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Land, Governance, Conflict and the Nuba of Sudan

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Abstract

The conventional perspective on Sudan’s recent civil war (1983–2005) - one of the longest and most complex conflicts in Africa - emphasises ethnicity as the main cause. This study, on the contrary, identifies the land factor as a root cause that is central to understanding Sudan’s local conflicts and large-scale wars. Land rights are about relationships between and among persons, pertaining to different economic and ritual activities. Rights to land are intimately tied to membership in specific communities, from the family to the nation-state. Control over land in Africa has been, and still is, used as a means of defining identity and belonging, an instrument to control, and a source of, political power. Membership of these communities is contested, negotiable, and changeable over time. For national governments land is a national economic resource for public and private development, but the interests and rights of rural majorities and their sedentary or nomadic subsistence forms of life are often difficult to harmonise with land policies pursued by national governments. The state’s exclusionary land policies and politics of limiting or denying communities their land rights play a crucial role in causing local conflicts that then can escalate into large-scale wars. Land issues increase the complexity of a conflict, thereby reducing the possibility of managing, resolving, or ultimately transforming it. The conflict in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan, the regional focus in this study, is living proof of this transformation. Guma Kunda Komey is Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Juba University, Sudan.
... La región de las montañas Nuba corresponde a una zona montañosa del norte del estado de Kordofán del Sur habitado por el denominado pueblo nuba y por población árabe, principalmente baggara, estos últimos de carácter nómada 2 . La forma de vida nuba es tradicionalmente sedentaria y viven de la agricultura, lo que contrasta con la forma de vida de los baggara que habitan la zona desde hace unos 200 años y que se dedican al pastoreo (Komey, 2010). ...
... GADM (2012) y elaboración propia 2 Los nuba se identifican a sí mismos como los indígenas de la zona y son considerados los habitantes autóctonos de la misma en múltiples fuentes, llegando a constituir una provincia durante la época colonial entre 1914-1928. El nuba es un pueblo de origen africano con multiplicidad de subdivisiones étnicas o clanes, cuyos miembros profesan el culto islámico, cristiano o tradicional-animista, manteniendo unos diez grupos lingüísticos (Komey, 2010). Komey (2010), en el pueblo nuba se representan, de manera adecuada, algunos de los principales rasgos del Sudán contemporáneo: el carácter árabe y africano de su sociedad; las relaciones desiguales y explotadoras entre el centro y las regiones; así como la existencia de un escenario de escasez y conflicto como consecuencia de la marginalización política de unos grupos hacia otros, la aplicación de modelos de desarrollo distorsionados, el acaparamiento de tierras y el control férreo ejercido por el Estado. ...
... El nuba es un pueblo de origen africano con multiplicidad de subdivisiones étnicas o clanes, cuyos miembros profesan el culto islámico, cristiano o tradicional-animista, manteniendo unos diez grupos lingüísticos (Komey, 2010). Komey (2010), en el pueblo nuba se representan, de manera adecuada, algunos de los principales rasgos del Sudán contemporáneo: el carácter árabe y africano de su sociedad; las relaciones desiguales y explotadoras entre el centro y las regiones; así como la existencia de un escenario de escasez y conflicto como consecuencia de la marginalización política de unos grupos hacia otros, la aplicación de modelos de desarrollo distorsionados, el acaparamiento de tierras y el control férreo ejercido por el Estado. Asimismo, la historia del pueblo nuba se ha caracterizado por una lucha continua por la defensa de la identidad y el territorio, pasando por diversas fases de violencia, que situó a la región en una posición similar al sur, en cuanto a marginalización y represión (Komey, 2010). ...
Article
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El artículo presenta el escenario del conflicto armado en las regiones sudanesas del Mar Rojo, Nilo Azul y las montañas Nuba en Kordofán, basando los argumentos en información y datos de fuentes secundarias. El periodo tratado es 1956-2011, y por lo tanto hace referencia a la República de Sudán hasta la independencia del sur, dejando de manifiesto que la violencia y el conflicto armado no se han circunscrito a la dicotomía norte-sur, sino que en el norte los efectos de la represión de los Gobiernos de Jartum se han hecho notar desde el nacimiento del país. De esta manera, los intentos de dominación de las élites político-económicas y socio-religiosas gobernantes han tratado de suprimir otras formas identitarias que no reflejen la visión unívoca de dichas élites, de cara a ejercer la hegemonía e imponer su modelo de sociedad. Para ello, la represión y la violencia han sido herramientas ampliamente utilizadas, provocando un escenario de tensión y guerra casi permanente en amplias zonas del norte sudanés. Abstract. This article introduces the scenario of armed conflict in the northern Sudanese regions of Red Sea, Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains by means of secondary data and information. It describes the period between 1956-2011, regarding the Republic of Sudan until the independence of South Sudan, pointing out that violence and armed conflicts have been not only concentrated on the south. Moreover, in the north the effects of repression have been also deep. Therefore, domination of northern political, economic, social and religious elites has aimed to eradicate and undermine other forms of identity different that the leading one. In order to do this, repression and violence have been used and applied as tools, provoking an almost permanent situation of tension and war in the referred northern areas.
