Questioning the Saliency in Contemporary Conflict in Sudan and Nigeria

Religion is no longer a major factor in the conflicts in Sudan and Nigeria. In Sudan, the conflict is primarily a power struggle between political elites, while in Nigeria, conflicts between farmers and herders are fueled by competition for land and resources, with religion being exploited by political and religious leaders. The conflicts in both countries have complex dimensions and involve economic factors. In Nigeria, the bandits, a criminal group, have also contributed to the conflict. Overall, religion is not the main source of conflict, but rather a contributing factor. Hi, it's Aloysia, hi it's Nicole, welcome to our podcast, we will be discussing the role of religion as a political identity and analyzing it as a source of conflict. Our podcast aims to show that religion is no longer a salient factor in contemporary Sudan and Nigeria as it relates to conflict. We also discuss the lack of attention given to the broader inequalities which we argue are the true source of conflict in contemporary African states. Further, we will be discussing the complexities which attach to these conflicts in Sudan and Nigeria. While it's been argued by academics in the past that religion plays a salient role in Sudanese politics and conflict, that is no longer the case. Rather, political elites are fighting for power. In Nigeria, the climate conflict and radical insurgent groups such as the bandits are fueling the ethno-religious tensions and are depleting natural resources since northern Nigeria became a pool of innovation in the 2000s, as well as the kidnapping of children as a business model. Currently, in Sudan, there is a war between Hamadi's RSF forces and Baran, the head of the Sudanese army. The army, in 2019, staged a coup d'etat to overthrow the 30-year-old Bashir regime. We briefly discuss this conflict to showcase that religion is no longer a salient factor in the current conflict that's going on in Sudan. For context, Sudan has had three civil wars and some of them have been led by Islamic forces and there was a communist regime as well, but that was also overthrown in one of the civil wars. But popular Islam is deep-rooted in Sudanese culture. Religion as a political identity has been devalued as a salient factor. Rather, it is the economic factors and the perceived inequalities and the control of state resources that have led to political instability in contemporary Sudan as demonstrated by the Baran and Hamadi war. Nevertheless, having said that, identity is still an underlying factor in the conflict, but not a central issue. The following comment was made by an army official. Hamashi is an outsider. If he were a mid-level Sudanese politician, he would stand out as a national leader. His style and personal background is even more striking, unlike any other leader or politician that the Sudanese have ever known. He speaks almost in a vernacular and his Arabic is marked with a distinctive accent. It's so distinctive that it's linked to the Western tribes, who live far away from the usual source of Sudan's leaders. I want to bring up the fact that the periphery feel particularly economically deprived. When I say the periphery, I mean areas outside of Khartoum. And there is a democratic deficit within the countries. The general population aren't really too involved in the current conflict, as per the discussion by Michael Walker and Joshua Crais in their podcast. While the marginalized communities in Darfur face their own civil war, which was erupted in 2003, triggered by the formation of insurgent organizations that have motives and means and opportunities to engage in armed resistance against the state. However, this is not to say popular Islam has no role to play in modern Sudanese society, as religion is closely linked to one's personal identity. As Ousmane Boko puts it, religion is emotional. It has deep roots in Sudanese history, where Islam has played a significant role in the country's public political spheres. In 1991, Sudan was considered the epicenter of an Islamic movement. Prior secular movements have failed, such as Nimeri's Communist Party. Bashir himself used Islam as an anti-colonial identity, and all oppositions were seen as bad Muslims. For example, in 2007, Bashir stated that the West pushes its nose into our beliefs and calls for changing our education curriculum, our governments, and he denounced a Western plot to Christianize Sudan and Darfur, which was alleged to have involved the reported abduction of the Furi children by the French NGO. Al-Bashir said that the abducted children would be converted to Christianity and returned to Sudan in order to convert more Sudanese Muslims to Christianity and Westernize them. This type of rhetoric is also seen in Nigeria, especially in the early 2010s, as Boko Haram uses its distaste for Westernization. Today, while Burhan denies that the army is an Islamic army, there are many strong Islamic forces within the army, although the army originally was an Egyptian creation. Despite this, religion is not the basis of this conflict, as neither Hamidi nor Burhan are concerned with Islam directly, rather they are