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South Sudan : War, forced displacements, humanitarian aid, minorities, and the construction of ethnicity1

Marc-Antoine PÉROUSE DE MONTCLOS

Ph.d. Political Science, Professor at the French Institute of Geopolitics, University of Paris 8, PRIO Global Fellow (Peace Research Institute in Oslo)

T

he ethnic question has always fascinated —and disturbed— the academic world of Africana studies. The debate is far from over since the end of colonial anthropology, which had catalogued and labelled almost all the people of the continent. After independence, ‘tribal’, Darwinian and cultural analyses were called in question; some Marxist scholars even denied ethnicity, as if the political societies of pre-colonial Africa had no collective identities. Some sociologists, anthropologists and historians in particular argued that ethnicity was a colonial legacy, an anachronism, an artificial construction, or even a complete invention.2 As for political scientists, they insisted on the malleability of collective identities which were used by the imperialists to divide and rule, then by post-independence governments to capture power and patronage for their own lineages behind the façade of a nation state. In fact, colonization left a considerable mark on ethnic frameworks. Where wellestablished kingdoms existed, the imperial powers revised and often enlarged the borders of pre-colonial states. Where communities recognized no central authority, a full complement of customary chiefs were created. In addition, the introduction of market economies exacerbated social divisions between different groups according to the way they were located and affected by Western modernity. The colonialists, however, were not the only manipulators of ethnicity; Africans also rewrote their history, a task made easier by the oral and fluid character of their civilizations. In 1950s Kenya, for example, the Nandi, Kipsigi, Pokot-Suk, Elgeyo, Marakwet, Keiyo, Sabaot, Sebei, Dorobo, Terik and Tugen peoples came together to form a politico-ethnic lobby on the basis of a common language, calling themselves Kalenjin, i.e. ‘I’m talking to you’ — a derivative of the name of a BBC programme during the Second World War. Similarly, the Swahili clans on the 1 2

This chapter was first presented as a paper for the symposium “Les minorités en situations coloniale et post-coloniale” at the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (Paris), 31 May 2013, Réseau interdisciplinaire « Colonisations et décolonisations ». See Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In French, the prime exponent of this school of thought is Amselle, J.-L. (1985) Au cœur de l’ethnie: ethnies, tribalisme et État en Afrique, Paris: La Découverte.

Faculté de Droit et des Sciences sociales - Poitiers

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Les minorités ethniques, linguistiques et/ou culturelles en situations coloniale et post-coloniale

Kenyan Coast decided to form a bloc, under the generic name Mijikenda, to defend their interests during the negotiations for independence. Of course, the endogenous nature of such creations does not detract from the relevance of research on the political manipulation of ethnic allegiance. But following the two great periods of identity creation - colonization and the gaining of independence - the emergence of a third can be distinguished: that of contemporary wars. Indeed, armed conflicts and the forced migrations they cause produce very specific forms of collective identification. For our purposes, the main point is to understand how civil wars sharpen the sense of separate identity and give valid meaning to ethnic groups. It is not a matter of questioning the economic motives for hostilities, the political springs of action or the combative manipulation of ethnic allegiances, but rather of showing that forms of mobilization of this type have resulted in the creation of strong entities around humanitarian enclaves or military redoubts, which can only be dissolved by the intermixing of populations, trade and commerce, and freedom of movement during peacetime. This finding deserves consideration when it comes to reconstruction of the state after the war.

