Abstract
This article focuses upon a cluster of questions about identity: under which conditions can social, political or ethnic affiliations which have been denied for over a generation be revived? Can there be, even in predominantly oral cultures, a kind of backup copy for older identities which are of no use in the present but might be useful again in the future? How does collective memory deal with what is deleted from it? Do insiders preserve and pass on what in the version of history they propagate has been cut out, maybe by describing to the younger generation in detail what it is that they should not say? Two cases are considered. The Ajuran of Kenya, who in the early colonial period were regarded as Oromo, later insisted on being Somali, denying completely that the close ritual and politico-military affiliation they once had to the Boran Oromo ever existed. In recent years the Ajuran have sought an alliance with the Boran again. This case is mirrored by the Degodia Somali, who briefly claimed to be brothers of the Boran, producing even a genealogy in support of that idea, and then went back into the Somali fold. The physical and social environment in which these re-identifications take place comprise arid lowland conditions with contested water and pasture resources, the Kenyan and Ethiopian states and their ethnic policies, neighbouring groups of pastoralists like the Gabra and Garre, and international legal discourses about human, civic and minority rights. As identity games imply, choices are restricted by considerations of plausibility, consistency and the need to be accepted, and it is not easy to re-affiliate in terms of belonging to one major category rather than another according to political and economic needs. Re-affiliation may also fail and the claim to historical links be exposed to ridicule.
Introduction
The arid lowlands which stretch through northern Kenya, along the Ethiopian border from Lake Turkana in the west to Somalia in the east, are inhabited by speakers of East Cushitic languages. When the British brought this area under their control in the early twentieth century, they perceived, minor groups aside, two broad categories of new subjects, namely ‘Galla’ and Somali. The term ‘Galla’ has since been dropped in favour of ‘Oromo’. The Somali are still called by that name, although who falls into this category has changed over time. A boundary was drawn between the Somali and the Oromo: the former were restricted to pastures to the east of the line, and the Oromo to those west of it. The Ajuran were given pasture rights on the Oromo side of the dividing line, while the British regarded the Degodia as Somali invaders from outside the colony and tried to contain them east of the dividing line. Later the Ajuran managed to become accepted as Somali. The Degodia, under pressure from other Somali, have in recent years claimed a genealogy which makes them ‘brothers’ of the Boran Oromo.Footnote2 The Ajuran, who for several decades denied ever having belonged to the Oromo, now appeal to their historical and ritual links with the Boran Oromo. With some simplification, one can describe the shifting affiliations of these two groups as the movement of two pendulums swinging in opposite directions: when the Ajuran were Oromo, the Degodia were Somali.Footnote3 Later, when the Ajuran were Somali, the Degodia sought proximity to and even claimed kinship with the Oromo.Footnote4 When the Ajuran ‘rediscovered’ their Oromo past, the Degodia became estranged from the Boran again.
Ethnic affiliation has become more important with the ‘ethnicisation’ of politics, or even the constitutional order in both Kenya (throughout the colonial and post-colonial periods) and Ethiopia, and levels of violence have risen with the spread of automatic weapons. Identity games have become a dangerous gamble. To claim the wrong affiliation or to be found to have the wrong affiliation in the wrong place can be deadly. But, as all forms of entitlement become tied to collective identities, there is no way of dropping out of the game itself. The commonplace sociological truth that ‘all identities are just constructs’ is of little help to those who are killed or disowned because of these constructs.
Degodia and Ajuran are culturally indistinguishable at first sight. There are Boran-speaking Ajuran, but the remainder of the Ajuran speak the same form of Somali as the Degodia. An elderly woman, an Ajuran married to a Degodia, once explained to me that the division of labour between the genders differs between the two groups, and that it was a nasty surprise to her that as a married woman among the Degodia she was expected to herd animals.Footnote5 But such differences only turn up when specific enquiries are made, or after one has spent prolonged periods of time living with both groups of pastoralists. When I visited Somali hamlets in the eastern part of Marsabit District and in Wajir District in 1976–80, I found Degodia and Ajuran living in intermingled settlements and there was no way of telling which was which without asking.
When I met the same people again in 1984, one of my key Degodia informants, an hospitable and wealthy camel-owner, had been robbed of all his camels by Ajuran and was collecting money to take the matter to court. I made a contribution, although I knew that he would have little success in this because the same thing had happened to thousands of others and the courts did not interfere in matters relating to the ‘war’. Some Ajuran informants, no less helpful and generous to me, boasted that it was ‘them’ (probably not meaning themselves but rather people they knew in the community) who had taken the camels of my Degodia friend. Of course, I could not make use of this information to help my friend, because as anthropologists we must protect those who give information, just as journalists do. An examination of recent history reveals how this deterioration in Degodia–Ajuran relations has come about.
Recent History
There had been a steady deterioration in the relationship beyond the usual violence between men over precedence at a well, or occasional raiding. Herd girls had been raped and killed, and there had been the notorious Wagalla massacre on an airstrip near Wajir where hundreds of Degodia men had been left to die in the sun. 1984 was a very dry year and pressure on pastoralists’ resources was extreme. Aulihan Somali from Garissa District pushed into Isiolo District and began to squeeze the Waso Boran out of their pasturelands. Many Boran herds were raided. Degodia had also moved into Isiolo District, partly because of the drought, and partly because of the Ajuran threat, but they succeeded in establishing a rather better relationship with the local Boran. They helped them to retaliate against the Aulihan. That they helped their traditional enemies, the Boran, against their fellow Somali is not so surprising if one considers what they had suffered at the hands of the latter.Footnote6
As a consequence, Waso Boran informed the Boran of Marsabit and Moyale that the Degodia should henceforth be regarded as allies. The message, upon which a committee of elders had agreed, was taken by Isiolo Boran who took herds to the Moyale area, and delivered to known Moyale elders. In that year there was much coming and going between Moyale and its Ethiopian hinterland, and the Waso. Guns were purchased in Ethiopia to be used against the Aulihan Somali or for sale. Degodia then flocked into the Moyale area, which at that time still belonged to Marsabit District (it became a separate district in 1995). The pasture was sufficient for their camels, which can make use of a much wider radius around the water points than the cattle of the Boran whose carcasses were in this period lining the roadsides. For the latter the journey between pasture and water had become too long and exhausting. The collection of grass from remote mountain areas inaccessible to cattle had become a business for women around Moyale town at this time, and the price of a cow was the equivalent of the price of its fodder for three days. At the Moyale market, the milk of Degodia camels had replaced that of Boran cattle. Through all the ups and downs of the Boran–Degodia relationship, some townspeople had always been opposed to the expulsions of Degodia because their camels guaranteed a constant supply of milk, mainly used for the ubiquitous tea.
