella. Hutchinson (2000) observed a similar trend towards the primordialization of inter-ethnic relations among the Dinka and the Nuer in the context of a protracted civil war and the militarization of society in southern Sudan. In her analysis, the primordialist reaction of the Dinka to the ‘sticky grasp of the Nuer’ has led the Nuer, in turn, to begin making the transition from a hitherto ‘performative’ kind of ethnicity to a ‘more closed and fixed “primordialist” concept based on procreative metaphors of shared human blood’ (Hutchinson 2000: 9). The post1991 political structure in Ethiopia, which involves institutionalized ethnopolitics and group-based electoral politics, has undermined the assimilationist thrust of the Nuer not only at the inter-ethnic level but also internally, especially with the fragmentation of previously integrative relations among diel, rul and jaang in local communities. The emerging discourse of ‘cieng purity’ gives expression to new processes contributing to the primordialist reconfiguration of Nuer identity concepts. The Anywaa, like their Nilotic neighbours, were originally assimilationist in the context of earlier migrations, upon which they embarked long ago with their Lwoo cousins. Protracted intergroup warfare is often central in the production and reproduction of political identities; but in the new lands where they settled, along the Sobat River and in Gambella, the Anywaa did not encounter competitive ethnic groups that might serve as their relevant others. Thus, in the context of relative isolation, i.e., of relatively infrequent interaction with other groups, the Anywaa developed their primordialist concept of ethnic identity with reference to a relevant ‘spiritual other’. The luo-jwok contrast is central to the construction of Anywaa ethnic identity, as described in this book. The image of a belligerent supernatural power, and of Anywaa resistance to it, significantly informs their cultural world. Anywaa territoriality must be understood in its connection with Anywaa cosmology. The sudden and massive encounter with new neighbours who encroached upon Anywaa territories was experienced with reference to a particular image of Jwok, which seem to have functioned as a dispositif, in Foucault’s sense, i.e., as a conceptual toolkit or apparatus for the ‘grouping of heterogeneous elements into a common network’ (Rabinow 2003: 51). In fact, the Anywaa associate the Nuer with Jwok. That is, the Anywaa view of God is a metaphor of their relationship with the more powerful Nuer, who have, seemingly, placed them under siege. Both Jwok and the Nuer are resisted for their incessant encroachment upon Anywaa territories. The territorial and cultural encroachments of the Ethiopian state have reinforced the Anywaa belief in a conspiracy against them, as if god, neighbours and the state are allied to challenge their existence. At the same time, the Nuer view their own benign god as an ally who is opposed to the Anywaa as they, the Nuer, are themselves.

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In articulating their identification strategies, the Anywaa and the Nuer have played different games in various domains of social life. I have explored these divergences in four areas: identity concepts; host/guest relations; images of the supernatural; and the definition of the inter-ethnic conflict situation. The very terms ‘Anywaa’ and ‘Nuer’ refer to quite different ideas of ethnic identity. Ethnic identity is ‘given’ for the Anywaa, whereas it is ‘acquired’ by the Nuer. The concept of host/guest also has different connotations. For the Anywaa a guest has a permanent status, while such status is temporary among the Nuer. The Anywaa and the Nuer also differ in their images of divinity. Jwok is not worshiped by the Anywaa; rather, it is avoided because of its destructiveness. Kuoth, on the other hand, is a fatherfigure, and the Nuer frame their relation with divinity in kinship terms. Thus, Kuoth is also an ‘ally’ of the Nuer in the inter-ethnic scene. Nor do the Anywaa and the Nuer agree in the definition of the conflict situation. For the Anywaa, it is ‘the ethnic conspiracy of the Nuer’ seeking to bring about their extinction that is the root cause of the trouble between them. For the Nuer, the problem is the Anywaa’s ‘xenophobic’ tendencies, which are part of their ‘nature’. These contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation create a potential for inter-ethnic conflict, but, in the analysis of real conflicts, they must be viewed in relation to other conflict generating variables and processes.