... These results provide suggestive evidence that among the motivations driving the decision to return are the expectation of being recognized as a member of the community and the support for the claim on the land cultivated before the conflict. Moreover, the results highlight the fact that rights over land are among the main issues that fueled the spread of the civil war in Southern Sudan to the Nuba Mountains, and remained unresolved after the peace agreement (Siddig, El-Harizi, and Prato 2007;Komey 2010). ...
... The Nuba Mountains, also called the Nuba Hills, is a region located in the state of South Kordofan in the southern margins of current Sudan, which, broadly defined, covers over 80,000 km. 3 The area is mainly inhabited by the Nuba, who are comprised of over 50 distinct ethnic communities speaking different languages and dialects, and engaging in a number of religious practices (Ylönen 2009). The Nuba are often considered to constitute their own 'social space' or 'social world' (Komey 2010) due to the largely shared history of racial subjugation and external oppression involving slave trade and violent dispossession. ...
... Yet, the aggressive expansion of mechanized farming encroached Nuba customary land rights and their livelihoods, which were based largely on subsistence farming. This generated resentment which was heightened by the neighboring semi-nomadic Baggara, who, deprived from their pasture lands by the large-scale mechanized farms, guided their cattle to Nuba lands and destroyed farmers' crops (Komey 2010). As a result, the relation between the Baggara and the Nuba deteriorated. ...
... These results provide suggestive evidence that among the motivations driving the decision to return are the expectation of recognition as a member of the community and the support for the claim on the land cultivated before the conflict. Moreover, the results highlight the fact that rights over land are among the main issues that fueled the spread of the civil war in Southern Sudan to the Nuba Mountains, and which remained unresolved after the peace agreement (Komey, 2010;Siddig et al., 2007). ...
... The Nuba Mountains, also called the Nuba Hills, is a region located in the state of South Kordofan in the southern margins of current Sudan, which, broadly defined, covers over 80,000 km. 3 The area is mainly inhabited by the Nuba, who are comprised of over fifty distinct ethnic communities speaking different languages and dialects, and engaging in a number of religious practices (Ylönen, 2009). The Nuba are often considered to constitute their own 'social space' or 'social world' (Komey, 2010) due to the largely shared history of racial subjugation and external oppression involving slave trade and violent dispossession. ...
... Yet, the aggressive expansion of mechanized farming encroached Nuba customary land rights and their livelihoods, which were based largely on subsistence farming. This generated resentment which was heightened by the neighboring semi-nomadic Baggara, who, deprived from their pasture lands by the large-scale mechanized farms, guided their cattle to Nuba lands and destroyed farmers' crops (Komey, 2010). As a result, the relation between the Baggara and the Nuba deteriorated. ...
Article
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We use a unique data set gathered during a short-lived interwar period in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan to compare characteristics of the households returning after the conflict with those that stayed in their communities of origin. We found that returning households seemed to face worse economic conditions, particularly in the case of female-headed returnee households. Nevertheless, our results show that returnees tend to perform better on different health indicators. Using a detailed set of variables about hygiene and sanitary habits, we explore the hypothesis that the latter result may be related to changes in attitudes given the distinct experiences during displacement. We show that returnees are indeed more likely to adopt these measures.
... The hilly region covers an area of 88,000 km 2 (around 30,000 square miles) within the savanna rain belt. It is located between longitudes 29° and 31°30'E and latitudes 10° and 12°30'N (Baumann 1987;Komey 2010;Stevenson 1984). Topographically, the region is made up of a pattern of long mountain ranges separated by stretches of plains and valleys (for more information about the physical character of the region see Nadel 1947;Komey 2010). ...
... It is located between longitudes 29° and 31°30'E and latitudes 10° and 12°30'N (Baumann 1987;Komey 2010;Stevenson 1984). Topographically, the region is made up of a pattern of long mountain ranges separated by stretches of plains and valleys (for more information about the physical character of the region see Nadel 1947;Komey 2010). ...
... According to Nadel's (1947) classic study, there are more than fifty ethnic groups/tribes in the region with various religious and cultural practices (e.g., Islam, Christianity; see also Thelwall & Schadeberg 1983). The 1955 population census estimated the Nuba with 572,935 people (6% of the total national population (Komey 2010;Thelwall 1978). The last population census in 2009 suggested 1,406,404 as the total population of the Nuba Mountains (Komey 2010). ...