1. War as a cause and a consequence of ethnic construction in Africa War is both a cause and a consequence of ethnic construction: a maker and a marker of communal identities. Indeed, massacres and forced migrations produce very specific forms of collective identification. Conversely, civil wars maintain a vicious circle by promoting ethnic cleansing which can in turn become causes of massive killing. Yet armed conflicts in Africa South of the Sahara are too often analysed as a result of tribal antagonism only, and not as a producer of ethnicity. For sure, ethnic nationalism and the manipulation of lineage systems are an effective technique to mobilise people over political issues regarding the sharing of power and economic resources. The spatial and demographic distribution of regional groups plays a role too. According to Donald Horowitz, for instance, most severe conflicts arise in societies where a large minority faces an ethnic majority, as in Rwanda3. Historically, the weakness of nation-states also contributed a lot to the persistence and the renewal of primary communities in a modern world. During the colonial era, the imperialist forces exacerbated tribal feelings by creating rigid ethnic administrative categories. Rwanda is a well-known case in this regard. During the 1994 genocide, the ‘Hutu’ or ‘Tutsi’ identification determined whether one lived or died. It mattered little that these labels were a colonial construction and that the concept of racial purity was introduced by the Belgian4 . Even anthropologists who insisted on the artificiality of such a confrontation admitted the permanence of its logic. Hutu men who came into power after the social revolution of 1959 and the fall of the Tutsi monarchy, continued marrying Tutsi women although this was no longer a way of social climbing. On the other hand, very few Tutsi men married Hutu women. Clearly, the social hierarchy was complicated

3 4

Horowitz, Donald [1985], Ethnic groups in conf lict, Berkeley, University of California Press, 697p. Vidal, C. (1996) ‘Le génocide des Rwandais tutsi: cruauté délibérée et logiques de haine’, in F. Héritier (ed.) De la violence, Paris: Odile Jacob, pp. 325-66.



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by considerations in which the Hamitic theory of a ‘superior’ Tutsi race played a role defying any ‘simplistic explanation’5. Of course, this does not mean that wars in Africa can be reduced to communal antagonisms. The ethnic pretext is often a screen for confrontation over power and economic resources -some journalists were thus criticized for insisting too much on a tribal reading of the genocide in Rwanda6 . Moreover, discourses of ‘Otherness’ are not restricted to primary communities and developing countries -for example, they also contributed to shape the Soviet enemy during the cold war7. In many societies, it is not so much the ethnic or religious heterogeneity, or fractionalization, which produces conflict, but the polarization of a would-be nation, i.e. the distance between groups8 . In this regard, it is important to investigate the consequences of civil wars, and not only their causes. Undoubtedly, armed conflicts tend to crystallize and solidify the fluidity of collective identities in the making9. In Uganda, for instance, ethnic groups are definitely not fictions, ‘political or administrative constructions devoid of everyday reality’. On the contrary, writes Gérard Prunier, ‘the violent confrontations of the last 20 years, the constant killing in the name of the tribe, provide a harsh empirical denial of the attempts to “demystify” tribalism and force us to recognize its operational reality’10. Generally speaking, armed conflicts precipitate identity changes by means of two main contradictory dynamics: amalgamation and dispersal, coalition and fragmentation. Within war-torn countries, first, the contours of ethnic and political entities are directly affected by violence, whether popular pogroms initiated from below, or intrigues fomented from above in order to divide and rule. Abroad, mutual negative perceptions are then exacerbated by the confinement of asylum-seekers in camps or the undercover life of illegal immigrants. In many African countries, refugees are perceived as a threat and fall victims of xenophobia against foreigners11. But in exile, immigrants can also invent a mythical nationhood and group into a diaspora where dispersal eventually leads to amalgamation. In other words, civil wars can change collective identities in both ways: coalition and disintegration. Thus in Somalia after the fall of the regime of Siad Barre in 1991, the complete dislocation of the state exacerbated the fragmentation into clans of an ethnically homogeneous nation. However, military alliances sometimes produced new confederations as well. In Jubaland, for instance, the Absame (a grouping of two Darod Ogaden clans, the Aulihan and the Mohamed Zubeir) joined the Harti to produce a regional identity, the 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Taylor, C. (2000) Terreur et sacrifice. Une approche anthropologique du génocide rwandais, Toulouse: Octares: 210. Smith, S. (1998) ‘Afrique des Grands Lacs: les coulisses du génocide’, Politique internationale 79: 385-95. Dalby, Simon [1990], Creating the second cold war : the discourse of politics, London, Pinter, 211p. Montalvo, José & Reynal-Querol, Marta [Juin 2005], « Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conf lict, and Civil Wars », The American Economic Review vol.95, n°3, pp.796-816. Turton, D. (1989) ‘Warfare, vulnerability and survival: a case from Southwestern Ethiopia’, Cambridge Anthropology 13(2): 67-85. Prunier, G. (1989) ‘Evolution des critères de définition ethnique en Ouganda, du xvie siècle á la fin de l’ère coloniale’, in J.-P. Chrétien and G. Prunier (eds) Les Ethnies ont une histoire, Paris: Karthala: 201. Mogire, Edward [2001], Victims As Security Threats: Refugee Impact on Host State Security in Africa, Aldershot, Ashgate, 204p.