Some Degodia, who had already picked up elements of the Boran language in the Waso area, now began to identify themselves as Boran when asked for their ‘tribe’, thus:
‘Att gosi maan?’ ‘Booran.’ ‘Balbal tam?’ ‘Degodia.’
‘Which tribe are you?’ ‘Boran’. ‘Which section [gate]?’ ‘Degodia.’
Degodia had thus become, at least in some situations, a section of their traditional enemy. In one of the ad hoc genealogies which sprout in such situations, the Degodia were not depicted as descending from the Boran but as branch adjoining them. Both ‘Degodia’ and ‘Boran’, treated as eponymous ancestors, were said to be the sons of Ali. The Boran tolerated this and accepted it as a sign of goodwill, even though it was contradicted by other such genealogies, like that attributing to ‘Boran’ and ‘Waat’ (the putative ancestor of the former hunter-gatherers) a shared father ‘Horro’. The Gabra, who had a long-standing tiriso-relationship with the Boran without ever having claimed common ancestry with them, were amused by this genealogical fancy.Footnote7
Genealogical ‘roots’ of this type are to be understood in the same way as the ‘root’ metaphor in many other social contexts. It is important to recall the botanical origin of this metaphor. Nothing derives from its roots. A plant grows from the surface, where its seed has come to lie, both ways, up and down at the same time. When the root metaphor is used in the context of human history, it is mostly used wrongly. Peoples and states are said to stem from their roots. In reality, they drive their roots from the present into the past, from the surface of time into its depth, just like a plant drives its roots downwards into the soil. The Degodia were attempting to grow roots in a new soil, as Somali groups and other lineage-based societies have always done, by linking their genealogies to some real or imagined ancestral figure in the local community. Should this genealogical fiction persist long enough, people may begin to accept it, first, as a convenient formula for regulating interaction and to shape this along ‘brotherly’ lines, and later perhaps even as fact.
The Degodia provided some substance to their new relationship with the Boran by guaranteeing them safe passage between Moyale and Isiolo as the crow flies. The road diverts from this line far to the west and had become obstructed by so many police barriers – where all lorries, with or without sufficient documentation or anything else, had to pay bribes – that road transport had become very costly. Boran traders, and Burji traders who were not distinguishable from them, took advantage of the Degodia guarantee of security and trekked herds by foot to the central Kenyan markets by the straight route through the bush. This route came to be known as the Bosnia route. In this period news about ‘ethnic cleansing’ was frequently heard on the transistor radio, which formed the link between these mobile populations and the outside world. As the new route had been cleared of Ajuran, it was believed to conform to Bosnian standards of ethnic untangling.
The Degodia did not distinguish between Boran and Burji traders, but the Boran traders did. The Boran had tended to despise the Burji, who were originally mountain farmers and poor in cattle, and the new role of Burji as highly successful competitors in business did not endear them to the Boran either.Footnote8 So the Boran sacrificed a goat at a place called Mad'eera Kaayo along this route to prevent the evil associated with the Burji from coming with them. The Burji were not informed of this. Meanwhile, in the same way that the relationship between the Degodia and the Boran improved, that between the Garre and the Boran deteriorated. In a sense, the Degodia were occupying the niche formerly occupied by the Garre as camel pastoralists in the Boran orbit. In the Negelle area in Ethiopia, raids occurred between Garre and Boran, and the Degodia also took advantage of this situation to raid the Garre there. These were not the same Degodia as those who had come from Isiolo District to Moyale, but people of the same Somali clan who had been living in Ethiopia for some time. Cattle taken as loot in these raids were brought to Kenyan markets. The Kenyan Garre were now convinced that the cattle taken by Moyale traders by lorry to Nairobi rightfully belonged to them; and influential Garre then succeeded in persuading the Veterinary Department to close the road to cattle transport under the pretext of the outbreak of disease. Transport restrictions ‘for veterinary reasons’ have long been misused for political and economic purposes.Footnote9 The closure of the road served to strengthen the trade on the ‘Bosnia route’ and thus to further strengthening the interdependence of Boran and Degodia to the detriment of the Garre.
In the second part of the 1990s, however, relations between Boran and Degodia in what was Moyale District were worsening. Dr Gurrach Boru Galgallo, in a ‘Manifesto for the total development of Moyale Constituency’ which had been part of his successful election campaign for a parliamentary seat in 1997, blamed camels from North Eastern Province for serious environmental degradation and water shortage at the dams, and accused local leaders from Moyale of pursuing ‘personal gain’ in allowing Degodia into the district.
