What Does the Abyei Ruling Mean for the Missiriya?
Due to the Court of Arbitration decision in The Hague, around 1460 square kilometers which were inhabited by two clans of the Missiriya tribe (Mazaghna and Awlad Kamal), have become part of Abyei. This means if the people of Abyei decide in 2011 to be part of the south and vote in the referendum, as the most likely outcome of that referendum will be a southern vote for secession, the newly-drawn administrative boundary will shortly become an international frontier. This may make their journey south very difficult due to the history of violent conflict during the 20 years of north-south war.
Based on the decision of the Court of Arbitration on the disputed Abyei area between the National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan Liberation Movement (SPLM) I am analysing the impact of the decision on the two tribes in the region, namely the Dinka Ngok and Missiriya, taking into account the effect on their livelihoods and investigating how to overcome any negative impacts on inter-tribal relations and helping in sustaining peaceful co-existence between them.
1. For the Missiriya tribe the decision will affect their seasonal cattle movement north to south and south to north looking for pasture and water. Any disruption of the movement of livestock might create security problem in the area. This issue is considered to be life or death for the Missiyira tribe.
2. There is no water in the areas where the Missiriya have their three marahil (nomadic migration routes), east west and central. Water resources in the area are urgently needed to prevent them from going deep into the Dinka areas which cause clashes to occur between them and the locals or the SPLA in those areas. The best solution is to build three reservoirs, on those areas:
A – the valleys, before El Ragba EL Zarga water source.
B – in the central Missiriya area for settlers.
C – Water wells on their nomadic migration routes.
3. A third option is the establishment of villages to help the nomads to settle, and that will stop them from travelling the whole year north to south and south to north. In turn that will mean changing their life style and also lead to stability and a new methods of rearing livestock at a time of economic and social changes.
Among the Missiriya tribe, cattle have a great social value as well as an economic one. Cattle means the pride of the family or the clan, and to change those habits more education is needed. That can happen by building boarding schools in each of those villages to educate the new generation as the so called nomadic schools faces many difficulties and failed to have any impact on their life.
The needs for each village are as follows:
A- Primary school for each one
B- Secondary school for each two
C- Health Center for each
D- Veterinary centre for their animals.
E- Various administrative units, as needed and rural hospitals.
F- Solar Electricity
G- Technical and administrative unit to monitor the existing facilities in the village as sources of water and electricity.
Changing their life style require changes in their economic activities also and that can be done by helping them to cultivate their land so they can produce their food and other cash crops. The cost of building a village with all the facilities mentioned above is around US $ 11 millions. The cost of allowing the area sliding into violence is hundreds times higher, and will not only affect the area but will spread to the other neighboring regions, other part of north Kordofan, Nuba mountains, and Bahr el Ghazal.
To fund those settlements project, government and donors can contribute. The Sudanese government can pay through investing the 2% share of oil revenue, and it can also borrow against the stock of oil in these areas, to regenerate the area and help the people to overcome the negative affect of the oil exploration which played big role in destroying the environment. UN agencies including UNDP and UNICEF can also assist, along with other donor countries.
With the tension very high among the Missriyia tribe, the general mode among the majority of them is to fight on and not surrender to the court decision. They have called for a conference for all the tribe in September. The main reason of that conference is to help take a collective decision on how to deal with the court decision.
The NCP cannot afford to support any hardline position even if it totally agrees with it on fear of international condemnation including threats of more sanctions from the UN Security Council. At the end of the day, the NCP has to face itsconstituencies alone, and the alliance between Missiriya and the NCP at last may come to an end as many of the Missiriya now publicly blame the Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha, as he was the one who negotiated the Three Areas Protocol during the CPA negotiations.
Dear Hafiz,
I think there are lots of questions on whether or not this Court Arbitration decision should be taken as it is, and also whether your suggestions will resolve this complicated issue of the Missiriya.
Few years ago, no, actually in 1996, I was assigned with one of my colleagues, who happened to be from the Missiriya, to conduct a socio-economic assessment and to design some rural development program for a nomadic group in one of the Horn of Africa countries. The assignment was given by the local government of that country, and the situation was described as that, the government has just invested huge amounts of money to resettle the nomadic tribe and has established villages and prepared them with exactly the same items that you mentioned in your list of needs for each village.
Unfortunately, despite all these investments, the places remained as ghost villages with empty and unattended to fancy type of buildings, and the Nomads continued to live their lives and follow their traditional pastoralist routes, but staying away from these villages. Our role was to investigate what went wrong, and try to develop the best way for resettling the nomads so that they can benefit from the governmental development support and services.
Following a three month in depth study that involved living with and moving with the nomads, our recommendations, however, never emphasized the issue of the resettlement and actually called for a different type of action and strategy.
I do not want to get into the details of that specific case study, however, I would like to emphasize that the issue of transmigrant nomads goes beyond what we can provide them at a village level.
There are multitudes of elements that actually keep the nomads moving and contribute to defining them as non-sedentary groups, and which emerge from the very nature of their livelihoods, skills, experiences, and cultural and social settings. I am not really comfortable or confident that our political agenda and forced status quo should imply for us to try that type of involuntary settlement of a nomad group despite of all the realities of their lives and their real and basic needs to be mobile. It is also commonly believed that the resettlement process often reduces the traditional spatial mobility of the nomad’s herds, increasing the potential for overgrazing and rangeland degradation and the eventual compromise of the animal wealth.
Changing a traditionally cattle herders tribe into a sedentary farming one, is a very daring and bold suggestion in my view, which surpasses and tried to erase all the cultural and the social heritage of the Missiriya and their own perceived pride of the type of their living, just for the sake of protecting that one-of-a-type court decision.
These are peoples’ lives and history and future we are discussing , and not just “matters” to be resolved and messed with that or this way. We had to bitterly accept, in the past, the colonial boundaries and their protection under the false pretexts of the sovereign “nation state”, that are actually falling apart now, as something imposed on us during the colonial periods, and we need to question ourselves simply why we need to accept such a practice now? Is it for the sake of globalization and the Great Almighty international community’s sake? Is it for the sake of globalization and the Great Almighty international community’s sake? I think here is one basic lesson we should have learnt reagrding the main reasons behind the disintegration of the nation states that simply does not take into account the unique identities and specific needs of their constituents and tries to repress them by one way or another under their false national umbrellas. It is the same sad story whether you talk about Africa or the Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia for that sake.
Dear Ahmed
The court of Arbitration decision is a fact which we have to deal with whether we agree with it or not.
I know there are no black and white answers which might resolve this issue, but we have to find away to deal with it so we can sustain peaceful co-existence in the area.
I am not suggesting forcing the nomads to settle because that will not succeed, but convince them that are the best option they have. Not just due to the Court decision but there are numbers of other factors which need them to adapt to.
Instead of having cattle herding as away of life why not changing it to industry so it can grow vertically to face the future challenges which might make their current way impossible, that just in the long term.
The main question which I am trying to find answer to is why the Messriyia have to do or to come out with in their conference next month is not to go for all confrontation, and one will not where that end, the NCP will not publicly support that move as they are behind the three areas protocol and also accepted to refer that case to the Court, and they don’t want to be seen as spoilers by the international community.
Something urgent need to be done to avoid any potential violent clashes in the area.
The UNDP and other organisations carried numbers of researches on the issue of settling the normad, but to make that attractive to them you have to bring investment to the areas, so they can see the benefit of that.