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Anuak History – In Memory of the Anuak 2003 Genocide in Neo-Nazi ‘Ethiopia’ (Part 1)

By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

[ Posted On: 2007-12-19 ]

On the 4th anniversary of the Anuak Genocide, we dedicated four articles to the Anuak people, a great African Nation who still remains imprisoned within the borders of tyrannical Abyssinia – fallaciously re-baptized Ethiopia. We mention here the titles, adding the corresponding links to the articles (1. Christian Anuak Massacred by Neo-Nazi, Pseudo-Christian ‘Ethiopians’ / 2. African Christianity under Attack: the Anuak Genocide / 3. The Neo-Nazi Policies of ‘Ethiopia’, the Anti-Christian Country Par Excellence / 4. Anuak Leader Obang Metho’s Open Letter to U.S. Senate on Racist ‘Ethiopia’).

With the present article, we complete a first circle of reference to the tyrannized Nation of Anuak who still today face an unprecedented set of racist Abyssinian (Amhara and Tigray) policies targeting their very existence. Contrarily with the previous articles that all evolved around the 2003 Anuak Genocide, we will republish here an excellent contribution by a great Africanist scholar, Professor Emeritus Robert O. Collins on the History of Anuak; it consists in parts of Prof. Collins’ books “Land Beyond the Rivers: The Southern Sudan, 1898-1918” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971, pp. 53, 57) and “Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, 1918-1956” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, Chapter Nine," Thunder in the Highlands," pp. 365-405). The texts were first published (http://www.anuakjustice.org/doc_history_to_1956.htm) in the Anuak Justice Council website under the title ‘History of the Anuak to 1956’. We inserted subtitles in the long but very enlightening text that reveals some of the most appalling pages of Colonialism in Africa.

History of the Anuak to 1956 by Professor Emeritus Robert O. Collins

The Anuak are a Luo-speaking people of the Eastern Sudanic language family that includes the Western Nilotic Luo in the Bahr al-Ghazal and the Luo of Kenya and the Maasai of Tanzania. The original homeland of the Luo appears to have been the Gezira, the "island" of fertile land between the Blue and White Niles south of Khartoum. When the Luo began to move southward from the Gezira remains unclear. Historical linguistic infers that these migrations took place sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, but long before the Dinka followed the Luo into the southern Sudan. The numbers of Luo were small and the pace of their migration must be measured in generations not decades. The reasons for their wanderings are not explicit but can be confirmed with some confidence by acts of man and nature--rebellious sons seeking their independence from their father; fraternal disputes among brothers, which are characteristic of Luo society; droughts, which were frequent, drove the Luo in search of new grass; the eternal search for greener pastures; and pressure from the Ja‘aliyyin Arabs making their way from upper Egypt to the Blue Nile.

By the fourteenth century oral traditions firmly place the Luo in the vicinity of Rumbek in the Bahr al-Ghazal. In the fifteenth century the Luo began to move again, more rapidly than the glacial speed of past centuries. Small clusters of Luo clans wandered north from Rumbek. This group in turn experienced further defections during the northward march. The Bor made their way west to the ironstone plateau south of Wau. Another group led by Gilo also disengaged themselves from the main body, migrating north and east to the Sobat River, where some remained, the main body continuing upstream to settle at the base of the Ethiopian escarpment in the valleys of the Baro, Pibor, and Akobo rivers. They are known today as the Anuak. Some eight or ten generations ago, in the seventeenth century, a splinter group moved south from Anuakland to Lafon Hill where they were called the Pari, while a second clan, the Pajook penetrated further south into Acholi territory in northern Uganda.

Meanwhile, the original party, which traditionally was composed of only a few families, continued northward to Wipac in the vicinity of Lake No under the leadership of two brothers, Nyikango and Dimo. Here, as a result of a quarrel, Dimo and his followers departed to the south and west to settle eventually in the vicinity of Wau where the neighboring Dinka gave them their present name Jur, meaning stranger. His numbers now diminished, Nyikango moved slowly north and east absorbing, undoubtedly to strengthen his little band, many non-Luo.

Dale, son and successor to Nyikango, ultimately settled along the White Nile, and thereafter the Shilluk, as they were called, dominated the White Nile until the mid-nineteenth century. Led by Gau, a third Luo group appear to have meandered northwestward from Lake No into southern Kordofan, a more arid region they called Ker-Kwong. Since it was customary for each of these Luo groups to absorb others during their migrations, it is not surprising that Gau married Kwong, a non-Luo, who gave birth to Gaa, who as Land Chief acquired the title of "Chief of the Leopard Skin" and the most dominate leader of those we know now as Nuer.

In the latter decades of the fifteenth century the first of the Dinka, the Padang, began to arrive in the valley of the Sobat where they found the Anuak tending their crops and cattle. In the subsequent centuries they were followed by a stream of Dinka clans who ultimately settled on the plains east of the Bahr al-Jabal and westward across the vast expanse for the Bahr al-Ghazal. Those who pushed north into southern Kordofan early in the seventeenth century soon came in conflict with the Nuer, precipitating intermittent warfare for the next three centuries. In the eighteenth century the Baqqara Arabs arrived from Wadai in Chad to settle in the region north and west of the Nuer and Dinka living along the Bahr al-Ghazal and Bahr al-Arab, the Dinka Kirr, rivers. No sooner had the Baqqara settled in the southern Darfur and Kordofan than they commenced raiding for cattle and slaves among the Dinka and Nuer that precipitated, in the mid-eighteenth century, a massive eastward flight of the Bul Nuer. They descended upon the Jikany Nuer that precipitated a domino effect driving the Jikany and all before them eastward toward the Ethiopian escarpment including the Sobat Anuak. Within a century the Nuer had cut a swath a hundred miles wide during which they had absorbed countless Dinka and dominate the eastern Upper Nile. At the end of the nineteenth century the Nuer were poised to continue their eastward march to absorb the Anuak settled along the base of the Ethiopian escarpment.

Here in the valleys of the Pibor and Akobo the great crisis in Anuak society had occurred in the last decades of the nineteenth century after many years of Nuer raids that culminated in the 1880s in an invasion that destroyed many Anuak villages, including the populous village complex of Ukadi. The Nuer appear to have driven all the way to Ubaa and the sacred rock-pools of Abula in the southeast extremity of Anuakland, and probably would have settled had not their cattle suffered heavy losses from the tsetse fly. The Nuer consequently retired to the treeless plains, the Lau to the west, and the Jikany to the north. The Nuer never thrust so deeply into Anuak country again, but they continued to raid the western Anuak with impunity, and at the end of the century the Anuak appeared to be near extinction.