in a power struggle between two regimes. Religion is no longer a major source of conflict in contemporary Sudan. The conflict in Nigeria offers a similar conclusion on religion, but it has different themes. Nicole, would you like to discuss more about that? So to open my assessment of the conflict which ensues in Nigeria, it is important for me to address that although religious dimensions between Muslim and Christian communities is claimed and phrased to be a salient factor in relation to these pastoral farmer conflicts in Nigeria, we will aim to explore the multi-faceted dimensions in which play into these sources of internal conflict in Nigeria. Pastoral farmer conflicts in Nigeria is one of the most prevalent causes of conflict, with the Conflict Location and Events Database reporting that 34% of farmer-herder based conflict was reported to be coming from Nigeria. Moreover, there is seen to be a process to these conflicts between farmers and herders in Nigeria, with conflicts arising on the basis of encroachments onto land, in which then escalates towards violence such as killings of civilians and cattle, which rather is not based solely on religious sentiments but turns into a distrust and resentment between Muslim pastoralists and Christian farmers. This distrust between farmers and herders will then revolve around community based efforts in which retaliation occurs in areas which have Christian or Muslim sentiments. Rather, the attitudes between these farmers and herders are fuelled even further when political and religious leaders exploit these tensions for their own political and religious gains. Hence, the centrality of religion as the causal basis for these conflicts is tested as we look towards an Amnesty International report in 2018 which reported that the four issues pertaining to crop destruction by livestock cattle raids and the killing of cattle arose. Both Christian and farmers and Islamic pastoralists had previously maintained peace structures. Hence, it is claimed that although these religious based tensions exist, they act as an escalating factor to these issues surrounding the land ownership and competition for natural resources. The religious dimensions add complexities to these conflicts, especially in regards to farmer-herder conflicts with the prominence of the identifiability and uniqueness of these pastoralists. These pastoralists often share Islamic practices and Fulani ethnicities, with the Fulani being one of the largest ethnic groups in northern Nigeria and with much of these conflicts occurring in Christian-based regions. In the 2018 report by Amnesty International, it was found that these attacks which have resulted in the burning of villages, which have been seen at both ends with attacks based in both Fulani and Christian-based villages. The problem with religious ties to this argument is that these retaliation tactics from the unresolved conflicts between farmers and herders are acting as a catalyst to the attacks of other bordering communities as a result of the ethno-religious commonalities in which these communities share. However, yet again, this leads back to government inaction and security forces as despite their knowings and observations of these attacks, they are doing nothing to intervene in an attempt to pacify these conflicts. This lack of intervention and accountability have led to villagers to doubt the ability to provide conflict resolution, with some villagers believing that these authorities are complicit in these crimes. They do not diminish the vast reasons behind Nigerian conflict by framing it as religious conflict solely. For example, the group-like bandits are not necessarily a religious-motivated group, rather they have taken over swaths of countryside using military-grade weaponry to rustle cattle to terrorise communities and stage mass kidnappings for ransom and overrun security forces. Nicole, do you want to speak about the bandits and how they've influenced conflict in Nigeria? Yes, so thank you Elisa. So much like the situation in Sudan where economic conditions facilitated a coup, there is a need to assess the governance structures that need to be put in place for the security of the economic and social well-being of Nigeria's citizens. In assessing the need for social, political and economic reform, it is important that we look at the insurgency of the Boko Haram and in particular the recent insurgency of bandits into the northwestern regions of Nigeria, which has caused an additional strain on Nigeria's economy. These terrorist groups have extracted various monetary gains. There is often an assertion that these bandit groups are serving to exert Islamic dominance in the northern parts of Nigeria, as these members of criminal groups are in lineage with members of the Fulani tribe, which have ties to Islam. The International Red Cross affirms these assertions, as it mentions the key driver of these banditry conflicts is based on economic gains, while also highlighting that these attacks are not discriminative on the basis of faith. This non-discrimination of faith is seen as attacks have been deployed towards Fulani pastoralists in the form of cattle raids, while attacks