Causes of Ethnic Conflict Ethnic conflicts have often been explained in monocausal terms, such as competition over scarce natural resources, elite competition over new state mediated resources, the resurgence of ‘ancient hatreds’, hostility generated by deep primordial feeling, or the ‘clash of cultures’. The approach I advocated is novel in two respects. For one, ethnic conflict is explained in multicausal terms. I have identified three variables that must be taken into consideration in formulating an adequate causal explanation of conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer – variables that may also be applicable to other case studies: the resource variable, the identity variable and the power variable. The resource variable operates at two levels: among ordinary men and women competing for resources in rural settings and among elites competing for state mediated resources such as jobs and political offices in urban settings. Struggles over material resources often help to explain the intensity and the passion of individuals who identify with a particular ethnic category. However, the extent to which material resources are implicated in ethnic conflict needs to be specified in particular inter-ethnic contexts. This is so because the conflict over access to and control of resources might well be fought within ethnic groups, rather than between them, or in terms that have little or nothing to do with ethnic identity. While determining the nexus between resource and ethnic conflicts, I have explored variations within ethnic groups as interest groups. A simultaneous engagement with resource conflicts at the inter- and intra-ethnic level helps us to paint a more nuanced causal link between the resource and identity variables. The second causal variable in explanations of ethnic conflict is identity. As I have argued at length, the encounter between groups with contrasting modes of ethnic identity formation, such as the Anywaa and the Nuer, may result in conflict. The intervening variable in the causal link between identity and ethnic conflict is the dif-

Conclusion 215 ferent ‘language games’ generated by the contrast and the misunderstandings related to them. This is expressed, to cite one very important example, in the different value that land has for the Anywaa and the Nuer, respectively, and in the inevitable misunderstandings that emanates from struggles over land. For the Nuer, land has primarily an economic value; and this, coupled with their relative marginality in the distribution of vital natural resources, drives the territorial expansion of the Nuer. For the Anywaa, on the other hand, the land is not only an object of negotiations in inter-ethnic relations; it also fulfils fundamentally important symbolic functions in the construction of subethnic identities. Therefore, in the conflict between the Anywaa and Nuer, one can observe a ‘clash of cultures’ of a fundamental type. The third cause of ethnic conflict may be understood in terms of the power variable or, more specifically, the different patterns of incorporation of ethnic groups into ethnically stratified states. Conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer cannot be explained without referring to their mode of interaction with the Ethiopian and Sudanese states into which they are, generally, unfavourably integrated but within which they have been variously positioned. Anywaa–Nuer conflicts and the dynamic (re)configuration of their respective ethnic identities are generated through state-related political processes. In Ethiopia, this reconfiguration is related to the failures of the Ethiopian state to create an inclusive national identity. Instead, it has created a competitive political space within which a ‘zero sum’ game is played. The state’s strategic cooption of the Anywaa or the Nuer at various times has created fluctuating inter-ethnic power relations, instead of helping them to articulate regional interests or a wider national identity. In fact, the historical chapters of this book have shown how the Anywaa and the Nuer have been busy in contesting or subverting each other’s power. The creation of this competitive political space is as much by default as by design. The political tenure of the Ethiopian state in border regions such as Gambella is tenuous, partly because of the greater cultural distance between the peoples of the borderlands and the dominant ethnic groups of the Ethiopian polity. Instead of investing politically in fostering an Ethiopian national identity and corresponding feelings of belonging in the borderlands, successive Ethiopian governments have exploited and fanned Anywaa–Nuer conflict to enhance their political control over the Gambella region. More ominously, they have sought to connect with the Highlanders to neutralize actual and potential ownership claims of the Anywaa, the Nuer, or both in regional politics. The changing but consistently ambivalent relations among the Anywaa, the Nuer and a series of Ethiopian governments amply substantiates the truism that the conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer is not bipolar. The EPRDF seemed initially to have departed from this political tradition by introducing a new ideological spin to the age-old centre-periphery relations, i.e., between the Ethiopian state and its minorities. Unfortunately, the EPRDF could not sustain what might have been genuinely reformist aspects of its programme because of its drive towards total control over post-1991 political processes and its pragmatic approach to the volatile geopolitics of the Horn of Africa. The conflict between the Anywaa and the Nuer has also been generated by the protracted Sudanese civil wars. The Anywaa and the Nuer have been variously positioned in the politics of liberation in southern Sudan. The cattle wealth of the Nuer and their larger demographic presence in the Sudan have made them more attractive