Anuak and Nuer

They were saved by a technological revolution. Gradually, the Anuak acquired firearms from Ethiopia. At first the rifles were muzzle-loaders cast off by the Ethiopians, but they enabled the Anuak to obtain ivory with which to purchase additional ammunition and then rifles. As the Anuak became proficient in the use of guns, and rifles became increasingly available in Ethiopia, the Anuak were soon far better armed than the Nuer, who continued to rely on shield, spear, and surprise. Moreover, this technological revolution was accompanied by political changes that contributed to the military effectiveness of the Anuak. The acquisition of firearms by influential individuals permitted them to extend their sphere of authority by establishing effective control over neighboring villages.

The amalgamation of small, disparate clans and family groups into a larger political organization, symbolized by the Royal Emblems of the Anuak nation, contributed to the formation of political institutions which provided the discipline necessary to make the Anuak a formidable fighting machine.

The Anuak were not immediately successful. Udiel-wa-Kuat and Uliimiwa-Agaanya fought the Jikany with muzzle-loaders and an increasing number of breech-loading rifles during the first decade of the twentieth century but failed to defeat the Nuer. Sometime around 1910, Akwei-wa-Cam became the holder of the Royal Emblems of the Anuak and the dominant leader in the strategic Adonga region equipped with rifles supplied by the Ethiopians at Gore to whom he occasionally paid tribute. In 1911 he launched concerted attacks against the Lau and the Jikany that devastated the Nuer. By the end of the year, Akwei had led his Anuak all the way to the Bahr al-Zaraf and returned to Akobo with hundreds of Nuer captives and thousands of cattle. The Sudan government sought to respond, not so much out of sympathy for their pillaged Nuer over whom they had virtually no authority, but to curtail the Ethiopian arms traffic.

Ethiopian gunrunning had become habitual in the borderlands, but at this time Austria had abandoned the Werder rifle, which was purchased in large quantities by a syndicate of European and American gun merchants for shipment to Djibuti. Diplomatic protests at Addis Abada against the illicit trade produced little effect, and the Sudan government had no recourse but to try and seize Anuak arms by force. In the past the Sudan government had remained aloof from the volatile events along the Ethiopian frontier because of the expense of administering the wild territory between the Sobat and Lake Rudolf, but administrative expense could no longer obscure the fact that the Anuak were estimated to have over 10,000 guns. Governor-General Sir Reginald Wingate bitterly complained in 1911, "The Anuak raids have forced our hand and we must now go in where we did not wish to be involved". Consequently, in 1912 a large force was sent up the Akobo under the command of Major C. H. Leveson that drove off the Anuak but only after heavy losses among the government troops. Anuak villages were destroyed, but the Anuak were not subdued. A second armed force was planned to invade Anuakland in 1914, but the operations were canceled at the outbreak of war in Europe. Unable to penetrate into Anuak territory and destroy their power, the Sudan government had to content itself with containing them by garrisons at Akobo and Pibor posts and establishing a chain of smaller police stations between the Anuak and the Nuer.

The British

This containment policy was only partially successful. Around the posts themselves British officials were able to assert nominal administration and even to collect tribute, but beyond, the Anuak were free from control, exploiting the international frontier to frustrate British attempts to exert authority. It was not until Akwei-wa-Cam himself died in 1920 that Lieutenant Colonel C. R. K. Bacon was able even to visit the heartland of the Anuak in the remote Adonga region. In 1921 he made a reconnaissance through Adonga. It was to be another fourteen years before a British District Commissioner returned to Adonga.

North of the Sobat the British faced even more formidable and intransigent opposition among the Gaajok and the Gaajak sections of the Jikany Nuer who lived along the Ethiopian frontier that they annually crossed to seek grazing. They were well armed with rifles and ammunition from Ethiopia and raided their neighbors--the Burun and Koma to the north, the Dinka and Anuak to the south--as well as Ethiopian tribes in the western foothills. The Sudan government had long taken a dim view of these hostilities, partly because they disrupted taxpaying tribes, but the real concern was the possession by a large tribe armed with several thousand rifles. Plans had been devised for a punitive expedition to secure control of the Jikany, but the outbreak of the First World War postponed any operations and the Gaajak and Gaajok were left alone for another six years.

The delay appears to have inspired the Jikany with confidence in their strength and convinced them that they had little to fear from the Sudan government represented only by a post at Nasir from which the officials had never ventured more than a few miles. Their continued freedom from administration and their taunts of superiority to their neighbors exasperated British officials and their subjects alike.

Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bacon a powerful patrol was finally launched against the Jikany from Nasir in January 1920, complete with machine guns and airplanes. The Gaajok, Gaajak, and even a small section of the Jikany, the Gaagwang, attacked the advancing troops, sustaining heavy losses before retiring into the swamps or across the frontier into Ethiopia. They were led by two well-known Gaajok prophets, Mut Dung and Git Gong, and a Dunjol Dinka, Ajak Tor Bil. Militarily the patrol destroyed hundreds of villages, seized large numbers of Jikany cattle, and burned quantities of dura. The airplanes strafed and bombed, and Bacon steamed up the Baro River in the Metamma, destroying a fleet of canoes and bombarding the shore with artillery. In fact, the patrol represented yet another in "a series of raids which were indistinguishable from the looting of the Turkish regime to the average Nuer which resulted in a grave misunderstanding of the intention, or object of Government which has not yet been dispelled." Politically, the patrol was hardly a great success. When the troops departed, the Gaajak returned from Ethiopia. Mut Dung later died, Ajak Tor Bil returned to Dunjol country where he was arrested, and Git Gong submitted. Yet the fundamental conditions for unrest remained--the presence of the Ethiopian sanctuary and the past failure to provide any continuity resulting from the frequent rotation of the District Commissioner at Nasir. There was little the British officials in the upper Nile could do about the international frontier, but they did appoint J. M. Lee as D.C. Nasir who sought to bring the Jikany under the control of the Sudan government throughout the next decade.