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so-called Reer Waamo, in order to control and claim the port of Kisimayo12 . Likewise in Hargeisa and the North-West, which used to be a British protectorate, the proclamation of the independence of Somaliland incited various Issaq clans to put aside their differences and to create a new citizenship. Yet the establishment of an “international” border with autonomous Puntland also contributed to shifting identities. In the contested area of Las Anod, for example, the Dhulbahante used to intermarry more frequently with the Isaaq than with the Mijertein of Puntland, a major Harti clan in Italian Somalia. But the Dhulbahante refused to be governed by Hargeisa after 1991. To justify their alliance with the Mijertein against the Isaaq, they claimed to be “more” Somali and overemphasized the role they played during the Dervish uprising of the “Mad Mullah” against the British, in the 1920s13.

2. Ethnic manipulation in Southern Sudan Southern Sudan is a textbook case in this regard, as it experienced one of the longest civil war on the continent. The rebellion against Khartoum first began in 1955 and doubled in intensity at the end of the 1960s, when the Anyanya guerrillas took the baton until the signing of a peace agreement in Addis Ababa in 1972. Hostilities then resumed under the aegis of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) from 1983 up to another peace agreement that led to the official independence of South Sudan in 2011. On the long run, the fighting and the killings fashioned the contours of the conflicting parties and sharpened the definition of communities. By setting the ‘Negroid’ peoples of the South against the Arab-dominated military junta in power in the North, the war gave room for strategic manoeuvres to create ethnic divisions ‘from above’ in order to undermine the rebels. In the South, ethnic fractures also developed ‘from below’ because of the attacks of combatants, warlords and cattle raiders, as well as victims and refugees who took up arms in revenge for the extortions they had endured. Today, the national identity of South Sudan is still in the making and suffers from the internal divisions between, namely, the Dinka dominant group and “other” communities like the Nuer or the Shilluk. Unlike the Somali case, which set seal to the dissolution of a failed state, the rebellion in Southern Sudan was opposed to a strong government (an Islamic junta) which could manipulate ethnic feelings. Two factors crystallized local differences: the central power’s divisive tactics, and the way in which guerrillas mobilized their troops. Khartoum aimed to cut along existing fault lines by promoting the creation of tribal militias to combat a rebellion which was seen as dominated by the Dinka14 . The guerrillas themselves proved incapable of presenting a common front and could not resist a process of fragmentation which often took on an ethnic aspect.

12 13 14

Menkhaus, Ken [2004], Somalia : State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism, Oxford University Press, Adelphi Paper n°364, p.42. Höhne, Markus [2006], « Political identity, emerging state structures and conf lict in northern Somalia », Journal of Modern African Studies vol.44, n°3, pp.397-414. Montclos (Pérouse de), M.-A. (1998) ‘La privatisation de la sécurité en Afrique subsaharienne: le phénomène milicien dans le sud du Soudan’, Politique africaine 72: 203-211.



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Natif manquant

From equatorial forests to the extensive marshlands of the upper Nile, Southern Sudan actually presents a wide cultural diversity (Map 1). Near the frontline with the North and Kordofan, and towards the East, the two main groups are the Dinka and the Nuer, who make up the bulk of the SPLA troops. But the ‘capital’ of South Sudan, Juba, is in Equatoria and its population is mainly composed of Bari (17 per cent) and related groups like the Kakwa, Fajulu, Kuku, Nyambara, Mundari and Nyepu (45 per cent) according to some surveys. In the rest of Equatoria are the Zande and a host of small communities along the borders with Congo, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. They often bear different names in one part or the other of the frontier: the Logir or Logiri, the Madi or Luluba, the Lango or Dongotono of Mount Dongotona, etc. In earlier times, these many communities were subject to constant processes of integration and separation. Repeated conflicts led either to absorption, or to flight, and secession. Breakaway groups founded their own communities and eventually became completely separate entities. Thus the Atuot, separated by the Dinka from their original homeland, appeared as a distant branch of the large Nuer family: they spoke Nuer but called themselves Reel, after the ancestor who led their migration15. As for the Dinka and Nuer, they asserted themselves against neighbouring peoples by raids and conquests. In spite of a common Nilotic linguistic background, for instance, they treated as foreigners (juur, sg. jur) the Luo speakers of the region, namely the Joluo, Jobodho, Shatt, Managir, Shilluk and Berri, that they called Jur, Dambo, Thuri, Jur Wir, Jur Shol and Föri. The 15