Chapter
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This book is the outcome of the first international conference on the Nuba Mountain languages, held in Leiden, September 2–4, 2011. The conference was organized by Heleen Smits and Jade Comfort, both active linguists with recent experience of linguistic field work in the Nuba Mountains. The conference brought together ca. 45 researchers from the Sudan, Europe and the United States. Most articles in this book are revised versions of papers read at the NML Conference. Some contributors offered a different paper, while additional papers known to be floating around were recruited by the editors. The result is a volume with 32 original contributions. They constitute an important leap for­ward in the linguistic exploration of this complex area. The articles in this book deal with languages from each of the ten indigenous language groups of the Nuba Mountains. They also cover a wide range of topics, with a focus on descriptive linguistics.
... In addition, conflicts around the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan stem from grievances over economic development, political participation and cultural self-determination that go back at least several decades and which spawned, at least since the in the 1960s, several political movements, which became violent following continued failure of parliamentary engagement to yield tangible and sustainable results (Abbas, 1973;Battahani, 2009). This has, particularly since the 1980s, morphed into an overarching process of societal radicalisation and militarisation, with recurring violent conflicts beyond the simple dichotomy of SPLM versus SAF (Komey, 2010;Rottenburg et al., 2011. In a similar way, the struggle for physical and cultural survival in the Blue Nile did not start with the presence of SPLM-N there (James, 2007); the armed anti-government movement is merely the aspect of conflict dynamics in the region that has been made more visible than others (Schlee, 2014). ...
... The prevalence of external coercive measures to secure dominance in distributive arrangements, rather than consensual economic development, is a historical pattern in the Nuba Mountains Ille, 2015). The present landscape is dominated by socio-economic conflicts, which span small-scale struggles over land rights to land grabbing (Komey, 2010). In the most war-affected areas in the central Nuba Mountains, these conflicts have become exacerbated by the battle lines drawn by armed groups, violence against unarmed population by paramilitary troops and almost daily bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces; accordingly, forced population movements and the basic struggle for survival mark the life in these areas. ...
Article
This article discusses a recent call to include gold from Sudan in the ‘conflict gold’ category of global supply chains. The call reacts to Sudan’s protracted violent conflicts, as well as a recent surge in gold mining that became of essential importance for governmental policies after most of the country’s oil reserves were lost with South Sudan’s independence in 2011. The extension of gold mining in areas with violent conflicts, so the call’s demand, requires due diligence concerning gold from Sudan and an extension of sanctions to conflict actors benefiting from it. On this basis, the article reviews critically the contradictions that arise from the convention to both define territorial conflict areas and collective conflict actors, and connect due diligence to case-by-case assessment, representing an attempt to concomitantly advocate human rights and preserve investment opportunities. Further complications arise from contradictions between state sovereignty and international humanitarian law, as well as the complexities of violent conflicts whose causes cannot be readily identified and targeted. The author argues that this results in numerous ambiguities of situation assessments and planned interventions, which have to be acknowledged if unintended negative consequences are sought to be reduced.
... Land is increasingly at the core of conflicts in Sudan, for instance between farmers and herders (Osman and Schlee 2014) and between rural populations and entrepreneurs (Gertel, Rottenburg, and Calkins 2014). These conflicts are widespread in the Sudans and beyond, but they have been especially intensive in Darfur (Flint and de Waal 2008) and the Nuba Mountains (Komey 2010). They are also among the most complex conflicts, encompassing economic survival, belonging, governance and environmental sustainability, among other aspects. ...
... While the NCP supported private land ownership and large-scale agricultural investment, the SPLM established land commissions to register communal lands. Komey's (2010) examination showed the inadequacy of conceiving any conflict, including land disputes, in the frame of local, traditional versus national, modern Canadian Journal of African Studies / La Revue canadienne des études africaines 181 institutional orders. The mainstay of previous explanatory frameworks, the relation between individual and communal ownership and between various scales of institutions, was shown to be deeply intertwined with the interests of political actors at the national and international scale. ...
Article
All social theory emphasises that institutions universally play a crucial role in organising the ways in which people live together. At the same time the concept is vaguely defined and used in different ways. Inspired by the pragmatic sociology of critique, we emphasise how institutions enable people and things to hold together and provide important references for action in settings with limited predictability for everyday life. We first analyse how the concept of institutions has been used in scholarship on land tenure in Sudan. We then suggest, using a case study, that increased attention to the different ways in which actors validate or challenge institutions helps to examine the precariousness of institutional orders in the Sudans. This can move Sudan Studies beyond some of the limitations of previous scholarship, such as a tendency towards interpretations that reiterate institutions as timeless, discrete and immutable units such as “traditional” or “modern”.
... Ongoing communal violence in Nigeria and Sudan is tied to competition over scarce fertile land and poor resource governance. Disputes over access to land and valuable mineral resources drove wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the nearly 25-year war in Sri Lanka was fought over geographic claims to an ethnic homeland for the country's minority population (Komey, 2010). ...