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than the Anywaa to political actors seeking allies in the civil wars. Actors in Nuer local communities have instrumentalized this appeal and constructed political and military power, which they have exploited in determining the outcome of local resource conflicts. The Anywaa, on the other hand, have largely been on the receiving end of the adverse impact of the Sudanese civil wars. This is expressed, above all, in the changing demographic situation, which has reduced them to the status of an ethnic minority in the region that they regard as their homeland. It has led to the loss of further Anywaa territories to the Nuer. These factors have contributed to the development, among the Anywaa, of a siege mentality and a tendency to subscribe to conspiracy theories – a development that has undermined their capacity to forge dynamic alliances with various political actors in regional politics in their own terms and in the spirit of realpolitik. The seemingly desperate situation of the Anywaa only increases the potential for further violence in Gambella.

Glossary of Local Terms Anywaa Terms Abudho Agelgalcher Agem Agwaga Ajuwa Amulo Anger Awido Bell Bilo Bura Chirawiya Ci-Jwok Ciro Dho Anywaa Dho-oto Dibuoc Gilo Digwi Watnaadhi Dimui Gaala Girgir Goro Gungi Ji-kwaaro Ji-nyiya Jobur Jur Jwok Jwok nyingalabuo Jwok nyidungu Kac Kap Ker Kew Köro Ku Kuac Kuruach Kwaari

String of beads Agriculture Village rebellion A village anthem Ritual expert Calabash without neck Cob antelope Long, narrow–necked calabash Sorghum; leopard Exchange marriage Local militia A symbolic act denoting the right to kill Wives of Jwok Anywaa who live in the Akobo region Anywaa language Clan Followers of Gilo Lizard of the Watnaadhi people Blue glass beads used as bridewealth Anywaa name for the Highlanders The turmoil (specifically, during regime change in 1991) Gar (see ‘Nuer terms’) The ceremonial low-bowing posture People of the headmen People of the nobles First settlers of a village Foreigner A Supernatural Being The benevolent Jwok The malevolent Jwok Hunger Prostitution Calabash Boundary An organized rebellion against Jwok Theft Skin Thief Headmen

218

Glossary of Local Terms

Kwaaro Kwac Kwar nyigilo Kwec gel Laegnmajid Lango Lull Luo Math Medho Naak Naam duong Ngom Nyibur Nyikugu Nyilwinyjwok Nyinya Nyipem Nyiya Nyiye Nyooyu Nyuwei Odolo Paak Padhano Peath Piny Pinykwara Pö Ramo Safara Tung Tung Akwei Tung goc Tung udola Uchuok Ucuudho Ugaala Utak Walo Warakata

Headman Begging Descendants of Gilo Salaried government officials The wars of Majid Slave Anywaa who live in the forested areas Pure (as in ‘ethnic purity’) Clan salutation The Dog which saved the Anywaa Dental evulsion A large river Soil Deputy of Kwaaro Adviser to Kwaaro The chosen nation The nyiya who holds the royal emblems Prince Noble Nobles Honorific salutation of the Jowatnaadhi Iron The village drum Honorific title Nonhuman Witch Land Ancestors A spontaneous ritual of resistance against the wrath of Jwok A spiritual transplanting of bone by the witch to the victim Resettled Highlanders Lineage The Murle and Nuer captives who are attached to the lineage of Nyiya Akwei Royal lineage based in the Adongo region Royal lineage based in the Abobo region The royal necklace Divine ancestor of the nobles A person from mixed parents Beating of a husband by in-laws for failing to take care of his wife The royal stool Paper

Glossary of Local Terms 219 Wat-ngomi Welo Wora Ariat Wudo

Earth priest Stranger President Mengistu Ceremonial respect

Nuer Terms Bär Bell Bi jile duoth Biem Boum Bunam Buny Buny cie turuk Buth Caa naath Camun naak Chan Ciang Cie buny michar Ciek joka Cieng Colwic Darchieng Deeth Dhol Diel Dil Dwac Gaatnyiet Gaattutni Gam Gar Gee Guan yier Guk Jaang Jal tang Jalab Jenubi Jeop Jikany Jing Kal Kir