A new factor which came to influence both internal Boran politics and their relationships with neighbouring groups was the presence of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in the area. The OLF, which had been operating in Ethiopia since the 1970s, was compelled, after 1992, to operate increasingly from the Kenyan side of the border. A Gumi Gaayo, a Boran popular assembly, held every eight years, took place in 1996 and was attended by Abdullahi CitationShongolo.Footnote10 It was used by representatives of the Ethiopian Government, among them the president himself, Dr Nagasso Gidada, an Oromo, who also attended the assembly, to appeal to the Boran to withdraw their assistance from the OLF. Increasingly isolated from the Boran, the OLF mixed with the Degodia in the ‘bush’, a dangerous association for the Degodia. To gain the support of government, each side in the various conflicts of northern Kenya tried to depict themselves as loyal Kenyans, and the presence of the OLF was an embarrassment. The deteriorating conditions of pasture exacerbated the situation: both the Gabra Miigo, who had joined politically with the Boran again following a period of estrangement in the early 1990s, and the Degodia are camel peoples, competing for the same resources.Footnote11 Some Gabra Miigo pastoralists who had settled in Kinisa shared a dam, located midway between Kinisa and Illaadu, with the Degodia. Another cause of friction was the fact that the District Commissioner had provided famine relief to the Degodia only. It was alleged that the Gabra Miigo subsequently murdered several Degodia, one at Funaan Nyaata and two at Ambaalo in July 1998, to frighten the Degodia off. Political rhetoric acquired an increasingly moralistic tone. Competition for pasture was equated with theft, i.e. seizing other people's land. The legal situation, indeed, is by no means clear. The colonial heritage of closed districts and reserved grazing rights is at variance with the right of freedom of movement of all Kenyans within the country.
In September 1998, an attack on a lorry at Funaan Nyaata near Moyale resulting in nine casualties was ascribed to the Degodia. The following month, it was the turn of the Degodia to be massacred, but on a much larger scale. A large force of Boran gathered and crossed into Wajir District into the Bodod, Tullu and Muddam area, where there was plenty of water as a result of the exceptional rains that year, and on one particular morning called the Degodia and camped there for a meeting. Herdsmen gathered at one of the watering holes were also called to the meeting. Once large numbers of Degodia had assembled, the Boran opened fire on them. In the press this massacre came to be known as the ‘Bagalla massacre’, a name that recalls the Wagalla massacre of 1984. The name ‘Bagalla’, however, is not known to the Boran, and the reasons for its selection by the media remain somewhat obscure.
The Boran then drove away huge herds to the north, presumably into Ethiopia. Accounts vary as to the number of dead. After a week of press reports based largely on exaggeration and speculation, the Weekly Review provided the following breakdown: ‘By early this week, the actual number of dead was put at 187 (87 men, 51 women and 50 children), while 83 people were still unaccounted for and 36 seriously wounded, some of them critically’.Footnote12 The magazine went on to explain:
The raiders were also reported to have driven away at least 3,000 head of livestock, including camels, cattle and goats. Some reports talk of as many as 15,000 head of livestock being stolen and the use of poisonous chemical bombs in the attack. Such reports have not been verified. … Following the killings, the government announced that it had beefed up security in the entire region. … The government of Ethiopia released a statement soon after the Bagala massacre, condemning the act and absolving its armed forces from any involvement in the incident. … While it is still not exactly clear who was responsible for the heinous act – which has been blamed by several political leaders from the region on the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) from Ethiopia that is fighting a secessionist war against the government in that country – the Bagala massacre has caused an unlikely public row between the provincial security teams in Eastern and North-Eastern provinces, with the latter blaming their counterparts for the incident.Footnote13
In fact OLF involvement in this massacre is most unlikely. The OLF camped among the Degodia in Moyale District. The deteriorating relationship between their local fellow Oromo, the Boran and the Degodia had not affected their own good relations with the Degodia. Moreover, the raiders were suspected of having moved their loot into Ethiopia by the very same media which suspected them of being OLF, and it is difficult to imagine how OLF fighters could have realistically sought refuge with thousands of animals in territory controlled by a government with which they were at war.
Indeed it was common knowledge among the Boran that the attack had been carried out by Ethiopian Boran, the majority of whom, by that time, were opposed to the OLF. People mostly keep silent about the matter. One of the rare public occasions on which this was stated openly was a meeting of Ethiopian Boran in the Ethiopian side of Moyale town in March 1999, to which the Boran of Moyale, Kenya, had been invited.Footnote14 A landmine, believed to have been planted by the OLF, had killed 27 people. An elder, Boru Jilo, accused the Kenyan Boran of not having expressed their condolences and of displaying a lack of borantiti, of ‘Boran-ness’. He contrasted this with the helpfulness of the Ethiopian Boran toward their Kenyan brethren: ‘The other day [sic], when nine of you were killed at Funaan Nyaata, we immediately sent a force against the Degodia and killed so many of them, before you had even asked us to do so.’Footnote15
Let us pause here in our chronology to try to explain the changes in the Boran–Degodia relationship. By this point in time, the Degodia had come full circle. They had been the prototypical ‘Other’ of the Boran, the ‘alien Somali’. They had become brothers of the Boran for a period, even naming a fictional ancestor they claimed to share with them. Now they had suffered hundreds of casualties at the hands of the Boran and were enemy Somali once more. This scenario demonstrates the limits of invention in the field of ethnicity. Not all ‘claimed identities’ are accepted. They have to be asserted in ‘the forum of reason and public consensus’.Footnote16 The ‘Degodia Ali–Boran Ali’ geneaology was too spurious. It contradicted much more elaborate bodies of oral literature, namely Oromo traditions of origin and the ‘total genealogy'of the Somali.Footnote17 Nevertheless it might have been accepted, tongue in cheek, as a useful fiction, if the Degodia had managed to play the brotherly role. As it happened, however, their inability to conduct themselves peacefully led to violent incidents and an alienation from the Boran. Pressure from both governments, Kenyan and Ethiopian, to desist from hosting the OLF completed the process of transforming the Degodia ‘brothers’, in the eyes of the Boran, from an asset into a liability.
Six months after the Bagalla massacre, Kenyan forces managed to expel the OLF from northern Kenya. The OLF then played a role in the fighting in southern Somalia for a time, where they sided with Hussein Aidid, and – indirectly – with Eritrea in the latter's war with Ethiopia.Footnote18 The period between the Bagalla massacre and the expulsion of the OLF was characterised by a shift in the ethnic composition of the nomadic population of Moyale District. Guyyo Galgallo, a Boran elder, explains how the Ajuran took advantage of the dissent between Boran and Degodia:
The Ajuran played a ‘monkey role’ in the aftermath of the Bagalla massacre [the monkey being the trickster in some African folk tales]. They were peddling information between the Boran and the terrified Degodia. One day they send reports to the Degodia saying that Boran forces were on the way coming for them again. The Degodia fled beyond Wajir in fear of the attacks. At the same time, the Ajuran also sent reports to the Boran settlements in Ambaalo and Bori saying that a huge Degodia force with sophisticated weapons from Somalia was advancing towards the Boran settlements to avenge the Bagalla massacre. The Boran settlements withdrew back to the Sololo area although pasture and water were scarce there. The Ajuran thus succeeded in removing both the Degodia and the Boran from a large area where there was good pasture and plenty of water for the livestock. The Ajuran then settled in the area with ease.