Article
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Tanzania has established a separate system for dealing with land disputes, which is less formal than ordinary civil courts and more accessible to citizens with less formal education. The Village Land Act and the Land Dispute Courts Act provide the institutional framework for land dispute settlement, including the Ward Tribunal, District Land and Housing Tribunal, High Court, and Court of Appeal of Tanzania. Ward Tribunals are established by the Ward Tribunal Act in 1985 to secure peace and harmony in their areas by obtaining justice and amicable settlement of land disputes. However, some cases have been decided without considering customary principles of mediation, as seen in Cosmas Matimila v John Cosmas Matimilia and Fredrick Leonald v Ezekiel Maganga. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of Ward Tribunals in dealing with land disputes in Tanzania through the application of customary principles of mediation using Kibaha District as a case study. The research methodology was a qualitative approach, employing documentary and field research methodologies, primary and secondary sources of data, and non-probability sampling. A sample size of fifteen respondents was selected, including seven respondents from Kibaha District Ward Tribunals, five respondents from mediation practitioners and experts, and five respondents who was beneficiaries of mediation through customary principle from Kibaha District. The data analysis was content analysis, interpreting canons of statutory interpretation, including inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The Findings of this study shows that; l that although Ward tribunals are very important in disputes mediations through customarily principles face ineffective application in land disputes mediations in Tanzanian context. The study recommends deliberate intervention by the judiciary system to ensure enforceability of customarily principles in land disputes mediations.
... This is clearly depicted in the wars erupted in the different areas of the country throughout most of its postcolonial history (1955-1972-1983-2005) in the South. The 0; scene was complicated by the devastating wars in Darfur (see Mamdani,201 ains (see Komey, 2011) and in the Blue Nile (see , 2011), the Nuba Mount Tubiana James, 2007). ...
Conference Paper
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In today’s world, the question of diversity management occupies the thinking of researchers in academia and equally draws the attention of politicians and/or practitioners in public domains and institutions. The case in Sudan is not an exceptional one. The question of diversity management in Sudan is mostly larger than itself. It is closely intertwined with politics of governance both in colonialism and its aftermath. The practice of managing linguistic or cultural diversity is one of thorniest issues that challenge almost all nation-states in Sudan’s modern history. It seems that the imposition of nation-state projects in process of managing diversity in Sudan always triggers resistance and motivates conflicts. This paper discusses the politics of managing linguistic and cultural diversity in Sudan. Along these lines, the paper addresses three questions: (1) how diversity is officially represented and managed by the various governments in Sudan? (2) How official governmental policies of diversity management in Sudan co-vary with unofficial public responses at the grassroots? (3) How the official governmental project of diversity management is linked to the larger politics of conflict in Sudan? To answer these questions I lead an archeology into the cultural policies employed in the construction and management of diversity in Sudan. In this regard, I engage with cultural politics of diversity management both in colonial and postcolonial Sudan.
... So far, the conflict has split into west and east Sudan and has continued up to date. Thus, elements of weak state, centralized nature of the regime, ethnic diversity and historical grievance as well regional disparities are among the most reasons for the great state of instability in the country at large (Komey, 2010). ...
... The closing of the 'internal frontier' was thus a governance strategy as much as a result of increasing population and land scarcity. Colonial restrictions were replaced by postcolonial government policies of land alienation and privatization for commercial development and political patronage, giving emotive political value to land (Komey 2010). Particularly since the 1990s, the combined effects of political and economic liberalization and decentralization policies have tended to revive and entrench processes of ethnic and political territorialization as political elites competing at both national and local levels of government have sought to mobilize constituencies along ethnic lines and as intensifying competition over resources has fuelled conflicts and discourses of autochthony (Lynch 2011;Mbembe 2000;Nsamba 2013). ...
... Soils were exhausted, land was degraded and productivity was sinking. Nimeiri had neither managed to build a political economy beholden to him nor to counter rising forces like the Islamists of Hassan Al-Turabi and the rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) who attracted recruits and support from those dispossessed by the Breadbasket (Komey 2010). Nimeiri's foreign friends left disappointed too. ...
Article
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The historical proximity between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa has in recent years been increasingly experienced as a relationship of growing insecurity. Gulf States have rapidly expanded their economic and political roles on the other side of the Red Sea and have established military bases. This article argues that this interventionist thrust is historically rooted and deeply structural: the politics of state survival that dominate both the Gulf and the Horn are leading aspiring regional hegemons with a self-proclaimed responsibility to provide order to securitise their near abroad. Originating from the self-identity of regional powers and efforts to protect their respective domestic political settlements, this is producing a profoundly destabilising pattern of regional polarisation.
... The basis of contemporary Sudanese state can be traced back to its ancient, pre-colonial and colonial history and related legacies. From its establishment in 1899, the colonial administration subjected the peoples of Sudan to new spatial and socio-political arrangements which persisted under successive postcolonial regimes (Komey, 2010). ...
