South Sudan: Poor Gambella! So Far From Addis Ababa, So Close to South Sudan
By William Davison, 25 April 2014
An influx of South Sudanese Nuer into Gambella in Ethiopia could destabilise
the region, but the impact on long-term development is likely to be more
significant.
Gambella, Ethiopia:
It's a wild ride returning from rebel-held territory in South Sudan to the
region of Gambella in western Ethiopia. Bush fires dot the plains, with
flames from the largest edging dangerously onto the road. A Nile crocodile
scuttles between swamps. As our truck clatters towards them, families of
antelope freeze before prancing into grasslands.
These are white-eared kob, around half a million of which leave the Sudd
wetlands of South Sudan and travel a hundred kilometers across open country
to graze in Gambella before seasonal rains come in July.
This year, alongside what is believed to be Africa's second-largest annual
animal migration, humans are also moving east and en masse across these
porous borders.
After over half a century of frequent war and displacement, a new conflict
has broken out in recently independent South Sudan, leading to a further
wave of migration of ethnic Nuer people to Ethiopia. So far, in four months
of fighting between the government and the primarily Nuer rebels, over
90,000 people have sought refuge in Gambella at makeshift camps. More than
70,000 refugees were already present after fleeing violence during South
Sudan's war for independence and, more recently, ethnic strife in Jonglei
state.
For Gambella - part of Ethiopia's low-lying hinterland, historically,
economically, and ethnically apart from the temperate highlands - the
conflict and the influx look likely to prolong its stagnation. Due to the
war, plans to construct highways, oil refineries and railways linking South
Sudan and Ethiopia will be delayed, and with them Gambella's chances of
becoming more closely integrated into the region's economy. Instead, as in
decades past, the cross-border traffic will continue to be aid workers,
essential goods, refugees, and rebels.
Support for Machar
The Nuer have been migrating to Gambella for over a century, with the trend
accelerated by civil war in southern Sudan. They are mostly members of the
Jikany sub-group and have become the Gambella's most populous ethnic group.
Most of the community seem to support the objective of South Sudan's former
vice-president Riek Machar, a Nuer, whose rebel forces are currently at war
with those of President Salva Kiir, a Dinka.
The two politicians have long been rivals and in December, a power struggle
between the two spilled over into clashes between soldiers supporting one or
the other. The conflict quickly spread and became deeply polarised as
civilians were targeted based on their ethnicities. People in Gambella are
furious with Kiir for the killings of Nuer in Juba, while many have
relatives now sheltering in the UN's compounds in South Sudan.
"The government here is not happy with what happened in Juba," says one
local close to security issues, referring to the Nuer officials who run
Gambella's regional administration. "They are on the side of the Nuer
opposition, but they don't show it."
The local politicians hide their views because it would put them at odds
with Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa, which is striving to be an
impartial mediator in the conflict. The reality, however, is that Gambella
is an obvious meeting point for Nuer rebels.
Ties that bind
A journey to Nasir, a stronghold of the rebellion just over the border in
South Sudan, involves a three-hour drive from Gambella town to the crossing
point of Burbiey on the Baro river, which flows into the Sobat, a tributary
of the White Nile. The only official that stops our vehicle is a tall,
well-spoken Gambella National Park guard asking if our purpose is to view
the migrating antelope and other wildlife.
At the entrance to Burbiey, regional police, both Nuer, wave us through a
checkpoint with a rope slumped across the road. Minutes after arriving at
the collection of huts and souks milling with migrants and traders, we
shuffle down a steep muddy bank onto a boat that ferries us across the Baro
into South Sudan. Armed men with looted pick-up trucks wait at the bank to
take us to Nasir. There are no border officials in sight.
The existence of this passage is no secret. Machar's delegates at
negotiations in Addis Ababa openly invite journalists to visit Nuer
territory in Upper Nile and Jonglei states, and friendly Gambella officials
are informed to ensure journeys through the region go smoothly.
However, reporters aren't the only ones travelling. On our way to Nasir, we
were accompanied by a former gender officer in the Upper Nile government and
an ex-administrator of Juba airport who are looking to take up civilian
roles in rebel areas.
Other Nuer with strong Ethiopian ties were already there. For example,
flanking the commander of Nasir County's militia was Nhial Tuach Riek. Riek
obtained a biology degree from Gondar University in northern Ethiopia yet
returned home to fight for his people. A man whose previous job was in the
agriculture office of Gambella's regional government assists the rebel
acting commissioner of Nasir County.
History repeating, almost
Despite Gambella's tacit support for the current cause, it is playing a less
prominent part in the war across the border than in the 1980s, when the
south's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was fighting a war against the
Sudanese government in Khartoum. At this time, Sudan was supporting Eritrean
rebels who were fighting Ethiopian troops, and Ethiopia was helping arm the
SPLA. Cold War proxy politics also featured: the Soviet Union allied with
socialist Ethiopia, while the US, which had interests in Sudan after Chevron
struck oil, backed Khartoum.
Part of Ethiopia's support for the SPLA was in allowing it to set up bases
in Gambella. Here, the Sudanese rebels recruited and trained tens of
thousands of young men from refugee camps. The forces, including many Dinka,
stole cattle, looted grain, and fought with Anuak and Nuer. And in Itang, 50
km west of Gambella town, people stopped growing food out of fear of the
SPLA, according to Obang Ojud Ogera, a 70-year-old Anuak member of Gambella
state council.
Given this past experience, officials more recently had to persuade locals
that the new influx from South Sudan wouldn't pose a similar threat. "The
problems caused by the SPLA were in their mind," says Ogera.
