In 1972 an agreement was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, mediated by Ethiopia’s ruler Emperor Haile Selassie, which ended the first civil war and gave regional autonomy to the three southern provinces, uniting them into one political body, the Southern Region.107
_________________________________________________
PART I: OIL IN SOUTHERN SUDAN:
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS
BACKGROUND
Blocks 1, 2, 4, and 5A and 5B: Oil Geography
The main area of oil exploration and production in Sudan to date, the Muglad Basin, stretches southeast down across the midsection of the country into the south. The Muglad Basin extends from El Muglad in Western Kordofan through Bentiu and Western Upper Nile, known by the government as Unity (al Wihda) State,57 to just north of Juba on the White Nile River.58 Oil exploitation in southern Sudan began north of Bentiu, in Western Upper Nile/Unity State—in Blocks 1 and 2, the sites of Unity and Heglig oilfields. (See Maps B and C) This report first outlines the 1978-98 phases related to the oil companies, Chevron Oil Co. and Arakis Energy Inc., that successively owned the exploration rights to Blocks 1, 2, and 4, the three blocks which are the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC) concession. It highlights the waves of Baggara militia and government soldiers who displaced the pastoral Dinka and Nuer living there over several years, looting their cattle and leaving them without land and without resources, forcing them to escape southward from the 50,500 square kilometer concession.

The oil history and development of Block 5A, operated by Lundin Oil AB (until 2003) and then Petronas Carigali Overseas Sdn Bhd, have been determined by the developments in the GNPOC area, as it is a continuation of the Muglad Basin to the south east of the GNPOC blocks. The physical and human topography of Blocks 5A and 5B—and their military and political history—are different from the GNPOC blocks, however. Blocks 5A and 5B straddle the White Nile and Zeraf island, are swampy, more densely populated, and were in rebel hands from 1984 to 1999, after which significant parts were captured by government forces, who forcibly and without compensation displaced the population so that international oil companies could be brought in to develop the oil.

Blocks 5A and 5B and the rest of the vast Sudanese oil areas to the south and east are part of the flood plain, a basin in southern Sudan into which the rivers of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia drain off from an ironstone plateau that belts the regions of Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile in southern Sudan:

[T]he flood region covers most of what is now administratively called Upper Nile and Bahr el-Ghazal. Here the land is flat, heavy clay soil, of high fertility, and with only a few outcroppings of slightly higher, sandier soil. . . . [T]his area is subjected to severe seasonal river and rain flooding which limits its use for cultivation. . . The variety of grasslands . . . provide modern pastoralists with different types of grazing throughout the dry season, but this requires constant movement to take advantage of [it] . . . . Those areas which have consistently been able to support the largest populations have been those which combine large stretches of permanently habitable land with access to flood-fed seasonal grazing.59

Blocks 5A and 5B are discussed in the next part of this report, which also continues the story of development and displacement in the GNPOC blocks.

Despite geographical differences among the GNPOC blocks and Blocks 5A and 5B concessions, a common characteristic is the radical difference between dry season and wet season. In the dry season, the area of “permanent habitation” is hot and parched and most of the population moves the cattle to be nearer to water sources such as a river or seasonally flooded toic.60 In the wet season, as the lower lands flood, the population returns with the cattle to higher grounds—sometimes no more than a meter higher.

Whether people are driven from their dry season or wet season homes, however, they are displaced, as the two areas are economically linked and equally necessary for agro-pastoralists’ survival in the harsh environment.

Southern Sudan has been described as “a large basin gently sloping northward,” through which flow the rivers Bahr el Jebel River (White Nile),61 the Bahr el Ghazal (Nam) River and its tributaries, and the Sobat, all merging into a vast barrier swamp.62 (Map A) Southern Sudan may be divided into five subzones, the floodplain being the one which suppports Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, and others in much of the Muglad and Melut oil basins. The floodplain is divided into four land classes:

The highlands, higher than the surrounding plains by only a few centimeters, are the sites for “permanent settlements.” Vegetation consists of open thorn woodland and/or open mixed woodland with grasses.