People without cattle/Anywaa Sorghum Accepting the leftover Cooling-off period after a feud Power Total mobilization of the youth The Highlanders ‘Highlanders are not modern’ Agnatic kins Becoming Nuer Right of conquest Poor Culture ‘There are no black Ethiopians’ Ghost marriage Local community God of thunder Original home of the Nuer Ironsmith’s tools Uninitiated boy Dominant/aristocratic lineage Member of a dominant/aristocratic lineage Dwelling Sons of daughters of diel Sons of diel Half Male initiation mark Ancestor of the ‘original’ Nuer Master of the water Prophet A non-Nuer immigrant/slave Long-distance guest Arabs South Sudan Axe which Latjor hid in his hair An eastern Nuer tribe The Dinka foster uncle of Kir A man without cattle Ancestor of the Jikany Nuer

220

Glossary of Local Terms

Kom Koat Lieh Kuaar muon Kuar Kume Kuoth Kur Larcieng Lät Latjor Luak Luuch naath Madh Mibor Michar Milwal Mut Mut pini duong Mut Wiu Naath cieng Naath Mibor Naath Michar Naath Milwal Nei ti naadth Ngok Ngut Nok Nyal bany Nyam duar Nyayou Pac Piny Ran mi jaang Ran mi ran Ric Rual Ruic Rul Tele buny michar Ter Thok dwiel Thok nueri Tik

Chair on which Kir sat in the guard Place where rual was first practiced Leopard skin chief Leader Government; state power The Nuer Supreme Being/sacrifice Tribal wars Betrothal Subhuman creature Person who left the Jikany migration to the east Cattle byre Murderous people, a Nuer derogatory name for the Anywaa Intimate friendship White (European) Black Red (Highlander) A consummated marriage Tik’s spear name Divinity spear of Jikany Homeland White people Black people Red people Distinct people The blue heron bird Wedding Prophet who helped Latjor mobilize followers Airplane Hinterland Honorific title of the Jikany tribes Cattle raiding Land Person who is not original Nuer Real person/Nuer Age set A ritual of cutting a cow into two halves – i.e., forbidding marriage or sexual intercourse between members Spokesman A Nuer immigrant ‘There are no black Ethiopians’ Intra-tribal feud Lineage Nuer language Ancestor of the Cieng Reng

Glossary of Local Terms 221 Toiche Tuach kuach Turbiel Turuk mi thil kade Tut Tut kernyang Tuut dhoali Was-ngok Wut Ye thiang Yien

Green pasture during the dry season Leopard skin Car Civilization without ‘salt’ Bull (leader) Black-and-white brindled bull that Ngundeng gave to the Highlanders Uninitiated adults (bull-boys) Place where the Jikany crossed the river during their expansion to the east Initiated adult Right of conquest Tied; attached to the dil

Amharic Terms Abun Awraja Balabats Bariya Biher Bihereseb Birr Chiqona Degegna Dejazmach Derg Ehadeg Enjera Fangay Fitawrari Galla Habesha Ityopia tikdem Kebele Kilil Kokeb Lemma Liqemember Lualawinet Maqinat Metaweqiya Niqatehilina Qenyazmach Qey

Amharic Patriarch of the Orthodox Church District Local imperial officials Slave Nation Nationality The national currency Exploitation Highlanders Commander of the Gate Military regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1975–91 Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front Ethiopian pancake Slave raiders Commander of the Vanguard Derogatory term for the Oromo Highlanders’ ethnonym Ethiopia first Peasant association Regional state Medal Highlanders’ derogatory name for the Anywaa and the Nuer Chairman of a peasant association Sovereignty Civilizing mission Identity card False consciousness Commander of the Right Red

222

Glossary of Local Terms

Safari Shifta Silitane Tewelaj Tikur Tiqim Wastina Wereda Wonbede Yetesasate Zemach Zemecha

Resettled Highlanders Bandit Civilization Native Black Benefit Collateral Subdistrict Pejorative term for rebel False University students and high school teachers who participated in the cultural revolution Cultural revolution

Oromo Terms Dabi garba Daga garba Guracha Oromo Soso

Slave quarter Stones on which the slaves sat Black Oromo A type of grass put around slaves’ necks to make them look healthier