have also been made towards Christian Husa farmers with the obstruction of property in Christian-based regions. And finally, commenting that attacks on the president and political leaders who have ties to the Fulani ethnic groups is also conducted by these bandits. The bandits are presently the threat. Their tactics are shockingly similar to Boko Haram, despite not being a religiously motivated group. We examine a group like Boko Haram as a radical Islamic organization, which has caused terror to several African states. For context, southern Nigeria is more economically developed compared to northern Nigeria, where 95% of the Muslim population resides. Boko Haram's tactics involve the mobilization of economically destitute individuals. Literacy comparisons have been made between the Mastatines and the Al-Majira. Al-Majira were young students of Quranic schools who still move from teacher to teacher to acquire knowledge, and the Mastatines were an extreme Quranic militant group. And these were kind of past movements. I think the Mastatine movements were somewhere in the 1800s or the 1900s. Multi-faceted themes of conflicts are aided by complex agents. For example, when the Boko Haram attacked the police in 2009, they gained sympathy from the public due to police roadblocks are often used to force drivers to pay oversized fees for minor infections. However, in 2010, Boko Haram started attacking churches, killing Christians, and their attacks became continuously violent. They kidnapped young school children to prevent Western secular education, as well as forcing many of the young girls they kidnapped to marry them in 2014. So deriving from Aloysius' point, sexual violence amongst women and girls has been occurring in relation to these bandit attacks, which in effect has caused the spread of HIV, pregnancy, and huge psychological effects on these victims, with the commodification of women also being seen, with families being forced to hand over their daughters to these criminal groups in exchange for their protection. In addition, these bandits are also forcing these women to engage in drug trafficking, along with the transportation of weaponry, with a woman being discovered by police force in November 2021 to be in the possession of 991 rounds of AK-47 live ammunition, along with drugs in which was being moved to bandits in the Zamfara estates. These attacks imposed on women and children have been producing devastating outcomes for these victims of kidnappings, as women who have been raped while detained by these bandits are being rejected by their spouses. As they bear the burden of falling pregnant at the hands of their perpetrators, therefore the increasing effects of the sexual violence against women and children as a result of banditry have led to increasing rates of destitution, orphancy, and widowing. These bandit attacks have also been infiltrating into a core socioeconomic factor of the state, such as the educational system. This is having debilitating effects on education and their standing in northern Nigeria. It has been reported that since January 2021 there have been 10 incidents of the abduction of children from schools, which has resulted in the kidnapping of 1,000 students, while more recently these bandits have been storming schools in the northwestern regions of Nigeria, such as the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna. The banditry attacks have resulted in mass abduction tactics, which have resulted in taking these children out of schools and separating them from their families, much like the Boko Haram did in 2014. A story is told by a woman called Esther Joseph, whose daughter Precious Sim was kidnapped in 2021 for one month, along with other children from the Bethel Baptist school. Esther was forced to sell her belongings while also forced to seek support from her family and local residents to pay the 2 million naira ransom, which is equivalent to $1,256 for her daughter's release. Articles I've discussed above were all produced in the late 2000s, early 2010s. Notably, they are commenting on the political conflict relating in particular to Islamic insurgents. For example, it was mentioned in a journal article, after the British colonization, the economic dynamics have deepened the already existing struggles in Northern Nigeria Muslim society. A sound education in Islamic law consequently was a fundamental motive for religiously inclined groups. The introduction of Western education has become a threat and a symbol of the increasing impact of a materialistic and a corrupt process of Westernization, but this can also be described as a modern shock. However, in the 2020s, religiously motivated conflict has declined, yet political instability and conflict in general is on the rise. Pew's reports that religiously based conflict has declined in a fifth consecutive year, while democracy in African states and globally is on the decline. We can excuse religious conflicts on the grounds that radical groups mobilize the disenfranchised by using threats against Western modernization as a facade for their violence. We can't use the same argument, however, to explain military coups, and neither can they