Breaking the Code of silence...The ILEMI TRIANGLE...

OFFICIAL INDIFFERENCE
Britain’s ‘hands off’ policy on the determination of the sovereignty of Ilemi to ensure peace among the herders cannot be isolated from its overall administrative policies after the Second World War and geo-strategic intentions for colonial possession in eastern Africa. In this respect, sympathy is expressed with the opinion that Britain would have resolved the Ilemi dispute had its neighbor been France or Belgium and not Ethiopia and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. [71] It is important to briefly review the attitude and arrangements for British military and civilian officers serving in colonial Kenya and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
British administrators received training in Oxford and Cambridge, which in theory prepared them for complicated security and administrative duties in the colonies. [72] Others visited Yemen, Aden, and the Persian Gulf to gain experience of administering nomadic communities. Nevertheless, the British soldier-administrator found the complexity of Ilemi beyond any paradigm particularly after the outbreak of war with Italy in 1939. Furthermore, Turkana then part of Kenya's Northern Frontier District (NFD) was a ‘Closed District’ where movement was restricted and administrators forced to live unmarried which frustrated them. [73] Abortive punitive expeditions had indicated that the cost of developing the arid region could not be offset by taxes on the evasive pastoral nomads whose nationality was determined by ecological exigencies such as migration to reduce pressure on exhausted land or escape livestock diseases. Hence, most administrators working in Turkana district were out of touch with the pastoral rhythm of life and needs of the frontier at the grassroots level. [74] Albeit a generalization, Kenya’s borderlands remained only important as a strategic buffer for future wars and to prevent pleuro-pneumonia, rinderpest and smallpox from spreading to the agricultural farmlands occupied by white settler farmers. Therefore, the authorities of Kenya saw Turkanaland and the Northern Frontier Districts as only suitable for the incarceration of political detainees such as Jomo Kenyatta and ignored serious problems of pastoral security and economic development.
Similarly, the authorities of Sudan did not evince genuine commitment to a resolution of the problem of administering the Ilemi Triangle. It is noted that during the adjustment of the Kenya-Uganda boundary in 1931 the Karamojong and Pokot pastoral nomads did not experience any serious problem of security or transhumance across the international boundary. [75] The Sudan-Kenya boundary was similarly between countries under Britain and running across pastoral country, so, why was there a problem of delimiting Ilemi? Unlike the Uganda-Kenya boundary the determination of Ilemi involved Ethiopia, a country proud of its history of political independence, and Egypt, which though incorporated in the administration of Sudan through the Anglo-Egyptian condominium was skeptical of any belated boundary adjustments by Britain. It may be deduced that Egypt also considered Sudan’s unilateral attempt to rectify its borders as a surreptitious attempt to acquire some independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium. [76] After the Second World War, Britain’s attitude in Southern Sudan increased suspicion about its long-term intentions in eastern Africa, which delayed attempts to finalize demarcations along Sudan’s border with Kenya. British administrators posted in southern Sudan lacked commitment and were succeeded by Barons who implemented the policy of separation before it was officially introduced. For example, British officials excluded southern Sudanese from decision-making arguing that, ‘the ethnic diversity and comparative backwardness of southern tribes precludes the selection of suitable indigenous representatives’. [77] Due to a conspicuous north-south cleavage and post-war political uncertainty it was speculated that southern Sudan might split in the future and join Uganda. This suspicion was underpinned by Britain’s lack of socioeconomic development of the south and its reliance on missionaries and philanthropist organizations to open the region for commerce and education. [78] Therefore post-colonial governments of Sudan inherited a legacy of negative attitudes that the Ilemi was troublesome, undesirable, and its economic development costly in human and financial resources. Despite the importance of its pasture to various Sudanese peoples the territory was only suitable for exchange with Ethiopia’s Baro salient.