Frontiers are meeting places for those who are going, not staying. They are crossings of the different, the hopeful, the good, and the bad. Here also are the frontier people, whose blood flows with the currents left behind by the sedentary. They attract those on the move and those who wish to live between two flags without paying much attention to either. Such was the eastern frontier between the highland massif of Ethiopia and the great Nilotic plains of the Upper Nile.

The long frontier between Ethiopia and the' Sudan created many and continuing problems for the Sudan government, particularly in the southern wastelands stretching from 9° north latitude to the Kenya frontier at Lake Rudolf. These are wild lands--Gambella, the Baro Salient, and the llemi Triangle--difficult to reach in the best of weather and quite impossible in the worst. Here the authority of the governments both in Khartoum and Addis Ababa is little stronger today than in the past, and the inhabitants exploit the weakness of each in the marcher lands to exert an uncommon degree of independence. The traditional game was, and is, to playoff one government against the other under the cover of difficult communications and terrain and a frontier drawn by inspiration rather than understanding. Everyone would have been just as happy to have left the frontier under minimal government--certainly the authorities on either side of the boundary as well as the inhabitants. If by sheer wishful thinking the frontier peoples could have remained isolated, neither Khartoum nor Addis Ababa would have spent men and money to control these unproductive lands and turbulent border people. Unfortunately, even in one of the most remote areas of Africa no one is ever truly isolated. The flow of people and their herds in search of water and grazing, the fugitives from justice, and the traders taking produce to markets all pass in and out of the frontier, interacting with the more closely governed peoples beyond. Hostility between the two groups has been traditional with border peoples everywhere in the world, and the eastern frontier was no exception. Inexorably, the forces of authority were drawn to the frontier to protect their own taxpaying inhabitants of the interior, only to be sucked into endless border disputes with the rival sovereign power.

For the Sudan these border quarrels became all the more frustrating because of the political instability in Ethiopia following the First World War. Thus, when King Taffari Makonnen was able to secure the acquiescence of the feudatory chiefs of Ethiopia and proclaimed his succession to the imperial throne as Haile Selassie I in November 1930, the two most powerful figures in the Sudan government, Sir John Maffey and Harold Mac Michael, represented the Sudan at the coronation ceremonies in the hope that a strong central government at Addis Ababa would bring stability to the volatile frontier provinces in western Ethiopia. The appointment of Ras Mulugheta, the former minister of war, as the governor of Gore in the western highlands above Gambella, and the sending of the emperor's nephew, Dejazmach Maugasha Yilma, to Maji early in 1931 confirmed the intentions of Haile Selassie to bring to bear the authority of the central government. It was soon apparent that more than the appointment of men close to the emperor would be needed to settle the frontier. Not only were the Nuer and the Anuak who inhabited the frontier in the Upper Nile Province traditional enemies, but since the turn of the century the flow of weapons through Ethiopia to the borders had provided them both with arms to escalate the ferocity of their rivalry.

International frontier drawn with ineptitude

Control by either government in the region was further complicated by the ineptitude with which the international frontier had been drawn in the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of May 15, 1902. Rivers do not automatically make good boundaries, and they almost never do when people of the same society live on either bank. Thus, rather than running along the escarpment of the Ethiopian plateau, whose precipitous slope formed a natural barrier between peoples living on the plains of the Sudan and those in the highlands of Ethiopia with their different environments, cultures, and histories, the frontier followed the Akobo River, descending from the highlands to join the Pibor and the Baro, and creating an Ethiopian Salient--the Baro Salient--which jutted into the plains of the Sudan where lived the Nuer and the Anuak, now divided by the Akobo River. From time past memory both the Nuer and the Anuak had crossed the Akobo in pursuit of water and grass and were now oblivious to the fact that it had become a recognized international boundary. The Anuak were the most directly affected, being split by an arbitrary political boundary into two groups each with a separate allegiance and tax collector.

The first serious attempt to define the eastern frontier was made by Captain J. L. Harrington, who had been a member of the mission of Sir Rennell Rodd to Addis Ababa in 1896-97 to insure Menelik's neutrality in the coming conflict with the Khalifa ‘Abd Allahi in the Sudan. Harrington remained at Addis Ababa as the British agent in Ethiopia but had little information, and Menelik not much more, about the geographical details of western Ethiopia and the Sudan on which to draw a boundary, except by a blue line with no reference to topographic or ethnographic facts. Therefore, in the summer of 1899 Major H. H. Austin of the Royal Engineers was ordered to explore the frontier from the Sobat to Lake Rudolf and Major Charles W. Gwynn to do the same from the Blue Nile south to the Sobat. Both parties traversed the frontier country, though Gwynn had to rely on an interpreter who knew Amharic but only theological English and Alexandrine Arabic that was almost unintelligible in the Sudan border districts.

Gwynn was detained by the Ethiopians; he was short of supplies and descended to the Sobat in haste, seemingly more concerned with the progress of the South African war, in which he was anxious to fight, than with exploration of a remote frontier. South of the Sobat, Major Austin and Lieutenant R. G. T. Bright made their way up the Sobat and the Baro into the highlands during the early months of 1900 to Gore, where they remained for several weeks before descending the escarpment down the Gila in May to the plains which had been inundated by the rains and were thus assumed by Austin to be one huge swamp. Abandoning his equipment and losing pack animals, he made his arduous way to the Akobo, overland to Nasir, and eventually downriver to Omdurman. He and Bright returned to Nasir in January 1901 and with difficulty followed the Pibor and Akobo rivers to the Ajibur, only occasionally catching sight of the Ethiopian escarpment to the east. The country was depressing and devoid of any interest, and as nothing was known of the country east of the Akobo to the escarpment, the river appeared at the time to be the most sensible frontier. Thereafter, Austin's party proceeded south, skirting the Boma Plateau until it reached the Omo River just north of Lake Rudolf. During this strenuous but cursory trek, in which the party encountered either too much water or too little, the line of the escarpment, which in fact is what they should have been surveying, never occurred to them as a possible frontier.

Such an unsatisfactory frontier having been defined, it is little wonder that neither Anuak, Ethiopians, nor British officials paid much attention to it. Like the Anuak, Lieutenant Colonel C. R. K. Bacon passed back and forth across the Akobo--which when not in flood was a stream a mere twenty yards wide--to keep the peace. In the 1920s, no Ethiopian officials ever appeared to administer the Baro and Akobo borderlands, and the idea of a frontier appeared anomalous to the Anuak since the British officials seemed to ignore it. Even Khartoum gave its grudging approval for Bacon and other DCs to cross the river when it was clear that the current political situation in Addis Ababa remained unstable and any temporary arrangements on the border could hardly be made with Ethiopian frontier officials who in fact did not exist.

