Conflict and social change on the south-west Ethiopian frontier: an analysis of Suri society

Abstract

This article examines changing configurations of regional conflict in south-west Ethiopia around the Suri people, a “beleaguered” ethnic group of about 24–25,000 people living on the Sudanese–Ethiopian border. The question will be asked around why the Suri, a small agro-pastoral people at the margins of state power centres, failed to develop solutions to growing problems of group conflict, challenges of state policy, the spread of small arms (since the late 1980s), and the lack of forming new local alliances with neighbouring groups. Social and cultural effects of violence are fragmenting Suri society and their regional position is weakened, in contrast to, for instance, the Nyangatom or Anywaa, neighbouring ethnic groups of comparable size, but who are more successful in the ethno-federal political structure of post-1991 Ethiopia. In addition, while the Suri are affected by new globalizing influences like tourism and evangelical Christianity, there is only a very slow movement towards, respectively, more inclusive identification – e.g., by religious conversion – or through the incorporation of new elements into their mode of life. The reasons for the present crisis of Suri society, which is partly one of livelihoods decline, failing identification and insecurity about the future, will be explored and the conditions of inter-ethnic instability in the region described. The role of the Ethiopian state as a political model largely incapable of accommodating difference and diversity will also be discussed in assessing the “fate” of smaller ethnic groups such as the Suri in politico-economically marginal zones with high levels of insecurity.

Keywords:

• conflict
• agropastoralism
• ethnic relations
• Suri people
• group alliances
• violence

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to friends and informants in the Maji area, Ethiopia, for their cooperation and tolerance during my field visits among them (intermittently in 1991–9), and for subsequent information during visits to Ethiopia from 2000 to 2007. I wish to thank the two Journal of Eastern African Studies referees as well as participants at the conference on “Changing Identifications and Alliances in East Africa” (18–20 March 2002 at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/Saale, Germany), for their critical questions and remarks on a first version of this paper. Any remaining flaws are obviously my own.

Notes

1. Or “Surma,” as they are often called by outsiders, including the Dizi. I have treated other aspects of Suri society in various other papers (see list of references).

2. Data for this paper comes from fieldwork in the Suri area (1991–9), interviews in Addis Ababa during research visits in 2000–7, and correspondence with friends in Ethiopia.

3. For a useful survey of core issues, see Nagengast, “Violence, Terror, and the Crisis of the State.”

4. James et al., Remapping Ethiopia; Turton, Ethnic Federalism.

5. Abbink, “New Configurations.”

6. Abbink, “Violence and the Crisis of Conciliation.” Idem, “Ethnicity and Conflict Generation.”

7. Fukui, “Cattle Colour Symbolism.”

8. Abbink, “Violence and the Crisis of Conciliation”; Tronvoll, “Voting, Violence and Violations”; Young, “Along Ethiopia's Western Frontier.”

9. This awaits more investigation and evaluation in a comprehensive, critical manner, despite the spate of papers and articles published in recent years. The emphasis in most work has largely been on the formal political developments and policies, not on their effects on, and “appropriations” by, the common people.

10. For an excellent historical discussion, see Kuper, Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account.

11. Markakis, Resource Conflict; Homer-Dixon, The Environment, Scarcity, and Violence.

12. There is a growing body of literature on this theme, but a systematic theory linking psychological, social-structural and cognitive aspects is still underdeveloped. For a very interesting study, see Miller, Humiliation. For an approach applied to (post)modern industrial-bureaucratic societies, see Margalit, The Decent Society.

13. For a pioneering study on the effects of stigma, see Goffman, Stigma. Also, Abbink, “Of Snakes and Cattle.”

14. This is not to say that people who are “humiliated” are always right in the factual or moral sense; we are analysing the social fact of people reacting in such terms to intensifying contacts, challenges, conflict, and hegemonic state policies.

15. Garretson, “Vicious Cycles.”

16. The Suri regularly hunt in the nearby Omo National Park (buffalo, hartebeest, giraffe, antelopes; some species, such as elephant and rhino, have disappeared). Neighbouring people like the Nyangatom and Dizi (who also hunt) say the Suri have a very exploitative attitude towards game.

17. The term “culture,” as it is made relevant in the local discourse on group relations and enmity in the Maji area, refers here to nothing but the socially constructed and inherited repertoires of behavioural difference – in lifestyle, cognition, and values of honour, identity, or dignity – between human groups. (Locally, in Amharic, people talk of dänb, not bahil. Dänb means “the rules,” “the customary ways of doing things”; bahil is song, dance, theatre, etc.: the non-problematic, folkloristic culture).

18. Including the giving of coded warnings before an impending cattle raid, no burning of pasture, no poisoning of wells, no killing of cattle, no raping and killing of women.

19. Anywaa were not “traditional enemies” of the Suri in the past. Incidents with the Anywaa have occurred over approximately 15 to 18 years in gold panning places at the northern fringe of the Suri area and also in Dima, a new frontier town on the Akobo River, where much of the gold is sold to traders. Since 2000 the town is part of the Gambela Regional State, where mostly Anywaa used to control the administration. In Dima, visiting Suri are frequently robbed of their gold and money. Anywaa, because of their alleged “deviousness,” came to be seen by many Suri as their main enemy.