Chapter
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The Horn of Africa is a region that faces a number of challenges including fatal conflicts. The root causes of these conflicts are many, inter-related, and complex in nature. The purpose of this chapter is to review and give evidence to inequality as a driver of conflict in the region. Among its findings, the chapter argues that one of the pressing problems in the region is the prevalence of several categories of conflicts that are linked to various forms of inequalities, as well as other root causes that fuel the persistence and continuity of most of them. The reviewed evidence from the two case studies (Kenya and Sudan) show that there is unequal access and distribution of resources such as land, presence of group formation, their mobilization, and the presence of inequalities among them, which might support the hypothesis of inequality-conflict nexus.
... Furthermore, there was a strong awareness of the great variety of soil types and soil quality in the area, which the farmer in this example divided into two, nīliyya (Nile-like) or ġurīn (silt), a black clayey soil, and the sandier type qūz. 6 This was coupled with the distinction of staple crops, here mostly sorghum, into small categories varying in colour, growth period, taste, 5-These uncertainties have been discussed in a wide range of publications, among them Manger 2008, Komey 2008a-c, Komey 2010a-d, Alden Wily 2010, and Large & El-Basha 2010, Komey 2010a being the most comprehensive work. 6-There exist several natural science studies on the complex soil structure of the Nuba Mountains, among them Colvin 1939, HTS 1981, Nawari & Schetelig 1991, Olsson & Rapp 1991, Nawari & Schetelig 1992, Poussart et al. 2004, Elgubshawi 2008, and Mubarak et al. 2012 hardness, yield for flour and adequacy for secondary products, such as sorghum beer. ...
Article
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This article discusses the spatial organization of agri-and horticulture in Heiban (South Kordofan) through five case studies, which cover various scales and kinds of cultivation. The discussion aims at highlighting the interconnections and gradual differences between these cases, in order to stress the shortcomings of conventional exclusionary classifications of farmers and their practices, e.g. traditional/subsistence/conservative vs. modern/commercial/innovative. On the basis of ongoing global and national debates on 'appropriate' agricultural development, the article contributes to the critical analysis of influential classifications in this field and of the policies that are informed by them. In conclusion, the article argues that without verification of conventional assumptions, e.g. subsistence farmers' low productivity and little readiness to experiment and innovate, agricultural policies will be based on fictional rather than actual farmers' practices. Given the political economy prevailing in Sudan, with dominant top-down approaches to land distribution and modernization, such policies will feed into existing conflicts and hamper the search for sustainable solutions to food production and distribution problems in the country.
Article
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This paper examines the 1994 Declaration of Principles (DoP) for the resolution of the Sudanese civil war, adopted by the Inter‐Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). This was the only occasion on which an African inter‐state organization included separation as an option for resolving a civil war. It was the basis for South Sudan's independence in 2011. The DoP was drafted by the Ethiopian government, and imposed on belligerent parties, both of which were, at the time, unionist. The paper identifies two concepts of self‐determination within the DoP— independence for colonial territories and the Marxist‐Leninist idea of self‐determination for national groups. The rationale for including both arose from Ethiopian leadership within IGAD. The paper also examines the diverse Sudanese debates on self‐determination, including several strands of nationalism, Islamism, and the ‘New Sudan’ of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). There was radical disagreement among Sudanese on national identity and self‐determination, creating ambiguities that ironically facilitated the exercise in southern self‐determination in 2011. Drawing on documentation of Sudanese negotiations, the paper examines how the DoP unlocked the Sudanese debate on the issue, and how the different concepts fared up to the time of the independence of South Sudan.
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The Gulf and the Horn of Africa share a long history of economic and political engagement. In recent years, following a decade of political disengagement, the Gulf states have become once again major economic and political actors in the Horn region. Horn states have hardly remained passive clients, however, and actively court Gulf states for funding, as economic drivers and remittances have been a key factor for maintaining their domestic political settlements as well as a major determinant of conflict in the region. In this report authors Jos Meester, Willem van den Berg and Harry Verhoeven explore the extent and impact of Gulf state economic engagement in the Horn as well as the linkages between these financial streams and prospects for regional stability in the Horn of Africa. It traces the historic ties framing perceptions of the relationship between the regions, describes the determinants and instruments of Gulf investment, trade and aid to the Horn. It maps the scope of Gulf investments across Horn states and economic sectors, identifying approximately USD 13 billion between 2000 and 2017, mainly in Ethiopia and Sudan, across the agriculture, manufacturing and construction sectors. Such financial streams are key to supporting Horn political settlements, providing the working capital required for further co-option, and to several regimes maintaining a degree of macroeconomic stability (especially under sanction regimes). Gulf countries are important business partners and have been known to mix political, business and religious motives in their interactions. Horn actors themselves however are not passive recipients. Economic drivers have been key to conflict in the Horn, and actors have at times actively courted Gulf countries for financing. The implications of such mobilised resources can have significant consequences on regional stability, migration and security.
