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

EVOLUTION OF THE ILEMI DISPUTE
During the partition of Africa, there was no urgency to delimit the Kenya-Sudan-Uganda boundaries, as they were part of the British Empire. Ethiopia was independent and an understanding of its political developments at the time will shed light to the problem under consideration. The death of Tewodros II of Ethiopia occurred during a critical stage of the partitioning of Africa whereby Britain and Germany agreed on mapping out their territorial possessions in Eastern Africa. [22] His successor, Emperor Menelik II, found his unification of Ethiopia hampered by European imperialism. In circulars sent to the imperial powers in 1891 and 1894 Menelik outlined the extent of his empire and in 1896 he resumed the expansion of the Amharic nation southwards in order to contain the northward expansion of the British sphere of influence. [23] Having better weapons than his predecessor, Menelik’s policy was to consolidate remote areas by military conquest and establish garrisons and administrative outposts in the fashion of the competing European powers. [24] The territory claimed by Menelik included Lake Turkana which he called the Samburu Sea. He proposed his southern boundary with the British to run from the southern end of Lake Turkana due east to the Indian Ocean. Emperor Menelik based his territorial claim on slave raiding into peripheral lands that Ethiopia did not always police. [25] For instance, it is indisputable that he had previously conquered the Lake Turkana region but the Turkana had regained control and expanded northwards to the present day Kenya-Ethiopian border long before the colonization of Africa. [26] Britain disagreed with Menelik’s proposal and insisted on running the Ethiopia-Kenya boundary along the meridian it had already agreed on with other European powers without consulting Ethiopia. However, logistical constraints prevented the Emperor or Britain from establishing administration on the ground to back their corresponding territorial claims. [27] Nevertheless, Britain delineated its territories to halt other Europeans’ territorial ambitions and more specifically to curtail Emperor Menelik’s claim to land Britain considered within its sphere of influence. Mr. Archibald Butter and Captain Philip Maud (Royal Engineers) surveyed Ethiopia’s border with British East Africa in 1902-3 and marked the ‘Maud line’ which was recognized in 1907 as the de facto Kenya-Ethiopian border. [28] Addis Ababa renounced Britain’s attempt to rectify this border through a survey by Major Charles Gwynn (Royal Engineers) in August 1908 for excluding Ethiopian surveyors.
Changes occurring in Ethiopia’s political landscape at the time influenced the subject under consideration. Menelik II did not consider the domestic use of prisoners as constituting slavery, hence he continued slave raiding into the region of study where communities had displaced into for safety. [29] Therefore, Britain conducted military expeditions not only to secure its sovereignty but also to prevent the depopulation of Kenya and southern Sudan by slave traders. [30] Sudan welcomed Britain’s punitive policing to halt Ethiopian slave raids. However, despite the security of Ilemi being essential to the security of Mongalla Province (Sudan), logistical constraints prevented Sudan from consolidating gains from British expeditions with the establishment of administration.
Considering Emperor Menelik II had been the architect of Ethiopia’s political edifice his death slowed down the possibility of an early settlement of disputes on the southwestern borders of the Abyssinian (Amharic) Empire. In 1908, he appointed his grandson Lij Iyasu, age 11, to succeed him but he was dethroned in 1916 before he could be crowned. [31] Whereas Menelik had been keen on any matters pertaining to Ethiopia’s sovereignty, his successor could not fill his shoes because he was too young, too naïve in international politics, and faced by a challenge to his legitimacy. Consequently, Kenya and Sudan did not hold meaningful discussions with Ethiopia on boundary rectification until after the crowning of Emperor Haile Selassie. At that time, discussions were possible because Haile Selassie tried to reduce the power previously vested on regional governors in order to centralize bureaucracy under his personal control. [32]