explain the abduction of children as a business model. However, both sources of conflict, religious and non-religious, can be explained by ill governance. Grievance theory offers an explanation here. Neopatrimonial systems managed poorly can lead to grievances, such as economic, cultural, and political grievances. Stuart argues contemporary political conflicts are found along ethnic and religious identity lines, but it is inequalities that are most significant. These are known as horizontal inequalities, ill government by the state due to multifactorial reasons, such as maluse of state resources and foreign interference can play a factor. Struggle for power is a central theme in contemporary African politics. Notably, in Sudan, for example, Hemini controls the gold mines, while Buran and the army have major stakes in constructions. Both actors are benefiting from the control of such resources and do not want to forego their control, while they are also simultaneously in a struggle for political power. The situation in Nigeria relates to bandits. In this case, they are not necessarily hoarding power for themselves, but they appear to be a marginalized group themselves participating in wild criminal activity, not to mention the farmer-herder conflict. Religion tensions exist, but they are not as prevalent as academics argued in the past. Many African conflicts can be understood as a physical manifestation of breakdown of existing political system and inability to successfully manage elite competition in a non-violent way. This journal article quote I think partially explains the situation in Sudan, and I quote, Conflicts tend to emerge when competing elites mobilize their constituents in a struggle with other groups for scarce state resources, and when factions decide that success is more likely achieved through armed struggle. In Sudan, this is a result of the unprecedented exploitation of resources, including fertile land, oil, minerals, water, and cheap labor carried out by the Sudanese capital class. So following from Alois' point, the farmer-herder conflict entails a mirrored struggle for power. The failure of state intervention with the government and security forces failing to provide effective conflict resolution to these banditry and farmer-herder conflicts lends itself to grievance theory, as these religious-based attacks overshadow the initial issues of tension, which is resource competition, which has not been resolved. Resource scarcity and mobilization practices of herdsmen is one of the main issues in which fuels tensions between farmers and herders. Pastoralists need access to arable grazing land and water resources. It is essential to their migration of livestock, while farmers are profiting from the cultivation of land for the production of crops. Problems arise when these pastoralist livestock encroach on to these farmers' lands, which cause crop damage and the depletion of water resources, which then leads to these perceived religious-based attacks. That's a really interesting point, Nicole. Do you reckon that the eco-violence theory developed by Homer Dixon in 1998 relating to the strong relationship between unfavorable ecosystems and the conflict applies to the farmer-herder conflict in Nigeria at the minute? So, the study conducted by Dixon, which you have mentioned, relates directly to the conflict which ensues amongst Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers. This theory lends itself towards a variety of consequences for northern Nigerians, as there has been economical, developmental, socio-economic and grave insecurity impacts as a result of the resource struggle. Dixon claims that, as we have noted, resource scarcity due to climate change and land ownership tensions is triggering the conflict. The study has also unveiled the politicization of these conflicts result in fueling grazing reserve tensions and banditry attacks, which have resulted in the increase of cattle raids and attacks on villages. These banditry attacks have also been having a spillover effect on neighboring communities as well. So, yes, following from your point, I do believe that Dixon's theory on eco-violence directly relates to these farmer-herder conflicts and that these banditry attacks are also escalating these resource tensions between farmers and herders. So, following from the escalating factors which fuel these tensions between farmers and herders, I'm going to talk about the prohibition on open grazing. So, the prohibition on open grazing aims to reform nomadic pastoralist sentiments which revolve around traditional migration tactics by focusing government policies around settlement areas through ranching. So, this ban on open grazing and the barriers it places on pastoralists is brought before in Banu. And here it was noted that this prohibition on open grazing and an introduction towards ranching requires that these pastoralists apply for permits in which involves a multi-step process and an approval by landowners. So, with these ranching policies being introduced, they disincentivize nomadic pastoralist practices and the practices in which these pastoralists are engaging in are being said to have a consequential effect