Burton, J. W. (1981) ‘Atuot ethnicity: an aspect of Nilotic ethnology’, Africa 51(1): 496-507



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Dinka, in particular, defended a highly exclusive and biological view of their community. Their collective identity relied only on blood ties, whereas the Nuer could eventually assimilate ‘foreigners’ who behaved ‘properly’ and conformed to the social rules of the group. In parallel, intensive processes of assimilation confused the distinctions between communities, especially among the Nilotic tribes: Luo, Shilluk, Anuak, Dinka and Nuer. Thus some Shilluk clans bear the name of other peoples, such as Dinka and Nuba, while Anuak tradition incorporates Dinka and Nuer ancestors16 . Numerous population movements explain these mixed identities. In the nineteenth century, the Nuer pushing to the east absorbed the local Dinka, who provided them with leaders17. In the 1870s, for example, the Nuer known as Gaawar were led by a warlord, Nuaar Mer, and a prophet, Deng Laka, who were adopted orphans and Dinka ‘refugees’ from the Thoi and Ngokqui clans respectively. In consequence of the exogamous marriage practices and ease of integration of the time, Douglas Johnson maintains that more than half the Nuer in the region were actually of Dinka origin. Linguistic borrowings bear witness to these common roots: half of the commonest Dinka and Nuer words show strong similarities, not to mention their affinities with the Luo languages spoken by the Anuak or the Shilluk18 . In addition, Dinka and Nuer often worshipped the same gods, many Dinka having participated in building the temple of Ngundeng, a Nuer prophet who preached concord between the two peoples at the beginning of the twentieth century.

3. The colonial legacy It was in fact the colonialists who tried to fix ethnic identities in order to assert their authority by means of so-called customary chiefs. In this regard it was typical of the British to aim to separate the Dinka from the Nuer. Seen as a nation of warriors, the latter in effect appeared as troublemakers19. The administration therefore hit on the idea of containing them in tribal areas, which forced them to extract the Dinka elements from the body of the Nuer, even if this meant declaring Dinka tribes which up till then had been seen as Nuer and nominating Nuer chiefs at the head of Dinka communities!

16 17 18 19

Johnson, D. H. (1989) ‘Enforcing separate identities in the Southern Sudan: the case of the Nilotes of the Upper Nile’, in J.-P. Chrétien and G. Prunier (eds) Les Ethnies ont une histoire, Paris: Karthala: 238 Kelly, R. C. (1985) The Nuer Conquest, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Johnson, D. H. (1994) Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Oxford: Clarendon Press: 54-55. Johnson, D. H. (1981) ‘The fighting Nuer: primary sources and the origins of a stereotype’, Africa 51(1): 508-527.



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Table 1 Colonial anthropology and the classification of Nuer clans Tribe BUL

Primary section n.a.

Secondary (tertiary) sections n.a.

NYUONG

Nyawar Nyal Tigjiek Dogwar Bur

Gamuk, Galieth Luac, Thac, Leik n.a. n.a. n.a.

Rengyan n.a. Mor Gun

n.a. n.a. Gaaliek (Nyaak, Buth), Jimac, Jaajoah, Nyabor, Bul, Biliu Rumjok (Dak/Dung/Nyajikany/Falker/Lang, Jak/Maiker, Kwacgien), Gaatbal (Thiang, Leng/Puol, Nyarkwac/Yoal/Ciec/Manthiep) Thiur, Dwong, Kwith

DOK JAGEI LEEK

LOU Gaajok

Gaagwang JIKANY

Gaajak

GAAWAR LAK THIANG

Laang Wangkeac Yol/Gaagwang Gaatcika, Nyingee, Nyaang Gaagwong Reng Thiang

Minyaal, Wang, Nyathol, Biciuk Pwot, Kwal, Yiic, Cam, Kwul n.a.