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This list of references is the result of the bibliographic work in two 4-year projects in frame of a collaborative research centre funded by the German Research Foundation, SFB 586 (Difference and integration). In these projects, Prof. Richard Rottenburg, Dr. Guma Kunda Komey and Dr. Enrico Ille undertook research on the relation of nomadic and sedentary people in South Kordofan, together with a number of other colleagues and assistants. From 2004 to 2008 this research concerned land and water rights, from 2008 to 2012 market institutions: SFB 586 – Difference + Integration. During that time, a list of mostly unpublished theses produced at the University of Khartoum up to 2010 was assembled by Amira al-Jizouli; it was included here as well. More recently, in early 2015, an extension of the bibliography and its partial transformation in an annotated bibliography was made possible by the ARUSS project of the Chr. Michelsen Institute, the University of Bergen, Khartoum University, Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, and a number of regional universities in Sudan. This work was conducted by Dr. Enrico Ille and Konstantin Biehl, with support of Rania Awad and Jasmin Weinert.
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Since independence in 1956 the dominant ruling elites projected Sudan as an Arab-Islamic state at the expense of its African and non-Muslim identities. The practical dimension of that early political stance continued to be sustained as manifested in a series of actions taken by the successive governments to the present day. This policy impacted negatively on the non-Muslim minorities, particularly the Christians, despite the fact that successive national constitutions recognised religious freedom and rights in Sudan. This article reviews the situation of the Christian minority in Sudan. The overall analysis implies that improving religious freedom and rights in Sudan is a vital necessity for improving its international image and relations.
Chapter
The resource-rich borderlands between Sudan and South Sudan are simmering with conflicts that have taken on new intensity and hold new implications in the present day. The renewed outbreak of war in the state of South Kordofan on June 5, 2011, and its spread to Blue Nile State a few months later, led to a total collapse of the special protocol for the two states enshrined in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005. It further complicated an already difficult situation in the borderlands, where dividing lines are contested in several areas. In Darfur, violent conflict that started in 2003 has led to widespread destruction, great loss of life, and internal displacement of many people and has continued despite an agreement signed in Doha in 2011. The borderlands are the subject of negotiation in all meetings held so far between the Sudan and South Sudan, facilitated by the African Union. But peace and security have been elusive.
Research
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This list of references is the result of the bibliographic work in two 4-year projects in frame of a collaborative research centre funded by the German Research Foundation, SFB 586 (Difference and integration). In these projects, Prof. Richard Rottenburg, Dr. Guma Kunda Komey and Dr. Enrico Ille undertook research on the relation of nomadic and sedentary people in South Kordofan, together with a number of other colleagues and assistants. From 2004 to 2008 this research concerned land and water rights, from 2008 to 2012 market institutions: SFB 586 - Difference + Integration . During that time, a list of mostly unpublished theses produced at the University of Khartoum up to 2010 was assembled by Amira al-Jizouli; it was included here as well. More recently, in early 2015, an extension of the bibliography and its partial transformation in an annotated bibliography was made possible by the ARUSS project of the Chr. Michelsen Institute, the University of Bergen, Khartoum University, Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, and a number of regional universities in Sudan. This work was conducted by Dr. Enrico Ille and Konstantin Biehl, with support of Rania Awad and Jasmin Weinert.
Article
This article analyses South Sudan's political and economic challenges as it seeks to become a member of the East African Community (EAC). The first section presents a brief profile of South Sudan, its development challenges, the land tenure system and legal framework governing access to and disposal of land. The second section presents an exposition on the challenges facing the EAC as it seeks to build a monetary union and a political federation. The article critically examines the EAC protocol regarding the monetary union, political federation, the land tenure system in East Africa and its plan for a common citizenship. It reviews and analyses EAC policies such as the elimination of trade barriers such as tariff, non-tariff and other technical barriers, harmonisation of labour policies, programmes, legislation, and social services throughout members’ states. The article concludes that the biggest challenge facing the EAC is how
Book
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This paper outlines the landscape of development interventions in South Kordofan between the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and the start of a new war in June 2011. Given the constant political volatility during this period and the resurgence of violent political contest, the study traces the conditions under which such interventions took place. It analyses the impact of the political context, but also looks at how the interventions related to this context during planning, implementation and evaluation. As a case study, IFAD’s South Kordofan Rural Development Programme is followed into the area in and around Heiban, a rural centre in the central Nuba Mountains, where it was supposed to extend a system of community development committees linked to public administration. The study’s perspective on actors involved in the programme to a variable extent shows not only the complexity of social relations it was interwoven with, but also how this and similar interventions emerged on the ground as part of a plurality of social institutions and organisational structures, in spite of their design as singular contribution to a given situation. Reading context and case study together, the paper argues that any evaluation of development interventions and their consequences in a region like South Kordofan fails to be adequate, if political accountability and political legitimacy are left out or marginalized in the analysis. Instead of being approached as an isolated interaction with ‘local communities’, specific conditions of gaining influence have to be understood, if a substantial contribution is expected to be made.