The wealth of the Anuak

Besides having a divided frontier, the Anuak district would certainly never produce sufficient revenue to pay for the cost of administration which consequently must be kept to a minimum. "The wealth of the Anuak lies in peculiar beads of no intrinsic value outside the tribe, in ancient holy spears of impractical design, and in firearms which they may not freely trade to administered tribes." The essential element to Native Administration among the Anuak were the Royal Heirlooms, or Emblems, consisting of five necklaces, two thrones, the "Tooth Drum," three spears, and an iron fork. The possession of the Emblems conferred upon the holder--whether in Ethiopia or the Sudan--a prestige amounting to veneration. These Emblems had been handed down from father to son for an unknown number of generations, beginning with Oshoda, the founder, mythical or real, of the Anuak.

The Emblems first came to the attention of the British in 1912 when their holder, Akwei-wa-Cam, led the Anuak resistance against the British; upon his death in 1920, they passed to his son Sham Akwei although he was only a child of twelve. When Bacon first reached Adonga in 1921, he was deeply impressed with the respect accorded to this boy because he possessed the Emblems and thereafter initiated a consistent policy of supporting Sham Akwei against any aspirants to power in the hope of consolidating the Anuak under a single chief. For the next six years relations between the Anuak and Sham Akwei were cordial and positive. Upon transferring the Sobat-Pibor Military District, as it had been known, to civilian authority as a district of the Upper Nile Province in 1925, Bacon urged that Sham Akwei be given "every encouragement and the dignity of his position be upheld. . . for he has considerable influence over the tribe as a whole and could be of great assistance in the formation and organization of native courts".

In 1927 the District Commissioner at Akobo, Major G. W. Tunnicliffe, decided to alter this system largely to satisfy the interests of the direct descendants of Oshoda, who claimed an equal right to possess the Emblems. They particularly demanded the right to sit on the Anuak throne, a four-legged stool, which was a prerequisite to being recognized as a direct descendant of Oshoda and thereby having the authority to pass that recognition to one's sons. Otherwise, the claimant and his male progeny would forever be disqualified as descendants of the founding Oshoda. Thereafter, to grant that highly sought after recognition to those claiming direct descent, Tunnicliffe, naturally with the enthusiastic approval of the many claimants, determined that the Emblems, particularly the all-important throne, would be held for one year only by that descendant annually elected by his peers. Although this change satisfied the claimants for recognition, it soon produced many more problems than it solved, all of which were exacerbated by the presence of the international frontier. Twice the holders of the Emblems for that year refused to give them up and simply retired into Ethiopia beyond the long arm of the District Commissioner at Akobo. The recovery of the Emblems was only accomplished after much negotiation and difficulties. On another occasion, the holder of the Emblems simply retired to the Adonga region and defied Tunnicliffe to come and get them, defended as they were by some six hundred armed followers.

By the process of recognizing direct descendants according to custom, the Anuak were sharply divided by 1932, and Bacon's original efforts to consolidate them under a responsible chief were completely dissipated, destroying any hope of establishing a system of Native Administration. Clearly, the first problem was to acquire "a great deal more knowledge of the history of the Emblems," for which the services of the anthropologist, Evans-Pritchard, were soon employed. Until he could make any recommendations as to the sanctity of Anuak custom pertaining to them, Anuak administration continued according to custom by electing an annual holder of the Emblems, while the energies of the District Commissioner were absorbed in settling the Ethiopian-Anuak raids against the Murle and countering the maneuvers of Majid Abud, followed by the aggressive activities of the Italians. In fact, the research and recommendations of both Elliot-Smith and Evans-Pritchard confirmed Bacon's practice of having one custodian of the Royal Emblems, and the last elected holder, Agwa Akwon, was given more permanent custody, a salary of E£l a month, and the strong support of the District Commissioner, Akobo, in the hope of beginning a system of Native Administration.

The third perennial frontier problem for the Sudan government in the Upper Nile was Gambella, the trading enclave on the Baro River inside Ethiopia itself. Gambella was named after an Anuak chief, reputed to have been over a hundred years old, who lived as a sort of hermit in a solitary tukl when the first Sudanese customs inspector, Ahmad Effendi Rifat, arrived in 1905. Article IV of the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1902, which defined the frontier between the Sudan and Ethiopia, permitted the Sudan to establish a trading post on the Baro some 2,000 meters long and not to exceed 4,000 acres, the lease to last as long as the Sudan was under Anglo-Egyptian control. The Enclave could not be used for any military or political purposes. Menelik himself had been enthusiastic about granting the Enclave as a commercial station, for he was anxious to have an entry into western Ethiopia for products from the Sudan, particularly salt, as well as an outlet for Ethiopian coffee, which was highly sought after in Khartoum and Omdurman. For the next fifteen years Gambella was administered for the Sudan Customs Department by a succession of Sudanese and British customs inspectors, who supervised the collection of duties on coffee, hides, and beeswax from the districts of western Ethiopia in return for salt and cloth from the Sudan.

The British regarded Gambella as a miserable place. It could only be reached by steamer from June to November and remained cutoff throughout the dry season, when the Baro disappeared to a mere trickle. At the height of the rains, the Enclave was an island in a swamp below the escarpment from which the tracks made their tortuous way up to the towns of Bure and Gore. By 1920 Gambella possessed a shed and a house furnished with a table and a bed for the customs inspector. All the stores for six months had to be brought up before the river fell in November. The warehouses and merchant compounds were strung out along the riverbank, but sanitation consisted of a series of holes dotting the acreage behind. Malaria was endemic, and after the last steamer went downriver there was little to do and a lot of loneliness. Few Ethiopians came to Gambella because of its reputation for fever, and as of 1920 no Ethiopian official of any importance had ever visited what had come to be known as "the Cesspool".

Gambella required a man with "Moral authority".