Prior to this the Ajuran had attempted to obtain these grazing rights in vain. They had been sending delegates to the Boran local leaders, requesting permission to settle in the area from where the Degodia had fled. The Boran only promised to discuss the matter among them later. The reason why the Ajuran wanted to occupy the Bododa area was that it had plenty of water trapped in the bule rocks [i.e. in the lava fields] from the El Niño rains as well as plenty of pasture for all kinds of livestock.
Most of the Ajuran fora Footnote19 livestock were grazing in Batalu and areas bordering the Garre territory to the north of Wajir. There is an on-going conflict between the Garre and the Ajuran over the border of the two districts of Wajir and Mandera. In search of pasture the Ajuran were penetrating into Mandera District which was already under pressure from Garre livestock. While this conflict was escalating, many Ajuran withdrew to the Bododa area.
The Ajuran, however, were not satisfied with the Bododa area. After about two months or so they finished the water at Bododa and moved to Funaan Nyaata dam, where the Boran and the Gabra were already settled.
The Ajuran elders on several occasions sent delegates requesting even water at Holale [close to Moyale town]. Realising that the Ajuran like our old step brothers [an ironic reference to the Degodia] are invading our territory by means of ‘cold war’ [using the English expression], we met to discuss about this recently. Some local leaders met with the District Commissioner to discuss the Ajuran incursion. The local leaders representing the Boran, Gabra, Sakuye and Burji were led by the District County council Chairman Golicha Galgallo and Haji Wario Guracha, the paramount chief. The Garre councillors did not attend the meeting.Footnote20
According to Golicha Galgallo, chairman of the County Council, the District Commissioner of Moyale had already made a request to the District Commissioner of Wajir to arrange for the return of the Ajuran nomads to Wajir District. Golicha explained:
We told the D.C. that unlike the former D.C. who helped the Degodia to settle in the area, he himself should not take this matter lightly. We pre-cautioned the D.C. that should any conflict arise as a result of Ajuran presence in the area, he should be held responsible. The D.C. agreed to take immediate action to return the Ajuran.
Despite our effort to avoid conflicts over grazing areas and the scarce water, some Boran elders seem to support the Ajuran plight, because like the Boran and Gabra they too are enemies to the Degodia. The first wave of the Ajuran who came was the Gelbaris. They reminded the Boran elders of their past relationship during and before the colonial period, and also of the time of the ‘Warr Libin confederation’. Unlike other Ajuran clans, the Gelbaris speak fluent Boran and are familiar with the Boran aada/seera [customary law]. On their arrival in the area, they came to the homes of Gon elders and requested for re-admission into the Boran fold, the status they had lost many years ago, when they forced the Boran out of their territory.Footnote21 They blamed both the Garre and the Degodia for having taken over the position closer to the Boran, which they claimed as theirs. An Ajuran elder claimed, ‘we were brothers even long ago and we shared common customs with you unlike the Garre and the Degodia who were both inclined towards the Somali ways in those days. For all these reasons we now ask the Boran to fully accept our return. We listened to their endless talk but only asked them to return to their district.’Footnote22
The local history of Ajuran–Boran relations has to be read against the background of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which involved the opening of a ‘second front’ in southern Somalia and a proxy conflict which further complicated the conflicts in the area. Kenyan forces also clashed with Somali militias, and the relationship with Ethiopia mirrored, as it always had, Kenyan–Somali relations. Now that the relationship with Ethiopia was good, that with the Somali was bad. In July 1999, it was reported that around 1,000 Degodia and 3,000 Ajuran, who had a recognised refugee status in Moyale, Ethiopia, were to be repatriated to the Wajir District of Kenya.Footnote23 Both groups had moved there as refugees following earlier clashes with one another. They had been largely ignored for some time, but with the 1999 census approaching, office holders in Kenya were keen to maintain the status of their administrative units and thus needed these populations to return. In fact, movements of Degodia and Ajuran have always regularly occurred in both directions across the Kenya–Ethiopia border, and continue to do so.
With the more relaxed situation arising from good Kenyan–Ethiopian relations, sanctions against the Boran were lifted. Ethiopian Boran had not been allowed to sell livestock into Kenya; now a livestock market was opened on the Ethiopian side within easy reach of Kenyan buyers. This immediately drained the Moyale (Kenya) market of its supply, which in the past had largely consisted of cattle smuggled across from Ethiopia. As market fees are the principal income of the County Council, an agreement had to be reached. Ethiopian officials proposed dividing that source of revenue according to the nationality of the principal traders. The sellers, mostly Ethiopian, would pay two birr per head of cattle, and the Kenyans would be free to charge the buyers, mostly Kenyan, what they wanted. This was not enough for the Kenyans. They sought to spoil the Ethiopian market by imposing a prohibitively high transit fee for each head of cattle taken into Kenya. They also increased the ‘export’ fee on each lorry taking cattle out of Moyale to the central Kenyan markets from 2,000 to 14,000 shillings on the assumption that all the cattle were from Ethiopia. In July 1999 the East African Standard reported that a crisis meeting was being held at Moyale to discuss the issue, and that all trade had ground to a halt.