The intermediate lands lie slightly below the highlands, and there the “creeping flow” of river water from heavy rainfall in the Ethiopian and East and Central African highlands is common. Vegetation is mostly open perennial grassland with some acacia woodland and other sparsely distributed trees, such as balanites aegyptiaca, or heglig.63

The toic is land seasonally inundated or saturated by the main rivers and inland water-courses, retaining enough moisture throughout the dry season to support cattle grazing.

The sudd is permanent swampland below the level of the toic, and covers a substantial part of the floodplain. It provides good fishing but is not available for livestock.64 Historically it has been a physical barrier to outsiders’ penetration.65

The ecology of the large basin and the societies of its peoples are almost unique in the world. Until recently, wild animals and birds flourished, hunted rarely by the agro-pastoralists. The names of rivers and towns in various Nilotic languages66 suggest this variety, for instance, Ghazal (gazelle), Jeraf (giraffe), and Mankien (mother egret).

Southern pastoralists in the floodplain live in different areas during a single year, and, depending on the season, family members will live apart according to their economic roles. One report accuses some past “experts” on southern Sudan of mistakenly basing their opinions and perceptions on observations of the Nuer or Dinka during only one season, the dry season. These experts usually left during the rainy season to avoid being stranded for months at a time,67 although that is the time when most of the population moves back into their permanent habitations, above the flood level. When determining whether people “live” in a given area, therefore, it is important to note the season of the year under observation. An area considered “empty” in the dry season would not be empty in the wet season.

Human Population
Two key human rights questions have been raised about developments in Blocks 1, 2, and 4 (GNPOC) and in Blocks 5A and 5B: did people ever live there? And if so, were they forcibly displaced by the government to make way for oil development? The answer to both questions is yes.

Maps and Tax Records of Nuer and Dinka Presence
Throughout the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium rule of Sudan (1898-1955), colonial administrators recorded ample evidence that Africans lived in the areas under consideration for an unknown number of centuries prior to 1898. During the condominium period, the government of Sudan Survey Department prepared a 1946 tribal map of Sudan (corrected in 1969),68 which showed that what later became Blocks 1 and 2 were inhabited by the Bul and Leek ethnic groups of the Nuer people.69 Block 1 was also inhabited by three subgroups or sections of the Ruweng (Panaru) Dinka ethnic group: the Alor Dinka to the west; the Awet Dinka in the northern cap; and the Kwil Dinka in the east. 70 (Map D) Maps compiled in 1928 and 1937 provide even earlier evidence of Dinka living in this Ruweng (Panaru) Dinka area of Blocks 1 and 2.71 The Dinka word dugdug, or cattle camp, appears on maps of this period throughout the Ruweng (Panaru) Dinka areas in Western Upper Nile, the large area the Baggara called the Bahr (meaning river in Arabic).72

The first population census of the newly independent Sudanese government, carried out in 1955/56, counted the numbers of people living in different court centers (or omdiyas), giving figures ranging from 7,000 to 33,000 heads of household in each of nine ethnic groups in Western Upper Nile.73 Although the figures from the 1955/56 census are suspect, as all census figures for the south have been, they give a rough idea of the proportional sizes of groups. Dinka and Nuer heads of households in Western Upper Nile totaled 137,391 at that time. 74 Overall, the population of the Upper Nile as a whole in 1956 was given elsewhere as 888,611.75

It appears the Nuer and Dinka were classified by later Sudanese government census-takers as “rural” and the Baggara as “nomads.” The 1983 census showed a population in Upper Nile of 1,594,554, of which 89.9 percent was rural, 5.7 percent was urban, and 4.4 percent was nomadic.76

From 1946-54, the Jonglei Investigation Team (JIT) carried out a survey of the possible effects of a massive canal—the Jonglei canal—on the ecology and peoples of southern Sudan.77 The research was conducted over a period of years beginning in 1946 and was based on administrative reports kept on the region by administrators who lived and traveled there.78