The real problem with Gambella was not the lack of amenities, which were improved after 1920, but the fact that the customs inspectors were not simply officials collecting duty on coffee. They also had to face countless questions of jurisdiction in a border territory which the Ethiopian government did not control and where the competing rivalries of the Barons of the western highlands were matched by the hostilities between Nuer and Anuak on the plains. In the middle were the merchants, who wanted to trade with as much security as they could muster along the trails from Gore to Gambella and as much freedom as they could have from Ethiopian tax collectors: "The situation in the station suffers from having no one to refer to, the Customs representative has little authority and questions outside his powers are the affair of no one in particular and get no attention." In the words of C. H. Walker, the British consul at Gore, what Gambella required was a man with "Moral authority". Yet there was revenue to be had from Gambella, particularly if the Sudan government could exert its control in cooperation with Walker at Gore to promote the trade of western Ethiopia. Consequently, rather than abandon Gambella, the governor-general of the Sudan approved its retention, its transfer to the jurisdiction of the Upper Nile Province, and its improvement through an appropriation of some E£5,000. So, in January 1920, Gambella was transferred from the Customs Department to the Upper Nile Province, and on September 15, 1921, Colonel J. F. H. Marsh arrived to take command.

Colonel Marsh had been designed for Gambella by the Almighty. Marsh was a man of 43 who having been in command of a British Battalion finds it difficult to bear any other discipline but his own, and he thrives on an independent job like Gambella. He is the son of the town clerk of Ryde, and was himself a solicitor until the war discovered his military capacity. He has no pretensions to breeding, but is very typical of his sort, honest, rather blunt, quite devoid of any literary or aesthetic appreciation, a Philistine, but an efficient and conscientious public servant, who hates not getting his own way and generally has quite adequate reasons for having it. . . . He does not mind living alone at Gambella indefinitely, and although he tries to disassociate himself as far as he can from the Sudan Government, so as to have his own show, he is amenable enough. He considers without joking, and with every justification, that his business is to keep British prestige high in Abyssinia so far as he is locally able and he certainly does so.

Abyssinians: Parasites Able only to Exploit the Wealth of Subjugated Nations

Marsh wasted no time. Customs officials and their police were sent packing, sanitation regularized, and the Enclave gardens laid out. Marsh himself was arbiter of the border, storekeeper, chief clerk, judge, jury, and financial comptroller. In his first year at Gambella he reorganized the warehouses, collecting nearly E£5,000 or 6 percent duty on some 2,000 tons of coffee alone, the freight of which on Sudan steamers meant another E£15,000 revenue. Salt imported from Port Sudan generated another E£15,000 in income for the steamers, which hauled over 55,000 bags to Gambella. Sudan salt was in such demand in western Ethiopia that the Ethiopian government imposed a heavy tax upon it, which C. H. Walker and the merchants successfully forced to be rescinded to previous levels. The salt tax appears to have been the idea of Dejazmatch Waldo Mikhail who had arrived in Gore in August 1922. Western Ethiopia being devoid of salt, over a thousand tons passed through Gambella and up into the highlands on the backs of porters, later mules, and finally in 1936 by motor transport which brought down the coffee. Not only was salt required for life itself, but its importance made it a valuable medium of exchange.

Not surprisingly, Dejazmatch Mikhail sought to profit and gain revenue from this valuable commodity by asking one Maria Theresa dollar for one kilogram of salt, which would have effectively ended the Gambella salt trade because French salt from Djibuti could be brought overland more cheaply. The loss to the Sudan government in customs revenue alone was estimated at E£6,000 per year, not to mention the loss to Sudan steamers for hauling charges and the disruption of trade by the removal of an important commodity used in exchange for coffee. Not only did Walker succeed in having the salt tax kept at the customary level, he convinced Mikhail to invest a portion of the profits from the salt tax to improve the track down the escarpment through Bure to Gambella.

The battle over taxes at Gambella never ended, however, as local Ethiopian officials sought ways to generate revenue, frequently for their own use at the expense of the merchants who continuously appealed to the British consul at Gore and the District Commissioner at Gambella to preserve the principles of free trade. This was not always easy. When not fighting the extortions of Ethiopian tax collectors, Marsh and Walker devoted their energies to prodding the Ethiopian officials to build a road for motor transport down the escarpment.

By 1924 several thousand tons of coffee had to be carried by porters to Gambella, a method not only slow and expensive, but hazardous for the porters if the track had not been cleared of thorns. The principal difficulty for Walker was the construction of a bridge over the Birbir River, and he spent hours badgering the Ethiopians to build it. It was not until 1935 that the Ethiopian Motor Transport Company, with a concession from the Ethiopian government, completed the motor road and the bridges. Although Walker was known at Gore as His Britannic Majesty's Consul, his salary and the expense of the consulate were paid by the Sudan government, just as it paid half the expenses of the British consul at Maji, Kenya, and Uganda sharing the remaining half. Walker was succeeded at Gore by Captain E. N. Erskine in August 1928 by which time the value of coffee and other products passing through Gambella were now averaged E£300,000 annually. Like Walker, Esme Erskine soon became a dominant figure in western Ethiopia. He established a special mixed court to protect foreigners over whom the Ethiopian government did not exercise jurisdiction. With Sudan government funds, Erskine created an imperial residency on a hill overlooking Gore, with a sumptuous residence, outbuildings, barracks to house ten special constables, a stable, and a pack of hounds.

The same year Erskine arrived at Gore, J. K. "Jack" Maurice arrived to replace Colonel Marsh who had retired in 1928; except for a brief interruption during the war Jack Maurice remained at Gambella for twenty-one years until he too retired in 1949. Gambella was worth the effort. Both the British and Menelik wanted it for badly needed revenue. The trade was rich, mostly in coffee, and accounted for seventy percent of the annual value of all Sudan trade with Ethiopia from the end of the First World War until the Italian occupation. In 1936 a record 4,500 tons of coffee passed through Gambella downriver into the Sudan. Except for the disastrous depression years of 1931 and 1932, when the value of the Gambella trade dropped to less than E£100,000, the normal annual value of trade through the Enclave during these interwar years averaged between E£250,000 and E£300,000, that generated between E£15,000 and E£18,000 in customs duties alone, not to mention the profits from haulage by the steamers, one of the largest single sources of revenue for the Sudan government.

In addition to revenue, Marsh and Maurice collected valuable information since all gossip from the highlands to the Baro Salient passed through Gambella. There was a steady flow of news, particularly about the arms trade which, next to administrative concerns, was the single most important worry by British authorities in the Sudan. Ethiopia was a huge repository of firearms steadily being augmented by European arms dealers working out of Djibuti. Rifles and ammunition were an important medium of exchange and vital to the purchase of slaves from southwest Ethiopia all along the frontier where the demand for guns was inexhaustible, while men, women, and children were readily available in exchange for them in the lightly administered border territories. Until the Italian occupation, the price of guns remained relatively stable, an indication of their value as a medium of exchange. Gras rifles in western Ethiopia sold for 35.50 Maria Theresa dollars, while ammunition consistently sold for six cartridges to the dollar.