Technical Report
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At the outset, it is worth noting that the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) is mandated by African Union with a task of undertaking the intellectual challenge of researching peace and security problems that African continent is experiencing. The IPPS’s mandated role was endorsed by the African Union Executive Council (see Appendix 1) to take up the intellectual challenge to define African-led Solutions (thereafter AfSol) for peace and security issues in the continent. Towards that end, IPSS launched African-led Solutions research project as part of its African Peace and Security Program. So far, the Institute has deployed an applied action research in two case studies: South Sudan and Somalia. The two cases are utilized as research tools with an aim of analyzing AfSol practices and applications on the ground, and the implications of those practices on the management of peace and security issues in Africa. To be specific, knowing that African problems are numerous, complex and highly diversified, IPSS focus is precisely on African solutions to African problems in peace and security sector. This focal research niche, however, is not being conceptualized in an isolated context. Rather, it is perceived as part of the whole intrinsically interconnected components along peace-security-development nexus. Within this context, IPSS overall research quest is to stir up an intellectual debate on AfSol as a concept and practice in order to arrive at a more concrete and operational definition(s) of AfSol to peace and security problems based on applied research informed by specific case studies.
Technical Report
The study attempts to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of African Solutions for African Problems in peace and security. Since the African independence decade of 1960s, the leaders of the continent have in one format or another been packaging and repackaging through summits, declarations, speeches, and other platforms the need to have ―an African led solution to African problems.‖ Despite the expressed desire towards fulfilling this goal, as many argue, the initiative lacks clarity in concept and practice. Many studies have been made on the topic and most produced more questions than answers. In this study we will attempt to shed some light into the challenges faced by AfSol as a theory and in practice taking two concrete case studies, namely the war-torn states of South Sudan and Somalia.
Chapter
The so-called Green Revolution established seeds and their qualities as a main focal point for the development of agricultural production. Subsequently, many countries were covered by networks of agricultural research stations, agricultural extensions, and seed banks, whose function was to develop and distribute new varieties promising higher yields and better resilience. In the Nuba Mountains, this process took place mostly from the 1960s to the 1980s. But economic deterioration of the 1980s, 20 years of civil war, and the dismantling of previous institutional structures after a military coup in 1989 left this development to decay, and large-scale rehabilitation was initiated by the government only in 2008. This paper follows processes of seed distribution and risk management in the aftermath of large-scale violence since 2002 from the perspective of small-scale farmers. Centralized governmental research institutions had no longer feedback from a tight network of experimental farms and agricultural extensions, leading to a distorted mechanism of seed distribution intended for social security, but empowering mostly commercial seed companies, whose products do not necessarily fit local soils. In consequence, farmers are left to decide each season between a conservative approach to seed selection and the readiness to take the risk of new varieties, knowing that they cannot compensate a failed harvest. INGOs had begun during the war to fill these gaps of governmental engagement, and found themselves stuck now in the attempt to transform their intervention from relief to rehabilitation. But new programmes of seed credits caused confusion, because the principle of returning the ‘gift’ looked like misplaced balanced reciprocity in an obviously asymmetric economic relationship. Through the case of a seed distribution programme in the central Nuba Mountains the paper discusses the criteria of individual choice in a situation, where governmental and non-governmental institutions divert risks to actors, who depend both on subsidies and secure results in a sector of production with very limited predictability.
Book
This book explores the emergent character of social orders in Sudan and South Sudan. It provides vivid insights into multitudes of ordering practices and their complex negotiation. Recurring patterns of exclusion and ongoing struggles to reconfigure disadvantaged positions are investigated as are shifting borders, changing alliances and relationships with land and language. The book takes a careful and close look at institutional arrangements that shape everyday life in the Sudans, probing how social forms have persisted or changed. It proposes reading the post-colonial history of the Sudans as a continuous struggle to find institutional orders valid for all citizens. The separation of Sudan and South Sudan in 2011 has not solved this dilemma. Exclusionary and exploitative practices endure and inhibit the rule of law, distributive justice, political participation and functioning infrastructure. Analyses of historical records and recent ethnographic data assembled here show that orders do not result directly from intended courses of action, planning and orchestration but from contingently emerging patterns. The studies included look beyond dominant elites caught in violent fights for powers, cycles of civil war and fragile peace agreements to explore a broad range of social formations, some of which may have the potential to glue people and things together in peaceful co-existence, while others give way to new violence.
Article
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This paper presents a case study of Baggara nomadic pastoralists which questions some assumptions about patrilineal and patriarchal societies. The goal is to better understand the dynamics of gender-segregated societies and the position of managerial and economically powerful women. The paper examines women's networks, economic activities, and the outcome of behaviors that seem at one level contradictory to traditionally held understandings of patriarchal societies. The case study demonstrates how contradictory behaviors are reconcilled betwen the public and private domains so that women's economic autonomy and power are real, viable, and fostered within the broader sociocultural context.
Article
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More than a decade of war in the Nuba mountains between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) is threatening the way of life and very existence of the Nuba people. Responsibility for the tragedy in the Nuba mountains lies squarely in the hands of successive Sudanese governments who are accused of human rights atrocities, creating famine conditions, war crimes and even genocide. The silence that surrounds the plight of the Nuba, however, also attests to the failure of the international community to secure protection and assistance for war‐affected populations in Sudan's civil war.