The year 2000 witnessed new variations on old themes. Violence escalated, mainly around Moyale and Isiolo and the adjacent areas to the east, Mandera, Wajir and Garissa Districts, and large numbers of casualties from single confrontations were regularly reported in the media. The main confrontation was that between Boran on the one hand and ‘Somali’ of various categories, and of degrees of ‘Somali-ness’, on the other. In Moyale, some ‘Worr Dasse’, the ‘people of the mats’ – i.e. the camel pastoralists who had once formed the Worr Libin alliance with the Boran as senior partners – now sided with the Boran again. The Ajuran who had gradually separated from the Boran in the 1920s and 1930s, now resumed their position of the 1910s, appealing to the memory of their old political affiliation to the Boran.Footnote24 The Garre, however, stayed aloof, representing the threat of Somali expansionism in the Moyale context. In fact, it was violent competition over grazing resources which drove the Ajuran back into the arms of the Boran. Confronted by other Somali, Garre and Degodia – many of whom, ironically, the Ajuran had at one time helped to gain access to resources still under Boran control – the Ajuran fondly recalled the once-privileged position they had had at the side of the Boran.
In Isiolo, the role of the ‘alien Somali’ was filled mainly by the Degodia, of whom there had been a fresh influx following the 1997 drought. There had been no place to return to for these Degodia. The drought of 1997 was followed by the El Nino floods of 1998, which decimated livestock; and after that deluge the drought had returned. Vast swathes of eastern and north-eastern Africa had not experienced a normal rainy season in 1999 and 2000. In both areas, Moyale and Isiolo, conflict took place not only over water and pasture but also over resources associated with urban life and indeed the nation-state. Considering that the Meru, Bantu-speakers from the neighbouring Meru District who form a business community in Isiolo, became involved in violent clashes indicates that these were concerned with ‘trade niches’. In Moyale, in addition to the recent pastoral and agro-pastoral Garre immigrants, there is also an older Garre business community, which had been there since the very foundations of the town.
Electoral politics represents another arena in which games of inclusion and exclusion are played. In 1997, immigrant Degodia welcomed the Boran politician Charfanno Mokku who then contested the Isiolo North parliamentary seat with their support. Later, they appeared to have threatened the Boran majority in the electorate, and Mokku eloquently opposed their continued presence. In Moyale the Garre represented the same threat to the Boran voting majority. Mokku appears to have played the ethnic and religious card in other ways, too: he referred to a rival Meru candidate as a ‘non-Muslim Bantu’, showing some acquaintance with language families which are not normally part of popular identity discourses.Footnote25
The close interplay between local politicians, elders, administrators and the media is very well illustrated by the Moyale case. The term ‘elders’ here comprises various kinds of people, including representatives of local agro-pastoral communities, ‘elders’ cited by politicians as democratic fig-leaves and amplifiers of their positions, elders as social actors and elders as instruments of other actors. In its first phase the violence took place mainly on the open range, in the grazing areas in Wajir District and in the eastern parts of Moyale District. In March 2000 there was a disagreement between Garre and Ajuran concerning the appointment of a chief for the El Danaba area and a sub-chief for Irrees T'eenno. The area had hitherto been dominated by Ajuran, and now the Garre claimed these offices.
A Garre was killed near Gurar on 16 March. Shortly afterwards, a mine exploded at D'okisu in Ethiopia, killing 12 Garre. The Ajuran were suspected as having planted it. On 22 March an Ajuran was killed by a Garre near Gurar, and then two Ajuran hamlets were burnt. On 27 March, four Garre were killed at Qofoole in Wajir District. The killings then spilled over into Moyale District. A lorry belonging to an Ajuran businessman was attacked on the Moyale–Dabel road. There was an exchange of fire between the lorry's escort and the bandits, believed to be Garre. That evening, two Garre were killed at Nana and their genitals were removed. One of the bodies, that of an elderly man, had an Ajuran property mark carved into the thigh. Garre now began to flee into Ethiopia while Ajuran sought safety to the south and moved in the direction of Isiolo. Killings continued on this scale throughout early April, and in the middle of April there were major clashes in Moyale town itself. On 4 April, there was demonstration by Garre in Moyale town following the arrest of two elders who had been accused of fuelling clashes between Garre and Ajuran in the north of Wajir District. Demonstrations and riots continued in the days that followed. In the course of these demonstrations, a Kenyan flag was burned, an incident which gave rise to rumours that the flag of Region 5, the Somali region of Ethiopia, was raised in its place.
The tension surrounding these events was heightened by the fact that simultaneously there were clashes between Garre and Ajuran in Wajir District and between Garre and Degodia at Malka Wiila near Dolo in Ethiopia, where 37 Garre were reported killed. On 12 April, there was a demonstration in Wajir by Degodia, Ajuran and Ogaden Somali who demanded that the Garre leave the District. There were killings and the Garre fled toward Moyale. On 17 April, seven lorries full of Garre refugees arrived at Moyale, which did nothing to ease the situation there.
An Old Alliance Revived
In a meeting on 9 July 2000, attended by representatives of Ajuran, Boran, Gabra, Burji and Sakuye elders, and two MPs, Dr Abdullahi Ali (Wajir North) and Dr Guracha (Moyale), the chairman of the Moyale County Council, Golicha Galgallo explained:
Now we, the Gabra and Boran, Sakuye and Burji, hold the old customs in our hands together, and our brothers of the Ajuran have also joined us. The war (‘spear’), which has us in its grip is also affecting them. The enemy who puts pressure on us is the same; that is why we have come together to organise our way of life. The things we have to organize are not about war; they are about peace, about pasture and water. Let us plan matters along these lines.Footnote26
Of course, there is an element of rhetoric in this. As pasture and water were the disputed resources, talking about them was not simply a matter of peace rather than war. Golich Diima, a Boran elder, added:
Our fathers have told us before, that the tribes who live in this land are three: the Gabra, Boran, and Sakuye together. They are the owners of the land. The tribe next to us whose customs were interwoven with ours are the Ajuran, they said. Our fathers called them Baalad ….My father was begotten by Mamad Ali Gabaaba as a genitor [i. e. he was not begotten by his father but by an Ajuran lover of his mother]. He was of these Gashe [an Ajuran sectionFootnote27] of Ali Diima. … Thus we and the Ajuran were like one village and brothers. At that time at Wajir only Boran and Baalad [Ajuran] were settling …Footnote28
The retired Chief Huqa Guleid, a Boran, then elaborated:
Ajuran and Boran have obligations to each other. This custom has been there even before us. If now we want to go back to the custom which has got lost, that is very good … The former chief Maalin Adan, his father was Hussein Ido Roble. And that Ido Roble was a hayyu [a gada set speaker, i.e. the holder of an office bestowed by the Boran].