Any rectification of regional boundaries after 1960 has tended to be half-hearted measures that evade the most important issue of the delimitation and administration of the disputed pastures. For example, Kenyan and Ethiopian officials met in 1964 to rectify the common boundary where Kenya surrendered Gaddaduma in exchange for Godoma and Namuruputh. Godoma has no strategic value to Kenya but Namuruputh, which lies at the tri-junctional Kenya-Sudan-Ethiopia point, is important for future negotiations with Sudan. [79] By conceding Namuruputh, Ethiopia erected an unnecessary obstacle to future negotiations for their Dassanech access to Lake Turkana while ignoring their grazing interests and traditional linkage to eastern Ilemi. [80] The haste in which Kenya and Ethiopia rushed through border agreements in the early 1960s should be seen against the backdrop of good rapport which existed between President Jomo Kenyatta and Emperor Haile Selassie. Apart from friendship at a personal level, the two statesmen were influenced by superpower clientele competition of the period and shared threat perception from Somalia nationalism in Somali-inhabited enclaves of Kenya's Northern Frontier District (NFD) and Ethiopia’s Ogaden province. [81] Nevertheless, Kenya’s wisdom in surrendering Gaddaduma is difficult to ascertain considering boundary commissions had in the past emphasized the strategic importance of the wells as being technically too concentrated to be subdivided and too precious to go to either Kenya or Ethiopia. [82] In July 1964, it was suggested that Kenya, Sudan and Uganda should rectify tripartite points on the boundary over western Ilemi to curb large scale organized rustlings and predatory expansion which were causing famine, indiscriminate bloodletting and ethnic displacements. Leslie Walters, Kenya’s boundary consultant and representative in the Kenya-Ethiopia boundary rectification, surrendered his British citizenship in favor of a Kenyan one to enhance his acceptability by the Sudanese negotiators. [83] The meeting never took place. Meanwhile on 18 July 1972, an exchange of notes between Ethiopia and Sudan failed to settle the question of the Baro salient or make arrangements to stop banditry and establish peaceful coexistence among the pastoral people. [84] This exchange recognized that future discussions on the southern terminal point of the Sudan-Ethiopia boundary should include Kenya.
In recent times Ilemi has been sidelined by higher priorities in each country’s security. For instance, in the post-independence era, Khartoum’s focus has been the war with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and various offshoot factions. Over the same period Ethiopians have been also been preoccupied with civil war and external conflicts, such as the 1977-78 Ogaden War with Somalia, which was supported by the former USSR, the war for the liberation of Eritrea, the collapse of Mengistu’s authoritarianism, and the current territorial disputes with Eritrea.
Kenya too has had different security priorities. After independence from Britain, Jomo Kenyatta’s immediate frontier security commitment was in the former NFD where pan-Somalia nationalism tied Kenya to a four-year secessionist conflict known as the Shifta war, which was supported by the Republic of Somalia. [85] In August 1967, President Kenyatta tried to win the sympathy of Britain on the determination of the Kenya-Sudan boundary by proposing the recognition of the Red Line as the international Kenya-Sudan boundary. [86] On the same premise the straight line of 1914, which places the whole of the Ilemi Triangle within Sudan was to be treated as null and void by virtue of having been superseded by the modified Red Line. Thereafter Kenya has not officially pursued the matter with Sudan although it maintains a police post in the area marked by the Red Line. [87]
Without exonerating the former colonizer from blame for the uncertainty it planted in Ilemi Triangle, the current territorial claims by both Kenya and Sudan have credibility gaps. First, Kenya’s claim that Sudan and Britain accepted the Red Line as the common border requires verification by documentary evidence. Be that as it may, Kenya would still experience difficulties explaining its unilateral demarcation of the Blue Line in 1944, which was adopted as the boundary in 1947, as this would constitute an encroachment on Sudanese territory. Similarly, unilateral border surveys by Sudan beg an explanation. Its demarcation of the Sudanese Patrol Line of 1950, which is west of the Blue Line, prohibits Kenyan and Ethiopian pastoralists from using pastures or water west of the line and henceforth authorities in Khartoum abandoned policing duties or economic development east of the line. This could imply a ‘silent’ territorial concession to Kenya and Ethiopia to resources east of the Sudan Patrol Line but the interpretation of such action under the international law is beyond the current investigation.
THE FUTURE OF THE ILEMI DISPUTE
The Ilemi triangle of conflict should be seen in the context of a wider problem affecting transhumant peoples of the region. Despite the current climate of good relations in the region each party to the dispute has either ignored the sovereignty of Ilemi or exploited the uncertainty for short-term political goals. For instance, Uganda may currently not stake any territorial claims to the triangle but its Didinga community needs the dry season pastures. The sovereignty of Ilemi has not featured in Uganda’s current rapprochement with Sudan despite having been a safe haven for various insurgent movements such as the Lord’s Resistance Army. [88] At present the threat of insurgency is so minimal that the priority for the authorities in Kampala is the disarming of the Karamojong ethnic group, which started in 2001. But the leaders may soon realize that the establishment of law and order today in southern Sudan generally and Ilemi in particular is crucial for Uganda’s future security.