Shilluk Terms Cie nwar to bie tuokto Yi ba Onwa

An unruly child When someone is not behaving well

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Index A abudho, 42 Adongo, 24, 39, 41–43, 102, 122–23, 133n15, 178, 207 agem, 44, 56 agnation, 61–64 ajuwa, 46 Akobo, xi, 1, 3, 24, 39, 49, 70, 80–83, 86–87, 92, 96–98, 101, 103–4, 116, 121–26, 134, 141, 152, 168, 176, 179, 180n5, 181, 187, 195–96, 198, 202, 205, 206n15, 207–8 alternative citizenship, 142, 153, 163 American Presbyterian Church, the, 129, 164n9, 196 Amhara, 2, 4n5, 6nn6, 7, 106, 126, 129, 134–35, 140, 145–46, 149, 151, 166, 168–70 amulo, 34 Anglo-Egyptian government, the, 197 Anyanya, 194–96, 201, 204 Anyanya-II, 198, 200 Anywaa project of containment, 100, 107, 147–60, 178, 190–91 territoriality, 18, 21, 38–43, 47–50, 59, 70, 78, 80–83, 85–89, 92, 96, 113, 115–16, 120, 125n8, 128 APDO, 159 awido, 34 B Banubdak, 84 bariya, 125, 127 Barth, Fredrik, 12–17, 95, 99, 119, 211–12 bär, xi, 114, 176, 205

Bär Jingmir, 70, 99–100, 136 be hulet bila yibelalu, 202 BGPNRS, 4n5, 145 bia lac, 114 bilo, 91 Bilpham, 198 Blood Exchange Pact, 116 bouth, 134 British, the, 4, 43, 50, 87, 111, 121–29, 153, 162, 164–65, 171, 173, 175, 180, 197, 206 buny, 6, 130–31, 170, 172–74, 176, 182, 201 buny cie turuk, 168 C caa naath, 66 camun nak, 87 chirawiya, 109–11, 113, 190 Cieng Reng, 25–27, 57, 59–60, 72, 86, 88–91, 93, 107n8, 109, 141, 172–75, 180, 185, 207 ci-Jwok, 46 Ciro Anywaa, 86–87, 96 confidential letter, the, 113, 116–18 conspiracy theory, 21, 112, 170 constructivism, 11–14, 16–17, 53, 62, 74, 211 Cuai, 34 Jowatcuai, 34, 36, 39–41, 102–3 cultural Darwinism, 207 cultural revolution, 50, 130–31, 134, 136, 140, 197 D Derg, 4, 130–42, 145, 149–50, 163, 164n10, 179–80, 185n7, 197– 201, 204 dhol, 69–70

234

Index

Dhol Koryom, 108 dho-oto, 36 diaspora, 8, 23, 105n6, 115n12, 117, 159, 164n9, 169, 202 dibuoc gilo, 32 dil, 59, 65–66, 68–69, 73–74, 92, 106, 112 Dimo, 32, 34 dimui, 37–38, 42, 97–98, 106, 109, 126, 131–34, 163 Dinka, 15n1, 16, 24, 32, 35, 37, 47, 54–57, 59–60, 66–68, 71–72, 74, 78–80, 88n15, 92, 99–100, 105–6, 111, 114, 116, 170, 172, 174–75, 183, 198, 200, 204–6, 209, 213 discursive modernity, 162 doctrine of mutual intervention, the, 193 Drang nach Osten, 81 E ELF, 196, 199 emic constructivism, 13, 17 emic primordialism, 13, 31 EPLF, 140, 146, 164n10, 199 EPRDF, 4–6, 140, 142, 145–47, 149–50, 154–59, 166–67, 183–87, 189, 199, 204, 209–10, 215 Ethiopian State, the, xi–iv, 3–4, 6–7, 16, 18, 20–22, 31, 47, 49–50, 84, 109, 115, 120–143, 145, 153–56, 159–60, 166, 168, 174–78, 182, 189–90, 194, 196–98, 201, 203–5, 209, 213, 215 ethnic boundary, xiv, 12–15, 36, 38, 48, 109, 211 conversion, xiii, 17, 24–25, 93, 96–100, 103, 112, 118 federalism, xiii–iv, 4–6, 16, 21, 50–51, 72, 89, 94, 143, 145–91, 204