The one who proclaimed him was T'uuye Galgalo, the adula [seniormost hayyu] of the Warr Jidda [a clan of the Gona moiety of the Boran], the grandfather of Halake Guyo T'uuye. At that time Boran and Ajuran were one. As to Maalin Adan, it was Hapiite T'uuye who proclaimed him. Hapiite came from Dirre [the former Boran heartland in High Ethiopia], he was brought from the other side in the car of Abdi Fite [a Moyale trader] and taken to Buna.
He took him up the stone outcrop near Buna town and there gave him the sceptre of Ido Roble. Even then the Ajuran were Muslims, [but] they were holding the customs as well … ‘If you say chaak! [a command to drive donkeys] the donkey will raise his ears’, it is said. When now you mention Jiile qulullu Footnote29 Worr Jidda we raise our ears, we remember the relationship.Footnote30
Chief Abdisalaam of Butte, an Ajuran, reciprocated:
In our language [meaning: culture, customs], to remind one of brotherhood is a shame. We and the Boran have not met for the first time today, we have been brothers before. … When this town of Moyale was built at the time when the Whites came, the head of the Ajuran was Mahad Hassan, the grandfather of my father. Long before that the Ajuran and Boran have come together, during the gada period of Abai Baabo [1667–74]. During that gada period the Boran and Ajuran put up shared regulations about pasture and water. At that time there were no Garre and Degodia in this land …
I have never seen Boran looking for other people's land. It is only us, the camel people, who look for Boran land. Secondly, we have told the government that they shold return our old boundary to Moyale, if you consent to that.Footnote31
When we recall the slow disintegration of the Boran–Ajuran alliance in the 1920s and 1930s, the time when the ‘Galla–Somali line’ was shifted westwards to include the Ajuran on the Somali side, we notice that history has now come full circle. The representative of the very same area, which was then transferred from the colonial Moyale District to what was to become North-Eastern Province, is demanding that the affiliation to major administrative units is now reversed.
Golicha Galgallo then asked a sensitive question arising from the issue of possible re-affiliation:
If now we combine the management (finn) of our lives, we do not know the Somali language. On your side, everyone speaks Somali. If other people who speak Somali like you come and say, ‘we are Ajuran as well’, and settle among us, can you keep them away from us? Secondly, if now we combine our ways, and if later the boundary of Moyale is put in its old place, will you eye our land and our seats [in political representative bodies]?Footnote32 and Footnote33
The first question – whether people accepted by the Ajuran should therefore have access to Boran resources – had a resonance from the 1920s and 1930s. It is, indeed, an old problem. The chairman also alluded to the Gelible – who still switch between being Ajuran and being Degodia, as they have always done – as particularly dubious candidates for acceptance as allies.Footnote34 Because of their situational handling of social identities, the Gelible have been dubbed ‘unidentified survivors’ by local English-speaking elites.
Osman Ali, an Ajuran elder, recalled a family relationship with the Gabra:
We, the Ajuran, are the same as Gabra, and Boran. The Gabra chief of Funaan Nyaata was begotten by Qalla Golicha. He thus is the grandson of Golich Dikira. He was begotten by my [lineage] brother. The Garre used to tell us about the badness of the Gabra, they did not know about the details. They tell us ‘the Gabra are adders, do not have them close to yourselves!’
All this is defamation, by saying so they want to keep us apart. … If we are united, no one can get between us. We, the Ajuran, have no wish to get Boran land or a Boran seat. But if they call us brothers and give us something, we shall take it …Secondly, the Boran used to settle between here and D'adach Warraabi. Enemies drove them from there and they came here. That land which was left by the Boran, until now has got Boran names [toponyms]. We, the Ajuran, have been claiming the land, pasture and water, pond and well, because of those Boran names and took it from the Somali and the Degodia.Footnote35 All this is because we are brothers. At that time the Boran language which we speak, helped us to establish that claim. Footnote36
To those familiar with descent reckoning in the area, all these claimed relationships through the genitor rather than the pater – i.e., the social father, he who paid the bridewealth for the mother – may come as a surprise. Relationships through women's lovers tend to be systematically ignored in public or official discourse. People might discuss similarities in children in a jocular fashion. No secret is made of known biological relationships. But these are entirely irrelevant for lineage structure, descent reckoning or exogamy. Biological fathers are not real fathers. That so many appeals to such relationships are now made is indicative of the intensity of the identification process.
Hussein Somo, an Ajuran elder, then explains:
Our problems today are big, the [Somali] people whom we called brothers in the name of Islam and whom we allowed into our land, who built houses, traded, and became fat among us, now we are their easy prey, they are raiding us.Footnote37 They are oppressing you in the same way.
They have driven us from the town of Wajir. We moved away from them and settled at Buna and Butte. But even from there they tell us to move away. When we had nowhere to go, we defended ourselves. That is why there is now war between us.Footnote38
Unable to speak Boran Dr Abdullahi Ali, the MP for Wajir North, had to address the gathering in Swahili. The Somali language would have been inappropriate on this particular occasion. He said:
The matter of bringing the tribes together is not an easy matter. We have brought you together so that you sit together and bring back the lost relationship. … We, the Ajuran, Gabra and Boran have now settled our matters, from here to Marsabit and Isiolo. Also the [Tana River] Orma will join us by and by …
We do not want things to turn round and round. If it is unity, let us have it. This style [in English] of the Garre, today on this side, tomorrow on the other side, let us do away with that habit. If it is a relationship like that of Boran Ali and Degodia Ali [see above] and then a disaster, that is what we do not want. If we have become Jille qulullu, let us be Jille qulullu Footnote39 entirely and without any doubt.Footnote40
While the Ajuran found their way back into the Worr Libin alliance under the umbrella of the Boran, the Garre moved in the opposition direction. They now identified themselves more clearly as ‘Somali’ than at any time in the past. Being Somali was equated with being Muslim, and their political rhetoric was that of jihad.