Ethiopia has allowed the problem to remain dormant and has been derelict in its responsibility of securing the needs of pastoral Dassanech. In the 1990s, the current Ethiopian government armed the Dassanech with new Kalashnikov automatics in recognition of their vulnerability from the Kenyan Turkana and Sudanese cattle thieves, but failed to seek a firm border settlement that could safeguard their grazing interests in the disputed Triangle. [89] Arming the Dassanech raises a number of issues. One, because they are the stakeholders for Ethiopia’s territorial claim to eastern Ilemi, the current government turns a blind eye when they raid Kenya for livestock. The Kokai massacre of March 1997 when the Dassanech shot 47 Kenyan Boran lends weight to this perspective. The other possibility is that the community is being used as a strategic shield to Ethiopia’s vulnerable southern flank. Emperor Menelik II armed and employed the community in this way in the nineteenth century and Italy did the same before the outbreak of the Second World War. Ethiopia’s special relationship with the Dassanech does not advance the community’s claim to Ilemi and it waters down the extant Kenya-Ethiopia mutual defense pact.
Arguably Sudan has more leverage over other disputants but it has not only abrogated its responsibility but also consistently destabilized the area controlled by the SPLA. [90] In the last decade alone it is estimated the Toposa have received 50,000 firearms from the government excluding landmines. [91] Overall it is estimated the government of Sudan has injected more than 250,000 firearms to border communities of southern Sudan to destabilize the SPLA. [92] Sudan’s action has made Ilemi more costly to administer and more ‘unwanted’ by any future government despite its significance to the lives of the local pastoral people.
Despite manning a frontier post in Ilemi today, Kenya’s future linkage to the disputed territory is difficult to establish due to official secrecy and conspiracy theories. For instance, before President Moi came to power in 1978, maps of Kenya showed the contested area in dotted lines with the words ‘provisional/administrative boundary’. After 1978, Kenyan maps omit the straight Maud Line and draw the triangle in a continuous line. By implication, the provisionality of Ilemi does not exist. This supports the claim that President Moi’s government entered a covert deal with the government of Sudan, which ceded Ilemi to Kenya in exchange for halting military support for the SPLA through the Turkana ethnic community. The other theory is that the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) cut a deal with Moi’s government in exchange for logistical support in the ongoing civil war and accommodation of its officials. Medical treatment of wounded combatants of the SPLA in Kenya and the presence of SPLM officials in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, support the latter view. Furthermore, for the last two decades President Moi has been arming the Turkana leading, to speculation that the firearms are for dominating the area claimed by Kenya. It is unthinkable that Moi’s government could enjoy its current cordial relations with the antagonists of the Sudan civil war without secretly having given something in return. Regardless, it is worth remembering that promissory bargains that lack legislative mandate are unlikely to survive regime changes.
Finally, it is important to briefly comment on the significance of Ilemi after the events of 11 September 2001 in New York. In July and August 2002, the USA sponsored a series of talks in Machakos, Kenya, to end the war in southern Sudan. [93] With the future of oil supplies from the Middle East being uncertain, the USA now realizes the importance of stabilizing oil-rich southern Sudan. [94] So far the sovereignty of Ilemi has not featured in this consideration and it is inconceivable how enduring peace and international cooperation can be achieved without embracing the ‘people of the periphery’ in the economic social and political rhythm of the mainstream society.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
Whereas colonial surveyors ignored local peoples in their demarcations, bilateral rectification of the international boundaries by regional governments in the post-colonial period have short-changed the pastoral nomads and failed to show a keen interest in resolving the dispute. The Kenya-Ethiopia boundary agreement, which bartered Gaddaduma wells for Godoma and Namuruputh, neither reinforced Kenya’s claim to the contested territory nor confirm the extent of the customary pastures of the Turkana in the hills north of the disputed triangle. By excluding Sudan, the bilateral boundary negotiations restricted their achievements to an exchange of territories without long-term significance. Similarly, the Sudan-Ethiopia boundary rectification of 1972 fell short of a viable long-term solution inasmuch as it did not redefine where the boundary should run over the Baro salient. As Kenya did not participate in the exchange of notes, it was not possible to determine the location of the Sudan-Ethiopia-Kenya border north of Lake Turkana.
What is required is a tripartite boundary rectification in which Sudan barters Eastern Ilemi to Ethiopia in exchange for the Baro salient and Kenya extends its border northward to encompass the customary pastures of the Turkana. Khartoum should consider the determination of the legal regime in Ilemi an integral element of the peace initiative it is currently pursuing in the south and good neighbor image it is cultivating with Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the international society. Likewise, Ethiopia and Kenya should consider the long-term welfare of their nomadic nationals herding in the disputed territory and prioritize their embracement into the economic and political life of the nation-state. In view of the prevailing ‘hands off’ attitude and chronic insulation of people of the periphery, have we not time-travelled to 6th December 1907, when the official perception of the significance of the disputed Ilemi Triangle contrasts with that of the local herders who constantly kill for its resourceful pastures?


End of Abstract...
Source:
http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v7/v7i1a2.htm

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