Before the First World War, the need to redefine the borders of British territories in Africa raised several issues that were core to future border rectification between Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan in Ilemi. In this regard, the Uganda-Sudan Boundary Commission was formed in 1914 under Captain Kelly (Royal Engineers) and Mr. H.M. Tufnell and tasked to demarcate Uganda’s borders. [33] Central issues included the determination of Turkana grazing grounds, Sudan was to gain access to Lake Turkana through a lozenge of land known as the Ilemi Appendix and its eastern border was to curve outwards to Ethiopia to bring the whole Kuku ethnic community into Sudan. [34] Similarly, Uganda wanted to extend its boundary northwards to include into Uganda the Sudanese Acholi. The Labur Patrol of 1918 was tasked to determine the feasibility of these issues. On the ground it found tribal dispositions and grazing limits were unfixed and impossible to verify due to their shape and limits being dependent on human recollection. Furthermore, they tended to vary in size depending on season and a community’s ability to protect its economic and socio-political interests. Some ethnic groups claimed as their ancestral home areas they inhabited at the time of the patrol, pasturage they had lost through war or abandoned as unproductive, and also grounds whose possession was desirable for strategic considerations. After the Labur Patrol, Britain was reluctant to invest in troops and administration north of Lake Turkana due to logistical costs and anticipated casualties in case of a military clash with Ethiopian soldiers. Besides, the Turkana west of Lake Turkana increased raids on their neighbors to regain livestock the British had confiscated and to reclaim their dignity among their pastoral neighbors. [35]
In the meantime the Uganda Order in Council (1902) transferred Uganda's Eastern Province (Rudolf Province) to British East African Protectorate (Kenya) thereby reducing Uganda to 2/3 of its size before this order. [36] The territory transferred from Uganda to Kenya included the area inhabited by the Turkana and vaguely encompassed the pastures of their Ngwatela section, whose inhabitants also lived in southern Sudan. Britain suggested that Ilemi should be excised from Sudan and incorporated into Uganda, or, the portion of Uganda’s former Rudolph Province containing the triangle be ceded to southern Sudan. [37] If neither proposal was acceptable, Kenya and Uganda could alternate the garrisoning of Ilemi Triangle with one third of the financial burden being the responsibility of Sudan. [38] When Sudan turned down these proposals it became urgent for the Colony and Protectorate (Boundaries) Order in Council of 1926 to redefine Kenya's territorial limit with Sudan. Britain demanded the Turkana of the borderlands should displace further south into the hinterland of the Kenya colony to benefit from British protection but by so doing they lost their fertile pastures in Ilemi to the Inyangatom and the Dassanech. By late 1926, Britain had established its administration among the Turkana but their dry season pastures in Ilemi were declared a closed frontier where no protection was forthcoming from the colonizer. [39] After 1926, the Kenyan colonial authorities established an administrative boundary that did not coincide with the Anglo-Ethiopian treaty of 1907 as a measure of accommodating Turkana’s ancestral grazing area within Kenya. [40] The grazing areas in question include the physical features, which afford the Turkana natural protection from livestock rustlers of Ethiopia and Sudan. This arrangement was constrained by a number of issues. As a start, a bigger portion of the Turkana’s dry weather pastures lay to the north of the 1914 line which was the portion of Ilemi not falling under Kenyan administration. Additionally, some pastoral communities who would henceforth be under British dominion were nominal subjects of the Emperor of Ethiopia and only migrated to Ilemi for dry season grazing. To compound the problem, most Sudanese and Ethiopian rustlers used secure avenues of approach provided by hills in Sudan far north of the Anglo-Ethiopian boundary and rolled down on the Turkana tending livestock in the lower grounds.