ethnicity, xii–iv, 4, 11–15, 17–22, 27, 31, 50, 77, 99, 138, 141, 145, 153, 160–66, 189–90, 205–6, 211–13 ethnogenesis, 16, 31, 47–48, 50, 54, 150, 174 EU, 122n2, 135, 173 F family resemblances, 14, 31 France, 173 G gaala, 6, 130–32 Gaatgankir clan, 57 Gaat-Guang, 57, 72–73, 84, 86, 98, 125n8 Gaat-Jak, 24–25, 57, 72–73, 84–86, 88, 113–15, 122n3, 123–24, 125n8, 127, 129n11, 141–42, 148, 151, 171, 182, 185, 199–201, 203, 206 Gaat-Jak/SPLA War, 200–1 Gaatnaar, 63 gaatnyiet, 65–66, 69, 73 gaattutni, 65 gaatwac, 63 gar, 69–70, 80, 93, 95–99, 101, 103, 106, 113, 169–71, 211, 213 Gee, 55–57, 59–60 Gaat-Gee, 56, 59 Geertz, C., 11–14, 31, 120, 129, 212 General Lemma, 126, 196 Germany, 23, 81n7, 173 Ghaak, 55–57, 60 Gilo, 3, 32, 34–35, 39–40, 58, 80–81, 86, 102–3, 121, 124, 125n8, 129, 137, 178 GPDC, 157, 178n2 GPDF, 157–58 GPDM, 159 GPLF, 159 GPNRS, 4–5, 83, 91, 145–49, 153–54, 165–67, 169, 181, 185, 188, 197n7, 204, 206, 209

Index 235 great traditions, 103 gungi, 43, 131

Jwok, 16, 41, 44–48, 107–8, 161, 213–14

H Haile Selassie, 175–76, 186, 196 hidden agenda, 101, 113–18, 153, 169, 189 Highlanders, xii, 2–3, 5–7, 22–23, 25–26, 47–50, 82, 100, 103, 113, 119–20, 124–26, 129–31, 133, 135n17, 137–39, 146–48, 155–57, 159–61, 163, 166, 168, 171, 175–77, 182–84, 189, 195, 202, 215

K kew, 41, 101 Kir, 40, 55–60, 72, 80, 174–75 Komo, 1–3, 6, 47, 82, 147–48, 176 Kong Diu, 25, 59, 88, 90, 173–74, 181, 185–86 kume, xi, 171–74, 181–82 Kuok, 72 Kuoth, xi, 58, 93–94, 107–8, 177, 181, 214

I Itang, 1, 3, 22–27, 40–41, 58–59, 81–86, 88–92, 94, 107–9, 124, 126, 131, 141, 149–50, 158, 168–69, 174, 177, 180, 182–83, 187–88, 195, 198–99, 202 J Jalab, 173 Jal tang, 68 jang, 65–66, 99 Jikany Nuer, 34–35, 56, 58, 60–61, 71–73, 78, 108, 122–23, 151, 170, 174, 206–7 Jikaw, xi, 1, 3, 23–24, 67, 81–83, 86, 94, 100n3, 104, 106, 108, 110, 115, 123, 128, 131, 133, 135, 136n18, 140n27, 141, 142n33, 150–52, 159, 168, 171, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 195, 200–2, 206n15, 207 ji-kwaari, 38 ji-nyiye, 42 Jingmir, 24, 70, 96–101, 103, 136 jinubni, 183 jiop naath, 183 jobur, 39–40, 112 jur, 36, 106 Jur-Luo, 34, 72

L language games, 15, 18, 20, 215 latent functions, xv, 25, 93 Latjor Dingyian, 59 lineage system, 62–63, 78 Lou Nuer, 70, 78, 87, 175, 207–8 Lull, 39–40, 177 Luo, 31n1, 32, 84, 87, 97, 104–5 luo, 44–45, 48, 91, 127, 213 Jur-Luo, 34, 72 luuch naath, 100, 110 Lwoo, 16, 31–33, 35, 44, 47–48, 57, 104–6, 150, 213 Lwoo migration, 32–33, 35, 44, 48 M Majangir, 1–3, 6, 47, 82, 146, 148–51, 157, 159 Makot village, 23–27, 58–59, 89–90, 107, 109, 141, 174, 181, 185 manifest functions, 93 massacre on 13 December, 156–57, 159, 166, 184, 210 math, 36 Medho, 44 Mekaneyesus Church, 24, 70 Merton, Robert, 93, 113, 169 mission modernity, 163 modernity, 160–64, 168–69, 189–91, 213

