Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables & Maps
- Preface: The Making & Object of the Book
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations & Acronyms
- Introduction
- PART I BACKGROUND
- PART II THE WAR: CAUSES & IMPACT
- PART III PEACE & POST-CONFLICT DYNAMICS
- 5 The CPA & the Nuba Questions of Land, Identity & Political Destiny
- 6 Territory, Ethnic Identity & Boundary Making
- 7 Contested Communal Lands, Identity Politics & Conflicts
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES
7 - Contested Communal Lands, Identity Politics & Conflicts
from PART III - PEACE & POST-CONFLICT DYNAMICS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables & Maps
- Preface: The Making & Object of the Book
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations & Acronyms
- Introduction
- PART I BACKGROUND
- PART II THE WAR: CAUSES & IMPACT
- PART III PEACE & POST-CONFLICT DYNAMICS
- 5 The CPA & the Nuba Questions of Land, Identity & Political Destiny
- 6 Territory, Ethnic Identity & Boundary Making
- 7 Contested Communal Lands, Identity Politics & Conflicts
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES
Summary
Claiming communal land ownership on the basis of customary rights is nothing new in the Sudan in general and in the Nuba Mountains in particular. What is new in the region is an upsurge of land claims with a strong tendency to exclude others who share the same claimed territory, particularly in the post-conflict situation (see Elsayed 2005, Komey 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a). This trend, particularly among the Nuba, has been described in previous chapters. This chapter presents a further analysis based on selected field sites offering a view of the long history of Nuba-Baqqara cohabitation and symbiosis.
It focuses primarily on the post-conflict discourse of the increase in Nuba claims to communal land ownership, the Baqqara's disputes over those claims, and the subsequent resource-driven conflicts over the land. Two sides of the situation are presented: first, the Nuba's autochthonous, or lesser ‘firstcomer’ claim to communal land rights, deeply rooted in their historical and traditional legitimacy; second, the Baqqara Arabs counterclaim to have rights not only in terms of their traditional secondary rights of access and use of land and water, but also in terms of equal rights of ownership of the same land. In the working out of these claims and counter-claims at various levels of scale in the social organizations of the two groups, a range of land-driven conflicts occur of varying magnitudes and with various consequences.
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- Information
- Land, Governance, Conflict and the Nuba of Sudan , pp. 185 - 216Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010