‘Ethiopia’ Involved in Slave Trade

Marsh and Maurice also supplied information about the slave trade from the Sudan into Ethiopia. Clearly, the Sudan authorities worked assiduously to destroy the slave trade across the frontier--after all, they were representatives of the great abolitionist tradition--but their concerns were more than just humanitarian. Where the slave trade existed, so did the breakdown of law and order, and no British administrator in the Sudan could tolerate slave raiding against their subjects for no other action would more quickly undermine their prestige and authority. Their implacable and exhaustive efforts against any raiding of Sudanese subjects was as necessary for British rule as for British conscience. Slavery as distinct from the slave trade was another matter. The consuls at Gore and Maji wrote many detailed and fulsome reports on slavery in western Ethiopia, but indignation never reached apoplectic proportions among British officials in the Sudan. This was more an attitude of mind and common sense than one of legislation, ordinances, or the efforts of the Slave Trade Repression Department. In fact, the attitude toward slavery on the part of British officials in the Sudan was relaxed and practical, and they were not about to carryon any crusade against its existence in Ethiopia.

By March 1931 the relative peace along the frontier, earlier regulated by Lee at Nasir, Marsh at Gambella, and Bacon at Pibor and Akobo, began to dissolve with Ethiopian attempts to assert their control up to the frontier where they had never before governed. In the past the Ethiopians had shown only sporadic interest in the Salient, demonstrated by an occasional foray by the army and had never made any pretense at administration. After 1930, however, the new emperor, Haile Selassie, and his officials were determined to demonstrate the authority of the central government over the whole of Ethiopia, even its most remote frontiers. Moreover, the provincial officials were always eager for additional tribute from the Nuer and the Anuak and greater revenue from taxing the coffee trade. Ironically, at Addis Ababa itself the British government was applying pressure on the new emperor to improve his control in his borderlands as part of their overall policy to support a strong central government in Ethiopia.

Here there was a direct contradiction. Under the system of frontier administration worked out during the 1920s by Lee, Marsh, and Bacon stability existed in the presence of the British DC whether on the Ethiopian or the Sudan side of the frontier. Once the illegality of British officials operating as administrative officials in Ethiopian territory was acknowledged, however, the British government and the consuls at Gore tried to make the best of a bad job. If their officers could no longer casually lay down the law across the river, then the British felt it was to their best advantage to encourage the Ethiopians to begin to govern their subjects within their own territory. Such hopes never materialized.

‘Ethiopian’ agents

Contrary to stabilize the frontier, the arrival of Ethiopian agents in the Baro Salient and in the Gaajak Nuer country only multiplied the opportunities for Anuak and Nuer to playoff one tax collector against the other. Moreover, the British had in ten years established the recognition of their authority by the Nuer and the Anuak, if not as loyal subjects, at least as obedient realists. In 1931 the Ethiopians were only just beginning to set up their control on their side of the frontier with vastly inferior forces, little experience, and officials subject to the whims of the Ethiopian governors at Gore and Sayo, and all were exposed to the vicissitudes of Haile Selassie's imperious rule at Addis Ababa thought necessary by the looming Italian threat. Without the necessary massive force and determination to rule, the appearance of the Ethiopians merely injected into the swampy plains below the escarpment yet another factor of instability on an already insecure frontier.

In April 1931 heavy fighting broke out in Ethiopia between the Gaajak Nuer in their dry season grazing grounds and the Anuak. This was the territory where J. M. Lee had previously intervened to keep the peace but was now officially forbidden to enter. So grave was the dispute, however, that finally the Ethiopian governor at Gore, Mulugheta, requested the Gaajak DC, "General" C. H. Armstrong, to cross the border to attempt a settlement. Armstrong was able to patch up a truce, but relations remained tense, exacerbated by the conspicuous absence of Ethiopian administrative officials. Checked in their confrontation with the Nuer by Armstrong, the Anuak continued to raid the Burun and the Koma.

South of the Baro, in the Salient, the Ethiopian presence was more demonstrable but not sufficiently strong to impose its authority. The result was sporadic resistance to Ethiopian soldiery which was repaid in violence interspersed by pockets of collaboration. A minor Ethiopian official, Dejazmatch Garbe, revived an imaginary claim to collect tribute among Anuak in the Sudan near Adonga where he managed to subvert Sham Medda, the holder of the Royal Emblems, and Sham Akwei to acknowledge Ethiopian authority. Major Tunnicliffe was not about to have the keeper of the Anuak Royal Emblems become an Ethiopian subject, and at the head of his mounted police with airplanes overhead he secured the submission of the chiefs and the surrender of the Emblems themselves. Life on the Ethiopian frontier was nasty, brutish, and short, for no authority could emerge from the swamps of divided allegiances and traditional hostilities.

Abyssinians: able only to ignite traditional rivalries

The Ethiopians could not control, but they could ignite those traditional rivalries by claiming to challenge the power of the Sudan government which some elements among the Nuer and the Anuak did believe was in their best interests. The result was violence. In March 1932 Anuak from the Baro Salient crossed the Akobo, where they were joined by Sudan Anuak, and marched seventy miles into the Sudan to attack the Murle south and east of Akobo Post. Here they took the Murle unawares, killed the men, captured eighty women and children, and seized hundreds of Murle cattle which were quickly sold off in Ethiopia for rifles.

This raid was no minor skirmish between traditional rivals, for the Murle seldom ventured near the Ethiopian frontier. Representations were made at the British Foreign Office and vigorously followed up in Addis Ababa. The Sudan government demanded compensation for the men killed, the return of the women, children, and stock, and that the Ethiopian government make every effort to establish its authority in the Baro Salient. A conference was held at Gambella between A. G. Pawson, governor of the Upper Nile, Ras Mulugheta, governor of Gore, and Fitaurai Haile Mariam, the acting governor of Sayo Province. Agreement was immediately reached and compensation paid forthwith by the Ethiopians. The captives were ultimately returned. The importance of the Gambella Agreement was the assurance by Ras Mulugheta to establish Ethiopian administration along the frontier. Largely through the agitation of Consul Erskine at Gore and his similar appeals directly to Addis Ababa, Ras Mulugheta recommended to the emperor Kanyazmatch Majid Abud as Ethiopian Frontier Agent assigned to carry out the terms of the Gambella Agreement and to assert the power of the Lion of Judah over the Nuer and Anuak of Ethiopia.