236

Index

MPDO, 159 Mut Wiu, 56, 58, 108, 175 N naak, 46, 114, 131 Naath, 35, 55, 63, 113 caa naath, 66 luuch naath, 100, 110 naath cieng, 55 Nasser, xi, 96, 104, 116, 150, 178, 204 Naturalizers, 11, 13 nei ti naath, 60 NGO, 103, 153, 165, 194, 201–2 Ngok, 56, 58, 114 ngok, 80 Ngok Dinka, 56, 68 Nilotes, 16, 31, 32n2, 47–48, 100, 104, 168, 177 Nok, 80 NPDO, 73, 159 Nuer cultural hegemony, 100–13 Nuer expansion(ism), xiv, 20–22, 77–79, 86, 93, 104–6, 109, 112–14, 118, 141, 152, 169, 207 nyamdoar, 85 nyidungu, 44 Nyikang, 32, 34 nyingalabuo, 44–45 nyinya, 42–43, 102, 160, 178n2 nyiya, 24, 38, 42–43, 47, 87, 102–3, 123–24, 133, 178n2, 197n6, 207 O Ochom village, 71, 92, 111, 115, 172 OLF, 140, 146, 199 Openo, 39–40, 80, 158 Openo Anywaa, 24, 39–41, 49, 84, 88, 114, 125, 151–52, 177 Opo, 1–3, 6, 47, 70, 82, 104, 146, 148 Oromo, 2, 6n6, 32n2, 47, 100n2, 106, 126–27, 129, 135, 140, 146, 149, 151, 166–69, 199 Othieno, 34, 45n10

P paak, 36 padhano, 45–46 Padiel Gakgak, 79 patrilineal descent, 36, 54, 61–64, 68–69, 72 piny kwari, 39 Pochalla, 23–24, 102, 115n12, 133, 140n28, 159, 199n5, 209 postcolonial Sudan, 193 primordialism, 11–14, 16–17, 31, 35, 41, 46–51, 72, 74, 212 primordial modernity, 162 protonationalism, 160–66 R ran mi jaang, 59 ran mi ran, 55, 59–60 red people, 100, 113, 115, 156, 183 refugization, 201 resettlement programme, the, 100, 130, 137–39, 141, 164, 202 Riek Machar, 155, 170, 204, 206–7, 209 rul, 65–68, 71, 73, 100, 110, 213 S second class citizens, 154, 204 shifta, 122n5, 159, 195–96 Shilluk, 32, 34, 47, 104–7 small traditions, 103 SNNPRS, 4n5, 145 sociobiologists, 11, 17 sovereignty, 4, 103, 122, 129, 145, 153–54, 185, 187, 197, 204 SPLA, 87, 105, 140–41, 153, 170, 183, 198–201, 204–6, 208–10 SSIM, 87, 204–5, 208 statism, 160, 164–66 Sudanese Anywaa, 28, 104–5, 107, 131, 133, 187 Sudanese civil wars, xiv, 2, 7–8, 74, 87, 194, 215–16

Index 237 Sudanese Nuer, 20, 128, 154–55, 169, 196–97 Sudanese state, the, 167, 193–94, 204, 209 T thok dwiel, 62, 64–66, 68 Tiek, 56–57 Tier Agak, 94, 113–15, 123, 152 Tigreans, 2, 103, 145–46, 154, 157, 160, 166, 168 TPLF, 6n7, 140, 149, 157, 160, 199 tuach kuach, 56 tung, 36, 42–43 Turks, 168 turuk mi thil kade, 168 tut kernyang, 175, 177 U uchuok, 38n6, 42 Ucuudho, 102–3 Ukuna massacre, 156 UNHCR, 8, 140n27, 164, 197, 201–3 utak, 98, 131

W Walo, 85 walo, 42 Watnaadhi, 34 wat-ngomi, 39 Wechdeng, 23–24, 27, 66–69, 73–74, 84–85 welo, 39–40, 66, 110, 112 Wittgenstein, 14–15, 18, 31, 212 wut, 69, 71, 170–71 X xenophobic, 50, 111, 214 Y yien, 65 Z zemach, 131