We have seen that the rural, pastoral facets of the conflict in Moyale involved people from Wajir District. In time, the mutual raiding taking place there was to affect Kenyan–Ethiopian relations, as the Ajuran claimed that the Garre received support from Ethiopian militias.Footnote41 The Ajuran, in order to mobilise official Kenyan support, placed the stress on being attacked by Ethiopians rather than depicting their enemies as Garre, thus trying to transfer a transnational affair between Kenyan and Ethiopian herdsmen to the international arena.Footnote42 As if education in northern Kenya was not riddled with problems at the best of times, this ongoing insecurity led to the closing of schools. In July 2000 it was reported that ‘two primary schools had been closed because teachers and pupils had fled for fear of attack’.Footnote43 On the national level, the insecurity in the north was used by the opposition to criticise the government. Regional administrators were caught between angry local elders and impatient superiors in Nairobi. The head of the largest opposition party – Mwai Kibaki, later Moi's successor as president – made a press statement on 17 July, reported thus:
GOVERNMENT URGED TO NEGOTIATE ON SECURITY
LEADER of Official Opposition, Mwai Kibaki, has asked the Government to immediately enter into talks with Ethiopia so as to end massacres and cattle rustling in North Eastern and Eastern provinces.
Kibaki wondered why the Government was quiet over the killings and loss of property that have rocked the area in the last three months. He said there was no need for President Moi to mediate between Eritrea and Ethiopia while his territory is suffering similar problems.Footnote44
There were rumours in the area that the Garre had hired militiamen, namely Garre from Somalia who had joined the RRA (Rahanweyn Resistance Army). These rumours were reflected in press reports at the time.
This history is unfinished. We could trace it to the present day, and then continuously update it. But certain patterns have become clear. As patterns of ethnic identification and the interplay between local, national and international forces are certainly of wider interest than further detail on the recent history of the Ethiopian–Kenyan borderlands, I will devote the remainder of the paper to the former.
The divide between Oromo and Somali plays a major role in Ethiopian and northern Kenyan identity politics, although a mere century ago many of the ancestors of the local populations were neither Oromo nor Somali but what we can describe as something in between. The dividing line which would eventually emerge developed not out of necessity but as a result of historical contingencies. Today this divide is paralleled by that between adherents of custom (aada) and adherents of Islam, aada being associated with the Boran Oromo and their allies, Islam with Somali.Footnote45 Besides the double pendulum movement of the Ajuran and Degodia between these two ethnic micro-categories, we can observe how the Garre have recently become more Somali and more ‘Muslim’.
Between the ‘tribes’ and the institutions of the state (or the individuals who man these institutions) there is a relationship of mutual instrumentalisation. Appeals are made to clan or tribal loyalties and alliances in electoral politics. People are either encouraged or compelled to come to certain locations at the time of the census, so that the administrative units in question are not abolished for lack of population. Individuals question the national loyalties of their rivals in order to direct the armed forces of the state against them, and in order to divert the attention of the latter from themselves. Ethnic movements are used by states against other states – for example the OLF by Eritrea against Ethiopia – or by political actors in neighbouring states against their rivals, for example Hussein Aidid's use of the OLF against the Rahanweyn in southern Somalia.
Summary of the Case History
Identity games in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia are no longer simply about pasture and water, although one is still well advised to always check first whether these two interrelated resources are at stake, whatever else the game may be about. Pasture rights are a more sensitive issue than ever, because they have become less flexible, with the model of the nation-state being applied on a smaller scale at the district or provincial level in both Kenya and Ethiopia: ethnic groups or whatever are perceived as such are given fixed territories, and ethnicity is thus territorialised. Pasture rights are fixed: if a community surrenders certain rights in a given year, it cannot simply ask to have them returned the following year. International considerations render the ethnic policies of national governments more inflexible, for example the fear of disorder spreading from Somalia.
With the territorialisation of ethnicity, political offices are also at stake, and the definition of ‘political office’ is a broad one. In Kenya, even recruitment into parastatal organisations, such as banks, is subject to ethnic and political considerations. In this paper we have seen examples of the expulsion of urban populations and the destruction of their property. As identity games become ever more deadly, the stakes have increased and it has become even more vital to play them well; historical knowledge, and the memory of past identifications, is an important resource in the game.
When the British incorporated northern Kenya, they perceived the Ajuran as Oromo, at least in terms of their political affiliation. In fact, they had been affiliated to the Boran clan Worr Jidda and had given regular ritual tribute to the qallu of the Gon Moiety of the Boran, also from Worr Jidda. Around 1980, middle-aged Ajuran informants would flatly deny that their ancestors had ever been anything but Somali or Arabs and would completely dissociate themselves from the ‘pagan’ Boran. I have even received such a response from an elderly man whom I knew from the Kenya National Archives to be the holder of a Boran title. By 2000, the Kenyan Ajuran managed to re-insert themselves into the Boran fold and much knowledge about their relationship to the Boran surfaced once again. This knowledge included even genealogies through lovers, although there is a strong cultural emphasis on the notion of paternity being established by the bridewealth for the mother, and extra-marital relations are known to exist but are normally completely discounted in descent reckoning.
For several decades, all this knowledge has been kept hidden, but ‘alive’, at some lower level than the official self-description. It has been kept in store for future eventualities. Our common ideas about oral traditions imply that these are constantly reworked. Unlike written sources, which are subject to social and political forces only up to the point in time when they were actually written down (although after that they remain subject, clearly, to interpretation), oral sources are believed to be constantly re-shaped to fit the needs and convictions of whoever re-tells them. This implies that older versions, which fitted the needs of past generations, fall into permanent oblivion. But is this really so? This paper has been concerned with a pendulum movement. The Ajuran were once politically Oromo, then were identified as Somali, and have recently moved back into the Oromo fold. But the older version of their oral history was not deleted: rather, a ‘back-up copy’ of it was kept somewhere. During the decades of denial of ever having had Oromo affiliation, a rather detailed hidden tradition about the Oromo dimension of Ajuran history must have been preserved by someone in the community.