Majid Abud al-Ashkar was one of those remarkable characters drawn to Africa as by a magnet. Esme Erskine at Gore and Jack Maurice at Gambella thought Majid "a paragon of virtue" compared with the Ethiopian officials with whom they had to deal; F. D. Corfield and Martin Parr regarded him as a distinctly evil man. Elliot-Smith thought him "a professional soldier of fortune endowed with all the qualities to success in that line. He is tough, brave and intelligent, perhaps more accurately cunning and one must add mercenary and unscrupulous." One cannot help but like Majid Abud.

He was a Syrian Druze born in 1884 in a small village near the source of the Jordon River in Lebanon. His parents were killed by Turkish brigands and Majid was reared in a Syrian orphanage in Jerusalem where he learned carpentry. At nineteen he accompanied a Danish missionary to the Hadramut where he experienced a host of adventures ending- up as the head of a mission from the Sultan of Lahej to Ras Makonnen in Harrar in 1906. He liked Ethiopia and worked for a time with a German merchant until taking a position with Idliba Hassan, the son of an Arab Syrian Christian and an English mother who traded in gum at EI Obeid with his company, the Kordofan Rubber Company. Having learned to speak and write Amhara, he became Idliba Hassan's manager in Gore where he won the confidence of the Ethiopian governor, Ras Tassama, through whom he received the beautiful estate at Comera in western Ethiopia near Gore from the emperor Laj Yasu in 1914. In return, Majid proved loyal to the emperor and on his orders led an Ethiopian punitive expedition into the Baro Salient in 1916 to punish those Anuak who had refused to recognize Ethiopian sovereignty and to wage guerrilla warfare across the frontier into the Sudan. He defeated the Anuak in a bloody engagement at Itang on the Baro River but had to withdraw before carrying out any hostilities in the Sudan. Majid then returned to the highlands, but his association with Laj Yasu made him highly suspect to Ras Taffari, and for the next ten years he lived quietly on his estate in Comera until Haile Selassie appointed him the Ethiopian Frontier Agent in 1932, probably as a result of the combined pressure of Ras Mulugheta and Erskine.

Majid met with Tunnicliffe at Akobo and then, throughout the remainder of the rains at Gambella, he planned his campaign for the winter dry season. Early in 1933 he was ready and marched on the Gila Anuak in late February with some 360 men, while the Sudan authorities reinforced the Pibor and Akobo line with two companies of mounted infantry supported by planes from the RAF to prevent the Anuak fleeing across the frontier from Majid's troops but also to observe his movements. None of the British officials in the Upper Nile had any trust in the Ethiopians (even Majid), their intentions, and certainly not their motives. Majid's march through the Salient met with little resistance largely because he spent most of his time placating the Anuak rather than punishing them. He obtained the release of those Murle captives not already sold into slavery and, with their cattle, repatriated them to the Sudan. Elated, Majid then turned north to Jokau, the small but important post at the confluence of the Baro and the Pibor rivers, crossed into Jikany Nuer country, where he claimed all the Gaajok and the Gaajak grazing in Ethiopia as subjects of the emperor, and announced his intention to collect tribute as a sign of their submission and as confirmation of Ethiopian authority over its territory. Needless to say, this would swell the emperor's treasury minus the usual deductions. Never in the history of the eastern frontier had an Ethiopian official ever made such a demand. The Nuer were not surprisingly disturbed, seeing it a direct challenge to the Sudan government, which they had accepted as part of border life, and the concurrent novelty that, in Ethiopia, they need no longer be concerned with British justice. Some Nuer were dismayed at the Ethiopian initiatives, others elated, but all knew that violence was imminent.

As part of the Ethiopianization of the frontier, Majid had appointed Koryum Tut, a Gaajak Nuer chief living at Kurthony on the north bank of the Baro, a Fitaurari that infuriated those Gaajak who wanted nothing to do with the Ethiopians and the tribute collecting of Majid Abud. Several hundred Gaajak warriors amassed to attack Kurthony; the raid was only averted by the intervention of F. D. Corfield, who crossed the river with his police and through personal bravery and a show of authority prevented hostilities. The incident clearly demonstrated the deteriorating situation on the frontier and the need of at least a local agreement over grazing between the Sudan and Ethiopia. Always willing to seek accommodation with the British, Ras Mulugheta agreed to open negotiations, but he was shortly recalled to Addis, leaving Majid to look after frontier affairs.

Majid had been furious at Corfield's violation of the international boundary by intervening at Kurthony and not only refused to negotiate any grazing agreement, but sent his agents, particularly one rather unsavory Kerazmatch Dampte, among the Nuer chiefs to urge them, with a combination of sweet talk, threats, and bribes, to transfer their allegiance to the emperor.

In fact, many of the Jikany Nuer would have liked nothing better than to be under the light but fickle administration of the Ethiopians compared to the strict and virtuous rule of the British. Indeed, Koryum Tut traveled to Addis Ababa, where he was hosted and presented with a robe of honor and a shield and thereafter worked diligently to convince his fellow Nuer of the benefits of being Ethiopian subjects. Other Ethiopian agents wherever they went did all they could to show the "Shangalla", Negroes, that they were a civilized government, while Majid boldly announced that he would take reprisals against all those Nuer chiefs who returned to the Sudan in 1933. None of these activities were what the British authorities in Khartoum, London, or Addis Ababa had envisaged when they had encouraged the emperor to administer his frontier territory. But it was precisely what the authorities in the Upper Nile had predicted.