Radh Bar

Kerfail (Teny), Nyadakwon, Per, Nyaigua, Jitheib, Nyang Lidh (Bang, Jamogh), Gatkwa (Caam, Gatkwa, Long), Dol

Jenyang Kwacbur Riah Bang

Kudwop, Nyapir Tobut (Nyawar, Dongrial). Lak (Thiang, Kar, Cuak) Juak, Manyal, Giin Nyangur (Gul, Bedid, Dwong), Kwoth, Cuol

Nyayan/Nyajaani, Cany, Wau Kong/Tiek/Yaar, Col/Nyaruny, Dhilleak/Gying Tar, Kang, Lony

Source: Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1968) Les Nuer, Paris: Gallimard: 165-167; Hutchinson, S. E. (1996) Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State, Berkeley: University of California Press: 22; Johnson, D. H. (1994) Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Oxford: Clarendon Press: 360-361.

Colonial anthropology contributed greatly to the rigidity of ethnic identity. The ethnologists set down in writing the existence and history of populations who were not always conscious of their community of interests and belonging; depending on the interpreter at the time, they were sometimes given names which they did not recognize, such as the Shilluk, Dinka and Nuer, who respectively preferred to be called Colo, Jieng and Naath. Nuer, in particular, were divided into clans which are summarized in Table 1. In the absence of chiefs or well defined territories, the colonialists had great difficulty in formally apprehending these groups. Because of their seasonal movement the Nuer nomadic pastoralists, for example, could not be assimilated to simple village communities, while in the absence of a registry neither could blood ties be used to define a lineage. In its determination to classify, the administration had to take another tack. The various groups were distinguished according to the way they regulated disputes: peace settlement



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when distant communities were at war; or payment of blood money in case of homicide by a member of a neighbouring community. The different levels of conflict known in Nuer land lent themselves to this kind of classification, with the duel (dwac) between individuals, the vendetta (ter) between neighbouring villages, battle (kur) between tribes and campaign (pec) against the Dinka. With the approach of Independence, the rebellion of the South against the grip of the North produced a new deal, liberating communal energies and putting an end to the Pax Britannica. The fine unity displayed by the Southern party at its creation in 1952 was shattered after the elections in 1953, which made it the third political force in the country20. The movement took the name Liberal Party to avoid accusations of regionalism. When the military took power in Khartoum in 1958, however, this experiment came to an end. Southern opponents had to go into exile, where they formed the Sudan African National Union (SANU), opening the way to serious internal dissent. When parliamentary life resumed in 1964, the Southerners who had stayed in Khartoum set up a Southern Front, while William Deng returned from exile to lead SANU in Sudan and Aggrey Jadein’s faction remained in opposition abroad. A multitude of liberation movements took up the torch of the armed struggle, from the Anyidi revolutionaries to the Republicans of the river Sue, including the Movement for Azanian Sudan. For some, these had strong ethnic connotations, such as the Nuer of the Anyanya movement or the Dinka of Aggrey Jadein and later Gordon Mayen Mourtat, within a provisional government of the Nile21.

4. Three dimensions of ethnic fabrication during the second civil war (1983-2005) After an interlude following the Addis Abeba peace agreement of 1972, the resumption of civil war in 1983 brought out local differences once again. Led by John Garang de Mabior, a Monyjang (i.e. Dinka), the SPLA was quickly perceived as an ethnic protest, which however made it no less political. Officially, it did not struggle for independence. It claimed to be Marxist and fought for a “New Sudan” where Khartoum would respect the rights and peculiarities of Southerners. Actually, however, the SPLA was a direct reaction to the decision of the Government to break the Dinka domination and infringe the peace agreement of 1972 by dividing (kokora) the South into three regions. The rebellion then developed in three conflicting dimensions, each of which sharpened cultural differences. In opposition to an Arab and Muslim ruled North, the first result of the cruelties of war was to show that Southerners could not remain in a united Sudan, feeding secessionist demands that went beyond the original objectives of the guerrilla movement. A second dimension saw the diverse communities of the South come into conflict with each other, often with the assistance of the Government of Sudan in Khartoum. Dominated by the Dinka, the SPLA suffered serious setbacks in Equatoria, where the Bari and Zande constituted about 20 and 25 per cent of the population, and it was almost 20 21