After Britain disarmed the Turkana the traditional authority and local military equation were disrupted so much that combined forces of the Inyangatom and Dassanech frequently raided the Turkana in full view of the British frontier post in Lokitaung. [41] Moreover the military imbalance attracted slave raids from Ethiopia despite Emperor Haile Selassie’s pledge to end slavery, which had survived in the form of captives of cattle raids being used as unpaid domestic servants in Ethiopia. [42] To be fair, Ethiopia’s frontier policing had become too costly and impossible in inaccessible remote areas after European powers limited the quantity and quality of weapons entering the country. [43] Toward the end of 1929 Britain realized that its success in policing Kenya’s northern frontier depended on Ethiopia’s capability to do the same across the common border. For this reason it recommended to other European governments to lift the arms embargo previously imposed on Ethiopia. [44]
Britain was determined to establish law and order in Ilemi provided Sudan contributed £10,000 annually toward the expenses of administering the territory starting from 1931. [45] It should be realized that setting up administration was not a simple case of constructing a fort and hoisting a flag. Where roads existed they were impermanent and often passed through rugged country making the movement for troops and supplies slow and dangerous. So, Kenya claimed from Sudan an additional sum of £5,000 annually for the construction of roads and administrative infrastructure in Ilemi. Apparently, Khartoum planned to bear the responsibility for the triangle and dispatched a reconnaissance patrol to the area in January 1931 to determine the suitability of its administration. It later abandoned the plan after realizing the immense logistical difficulties that could result if a military post was opened in the area. First, supplies would have to be transported along the Nile River, then through Sudan’s southern Mongalla province and across a hostile country that had no roads. Secondly, constructing an administrative center next to the Ethiopians could have invited constant friction from armed border communities whom Addis Ababa did not control effectively. [46]
Late in 1931, the administrators of Mongalla (Sudan) and Turkana (Kenya) agreed that the northern limits of Turkana pastures were within the area defined by the Red Line. [47] Sudan considered it legitimate and fair that the Inyangatom and Dassanech should similarly share the grazing in eastern Ilemi during the dry spell. As a measure of accommodating everybody, from August to September 1932 the Red Line was modified with a northeasterly extension of what came to be known as the Green Line. [48] This extension was to allow the Turkana to gain access to the pastures and water holes which they were to share with the Dassanech and Inyangatom when need arose. Later, Ethiopia was to interpret the area allowed to their Dassanech and Inyangatom for grazing purposes as constituting a formal cession of eastern Ilemi to Ethiopia and hastily constructed a border outpost at Namuruputh.
Several factors explain why the determination of Ilemi was constantly procrastinated during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. Britain was aware of the imminent Italian invasion but did not care about Ethiopia's territorial integrity as long as Italy did not jeopardize Britain’s geo-strategic interests in Kenya, British Somaliland, the Nile valley and Egypt. Indeed Britain’s realpolitik of the period is evident in the words of one official who said: ‘We are the protectors of Egypt's rights in the Nile and that is the benefit we give her and the hold we have over her’. [49] Nevertheless, Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1936 increased the urgency for Britain to define its borders in eastern Africa to curtail Italian irredentism. [50] For instance, after occupying Ethiopia in 1936, Italy laid claim to the Ilemi on the basis that the Ethiopian Dassanech were also indigenous residents of the triangle. On this premise their migration into the territory during the dry season was not based on tradition amicale de transhumance, the reciprocal grazing customs among pastoral nomads, but on une droit de possession collective which provided for inalienable right to their Ilemi ancestral home. [51] Rather than consider taking immediate steps to safeguard the interests of the disarmed Turkana, and without the consent or consultation of other herders, the 1902 Maud Line (also 1907 boundary) was hurriedly confirmed as the Kenya-Ethiopia border to protect British interests from Italian territorial ambitions. [52] Ethiopia and Sudan agreed to mark their common boundary using meridians because terrain features did not coincide with ethnic homelands. Britain suggested that Ethiopia should cede to Sudan the Baro (Beyrou) salient where British administration had been exercised on Ethiopian communities in exchange for an area southeast of Ilemi, which Sudan had never administered. [53] In Britain's quid pro quo proposal, Sudan would take 11,000 square miles of the Baro salient from Ethiopia in exchange for 6,000 square miles of eastern Ilemi that would be excised to Ethiopia. [54] As an assurance to Kenya that the territorial barter did not infringe on Turkana’s grazing rights Khartoum promised to rectify the Kenya-Sudan boundary to reduce the avenues through which Sudanese and Ethiopia rustlers could attack the Turkana. [55] Such adjustments would also enclose within Kenya the customary pastures of the Turkana whose limit was close to Kenya during the wet season but due to reduced browse in the dry season, they stretched further north into Sudan. However, Sudan could only offer this rectification if Ethiopia accepted the Baro-Ilemi barter.
