The Origins of Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Politics and Violence in Darfur, Oromia, and the Tana Delta

284 Pages·2019·3.89 MB·English

by  Tsega Etefa

AFRICAN HISTORIES
AND MODERNITIES
The Origins of Ethnic
Conflict in Africa
Politics and Violence in Darfur,
Oromia, and the Tana Delta
Tsega Etefa
African Histories and Modernities
Series Editors
Toyin Falola
University of Texas
Austin, TX, USA
Matthew M. Heaton
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, USA
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to
and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a par-
ticular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute
the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in ori-
gin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades.
Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the
series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on an
important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in
which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While priv-
ileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series will
also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the historical and the
contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing understand-
ings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect the way we
think about African and global histories.
Editorial Board
Akintunde Akinyemi, Literature, University of Florida, Gainesville
Malami Buba, African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies,
Yongin, South Korea
Emmanuel Mbah, History, CUNY, College of Staten Island
Insa Nolte, History, University of Birmingham
Shadrack Wanjala Nasong’o, International Studies, Rhodes College
Samuel Oloruntoba, Political Science, TMALI, University of South
Africa
Bridget Teboh, History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14758
Tsega Etefa
The Origins of Ethnic
Conflict in Africa
Politics and Violence in Darfur, Oromia,
and the Tana Delta
Tsega Etefa
Colgate University
Hamilton, NY, USA
African Histories and Modernities
ISBN 978-3-030-10539-6 ISBN 978-3-030-10540-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10540-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018966126
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: © Brain light/Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Nathan
P a
reface and cknowledgements
The idea of this book goes back to 2003, when I was a doctoral can-
didate at the University of Hamburg in Germany. At the time, I was
studying ethnic relations and the indigenous mechanisms of conflict
transformation in northwestern Ethiopia along the border with Sudan.
With the escalation of the Darfur conflict during that year, I observed
parallels between the root causes of the conflicts in northwestern
Ethiopia and in Darfur, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. I realized that
the decline of indigenous dispute-solving mechanisms due to govern-
ment manipulation was a key factor in the collapse of law and order in
Darfur. Both Darfur and Ethiopia’s northwestern border regions were
remote, on the periphery of their states, and neglected and marginalized
for years by the central government.
While the ethnic groups in northwestern Ethiopia suffered consider-
ably from marginalization, their grassroots dispute-solving mechanisms
helped to form strong solidarity in the face of adversity. But govern-
ment manipulation had contributed to those mechanisms’ inability to
manage local disputes. In Darfur, the indigenous mechanism had been
widely popular and respected until government intervention and manip-
ulation, mainly beginning the 1980s. Thereafter, the mechanisms lost
many of their traditional functions, which significantly contributed to
armed violence in the 1980s and 1990s. Analyzing the main historical
causes for the decline of the role of indigenous mechanisms is crucial to
understanding the Darfur crisis as well as ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia and
beyond.
vii
viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Contact with scholars who work on Darfur gave me additional impe-
tus for this project. I gained a new perspective from reading a draft chap-
ter on the Darfur crisis by Professor Nelson Kasfir (Dartmouth College)
in 2005. Also, contact with Professor Rex Sean O’Fahey (Bergen
University), an authority on the Darfur sultanate, further encouraged
me to explore the historical causes of the crisis in Darfur and its parallels
with Ethiopia. During his visit to the Asian and African Institute of the
University of Hamburg in 2005, Professor O’Fahey gave an insightful
talk on the Darfur crisis. The audience was stunned when he stated that
the Darfur crisis will not end anytime soon. Indeed, over a decade later
since his talk, Darfur is still in crisis! Professor O’Fahey gave me the arti-
cle on his talk and more information after he returned to Norway.
The following year (2006), during my job interview with the Colgate
University history department faculty, I presented my work on north-
western Ethiopia and fielded questions on the region’s similarities with
Darfur as well as suggestions to conduct more work comparing the two
regions. After joining the department, my chair, Professor Kira Stevens,
strongly recommended that I develop a new course on Darfur. Since
spring 2008, Darfur in Historical Perspective has become one of the
department’s popular courses. I continue to offer it regularly and, fur-
ther reading, combined with discussions with my students, have deep-
ened understanding of the root causes and the parallels with Ethiopia.