Oduho, J. and Deng, W. (1963) The Problem of the Southern Sudan, London: Oxford University Press: 60; Albino, O. (1970) The Sudan: A Southern Viewpoint, London: Oxford University Press: 132. Wakoson, E. N. (1984) ‘The origin and development of the Anya-Nya movement, 1955-1972’, in M. O. Beshir (ed.) Southern Sudan: Regionalism and Religion, London: Ithaca; Eprile, C. (1974) War and Peace in the Sudan, 1955-1972, London: David and Charles.



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non-existent amongst the Zande, further to the west and Congo-Zaïre. This division eventually affected communities within Equatoria when some Bari joined the rebels. During the short-lived parliamentary regime which flourished in Khartoum from 1986 to 1989, for instance, the Bari and the Zande opposed each other with, respectively, their People’s Progressive Party and Sudan African People’s Congress Organization. Such divisions succeeded in giving the conflict a tribal rather than religious or racial aspect 22 . But the main fault-line laid between the Dinka and the Nuer, spearhead of the rebellion. The leader of the SPLA, John Garang de Mabior, was himself a Dinka Bor23. Subsequently tribal allegiances impelled other Dinka clans, such as the Malual, Twic and Abeyei from the north of Bahr el Ghazal, to leave the Nuer-dominated Anyanya II and join the ranks of the SPLA. In spite of its initial Marxist rhetoric, the latter then confirmed the power of customary law to discipline Dinka fighters. To gain the support of traditional chiefs, it also contributed to the proliferation of honorific titles, especially at the lowest level. In the 1990s, Douglas Johnson could count one chief to every 400 male taxpayers, as opposed to every 1,000 before the war24 . These ‘ethnic’ tensions came into the open when the SPLA split in 1991. The 300,000 or so Nuer felt outnumbered by nearly two and a half million Dinka. Having launched the Anyanya II movement as a rival to the SPLA, they joined Riak Machar’s Nasir faction in 1991. Breaking away from the SPLA, the leader of this faction presented himself as the liberator of the Nuer nation, using the legend of the prophet Ngundeng who foretold a Messiah from his clan. More specifically, Riak Machar accused John Garang’s Dinka of aiming to monopolize power and defend only their own interests. A third dimension of ethnic identification equally exacerbated tensions within each group, thus facilitating the government’s efforts to undermine it. The Nuer in particular were torn by internal struggles such as the ‘Hyena’ war (kur luny yak), so called because it was so murderous that hyenas could eat corpses left on the battlefield 25. Opposition to the Khartoum dictatorship did not put an end to cattle raiding and land conflicts. The Nuer who initiated the second Anyanya movement from the mid-1970s never succeeded in effectively coordinating the principal clans which made up their troops: the Gaajak of Maiwut, the Mor Lou of Akobo, the Lak and Thiang of the Zeraf valley and the Bul of Mankien26 . In the Malakal region, the fratricidal war between the Jikany and Lou clans killed nearly 2,000 people between 1991 and 1992. Deep-seated rivalries likewise scarred the Gaajak country on the banks of the river Baro, one the most fertile lands in the sub-region. 22 23

24 25 26

El Zain, M. (1996) ‘Tribe and religion in the Sudan’, Review of African Political Economy 23(70): 523-529; Daly, M. W. (1989) ‘Islam, secularism and ethnic identity in the Sudan’, in G. Benavides and M. W. Daly (eds) Religion and Political Power, New York: State University of New York The Dinka are usually considered to be divided into the following main clans: Abeyei, Abialang, Abiem, Agar, Aliab, Angai, Atar, Bor (Athoic, Gok), Cic, Dungjol, Duor, Ghol, Luac, Malual, Ngok, Nyareweng, Paliet, Paloic, Palyopiny, Rek, Ric, Rueng, Rut, Thoi and Twic (Lith, Fakerr, Ajuong). Johnson, D. H. (1998) ‘The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the problem of factionalism’, in C. Clapham (ed.) African Guerrillas, Oxford: James Currey: 67. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1968) Les Nuer, Paris: Gallimard: 171-175, 189. Johnson, D. H. (1998) ‘The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the problem of factionalism’, in C. Clapham (ed.) African Guerrillas, Oxford: James Currey: 61



