Border Pastoralism in Eastern Sudan

Bibliographic Data

ID4492021
AuthorsJohnathan B Bascom, Johnathan Bascom (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume80
Issue4
Pages416
Publication date1990-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/215850
OpenAlexW2042703032
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited6

The eastern region of Sudan has attracted large numbers of pastoralists who are refugees from the ongoing civil war in Eritrea. One consequence of their resettlement is intensified conflict over land rights along the Ethiopian border. Data, based on fieldwork in 1987 and 1988, indicate that herds are being depleted and that pastoralism is threatened as a way of life. THE Sahelian belt of Sudan, which stretches across the entire central portion of the country, has been the predominant home for its pastoral cattle herders. During the last twenty-three years, more than half a million refugees, fleeing the protracted conflict in neighboring Eritrea, have crossed the Sudanese border and resettled throughout eastern Sudan (Fig. 1). Many of the refugees have brought livestock with them. A recent report concluded that refugees own at least 20 percent of all livestock in the area east and south of Gedaref (World Bank 1988). Their arrival, coupled with the widespread expansion of mechanized agriculture in the same region, has intensified conflict over land resources, especially along the border. This article examines the factors that are bringing refugee cattle herds to the point of extinction and thereby are jeopardizing pastoralism as a way of life for Eritrean refugees. It is based largely on a case study conducted at the Sudanese border village of Wad el Hileau. During seven months of fieldwork in 1987 and 1988, I obtained oral histories from several pastoral sheiks, conducted herd-management studies for fifty pastoral households, and interviewed relevant members of the institutional hierarchy outside the immediate field site. The first section of the article highlights the production logic among pastoralists before they left Eritrea, to illuminate the sweeping changes that have occurred during their exile in Sudan. Next, the article defines the migratory route of refugee herdsmen and identifies the principal market location for their cattle. The third section details specific pressures that force refugees to exchange their cattle for cash and thus precipitate the depreciation of their herds. I conclude by arguing that the demise of cattle herds can be attributed to immediate factors, including the dwindling amount of rangeland and the transformation of grazing rights into a scarce economic commodity, but that these factors reflect larger structural pressures. PASTORAL PRODUCTION LOGIC AND FLIGHT TO SUDAN The Beni Amer and the Maria are the main ethnic groups that have been forced to shift their grazing areas to eastern Sudan from the western lowlands * I thank Hamid Ahmed el Amin for his aid during fieldwork and Michael McNulty and Abdi Samatar for assistance at various stages in this research. * DR. BASCOM is an assistant professor of geography at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina 27858-4353. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:31:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PASTORALISM IN EASTERN SUDAN FIG. 1-Border region of Ethiopia and eastern Sudan. of Eritrea. For more than four and one-half centuries their cattle, ranging back and forth on well-established trek routes, moved as far east as the Keren foothills in subik, the late, dry season, and then westward onto the lowlands after sagim, the rainy season. The Maria have grazed their cattle closer to the Keren foothills, and the Beni Amer have grazed their herds in the area directly adjacent to, but west of, the Maria (Fig. 2). The western third of Beni Amer territory falls within Sudan. The last official census in Eritrea, more than thirty years ago, estimated that eighty thousand Beni Amer and forty-three thousand Maria were living in the western lowlands (Trevaskis 1960, 132). As is common in pastoral societies, cattle served as the nucleus of their nomadic lifestyle. Milk and its by-products were central to their diet, and cattle conferred political position, power, and prestige on their owners. Household heads made it their life objective to develop a perfect-sized herd of at least one hundred head. Cattle also served as the principal commodity for intrasocietal exchange: for example, seven mature cows constituted a bride price, and a cow was bestowed on each son at his naming ceremony and at his circumcision. Maria and Beni Amer sources insist that, in Eritrea, sale of a single cow was sufficient under ordinary conditions to fund annual cash expenditures. The Maria sold their cattle in the livestock markets of Agordat, Keren, oAsmara; the Beni Amer sold gelded males for oxen in Kassala (Shack 1974; Previous research suggests an annual growth rate of 5 percent for cattle herds in the Sahelian belt (Abia 1986, 27). This rate is reflected in the preflighr herd sizes collected from the sample population: an average of eightv-nine head for Maria herds and sixty head for Beni Amer herd;. 