Article
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Since Sudan's independence three development plans have attempted to reorient the agricultural sector and stimulate the process of social and economic development. Believing that their inadequacies have been largely due to a misunderstanding of existing and evolving production relations, the author has attempted to focus on one region of the country where state sponsored capitalist agricultural schemes have been introduced and are leading to the modification of pre‐existing pre‐capitalist forms. He argues that production relations among the peasantry of the Nuba Mountains should best be described as consistent with simple commodity or petty commodity production. But this mode is itself undergoing a process of change as the peasants interact with the capitalist system through sale of their labour power on the nearby capitalist schemes and purchase of their agricultural implements.
Article
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The current situation of indigenous peoples in the Sudan is the result of the independent state's adoption of land and other policies identical to those introduced by colonialists more than a century ago. The Sudanese state has not only unwittingly maintained some colonial coercive institutions and policies but it has introduced more aggressive ones and brutally deployed them against its indigenous peoples, particularly the Nuba. In the light of this, this paper attempts to demonstrate analytically how some historical and contemporary socio-political dynamics have continued systematically to deprive these indigenous Nuba peoples of their customary land, and to assess to what extent the recently concluded Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) has been successful in addressing the land question as one of the root causes of the recurring civil wars in the Sudan in general and in the Nuba Mountains in particular.
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Genocide by attrition occurs when a group is stripped of its human rights, political, civil and economic. This leads to deprivation of conditions essential for maintaining health, thereby producing mass death. Genocide by attrition is epitomized by the Warsaw Ghetto (1939-43), Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79), and Sudan (1983-93). Potentialities of response are considered, as well as state and international interests in overlooking genocide, and the inadequacy and misuses of humanitarian aid. Lastly, guidelines are offered for future policy to prevent genocide by attrition, involving governments, health professionals, and aid workers.
Article
The author suggests that in Sudan subsistence economies have all but disappeared. Food insecurity no longer defines one or another period but is a constant condition of the market economy that has come to dominate the country. The market economy which has emerged in Sudan is extremely fragile. Standards of living have been so reduced that slight fluctuations in prices or weather easily push large numbers of people into conditions of great distress. In the absence of democratic renewal, a donor-led social security system finds it difficult to resolve local conflicts arising from a shrinking resource base. The decay of governance, the prevalence of neo-liberal ideas among donors and the political immaturity of many NGOs will likely produce programs which are relatively expensive and difficult to administer. -from Author
Article
Disputes seem inevitable because society has to partition, diversify, organise, and regulate geographical space, yet scholarly examination of the national construction of social space is scant. Isolates eight major dimensions of 'national territory' which figure in ideologies and sentiment about the relations between society and its environment - habitat, folk culture, scale, and location; boundary, autarchy, homeland, and nation building. Argues that nationalist elites minimise the first four objectives, 'given' dimensions, and emphasise the remaining four, which are more abstract, subjective, and malleable aspects of 'land'. Instances three secular trends that have built up since the 18th century which support this contention. -A.F.Pitty
Article
Most Sudanese authors who have written about the nationality question in the Sudan have been personally involved in Sudanese politics, have held political offices, or have become advocates for the cause of one or another political liberation front. This unique position makes their contributions to the debate on ethnicity and nationalism not only tense, but also means that these writings contain influential political messages. This paper examines the works by major Sudanese authors who have contributed discursive narratives that express their individual political sentiments and simultaneously those of the ethnic groups to which they belong. It then assesses the impact of this committed agency on the construction and deconstruction of Sudan history and the subsequent use of the meaning of history in the struggle for defining the essential elements of a Sudanese national identity.
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Outlines the history of the Baggara and their relationship with the state and looks at the attempts to settle and 'modernize' them. Briefly describes an alternative strategy based on the development of traditional agriculture and pastoralism through gaining a measure of control over the cycle of environmental degradation. Measures include: reform of customary land tenure; the introduction of new practices in resource management; a programme of land demarcation and allocation; the controlled development of new settlements in previously uncultivated areas; introduction of procedures for range management through grazing units which redress the present imbalance between stocking rates and carrying capacity.-from Author
Article
The Nuba claim that they are the indigenous inhabitants of the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan. Indigenous peoples here refers to pre-existence, non-dominance, cultural difference and self-identification as indigenous. As such the Nuba are politically and economically marginalized and suffered persecution and dominance under external and internal colonialism. Human rights abuses, including genocide and ethnocide (or cultural genocide) have persisted and the Nuba are increasingly under pressure to give up their traditional way of life, and lose access to their lands and other natural resources for immigrant Baggara and Jellaba ethnic groups are supported by the state. This paper traces the origins of Nuba abuse and oppression, and delineates their uneasy and turbulent relationship with the Sudanese state.