The JIT survey confirmed that the Ruweng (Panaru) Dinka and the Leek and Bul Nuer lived in areas of Western Upper Nile in what later became known as Blocks 1, 2, and part of 4;79 large parts of these areas were referred to on the JIT maps as “permanent settlements,”80 located on higher and better drained land.81

A 1954 JIT map illustrates the “permanent habitation” land south of Bentiu in what is now Block 5A.82 (Map D) The most prominent geographical feature is the Nile River tributary, the Bahr Al Jebel River (White Nile), flowing from south to north where it meets the Bahr El Ghazal River and flows eastward. Coincidentally, Blocks 5A and 5B would be deprived of water by the Jonglei canal. Work on the Jonglei canal was brought to a halt in 1984 by an SPLA attack, however, and the project has not resumed as of the writing of this report.

The Bahr El Ghazal (Nam) River originates south of Wangkei, flows north to join the Jur River coming from the west, then continues north to where it meets the Bahr al Arab at Wangkei, almost one hundred kilometers west of Bentiu.83 It then continues east through Bentiu, joins the Bahr El Jebel then the Bahr El Zeraf (both flowing south north to meet it), until it meets the Sobat River (coming from Ethiopia) in Malakal to form the Nile. It continues north as the White Nile to Khartoum, where it joins the Blue Nile (also coming from Ethiopia), to become the Nile River until it reaches Cairo and pours out into the Mediterranean Sea.

Historically, the Bahr El Ghazal (Nam) River provided a barrier to Baggara horseback penetration to Nuer settlements south of this river. Block 5A—except its northern corner—is south of this Bahr El Ghazal (Nam) River and therefore did not experience many raids by the Baggara. Instead, Block 5A provided a refuge for the terrorized Leek and Jikany Nuer population fleeing south from Blocks 1, 2, and 4 in the 1980s and 1990s. Such displacement swelled the numbers of people and cattle south of the river.

The historical barrier was breached, however, when the Lundin consortium bridged the river at Bentiu in 2000 and the government later put in a bridge at Wangkei in Block 4. In 2002 the Baggara used them to penetrate south of the river for the first time, hunting Nuer civilians in government-organized destroy and displace raids.

The human and cattle population south of the Bahr El Ghazal (Nam) River was, even before oil exploration and accompanying displacement started, denser than in the Heglig area of Western Upper Nile. Block 5A includes the small towns of Nimne, Nhialdiu, Duar, Boaw, Koch, Ler, Adok, and the market town of Rupnyagai that grew up after a peace agreement was reached between the Nuer/SPLM/A and the Baggara in 1986 and trade between them recommenced. 84 Block 5A is populated by Bul, Leek, Jagei,85 (western) Jikany,86 and Dok87 Nuer. The Lak and Thiang Nuer also reside in Block 5A, on Zeraf island—formed by the triangle of the Bahr El Ghazal (Nam) River, the Bahr El Jebel River (White Nile), and the Bahr el Zeraf River—but so far they have not been as greatly affected by the fighting. Lak and Thiang Nuer live in Zeraf Island (in Central Upper Nile), which has been back and forth between the SPLM/A and progovernment militia leader Cmdr. Gabriel Tanginya, based in Pom to the east of Old Fangak (one day walking). The southern part of Zeraf Island, mostly of Thiang Nuer, is included in Block 5A.

The Nyuong and Dor Nuer lived predominantly in Block 5B, where the towns of Nyal and Ganyliel are located. On the East Bank of the Nile in Block 5B are the Gaweir and Gol Nuer. (Map C and D)

The Living Patterns of Dinka and Nuer
The subsistence economy and rich social life of the Nuer and Dinka have been determined in great measure by geography. Their agro-pastoral lifestyle has been adapted to the periodic flooding and dryness of the land they live in. Their way of life has been guarded from outside invaders—the first being slavers—by malaria, heat, wild animals, flooding, and papyrus-clogged rivers or sudd. .