Uncited reference
Notes
1. The material for this paper is derived from ongoing research undertaken with Abdullahi A. Shongolo, an education officer from Moyale, Kenya. We plan to publish a book, provisionally entitled ‘Islam and Ethnicity in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia: Observations on Somali, Oromo and Rendille’. Data from 1999 to the present have mostly been collected by Abdullahi Shongolo, and the earlier data by myself. The book will expand on the themes dealt with necessarily briefly in this paper, and will contain fuller quotations in original languages.
2. The ‘brothers’ here refers to patrilineal descendants of brothers, i.e. people who ultimately share one apical patrilineal ancestor.
3. The verb ‘to be’ (i.e. ‘were’ Oromo) may sound a little too essentialist to some, but as these classifications were mutually agreed between one group and the other, and as alternative affiliations were a matter of specialist knowledge, it cannot be denied that the Ajuran were perceived as ‘being Oromo’ at a particular point in time, namely the early twentieth century.
4. In other words, when they stressed the Somali aspects of their identity. In a way some of them, notably the Waqle clan cluster, have always been Somali.
5. This was in Wajir District, where I did field research in 1979–80 and in 1984 on inter-ethnic clan relationships (sponsored by the German Research Board, or DFG), and in 1989–90 for the Range Management Handbook of Kenya, sponsored by German Technical Aid (GTZ). I have also undertaken research in the Districts of Marsabit, Mandera and Isiolo.
6. For the orientation of the reader I have included a table showing the groups mentioned in the text and their wider affiliations. See Appendix at the end of the paper.
7. This refers to an adoptive clan relationship. In the process of establishing their hegemony in present-day northern Kenya since the sixteenth century, the Boran allocated the lineages and clans of non-Boran pastoralists to Boran clans. See Schlee, Identities on the Move, 91, 99, 119, 133, 140, 142, 172, 199.
8. According to CitationHaberland, the Burji had originally dispersed from their mountain dwellings because of Amhara slavers. The Boran despise them more than any other group but do not know why. Burji men were victims of Boran raids which served the purpose of ritually required killings. Women and children were not taken as booty, because the Boran regarded them as ‘too dirty’. See Haberland, Galla Südäthiopiens, 28, 150, 206.
9. CitationSchlee, ‘Some Effects of a District Boundary in Kenya’ and ‘Nomades et l'Etat au nord du Kenya’.
10. For his account of an earlier pan-Boran legislative meeting see Shongolo, ‘The Gumi Gaayo’.
11. See CitationSchlee and Shongolo, ‘Local War’.
12. This actually adds up to 188.
13. The Weekly Review, 6 November 1998.
14. On Ethiopian maps the spelling varies, for example ‘Moiale’.
15. Boru Jilo on a Meeting Moyale, Ethiopia, March 1999. Notes taken by Abdullahi Shongolo.
16. The phrase is borrowed from CitationAssmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, 123, who uses it in an entirely different context.
17. The phrase was coined by CitationLewis: see Lewis, The Somali Lineage System.
18. This alliance did not pay off for Hussein Aidid. His forces were later beaten at Baidoa by Rahanweyn and Ethiopian forces, after which he was compelled to reconcile with Ethiopia on Ethiopian terms, opening an office in Addis Ababa. At the Somali peace conference in Kenya in 2002–03, he was counted among Ethiopia's more ‘minor’ allies.
19. This refers to the satellite herds which are not maintained at the settlement.
20. Interview of Guyyo Galgallo by Abdullahi Shongolo, June 1999, Butiye.
21. Gon is the Boran Moiety to which the Ajuran were affiliated at the time of the pre-colonial Worr Libin alliance.
22. Interview of Golicha Galgallo by Abdullahi Shongolo, June 1999, Moyale.
23. East African Standard, 8 July 1999.
24. For example, see CitationSchlee, Identities on the Move.
25. Daily Nation, 14 May 2000.
26. Taken from the meeting at Moyale on July 9 2000. Notes taken by Abdullahi Shongolo.
27. CitationSchlee, Identities on the Move, pp. 212f., 219, 263.
28. See footnote 26.
29. This means members of the Boran clan, Jilitu = Jille, who are bald, hornless (without the Boran tress, guutu).
30. See footnote 26.
31. See footnote 26.
32. His real worry may have been that the Ajuran councillors were dissatisfied with their remuneration as members of Wajir County Council, and therefore wanted to become members of the more affluent Moyale Country Council.
33. See footnote 26.
34. CitationSchlee, Identities on the Move, 43, 199.
35. Note that the term ‘Somali’, as used here, does not comprise the Degodia. We have found a similar distinction vetween ‘Somali’ on the one hand and ‘Ajuran’ and ‘Garre’ on the other in early colonial records. This speaker seems to reserve the term ‘Somali’ for more recent arrivals such as the Darood.
36. See footnote 26.
37. The relationship, which in reality also comprised claims of genealogical relations, is here reduced to the wider and more vague brotherhood of all Muslims.
38. See footnote 26.
39. See footnote 29.
40. See footnote 26.
41. Daily Nation, 14 June, 24 June 2000.
42. Daily Nation, 24 June 2000.
43. Daily Nation, 7 July 2000.
44. East African Standard, 17 July 2000.
45. We are talking here about stereotypes. In reality there are many devout Muslims among the Oromo and many Somali are nominal Muslims at best. Even on the level of stereotypes these have only a local validity. Elsewhere, for example in Western Ethiopia, the Oromo are the prototypical Muslims and their ethnic ‘Others’ are branded as pagans: see for example CitationPopp, ‘Jem, Janjero oder Oromo?’
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