That led me to prepare talks on Darfur: one at Colgate University’s
Social Science Brown Bag (2008) and two at New York African Studies
Association Annual Meetings, at Syracuse (2009) and Binghamton
universities (2010), where I received helpful feedback. I am, there-
fore, very grateful to Professor Kira Stevens, and my other Colgate col-
leagues, especially Professors Ray Douglas, Graham Hodges, and Brian
Moore, for their great interest in my work, consistent encouragement,
comments, and assistance in attaining funding sources. Many thanks to
Professors Xan Karn and Monica Mercado for arranging my talk in the
History Conversation Series where I received helpful feedback. I am very
grateful to Professor Rick Braaten for facilitating Picker and discretion-
ary Colgate University research grants. I am also grateful to my students,
especially my research assistant Matt Reyes-Guerra-Dunn, Class of 2015,
whose comments as well as source identification have been very useful.
Through a decade of work (1996–2006) studying Ethiopia’s north-
western frontier, I developed significant relationships with inhabitants.
Members of the Oromo, Gumuz, and all other ethnic groups had good
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
working relationships, tolerance, and willingness to find solutions to
problems, as I detailed in Inter-Ethnic Relations on a Frontier: Mätäkkäl
(Ethiopia), 1898–1991 (2006). That work ends at 1991, and significant
changes with Ethiopia’s federalism occurred afterward, which initiated
uneasy relations. Longtime friends, and even relatives with mixed eth-
nic backgrounds, started suspecting each other. Real or imagined past
issues resurfaced, leading to unprecedented characterization of one
against another. Politicians used the opportunity to prey on ethnic fears,
leading to unparalleled armed violence. The surprise Gumuz attack on
the Oromo villages in the 1990s, and especially in 2007 and 2008, in
the area to the south of the Blue Nile River was the result of political
manipulation.
At the same time, while I was working on the history of Oromo–
Pokomo relations in nineteenth-century Kenya for another book,
Integration and Peace in East Africa: A History of the Oromo Nation
(2012), deadly clashes took place between these two ethnic groups in
2007. I briefly talked about relations between the Oromo (specifically
the Orma branch) and Pokomo in the Tana Delta during the nineteenth
century, particularly how they tolerated each other and lived together. As
with Darfur and Ethiopia, I was deeply saddened to hear of the brutal
revenge killings between the Orma and Pokomo that took place inter-
mittently up to 2013—longtime friends and neighbors killed each other,
incited by external factors. I was also frustrated to read misrepresenta-
tions of the history of these two otherwise peaceful groups. Most major
news outlets—and some scholars—characterized the violence as a contin-
uation of “a long history of conflict,” while ignoring their peaceful rela-
tionships. In fact, the Oromo and Pokomo had developed mechanisms
to handle resource-related disputes and, as a result, have a long history of
peace. Rather, their conflicts stem from national political factors.
Thus, I have identified striking parallels in the root causes of the
conflicts in all three of these peripheral regions in Sudan, Ethiopia, and
Kenya including ethnic manipulation, chronic neglect and marginaliza-
tion, land grabbing, arms smuggling, government relying on militias,
underdevelopment, and lack of basic infrastructure—all boiling down
to political grievances. I realized that much work needs to be done to
establish the historic causes of these disputes, and to assess the impact of
outside intervention between the contending parties. Hence, the birth of
the present book!
x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people contributed to bring this book to fruition. I kept busy
Colgate University librarians Ann Ackerson and Mike Poulin—who facil-
itated access to colonial British confidential prints, including Foreign and
War Office primary documents. Librarians at the Library of Congress,
Institute of Ethiopian Studies & Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies
(Addis Ababa University), Columbia University, Lehman College (New
York), Schomburg Center (New York), New York Public Library, and
Durham University (England) were very helpful. Professor Jay Spaulding
(Kean University) read some sections of Chapter 2, while Rebecca
Downing (Colgate University) and Professor Stephen Orvis (Hamilton
College) read all chapters. Professors Susan Thomson and Jon Hyslop
(Colgate University) provided useful suggestions.
I am grateful to Professor Hilarie Kelly (University of La Verne) for
useful comments on the main causes of the Orma and Pokomo clashes
as well as source information. I am also grateful to my fieldwork assis-
tant in Ethiopia, Gelata Getahun, who gathered significant materi-
als from victims and inhabitants in the conflict zone along the Oromia
and Benishangul-Gumuz state borders (July 2015). Joe Stoll (Syracuse
University) developed the maps. Additionally, Dr. Ambissa Kenea sent
me useful sources from Addis Ababa University and accompanied me
during research visit (June 2018). I am also very grateful to editors
Megan Laddusaw and Christine Pardue (Palgrave Macmillan) and the
reviewers. I would also like to thank again my former doctoral supervi-
sors Professors Siegbert Uhlig and Bairu Tafla. My brothers, Oluma and
Girma, facilitated fieldwork in the study area. I also extend my gratitude
to my wife Laly, daughter, Sena, and son, Nathan, who all endured my
absences.
Hamilton, USA Tsega Etefa