Additionally, this time around, Ethiopia's neutrality in South Sudan's
conflict and a beefy internal security apparatus make a re-run of Gambella
as a rebel base unthinkable, says the security officer who wished to remain
anonymous.
Delayed development
Indeed, in the long-term, it seems the immediate security implications of
the conflict in South Sudan will not be as damaging as the effect on the
region's already stunted development.
Gambella, which had been home to the Anuak people for two centuries, became
part of modern Ethiopia at the end of the 19th century. From 1902, the
British ran the town as a bustling port for its colony in Sudan. When Sudan
achieved independence in 1956, Gambella returned to Ethiopian
administration.
In 1969, during the first Sudanese civil war (1955 to 1972), a group of
separatists called the Anyanya formed with the aiming of creating a nation
out of all Nilotic people, including Anuak and Nuer from Gambella. But
according to the historian Dereje Feyissa, there was no local political
power over which to battle.
In the next decade, the SPLA dominated the region. Also significant was the
arrival of tens of thousands of settlers, some trucked from the north where
drought and civil war had led to famine. Many of these highlanders now run
restaurants, bars, hotels, taxis and garages in Gambella town to the almost
total exclusion of Nuer and Anuak business owners.
After allied rebels overthrew a national socialist regime in 1991, a
constitutional system of ethnic-based federalism emerged that protected
minorities' culture and language. Yet, although it granted Anuak and Nuer
local political power, the promise of the change remains unfulfilled.
Patching over problems
There are no barges full of coffee or ivory flowing to the Nile these days.
But below the bridge spanning the Baro, near the remains of the port, aid
agencies' Toyota Land Cruisers are bathed alongside locals. The town is
humming as the centre of a major humanitarian operation for South Sudanese
refugees. Hotels are block-booked for weeks by United Nations agencies.
Street-side noticeboards are full of advertised positions at international
NGOs, along with the usual government jobs. Additech, an electrical services
firm, is the only private business advertising a vacancy.
Emergency relief, now again dominating aid programmes in Gambella, is the
least progressive type of assistance as there is no attempt to tool people
to help themselves, says one charity boss. Gambella, tied intimately to
volatile South Sudan, is "often considered at a standstill in terms of
development," he says.
The transient boost to the local economy comes as Addis Ababa's latest
attempts to advance Gambella flounder. The region was promoted as a key part
of a commercial farming push because its sparse population left masses of
fertile bush to be developed. But the 5-year-old attempts of one
high-profile Indian investor, Karuturi Global, to farm 100,000 hectares are
in disarray after the company discovered four-fifths of its plot was in a
floodplain. A 10,000-hectare rice project backed by Ethiopia's largest
foreign investor, billionaire Mohammed al-Amoudi, has also slowed. And while
Saudi Star was given the right to water from the socialist-era dam on the
Alwero river in years ago, it is cultivating on just 250 hectares as it has
not completed the irrigation canal begun by engineers from the Soviet Union.
Attempts at social engineering appear similarly unsuccessful. In 2010, the
government launched an attempt to cluster scattered settlements in Gambella,
arguing that service provision would be more cost-efficient. While
bureaucrats claim success in overseeing the voluntary relocation of almost
the entire rural population, it seems to have largely failed as settlers
returned to their original homes when promised school and clinics weren't
built.
Currently the influx of Nuer into Gambella is being treated as a
humanitarian emergency, but it may have longer-term political ramifications
for the area. For decades Anuak people have felt marginalised by the influx
of Nuer and highlanders, says Feyissa. The current Nuer movement may renew
tensions if Anuak believe they're here to stay, further altering the area's
demographics in their rival's favour, he suggests.
"The refugee phenomenon has been a central part of regional politics since
the 1960s, to the extent it has radically changed regional democracy," he
says. "The Anuak think they're the main indigenous group but because of the
continued influx of Nuer refuges it affects the power balance."
Integrated disaster
The masses of white-eared kob dodging our truck on the road to South Sudan
are an indicator of Gambella's rich potential. Elephant and giraffe also
live among vast stretches of savannah, forest and swamp, far from any of the
state's few roads. Stability and political support for an integrated
development plan could turn Gambella into a thriving region, experts
believe. If done properly, local communities could benefit while the
potential for tourism and farming is tapped without disrupting the
ecosystem.
But the current instability is also a blow to big-ticket regional
infrastructure schemes. At the time of South Sudan's independence in 2011,
Harry Verhoeven, a researcher at Oxford University, described the potential
for economic integration between the new nation and Ethiopia. He suggested
that Gambella could soon be connected by road to South Sudan's three eastern
states. "Over the long term, there is the potential for a deal with Ethiopia
which could export cheap power to an electricity-starved South Sudan in
exchange for continued oil supplies," he wrote.
However, the latest crisis is a "disaster" for this potential integration,
Verhoeven now says. And Gambella's appeal to agricultural investors is also
likely to wane. "The results so far are not great and the regional
instability is certainly not going to lead to an increase of investment and
investor attention in Gambella," he says.
For further reading around the subject see:
A Child's Tale: Victims of South Sudan's Conflict Aiding and Abetting: UK
and US Complicity in Ethiopia's Mass Displacement Ethiopia: Business as
Usual
William Davison is a freelance journalist who has been based in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia since 2008. William focuses on business and politics and is a
regular correspondent for Bloomberg News and the Christian Science Monitor.
Follow him on twitter _at_wdavison10.