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5. The role of forced migration and humanitarian aid Thus the war contributed to sharpening group identities at the three national, regional and local levels. But the forced migrations it provoked also altered the ethnic sentiments of internally displaced people and cross-border refugees. During the Anyanya revolt of the 1960s, for instance, many Christian and Animist farmers from Southern Sudan took refuge in Ugandan towns and melted into the local Muslim Nubi communities. On the other side of the border, some Ugandan refugees experienced the same phenomenon of ‘Nubization’ after 1979 and the fall of the regime of Idi Amin, who was born in this region.27 However, assimilation was not always smooth. Until the resumption of the civil war in Southern Sudan in 1983, the emigration of Ugandan refugees sometimes caused conflicts and attacks on their camps exacerbated ethnic differentiation, notably between the Madi and the Acholi, whose lineages (kaka) used to be very close28 . Such reconfiguring equally affected the Sudanese minorities living on the frontline with the North and along the border with Ethiopia. When the SPLA resumed combat in 1983, for example, the conditions of forced migration and the modalities of distributing food aid brought into view the existence of an Uduk people which encompassed the Kunama, the Berta, the Mabian, the Hill Burun, the Gumuz, the Koma, the Kwama, the Shyita, the Mao and the Chali of Blue Nile province. Converted to Christianity since 1938, these small communities were suspected of sympathizing with the rebels and got targeted by the Arab militia of the Rufaa. It was to a large extent the war which created an Uduk entity29. As for the Dinka and Nuer in refugee camps in Ethiopia and, later on, Kenya and Uganda, the way they were organized brought out ethnic divisions. On one hand, villagers from the same region often came together to reproduce their traditional way of life in exile. On the other hand, the humanitarian agencies in charge of the camps deliberately set out to separate hostile communities30. In this regard, the growing implication of relief organisations contributed a lot to fix ethnic identities during the second civil war, especially after the establishment of Operation Lifeline Sudan in 1989. This is certainly not specific to Sudan. Regarding Rwanda, Johan Pottier also observed that “Western humanitarian practices reinforced the essentialist discourse on ethnicity and in doing so reinforced the notion of a collectively guilty refugee body”31. In the same vein, the resettlement process of Somali asylum seekers 27 28 29

30

31

Crozon, A. (1997) ‘Les Nubi en Afrique de l’Est: construction d’une identité ethnique’, Les Cahiers de l’IFRA (Nairobi) 4: 22-23; Johnson, D. H. (1989) ‘The structure of a legacy: military slavery in Northeast Africa’, Ethnohistory 36(1): 83-84. Allen, T. (1989) ‘Violence and moral knowledge: observing social trauma in Sudan and Uganda’, Cambridge Anthropology 13(2): 45-66; Crisp, J. (1986) ‘Ugandan refugees in Sudan and Zaïre: the problem of repatriation’, African Affairs 85(339): 163-180. Donham, D. and James, W. (eds) (1986) The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia: Essays in Social Anthropology and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; James, W. (1979) Kwanim Pa: The Making of the Uduk People. An Ethnographic Study of Survival in the Sudan-Ethiopian Borderlands, Oxford: Clarendon Press; James, W. (1996) ‘Uduk resettlement’, in Allen, T. (ed.) In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Montclos (Pérouse de), M.-A. & Kagwanja, P. (2000) ‘Refugee camps or towns? The socio-economic dynamics of Dadaab and Kakuma camps in northern Kenya’, Journal of Refugee Studies 13(2): 205-222; Kagwanja, P. (2002), ‘Le Bon Samaritain à l’épreuve de la “ tradition africaine ” dans les camps de réfugiés au Kenya’, Politique africaine 85: 45-55. Pottier, Johan [2002], Re-imagining Rwanda : conf lict, survival and disinformation in the late



