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Where the Land Is a Tinderbox, the Killing Is a Frenzy
June 16, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
YELWA, Nigeria - Before there were mass graves here, there
was the matter of cows and corn patches.
Some years ago, in a nearby village called Kassa, farmers
accused cattle herders of deliberately sending their
long-horned beasts to trample across their plots. Cattle
herders accused farmers of deliberately setting their
grassy meadows on fire to keep their animals from grazing.
Conveniently for leaders of both camps, this simple,
primordial conflict around land was stoked by fiercer
passions: Tribe and creed, resentment against outsiders,
competition for political power, an overabundance of guns
and frustrated young men to put them to use.
That combustible mix fueled a recent orgy of violence
across this fertile central Nigerian state. Churches and
mosques were razed. Neighbor turned against neighbor.
Reprisal attacks spread until finally, in mid-May, the
government imposed emergency rule.
In this way, the Nigerian conflict resembles many others
across the broad midsection of Africa, from the Tana River
Basin of northern Kenya to the arid savannas of western
Sudan to the tips of the Sahara in northern Mali.
On the surface, they may look like tribal or religious
wars. But they are more like Matryoshka dolls, one stacked
inside the other, said Alex Vines, head of the Africa
program at the London-based Royal Institute of African
Affairs. The smallest doll, he said, the one at the very
core, is often a contest over land. "Then you've got all
these layers on top," Mr. Vines said. "These things get
manipulated and exacerbated."
It is as old as civilization itself, the clash of men
attached to their cattle and men attached to their land. It
is a clash of two cultures, two ways of being in the world.
In recent years, as the desert has spread, trees have been
felled and the populations of both herders and farmers have
soared, the competition for land has only intensified.
In northern Mali, swords and sticks have been chucked for
Kalashnikovs, as desertification and population growth have
stiffened the competition between the largely black African
farmers and the ethnic Tuareg and Fulani herders. Tempers
are raw on both sides. The dispute, after all, is over
livelihood and even more, about a way of life.
"There's a kind of emotional, historical thing behind
this," said Mohamed Ould Mahmoud, country manager in Mali
for the antipoverty group Oxfam. " 'My grandfather used to
be there so I need to be there,' and so on. Land is a very,
very critical thing."
Clashes in most places have been managed by local elders
and law enforcement officials: fines have been levied,
grazing boundaries have been set, deals have been struck.
In Mali, Oxfam workers have coaxed leaders of both sides to
work out new rules on when and where grazing is permitted.
But it is when disputes over land intersect with tribe,
faith or political greed that brothers and neighbors have
turned on each other with sudden ferocity.
In the Darfur region of Sudan, competition over land and
water underlies longstanding tensions between Arab camel
herders and black African subsistence farmers. Those
tensions, among other things, have fed into a terrifying
civil war there, with Arab militias backed by the Sudanese
government chasing black Africans off their land in what
United Nations officials have deplored as a campaign of
"ethnic cleansing."
Here in the central highlands of Nigeria, farmers and
herders are divided along ethnic as well as religious
lines. The farmers call themselves natives of the land, and
they are overwhelmingly Christian. The herders are ethnic
Fulani who range across the region in search of pasture for
their herds, and they are overwhelmingly Muslim.
For generations, those distinctions didn't matter much.
Over time, though, they began to matter very much.
Trouble began brewing several years ago over control of a
political district in the state capital, Jos.
The ethnic groups that consider themselves indigenous to
the area squared off with those they called "settlers":
ethnic Fulani and Hausa who have lived in the region for
roughly 100 years. The Hausa-Fulani have prospered
economically but complain about political
disenfranchisement. The indigenous tribes have complained
about being "swamped" by outsiders. The indigenous tribes
are Christian; the Hausa and Fulani are Muslim.
That political competition drove a sharp wedge between the
two faiths. Riots broke out on a Friday afternoon in
September 2001, killing 1,000 Muslims and Christians in the
course of the next four days. It poisoned Christian-Muslim
relations across the state. By the following year,
Christian-Muslim marriages were banned here in Yelwa. The
market was divided into Christian and Muslim sections.
Some weeks after the Jos riots, recalled Saleh Bayeri, the
leader of a cattlemen's group, a Fulani herder was killed
in Kassa, along with 22 of his cows. A Christian farmer
named Rwang Pam said the herders had violated a village ban
on grazing.
Months later, Mr. Pam said, a lone farmer patrolling his
corn patch one Sunday morning was set upon and struck on
the head with a machete. The farmers, in turn, took
revenge. "In order to vent their spleen," he said, "the
villagers came out and met their cows and macheted their
cows. About 70." Rumors spread among the cattlemen that the
farmers then ate all the meat.
With each side certain that it was fighting for its faith,
retaliation followed retaliation.
In the outlying villages, Christians and Muslims turned on
one another, setting homes on fire, driving families from
villages where they had lived for generations, creating a
Balkanized, burned-out landscape in what was once the
breadbasket of Nigeria. Many of the eruptions continued to
be inspired by reports of cattle theft.
The cycle of vengeance went on: In February, Christians
were burned to death inside a church in Yelwa. In early
May, a Christian militia massacred Muslims, and revenge
attacks quickly followed miles away in the volatile,
largely Muslim city of Kano. Two weeks later, with the
declaration of emergency in this state, Nigeria fell into
its gravest political crisis since the return of civilian
rule five years ago.
Mr. Bayeri shrugged. "When you want to start a war," he
declared, "touch a Fulani man's cattle."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/international/africa/16lett.html?ex=1088415218&ei=1&en=6b9463307b0d7177
slide show:
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/15/international/16nige_slide1.jpg
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/15/international/16nige_slide2.jpg
are we still savages?
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/15/international/16nige_slide3.jpg
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/15/international/16nige_slide4.jpg
where are allthe women?
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/15/international/16nige_slide5.jpg
---------------------------------
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