on the environment by the government. So, placing these barriers on pastoralist practices, such as anti-open grazing law, negates to account for pastoral nomadic practices. And these exclusion policies often spur tensions between pastoralists and farmers even further. With the prohibition of open grazing, this has forced some herders to migrate to the south in search for arable land, while pastoralists often resort to forest grounds which can have an increasing effect on farmer herder tensions as pastoralists are often driven out of these areas which are dominated by insurgent groups like the Boko Haram. Hence, the government's failure to recognize these nomadic sentiments of these pastoralists and the move towards proposals for ranching will only fuel these tensions further between that of farmers and pastoralists. Completely agree, Nicole. Sarah Jenkins, when she was talking about leadership and pockets of peace, there's a quote in her article where she claims that community leadership is crucial for the conflict escalation and I definitely agree with that and I think that ties in with whatever you were saying about the conflict prior. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think leadership is definitely so important. These leaders need to account for not only farmer practices but also pastoralist practices and negating to account for their nomadic migration tactics is only just going to fuel this tension further. I think that there needs to definitely be a mutual recognition between both farmers and herders in order for the conflict to be resolved and for tensions to be basically dismantled. And this doesn't necessarily tie into my next point but there's an interesting point that I came across when I was doing the reading for this and it basically claims that social and behavioral policy based on sacred texts are more associated with, let's say, religious agendas and religious conflicts and thus I think the question of morality comes into place. This is why religious conflict is nuanced because of morality and morality is subjective and it evokes such a strong emotional identity within the individual person. Hence, it's hard to find a middle ground when religion is mobilized in political spheres. Thus, popular Islam is a useful mechanism to garner support for your cause. This is evident in the strategies used by Boko Haram. However, this is slightly contrasting to what the writer said about ethnicity. So, he claims that compared to religion, ethnicity has geographical bounds. Hence, they prioritize local club goods and the access to such goods in the areas they may live in. Ideas of patronage and neo-patrimonial systems are evident in African states and they serve as evidence. The trickle-down effect of resources, for example, and Thompson writes about how the three dominant tribes in Nigeria were basically invented to kind of lobby the colonial government, which was obviously the British, to kind of mobilize them as groups to gain access to these goods and resources. But an interesting observation here is this doesn't currently apply to Sudan, which was historically an infamous for religious polarization. The current conflict isn't based on sacred texts and neither is it directly related to resources, but resources play a more conspicuous factor compared to religion currently in the Sudanese conflict. Lumiere points out Nigeria's ongoing instability to achieve sustained economic growth as well as some degree of social justice will result in militant movements such as the Boko Haram again. And he was right. Groups such as the bandits in Nigeria are wreaking havoc currently. In Sudan, the current conflict barely refers to religious tensions. Most academics, however, refer to religious social cleavages as a source of conflict. In the early 2010s, where in hindsight, now we can observe, conflict has deviated from religious motivations, but conflict itself still exists in abundance. Thus, academics have paid insufficient attention to the underlying causes of conflict, such as grievances and inequalities that are pre-existing, such as socioeconomic inequalities and resource competition between elites. So, following from Alois' closing remarks on the conflicts, the farmer-herder tensions need to be resolved through a bottom-up approach, in my opinion. These tensions must be resolved through a micro-based approach, and this is very important, especially in a conflict which revolves around resource division and scarcity, as opposed to devising strategies from a macro basis, as seen in the policies surrounding the prohibition on open grazing law in Vanu. Hence, the ethno-religious divide which is seen in relation to these farmer-herder conflicts is accelerated when there is no basis put in place for mutual recognition in relation to resource regulation, and the violence on ethno-religious lines is further escalated through the Boko Haram and the banditry attacks. Thank you for listening to our podcast, guys. Hope you enjoyed it. We discussed the village and conflict in contemporary Sudan and Nigeria. Thank you very much, guys, and we really enjoyed recording this podcast, and we really hope that you enjoy it as well. Thank you.