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highlighted the identities of minorities who refused repatriation and claimed a special treatment because of their irreducible cultural difference. In Kenya, for example, trader communities from Southern Somalia coastal towns were grouped in refugee camps where a ‘Benadiri’ identity emerged with a view to be transferred to the United States32 . As for the so-called ‘Gosha’ descendants of slaves, they were given land on the KenyanTanzanian border because they claimed to originate from Tanzania or Mozambique. Actually, these Bantu communities had hardly known slavery, since many of them had succeeded in escaping from caravans and boats through Jubaland or along the Benadir coast. But they were clearly discriminated against by the Somali majority groups. So the civil war and the support received from relief agencies after 1991 facilitated the formulation of a separate identity and a political platform called Somali African Muki Organization, or SAMO, an acronym meaning ‘peace’. In the case of Southern Sudan, the implication of international humanitarian aid into ethnic fabrication was less focused on the resettlement of refugees in a third country of asylum. In Kenya, Uganda or Ethiopia, it had more to do with the planning of camps that were built along clan lines to avoid communal conflicts and maintain law and order. The same process affected internally displaced people who were accommodated within Southern Sudan. Independence did not put an end to these practices. In the Upper Nile State near the Ethiopian border, for instance, the Ingassana of Tabi Hills were registered in transitional settlements set up in 2012 by a French NGO, ACTED (Agence d’Aide à la Coopération Technique et au Développement). Inside the camps of Jamam, Maban County, the relief organisation allocated plots and attached to them numbers that referred to different clans, a very divisive tactic indeed.

Conclusion A parallel can thus be drawn between the British who demarcated collective identities according to dynamics of conflict, on one hand, and humanitarian agencies which fixed displaced people into ethnic camps, on the other hand. Basically, relief organisations face the same problems as the colonial powers when dealing with ‘unknown’ population, and they are often considered as a continuation of the civilization mission of the European imperialists33. Like the British before the independence of Sudan in 1956, ACTED, for instance, found it easier to deal with customary chiefs and gave them necessary resources to consolidate their authority. The difference is probably that it did not aim to divide and rule, unlike the military junta in Khartoum. But in refugee camps such as Kakuma in Kenya, the UNHCR deliberately separated communities to maintain law and order. In any case, the intentional construction of ethnicity ‘from above’ does not contradict the possibility of a re-appropriation ‘from below’. The intervention of humanitarian 32 33

twentieth century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.130. Montclos (Pérouse de), M.-A. (1999) ‘Les reconstructions identitaires de l’exode: les réfugiés somaliens à Mombasa, Kenya’, Autrepart 11: 27-46. Brauman, Rony [2005], « Indigènes et indigents : de la «mission civilisatrice» coloniale à l’action humanitaire », in Blanchard, Pascal, Bancel, Nicolas & Lemaire, Sandrine (ed.), La fracture coloniale : la société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial, Paris, La Découverte, pp.165-72; Yala, Amina [2006], « Les paradigmes coloniaux de l’action humanitaire », in Blanchard, Pascal & Bancel, Nicolas (ed.), Culture post-coloniale 1961-2006 : traces et mémoires coloniales en France, Paris, Autrement, pp.203-14.



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agencies or the manipulation of the British and post-colonial governments in power in Khartoum went together with the emergence of political collective identities. However, they did not always succeed in creating new ethnic groups. Sometimes, collective identities and separatism developed without interferences from outsiders and political authorities. And sometimes they did not, depending on the local context and the possibilities of assimilation. Even the sense of exclusion of a minority group did not automatically produce separatism. The widely scattered untouchable castes of Somalia, for instance, failed to form a common front and obtain the ‘privileged’ treatment of the Benadiri educated class or the Gosha farmers. In Southern Sudan, many minority groups were also victimized by the Dinka and the Nuer, yet failed to get a special access to international aid. Except for the highly mediatized case of the Nuba on the frontline between the North and the South, it is mainly those who lived near the borders that could travel to refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda or Ethiopia. If the social organisation of the former Sudan is partly a colonial legacy, the complexity and the heterogeneity of situations thus show the necessity to understand the contemporary making of ethnic minorities as a multidirectional process, both from above and below.



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