417 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:31:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW FIG. 2-Highland and lowland regions of Eritrea. Nomadic lifestyles required minimal cash expenditures. Two factors specifically reduced the demands for cash among the Maria and the Beni Amer. The first was cultivation of sorghum and millet on small plots of land. Interviewed households reported that, in Eritrea, the average size of their holdings was eleven feddans (one feddan equals 0.42 hectares); except in a year of extreme drought, these subsistence plots supplied the grain needs for pastoral households. Second, minimal taxes were collected from lowland pastoralists during two successive periods of foreign administration. Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1890 to 1941, but the exercise of Italian control was markedly uneven. In the highlands, the Italians removed the endas, heads of active clan-groups, to minimize security risks, and appointed in their place new, salaried chiefs, or meslenie, to govern each district. In the lowlands, however, the Italians designated tribal areas rather than districts. Each tribal headman or sheik was given a rank, a salary, and the principal responsibility of collecting tribute. During the Italian era tribute was limited to three pence per head each year (Longrigg 1974, 135). The colonial venture of the Italians ended during World War II, and their British successors likewise gave only peripheral attention to the lowland area, as was evidenced 418 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:31:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PASTORALISM IN EASTERN SUDAN by the minimal yearly tax of one shilling, three pence (Trevaskis 1960, 44). The imprint of colonialism had a far more definitive effect on highlanders than on pastoralists in the lowlands; that, in turn, allowed the Beni Amer and the Maria to maintain a largely self-sufficient economy and a logic of accumulating cattle, not cash. The way of life for the Beni Amer and the Maria changed rapidly and profoundly in the late 1960s with the outbreak of civil war. In 1950, the General Assembly of the United Nations resolved that Eritrea should constitute an autonomous unit federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian crown. That delicate federation broke within a decade of amalgamation. An Eritrean resistance movement had concentrated in the western lowlands, and in 1967 Emperor Haile Selassie launched a retaliatory offensive. Ethiopian troops devastated the countryside surrounding the towns of Agordat and Barentu as well as the larger Beni Amer and Maria homelands by burning villages and crops to the ground, slaughtering livestock, and poisoning well water. This campaign drove an estimated twenty-five thousand Eritreans into Sudan, approximately two thousand of whom settled in the village of Wad el Hileau. The village sheik, Omda Ali Awad Ajil, recalls receiving many of them in my own houses and giving them dura [sorghum] ... not by my choice but I was obligated to receive them because they were neighbors and Muslims (Bascom 1989, 55). Establishing themselves along the southwestern rim of the village, the Beni Amer and the Maria refugees optimized their access to the Setit River for watering livestock and minimized movement of their cattle herds through the village. Pastoralists continued to resettle in Wad el Hileau throughout the 1970s and 1980s as the conflict spread throughout Eritrea. Today, 65 percent of the population at Wad el Hileau consists of refugees, nearly two thousand of whom are Beni Amer or Maria. The latter group constitutes the largest concentration of Maria anywhere in eastern Sudan. Several factors account for the popularity of Wad el Hileau as a site for refugee resettlement, but the most important is its location only fifty kilometers west of the Ethiopian border, directly opposite the north-south boundary of Eritrea and Ethiopia and on one of the three main roads entering Sudan from Eritrea. Some 90 percent of the refugees came directly to Wad el Hileau from their homeland. Approximately 43 percent of the refugees interviewed chose to settle in Wad el Hileau because of its proximity to Eritrea; 19 percent because it offered the opportunity to join relatives; 17 percent for the services and familiar environment; and 21 percent for other

Ancient history · Geography · Livestock · Pastoralism · African history and culture analysis · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Forestry · History · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

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