Paper long abstract:

No region of Africa has seen more frequent inter-state and intra-state war. Nowhere has experienced more secessions -internationally recognized and unrecognized- than the Horn. Political orders here have been consistently unstable, threatened both from within by coups, popular mobilization and insurgencies, and from without by regionalized conflict in which states undermine or even break up one another. While governments recraft modes of belonging and (re)create citizens, liberation fronts appear in defence of old or future homelands across both the region’s rumpstates and the polities that have separated from them- Eritrea, Somaliland, South Sudan. Border conflicts have existed for decades and are increasing- every international border in the region is at least partially contested.

Competing nationalisms, I argue, are central to war and peace and to “future borders”, both in ways that are recognizable for scholars of other regions and in ways that render the Horn unique in Africa. The paper accounts for the enduring salience -and even primacy- of these competing nationalisms in not only structuring politics within the key regional states -Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan- but also between them. Indeed, it is my contention that projects of nation-building, state-building and revolutionary transformation and the nationalist opposition which they generate cannot be understood separately from the international relations of the Horn of Africa: the question of nationalism on the one hand and the structural and normative IR context on the other are deeply interlinked in ways that have proven hugely destabilizing to the peoples and states of the region.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates how Equatorian elites, seeing borders as both political and identity resources, used debates on the presence of Dinka cattle raiders in Equatoria to contest the post-liberation political order in South Sudan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates how Equatorian elites used debates on internal borders to contest the post-liberation political order in South Sudan. Seeing borders as both political and identity resources, Equatorian elites have long called for a rigidification of the administrative boundary between Equatoria and the rest of the country, mainly inhabited by Nilotic peoples. Keen on projecting the image of a homogenous Equatorian ethnic and historical territory despite diverse realities and local rivalries, Equatorian elites are the loudest in advocating for 'true' federalism in post-independence South Sudan. Located in the interdisciplinary space between comparative politics and political sociology, this paper focuses on discourses on the growing presence of Dinka Bor cattle-raiders in Central and Eastern Equatoria. It explores how local disagreements between Dinka Bor and some Equatorian communities are mobilized by Equatorian elites to contest the Sudan People's Liberation Movement's state-building strategy, leading to conflict, discourses on secession and calls to resurrect a fantasized Equatorian nation. This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in South Sudan and archival research done in the National Archives of South Sudan. It aims to contribute to the broader literature on identity, region-making and state-building in Africa.

Paper short abstract:

Ever since Juba's independence in 2011, the new international border between the two Sudans has been a matter of disagreements, repeated official statements and formal closure. A formality that clashes with the reality on the ground, along a border that the two governments don't completely control.

Paper long abstract:

Since South Sudan's secession from Sudan in July 2011, the new international border has remained a bone of more or less acute contention. The agreement reached in September 2012 has been implemented only partially and during the last decade the two governments have continued to meet regularly and to regularly issue statements making public their commitments to work towards the opening of a few official border corridors and check points. However, facts on the ground speak of a different reality: an almost non-existent border, which is hardly demarcated, not always controlled by either government and where exchanges and movements of goods and people have never really stopped, often being exploited by local powers, including armed groups opposed to either government during and after the two countries' respective civil wars.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic studies of land and agricultural policies in Ethiopia's western lowlands, this paper shows how Amhara irredentism is rooted in local contentions over access to land and agrarian resources.

Paper long abstract:

Against essentialist and nationalist readings of territory, I propose an agrarian understanding of Amhara irredentism. Amhara nationalist movements have engaged in intense campaigning over the zones of Metekkel, Wolqayt, Raya, and "Mulu Shewa" they claim as "historically Amhara". Based on fieldwork carried out between 2013 and 2021 in Mettekel and Wolqayt, I argue that agricultural policies and land administration carried out since the mid 2000s provide a grid for interpreting Amhara push on Ethiopian internal borders.

In the context of ethnic federalism, agricultural policies pressed local élites to transfer land to investors in the lowland peripheries. They reacted diversely, by both encouraging and complaining about land transactions and work migration entailed by the rush for land. As ethnicity provided the basis for party structuration and political representation, local land tensions espoused the same ethnic lines - although past agricultural practices were often more inclusive and allowed more fluidity, solidarity, and transactions between groups. Agricultural workers from other regions tried to access land, concluding transactions with groups ethnic federalism had recognized as "indigenous". Against this background, several policy programs including land registration projects implemented between 2014 and 2018, triggered local violence. As the political crisis was deepening and polarization increasing at the federal level, political parties and state institutions provided channels for local land conflicts to scale up. Meanwhile, agricultural investors played a prominent role in fostering irredentism, by providing narratives of success, and then resources for armed groups.

Paper long abstract:

Assumptions that underpin the cartographic discourse within countries and among them are deeply problematic. We propose to interrogate such assumptions within Ethiopia and between Ethiopia and Eritrea without lingering over the veracity of clashing claims and without prejudice to their appropriate adjudication.

Tigray-Amhara contestation over Wolkait-Tsegede (or Western Tigray) is one of several unresolved issues at the heart of the recent civil war in northern Ethiopia. Another issue complicating that war and one that awaits permanent resolution is the 1998-2000 border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea – even though a duly appointed arbitral court long issued a binding verdict. When juxtaposed, their legal substantive distinctions notwithstanding, these two vectors of conflict present a complex interplay of historical memory, semblance of legality and appeal to justice, blatant resort to and reliance on violence, and the ultimate realities of practical balance of power on the ground all to serve a desired cartographic outcome on the basis of historical maps. We challenge the putative objectivity of maps as accurate reflections of territorial, demographic, and political realities. Over the longue durée, notions of immutable, territorialized and bounded ethnic homelands – or even national territories – as timeless are untenable. Given the production of territorialized, bounded, and mapped ethnic homelands as a corollary of centralizing bureaucratic and administrative thrusts of modern states, we offer alternative reading of maps, in the present as in the past, as visual and textual artifacts that are intrinsically linked to the mapmaker(s) – their ideology, inspiration, worldview and motive, or those of their patron(s). We also examine the potentially different outcomes that follow from them under international law vis-à-vis domestic, administrative laws.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how legitimation strategies by different South Sudanese insurgents induced diverging degrees of external support from foreign governments. This has had profound consequences for how the South Sudanese state came into being, and how its future workings are currently being contested.

Paper long abstract:

For insurgents, engaging in international diplomacy is vital to achieve their objectives, ranging from securing financial assistance to realising aspirations for independent statehood. In their diplomatic engagements, rebels use various legitimation strategies to influence foreign governments, such as the organisation of official visits to rebel-held territories and setting up diplomatic representations abroad. The external support generated by these legitimation strategies varies greatly. In some cases, insurgent legitimation efforts are disregarded, while in other cases they induce political recognition and military aid from other states. It remains largely unknown however, why and under what conditions insurgent legitimation strategies induce external support from foreign governments. To address this puzzle the paper analyses how different South Sudanese rebel groups have used legitimation strategies to acquire external support during the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005) and the South Sudanese civil war (2013-2020). It compares the main faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) that was led by John Garang and later by Salva Kiir, the faction loyal to Riek Machar, and the National Salvation Front led by Thomas Cirillo. The paper demonstrates how the state of South Sudan came into being through rebel diplomacy, and how contemporary South Sudanese insurgents are trying to reconfigure the future of the South Sudanese state through old and new legitimation strategies. The paper’s findings challenge conventional wisdom about rebels as passive proxies, and deepen the understanding of civil war dynamics, state formation processes, and the international politics of insurgency in the Horn of Africa.