20. According to Bender, both languages are part of the East Nilotic branch within the East Sudanic subfamily of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Bender, “Nilo-Saharan,” 46.

21. The original, rather fluid, border between Nyangatom and Suri ran from below Mt Shulugui to the Omo River up to Kara country. For about the last ten years it has run from Mt Rongodò to the Dirga Hills, just south-west of the Omo River bend near the Mursi area (see Figure 1). The Suri have also lost virtually all of their old transhumance pastures in Sudanese territory.

22. Informant: Philemon Nakali, a Nyangatom administrator, interviewed in Addis Ababa on February 2, 2006.

23. Not only Dizi but also the Me'en have been victim of Suri raids, especially after the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime undertook a major effort to disarm them. Me'en are seen locally as the best fighters. In late 2000 the Me'en in the Gesha and Kella areas had had enough of Suri attacks and ambushes and staged a carefully planned and well-organized retaliatory raid, whereby they took about 5000 Suri cattle in one of the largest raids ever seen in the area. Some months later the Suri randomly attacked the Me'en area, killing 34 people, burning down 165 houses and taking away some cattle (interview with Guldu Tsedeke, Addis Ababa, 20 May 2000). The Me'en by that time were hampered by lack of weapons and ammunition. Government intervention or mediation failed. Only the Me'en were targeted for disarmament afterwards, and according to stories from eye witnesses (interview, Addis Ababa, October 14, 2001) it was carried out in a ruthless manner, with several adult men shot before the eyes of their children.

24. A record kept of violent incidents with dead or wounded for the years 1990–2007 has at least one violent incident per month between either Suri, Dizi, Me'en, Nyangatom, Anywaa or highland villagers. I estimate the number of casualties in these years to be at least 1300, most of them Dizi. The total 2007 population of these groups combined was estimated at about 190,000.

25. The Derg military government confiscated all their arms, and the EPRDF regime only allows some militia to carry (registered) weapons. These are also of a lesser quality or older types. In contrast to the Suri, the Dizi are easily checked on the possession of arms. See also note 15 above.

26. Abbink “Restoring the Balance.”

27. A report on the plight of the Dizi, written very much from their point of view and to be read very cautiously, is that of Addis Ababa University sociologist Abeje Berhanu, The Dizi People. See also Abbink, “Ethnic Conflict in the ‘Tribal’ Zone.”

28. Interview with Ato Adiburji Adikyaz, June 1998, Adikyaz village. I owe many valuable insights to Ato Adiburji, a Dizi chief and a very perceptive and wise man with whom I had many conversations in 1991–8.

29. One notorious incident occurred in 1986 when the Maji administrator, a Derg army officer, invited a number of Suri men to a meeting in Maji to resolve a case of cattle raiding. When they were gathered, he had them tied up and shot. A number of them died, the others escaped. Suri took revenge a year later with attacks on people on the roads near Maji, where a number of people were killed.

30. Abbink, “Violence and the Crisis of Conciliation.”

31. Elwert et al., Dynamics of Violence; Hutchinson, Nuer Diliemmas; Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?”

32. Abbink, “Culture Slipping Away.”

33. Group interview with Suri men at Tulgi, November 29, 1999. Also, Abbink, “Culture Slipping Away.”

34. Abbink, “Restoring the Balance,” 84–5, 94.

35. As told by Mike Bryant, SIL language researcher among the Suri (Addis Ababa, February 5, 2004), and as noted in several cases during fieldwork or heard in subsequent interviews with Suri men in Addis Ababa in 2006 and 2007.

36. Chisholm, “Death, Hope and Sex.” For a revealing analysis of similar dramatic changes in Nuer society, see Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas, and Hutchinson, “A Curse from God.”

37. Interview with Bargola Lemudigir and Mike Bryant (February 5, 2004, Addis Ababa).

38. Abbink, “Violence and Political Discourse.”

39. See also Mirzeler and Young, “Pastoral Politics,” on the Karimojong.

40. Abbink, “Violence, Ritual and Reproduction”; Abbink, “Restoring the Balance.”

41. Interviews during fieldwork, 1992–4. Ulrike Beyer, a teacher among the Suri, told me (interview on February 7, 2004, Addis Ababa) that during a meeting in 2004 one Suri elder complained: “I wish we could crush those guns causing all that trouble.”

42. Abbink, “Violence and Political Discourse,” 341–2.

43. Field observations 1994 and 1999, and interview with Guldu Tsedeke, 20 May 2000.

44. Abbink, “Tourism and its Discontents.”

45. Abbink, “Tourism and its Discontents.”

46. Amharic is the working language of the SNNPRS, the Southern Regional State.

47. Once this disease enters the ethnic communities in the Maji area, disaster will loom because it will likely spread rapidly due to polygamy and certain food and ritual habits.