The spread-out villages or “permanent settlements” of the rural Nuer and Dinka do not refer to brick and mortar buildings, but to settled locations with more permanent type of mud and thatch housing above flood-level, to which the Dinka and Nuer return annually during the rainy season and where they plant their crops. These settlements include several extended family and/or other compounds. The compounds contain tukls, circular mud one-room huts with thatched roofs that last about five to ten years. The compound fence, of thatching or more permanent material, may encircle several tukls, depending on family size. Other permanent structures such as cattle byres (luaak, plural of luak) and graneries are also made of mud and branches, in contrast to the impermanent “dry season” houses built of flimsy materials, closer to the rivers, which are flooded out during the rainy season.88

Many anthropologists and others have studied Africa’s migratory agro-pastoralists, particularly the Dinka and Nuer. The care of cattle and the availability of water for their cattle is the main reason for their migration. Cattle to the Nuer and Dinka are not simply sources of food and other products. Cattle are the main form in which wealth is kept, and are signs of prestige. They are used to pay bridewealth, which is a group responsibility of the family of the bridegroom, and therefore helps maintain interrelations among lineage members. Cattle are also used to provide compensation for homicide and other crimes; jails or prisons were introduced by outsiders and rebel movements. Cattle play an important role in the traditional religions. Even now, there is still resistance in most Dinka and Nuer areas to using cattle for draft or transport because the cattle might be harmed by such exertion.89

Movement from the permanent settlements to dry season grazing in the toic starts in December-January at the beginning of the dry season. The return journey to the permanent settlements usually starts in May-June, the early part of the rainy season.

These major migrations are planned not by individual families but by larger lineage groups. Some family members (particularly young men) accompany the cattle to the toic, and female family members go with them to milk cattle; these roles are traditionally assigned by sex. Other family members stay behind to cultivate.

Cultivation of sorghum and other crops begins in the highlands or permanent settlement areas in the early rainy season and the harvest of crops begins when the rains are heavy in June-August. Rains drop off in September-November and cattle are driven to the toic again. This is the most socially active place and time, a period of fun, especially for the youth. The rains usually stop by early December, while harvest of crops is completed and the cattle graze on the stalks.90

Relations between Baggara, and Nuer and Dinka
Before the discovery of oil in 1978, Blocks 1, 2, and parts of 4 were economically useful for their pasturelands during the dry season; they were partially flooded during the other six or eight months of the year. During the colonial period, the British allowed the Baggara91 to graze during the dry season in Nuer and Dinka pastures and water in their rivers, but controlled this seasonal migration by issuing permits, in order to minimize friction over resources between the Baggara and the Nuer and Dinka.

The Nuer and Dinka who lived in the region have never moved their herds to Baggara lands for watering or any other purpose, except sometimes for sale. Their migrations stayed within the south, where the valuable dry season pastures and water—and their permanently habitable land—lay. The historian of the Baggara in the 1950s noted that “much of [the southern area of Baggara migration] has permanent Dinka settlements, although during most of the time that the Humr [Baggara] occupy it the Dinka are with their cattle south of the Bahr el Arab [River].”92 The two groups had complementary migration patterns that avoided both using the same watering and grazing area at the same time, although this broke down occasionally.

Cattle raids were a part of life among the Baggara, Nuer, and Dinka; the Dinka lived on both sides of the north-south border in Sudan (which border was generally kept as the British left it at independence, with one exception).93 The Leek and Bul sections of the Nuer, and the Ruweng (Panaru) Dinka (as well as the Ngok Dinka of Abyei, Kordofan; Twic Dinka of northern Bahr El Ghazal; and other Dinka), lived close enough to the Baggara of Kordofan (Humr and Misseriya) to be affected by their cattle raids. They fought back and conducted counterraids.94 Usually a tribal conference resolved the conflict, sometimes at central government insistence.95 But the feuding did not dominate relations. Negotiated access for Baggara cattle to Dinka and Nuer watering spots was more common than raids before the war.