It was important to resolve the Baro exchange quickly because Emperor Menelik had leased the 2,000 meters River Omo frontage to the authorities in Khartoum on the assumption that Sudan would remain under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium. [56] Still, Sudan wanted more in the territorial concession so that it could encompass within Sudan the entire Nuer and Anuak ethnic groups including their clans that lived in Ethiopia. Britain opposed the barter because it would make the Turkana boundary co-terminus with Ethiopia, which could deny Kenya automatic right of cross-border pursuits of livestock rustlers and increase its commitment for frontier security. [57] In view of the above predicament, Kenya reiterated its proposal of being responsible for the administration and security of the whole Ilemi Triangle at the expense of Sudan, which the latter declined because the financial burden worked out by Kenya, was not commensurate with the practical task of policing it.
In 1938, a joint Kenya-Sudan survey team established an administrative line that extended the Red Line in a northeasterly direction with the intention of accommodating within Kenya the hilly grounds in north Ilemi that afforded the Turkana natural protection from raiders of Sudan. Henceforth, the Red Line was variously known as the ‘Wakefield Line’ after the Sudan survey team leader or ‘Provisional Administrative Boundary’ to mark its purpose and conditionality. The Red Line now stretched the Ilemi eastwards to include more watering and protective terrain shared by all pastoral communities. It was regarded as a temporary measure in that proper demarcation would take place during Sudan’s exchange of eastern Ilemi with Ethiopia’s Baro salient.
In July 1939, a raid by the Inyangatom and Dassanech in the unadministered part of Ilemi left 250 Turkana dead; the majority of them were unarmed women and children. After Italy conceded it did not have full control of the Dassanech and Inyangatom, Britain conducted a punitive raid with the Kings African Rifles (KAR) supported by the Royal Air Force who dropped 250-pound bombs north of Ilemi. The punitive expedition was a temporary solution whose repeat was unlikely due to prohibitive financial costs and the need to honor Italo-Abyssinian airspace. Britain and Italy agreed that future punitive patrols against pastoralists of Italian Abyssinia should be the responsibility of the Sudanese Defence Forces while Kenya and Italy held their frontiers intact to disarm raiders retreating across them. Italy refused to compensate Britain, arguing that the counter-raids on the Dassanech and Inyangatom were outside the category of tribal raids in that Britain had employed conventional forces. On 10 August 1939, Italy rejected the Sudanese offer of the Baro-Ilemi exchange on the grounds that the territory to be surrendered by Ethiopia was too large and no further discussions followed due to the outbreak of the Second World War. [58]
IMPACT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
The build up of British troops for invading Abyssinia was conducted in Lokitaung just south of the disputed territory. The 25th East African Brigade comprised of two battalions of the Kings African Rifles (KAR) with 550 Turkana Askari and support elements. It employed the Turkana as vanguard and flank scouts to upset any ambushes organized by the Dassanech who had been armed, trained, and deployed by Italy. A lasting impact of this war was not only in making pastoral enemies fight each other across indeterminate boundaries, but post-war resource conflicts in the contested pastures would henceforth employ tactics and weapons acquired from the world war. [59] After Italy was defeated in 1941, troops of the KAR remained in Ilemi for six months to consolidate their victory during which the Turkana anticipated the disarming of the Dassanech and Inyangatom. Policing the armed pastoral communities of no fixed habitat was difficult for the KAR, yet disarming them was unthinkable unless they were all permanently under one jurisdiction. For this reason, Britain decided to blockade west of River Omo to reduce Dassanech encroachment on pastures of eastern Ilemi. At the time this was the plausible proposition given that Egypt was suspicious of any closed frontier policy in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and without justification refused to accept any further rectification of Sudan’s border with Kenya or Ethiopia. [60] In January 1942, Ethiopia demanded Britain honor the provisions of the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement of 1907 that provided for pastoral transhumance. In reality, the blockade contravened this treaty for being located inside Ethiopia’s indisputable jurisdiction. Britain withdrew but insisted that grazing was permissible in their territory if the herders were unarmed and subject to British jurisdiction as provided for in the same clause. [61] There followed an awkward impasse on the interpretation of the Anglo-Ethiopia Treaty of 1907, which increased the delay of determining the future of Ilemi. At the same time, British officials in Kenya and Sudan proposed a covert adjustment of the Kenya-Ethiopia boundary point using the original surveyors without the knowledge of Ethiopia. This ‘cowboy’ solution was later rejected after it leaked out. [62] After the Second World War, there was talk of establishing Sudanese authority in the disputed territory with the understanding that the logistical difficulties envisaged by Sudan were enormous but it did not mean the country could be relieved its territorial obligation under the international law. [63] Conflicts amongst pastoral nomads increased after the war because without any authorities in the area to regulate their use, boreholes drilled to supply water to British troops liberating Abyssinia from Fascist Italy became instant casus belli (cause for war). In 1944, Britain’s Foreign Office established the ‘Blue Line’ to the west of the Red Line, which enlarged the Ilemi triangle. The Blue Line was used from 1947 in post-war correspondence pending further negotiations that would consider the settlement of all former Italian territories in Africa. [64]
Meanwhile, on 10 May 1947, Ethiopian and Sudanese officials met to rectify their common boundary but were unable to agree on where the line should run to avoid splitting the Nuer and Anuak ethnic groups. Ethiopia proposed that in exchange for the Baro salient the common boundary should include in Ethiopia the Inyangatom and Dassanech grazing grounds. [65] Ethiopia also wanted the boundary to be rectified at the north end of Lake Turkana so that the whole River Omo remained in Ethiopia to protect the traditional fishing rights of Ethiopian ethnic groups. In 1950 Sudan unilaterally established the ‘Sudanese Patrol Line’, which is further to the west of the ‘Blue Line’.
