Abstract
This chapter explores emerging complexes of power and accumulation as well as manifestations of state-making in the South Sudan–Kenyan border area. Moving away from a focus on the nation-state as the privileged frame for analysis of scale and agency, the chapter’s specific entry point is that of the postwar livelihoods of town residents, who settled in this area during the second civil war or after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The chapter looks at how they have built a livelihood within urban perimeters in a weakly regulated government context and investigates more specifically the reasons behind the differential success of one particular crossborder business network.
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Notes
For a historical account of the dramatic events of 1991 (from the fall of Mengistu in Ethiopia and its impact on the SPLM/A until the split of the SPLM/A and its consequences for the civilian population), see Douglas Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars: Updated to the Peace Agreement (Oxford: James Currey, 2006), 79–126;
and Ann Mosely Lesch, The Sudan. Contested National Identities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 157–166.
See endnote 9. As a reaction, militia movements emerged—both breakaway factions from the SPLM/A and bottom-up groups created by frustrated communities—all of which were welcomed and sponsored by Khartoum. Johnson, Root Causes, 70, 105–107; John Young, “Sudan: Liberation Movements, Regional Armies, Ethnic Militias & Peace.” Review of Afizcan Political Economy 30 (2003): 97;
John Young, “The South Sudan Defence Forces in the Wake of the Juba Declaration.” Small Arms Survey Geneva, 2006.
The distinction is based on Little, who uses the term clean for trade in relatively benign commodities such as cattle and grains, while unclean trade refers to dirty goods such as drugs and arms. Peter Little, Somalia: Economy without State (Oxford: James Currey, 2003).
Darlington Akabwai and Priscillar Ateyo, The Scramble for Cattle, Power and Guns in Karamoja (Feinstein International Centre, 2007). http://dl.tufts.edu/catalog/tufts:UA197.004.004.00012 (accessed March 5, 2011);
Alan King and E. Mukasa-Mugerwa, Livestock Marketing in Southern Sudan. With Particular Reference to the Cattle Trade between Southern Sudan and Uganda (OAU/PACE, 2002). http://www.eldis.org/vfile/upload/1/document/0708/DOC11410.pdf (accessed March 5, 2011);
Kennedy Mkutu, “Small Arms and Light Weapons among Pastoral Groups in the Kenya—Uganda Border Area.” African Afairs 106 (2006): 59–61;
Mareike Schomerus, “Violent Legacies: Insecurity in Sudan’s Central and Eastern Equatoria.” Small Arms Survey (Geneva, 2008);
Anne Walraet, “Governance, Violence and the Struggle for Economic Regulation in South Sudan: The Case of Budi County (Eastern Equatoria).” Africa Focus 21 (2008): 60–63; “Symptoms and Causes: Insecurity and Underdevelopment in Eastern Equatoria.” Small Arms Survey (Geneva, 2010).
Reporting on the Greater Equatoria conference, both the then Governor of Eastern Equatoria Aloisio Ojetuk and SPLA Major General Mathiang Aluong confirmed the domination of the international borders of Eastern Equatoria by Bor Dinka. Isaac Vuni, “Sudan’s Greater Equatoria Conference Discusses Security, LRA.” Sudan Tribune March 1, 2007 (accessed June 6, 2009).
International Crisis Group, Regional Perspectives on the Prospect of Southern Independence, Africa Report no. 159, May 6, 2010.
Also relevant in this respect is the issue of the Ilemi Triangle, that is, the supposed “covert” deal between the then President of Kenya Daniel arap Moi and the late SPLM/A leader John Garang de Mabior, whereby Ilemi was transferred to Kenya in exchange for logistical support for the SPLM/A, accommodation of its officials, and medical treatment of its wounded combatants. Douglas Johnson, When Boundaries Become Borders. The Impact of Boundary-Making in Southern Sudan’s Frontier Zones (London: Rift Valley Institute, 2010);
Nene Mburu, “Delimitation of the Ilemi Triangle: A History of Abrogation of Responsibility.” African Studies Quarterly 6 (2003): 4. http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v7/v7i1a2.htm (accessed December 23, 2010).
Alfred Dube and Andreas Koenig, Self-Reliance and Sustainable Livelihoods for Refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma Camps, Final report, UNHCR/ILO, April–September 2005: 8–10.
David Anderson and Adrian Browne, “The Politics of Oil in Eastern Africa.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 5:2 (2011): 391–392.
Tobias Hagmann and Markus Hoehne, “Failures of the State Failure Debate: Evidence from the Somali Territories.” Journal of International Development 21 (2008): 1.
It was in Chukudum in Eastern Equatoria that the SPLM/A in 1994 held its first National Convention where the need for civil governance structures, independent from the SPLM/A, was officially recognized. Despite the rhetoric, civilian governance remained dominated by the SPLM/A, and little devolution of power and resources to local administrations took place effectively. Johnson, Root Causes, 105–107; Øystein Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government. Political Changes in the Southern Sudan during the 1990s (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2005), 82, 155;
John Young, “John Garang’s Legacy to the Peace Process, the SPLM/A & the South.” Review of African Political Economy 32 (2005): 540–541.
Volker Boege, Anne Brown, Kevin Clements, and Anna Nolan, On Hybrid Political Orders and Emerging States: What Is Failing—States in the Global South or Research and Politics in the West? http://www.berghof-handbook.net/documents/publications/dialogue8_boegeetal_lead.pdf (accessed September 9, 2012);
Martin Doornbos, “Researching African Statehood Dynamics: Negotiability and Its Limits.” Development and Change 41 (2010): 4;
Ulf Engel and Gorm Rye Olsen, The African Exception (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005); Hagmann and Hoehne, “Failures of the State Failure Debate.”
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© 2013 Christopher Vaughan, Mareike Schomerus, and Lotje de Vries
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Walraet, A. (2013). State-Making and Emerging Complexes of Power and Accumulation in the Southern Sudan–Kenyan Border Area: The Rise of a Thriving Cross-Border Business Network. In: Vaughan, C., Schomerus, M., de Vries, L. (eds) The Borderlands of South Sudan. Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340894_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340894_9
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