Independence, Civil War, and the Addis Ababa Agreement
In 1956 independence came to Sudan, a country where many differences existed among its peoples: race, ethnicity, language, religion, dress, facial scarification, cuisine, and so on. It was a multicultural society where no one people had the majority. The Dinka, the largest people in Sudan, were estimated to comprise 12 percent of the Sudanese population at the time of the only ethnic census in 1955/1956.96 At that time, 39 percent of the Sudanese spoke Arabic as their native language and identified themselves as “Arabs.” Approximately 60 percent of the population was African (non-Arab).97

It is estimated that between 60 and 70 percent of the population of Sudan is Muslim. Ninety percent of Muslims live in the northern two-thirds of the country. They are, among themselves, quite diverse and preserve many customs, languages, facial scarification styles, and dress unique to their ethnic groups.

Southerners--which name refers to those who predominate in the southern third of the country--call themselves “Africans,”98 speak their own languages,99 worship their own gods or—a minority—practice Christianity.100 Few southerners are Muslims.

Not all persons describing themselves as Africans (non-Arabs) are southerners, and many Africans living in the center, east, and west of Sudan are Muslims; approximately a fifth of Sudan’s population is both African and Muslim. These Africans are Muslims who have not adopted Arab culture and their home language is not Arabic. One example is the Nuba, who live in central Sudan; many Nuba, including Muslims, consider themselves Africans (not Arabs); perhaps one-half of the people of the Nuba Mountains area is Muslim and the other half Christian.101 The adoption of Islam without Arabization is typical of sub-Saharan Muslim Africans outside of Sudan; Sudan’s coupling of Islam with Arabic language, customs, and culture in most of northern Sudan is unusual in Africa. The attempts of central governments and others to spread the Arab/Muslim culture to African areas has long been a source of political and social friction in Sudan. Attempts of Arab/Muslim Sudanese to politically and economically dominate non-Arabs and non-Muslims have also been resisted.

Those dominating the central government in Sudan since independence—whether military dictatorship, elected, democratic, socialist, free market, sectarian, secular, or Islamist—have always come from northern Nile-based (riverine) ethnic groups claiming Arab origin, whose religion was Islam. All Sudanese central governments have considered the oil in the south to be national, i.e., central government, property, and the same for the Nile waters that wend their way north through the sudd. Historical experience, including nineteenth-century enslavement of southerns by northern entrepreneurs,102 made southerners suspicious of northern government promises to deal fairly with them regarding treaties, oil, or any other matter.103

At the time of the last national census, in 1983, the southern provinces were the poorest in the country. Per capita income in the south (population then about five million) was about half that of the national average and perhaps only one-quarter that of the more prosperous province of Khartoum.104 Life expectancy in Upper Nile province in the 1973 census was 35.69 years, compared to the already low national average of 44.85.105

Against this background, it was unsurprising that an independent Sudan, once freed from its colonial masters, soon showed the strains of maintaining unity. The country consisted of nine large provinces. As early as 1955, less than a year before independence, a mutiny among southern soldiers broke out when the central government tried to transfer them from the southern garrison in Wau, Bahr El Ghazal, to the north. Only two years after independence, the 1958 military takeover by Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abboud and his subsequent policy of Islamization fueled a southern separatist war, sporadic at first. During the early 1960s, separatist southern guerrillas known as Anyanya106 made the initial focus of the war Equatoria, one of three southern provinces, but by the mid-1960s it had spread to the other two southern provinces: Upper Nile (the largest) and Bahr El Ghazal. In 1969, President Jafa’ar Nimeiri took power in Khartoum following a military coup. He prosecuted the war but soon entered into peace negotiations with the rebels.

In 1972 an agreement was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, mediated by Ethiopia’s ruler Emperor Haile Selassie, which ended the first civil war and gave regional autonomy to the three southern provinces, uniting them into one political body, the Southern Region.107

The government subsequently incorporated some Anyanya rebels into its army: the Addis Ababa agreement stated that citizens of the Southern Region “shall constitute a sizeable proportion” of the Sudan armed forces “in such reasonable numbers as will correspond to the population of the region.”108 In all, the government brought 10,703 Anyanya into the uniformed forces,109 leaving 7,290 still unemployed.110