DIFFICULTIES OF INTERPRETING MERIDIANS
Eurocentric surveyors of the Ilemi Triangle ignored local opinion and often used impermanent objects and vague vocabulary to describe the border, which has been a source of technical difficulties to both administrators and the local herders. A few examples will elucidate this point. Along the Provisional Administrative Boundary (also known as Red Line or Wakefield Line) Border Point (BP) 6 is described as ‘A prominent tree on the slope of the northwestern spur of Kalukwakerith’. BP 13 is ‘a prominent cedar tree on the northeastern spur of Loreniatom. This tree is on a spur named Atalocholo’. BP 16 is ‘a distinctive and blazed brown olive tree in the midst of the forest’, and BP 17 is ‘a lone tree marked with stones at its base on a bluff’. [66] Surveyors christened the largest water mass in the region as Lake Rudolf, which local pastoral people could not pronounce or relate to. A controversial lake which lies between Kenya and Ethiopia was renamed Lake Stefanie but the local Boran know it as Chulbi, it is Galte to the Arbore community, and Chow Bahar to several Ethiopian peoples. One essential border point is Namaruputh, which exists only in colonial records and maps yet no official or local inhabitant can today pinpoint its extent or breadth on the ground. The other contentious issue is that on the northern shore of Lake Turkana (previously Lake Rudolf) the border is constantly shifting due to deforestation and other human and ecological factors that cause the lake to recede. When the Kenya-Sudan boundary was drawn one prominent landmark was a large water mass known as the Sanderson Gulf, which has since dried up thereby opening dispute on the precise point of convergence of the Kenya-Sudan-Ethiopia border. It has been opined that by failing to visit specific points on the ground the Boundary Commissions could have been deceived by a mirage in demarcating the Sanderson Gulf. [67]
Sudan has consistently argued that the delineation by the Maud Line of 1902-3, which leaves the triangle in Sudan, should be the basis of determining its boundary with Kenya. Alternatively, it could be based on the Uganda Gazette of 30 May 1914 which also leaves the Ilemi in Sudan by describing the Kenya-Sudan-Ethiopia tri-junctional border point as: ‘A line beginning at a point, on the shore of the Sanderson Gulf, Lake Rudolf, due east…’ [68] However, the Gazette does not say whether this line begins in the east, west, north, or south of the gulf. The precision of the border here is important to Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan because it could determine the breadth of the Ilemi Appendix, which is a north-south narrow strip measuring about 150 miles by 200 miles. This proposed finger-like projection extending from Sudan due south was intended to give Sudanese and Ethiopian pastoralists access to the water of Lake Turkana. Sudan's future plan was to use its access to Lake Turkana to construct a railway line for transporting food to the lake then by water using boats to consumers of Kenya’s hinterland. [69] Nevertheless, the description of the border using indeterminate reference points on the ground makes it impossible for pastoral nomads to respect it and it would take disproportionate time and personnel to police it to prevent intercommunity violence. [70]

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