The cross-purposes of the men in Whitehall and those on the spot in Africa were as old as the British Empire. Consul Erskine was vehemently opposed to the autonomous attitude assumed by the governor and district commissioner of the Upper Nile. He had denounced Corfield's intervention at Kurthony and roundly instructed Martin Parr, the deputy civil secretary of all people. "In any case I advise you to be guided by me as far as my consular area of Western Abyssinia is concerned. That's what I'm here for." Parr reacted in his usual fashion by reminding the consul for western Ethiopia where he stood at Malakal, whereupon Erskine replied by denouncing the District Commissioners of the Upper Nile, particularly Jack Maurice at Gambella, for their ill-founded protection of the Anuak and the Nuer that had done so much to undermine the gallant attempts by Majid Abud and his officials to bring stability to the Ethiopian side of the frontier, "not on behalf of the last persons killed on the raid or the miserable conditions of the women and children sold into slavery but the fear expressed that the Anuak of the forest, Baro or Gila areas should meet with their just deserts from the hand of the Governor of Gore who would give the same measures they gave their victims. . . . As long as D.C. Gambella continues to lodge protests for the protection of Anuak raiders as if they were admittedly dangerous but rare and valuable carnivores which should be protected in a game preserve, then so long will the Anuak continue to be a law unto themselves".

Governor of the Upper Nile Pawson's solution was to negotiate a grazing agreement for the Nuer whereby the Sudan government would pay the grazing fees in return for Ethiopian recognition that the Nuer were a Sudan tribe. Erskine himself had first suggested such an arrangement in order to settle the frontier disputes. He had pinned his hopes on Majid Abud, but the latter's hostility, aroused by Corfield's defense of the Nuer and concomitant violation of the international frontier at Kurthony, had damaged their hitherto good relations.

Erskine was personally offended by Corfield, who he had thought usurped the consul's rights to defend the interests of British subjects in foreign territory. At Gambella, Erskine, Pawson, and Corfield were at least sufficiently civil to agree upon the necessity of a grazing agreement and forwarded their views to Khartoum and the British minister in Addis Ababa. But this was not the crux of the matter. All of these men, who knew the territory very well, understood that there would never be peace on the frontier until the boundary was redrawn. The grazing agreement was a palliative; it was not an obvious solution--the rectification of the frontier to give the Baro Salient to the Sudan by redrafting the boundary along the line of the escarpment. The British government saw the sense of solving the Sudan government's problem at the expense of Ethiopian territory and argued that some unwanted region should be offered in exchange. Why not the llemi Triangle? From that point the Baro Salient became a persistent part of Anglo-Ethiopian frontier negotiations.

A Syrian becomes “Imperial Agent for the Nilotic Tribes of Ulu Baboor [Gore] and Sayo-Wallega Provinces”

Kanyazmatch Majid Abud returned to Gambella in May 1934 in high dudgeon and bearing a new title, "Imperial Agent for the Nilotic Tribes of Ulu Baboor [Gore] and Sayo-Wallega Provinces". He now had a united frontier administration which had hitherto been divided between the two rival Ethiopian provinces of Gore and Sayo. He brought with him several hundred men and a machine gun. To his astonishment, while collecting taxes, his men were attacked by a large number of the Baro Anuak on 26 May and were nearly overwhelmed. Only his machine gun saved him for the moment; his men were decimated, some sixty killed on the spot and others picked off as the column retreated toward Gambella where he and his force, their ammunition spent, would have been annihilated had not Maurice's Gambella police rescued Majid and brought him back, seriously wounded. The Anuak pursued him to the very banks of the Baro at Gambella but would not attack the Sudan Enclave. Majid lost everything--baggage, ammunition, guns, and large quantities of currency. Only half of his force ever returned, and he himself went up into the highlands and on to Addis Ababa to have his shattered leg treated, vowing to return.

To Erskine, Majid's disastrous defeat was a calamitous blow to his policy of Ethiopian administration of the Baro Salient. He never fully trusted Majid, but he thought he could control him. The British officials in the Upper Nile could hardly contain their satisfaction, that the Ethiopian belief they could control their volatile frontier tribes, had been shattered by Majid's debacle. As for the Nuer and the Anuak in Ethiopia, Majid's defeat only appeared to convince them that they had nothing to fear from the Ethiopians, on the one hand, and had immunity from the Sudan authorities, on the other, so long as they remained behind the border. Here they could offer refuge to the unscrupulous and encourage cattle raiding from the Ethiopian sanctuary. A Gaajak Nuer, Giet Gong, was such a brigand. His lair was the village of Barakwich situated on Adura Island in Ethiopian territory. Here he openly sheltered fugitives and pillagers, who gave him their allegiance in return for safety. The Gaajak victims were not only aggrieved but determined to regain their stolen stock. Even before Majid's defeat, Corfield again struck across the border on 20 February 1934 to retrieve cattle, settle claims, and then withdrew.

With unrest and tension all along the frontier, the immediate concern of the British authorities was the impending return in the dry season of a wrathful Majid Abud ready to spread fire and sword throughout the borderlands. Most thought any such attempt would result in a massacre. There was a more serious concern. Corfield had instructions, reinforced by two companies of mounted infantry and aircraft, to cross into Ethiopia to defend the Nuer against the troops of Majid Abud, thus undoubtedly creating an international incident or even a casus belli which no one wanted. In light of the growing Italian threat, Haile Selassie could hardly spare the troops necessary to disarm the Anuak in a remote region of his empire where there were no Italians. Symes, governor-general of the Sudan, knew this and could thus take advantage of the emperor's weakness by deferring to the demands of his DCs on the frontier for authority to reassert the Pax Britannica and British prestige. In Addis, Majid's proposed expedition against the Gaarjak Nuer and the Anuak of the Baro Salient was quietly abandoned. The civil secretary, Angus Gillan, wrote to Erskine at Gore, "If it means that he cannot work in the Salient without interfering with the Sudan Nuer I am convinced, and I do hope you will be, that the time has come to drop him". Majid had outlived his usefulness on the Ethiopian frontier. Diplomatic representations were subsequently made to the emperor and the redoubtable Majid Abud never returned to the Baro Salient, but the problem remained unresolved. Although the emperor did not mention Majid, he kept him in the capital where he clearly needed him more against the Italians than against the Anuak; but he was not about to give up the Baro Salient by frontier rectification and Sir Sidney Barton, the British ambassador at Addis, was not about to press this request at a time when the emperor was struggling to prevent the dismemberment of his country by the Italians.

With Majid Abud safely ensconced in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian officials in western Ethiopia soon fell to squabbling among themselves. Majid's agent, Marco Beshir, represented the imperial government, but without Majid's support his authority was soon challenged by the provincial officials of Sayo and Gore each of whom wanted exclusive administration on the frontier for their own benefit. There was equal dissension on the Sudan side of the border. Corfield at Nasir and G. L. Elliot-Smith at Akobo continually fulminated against the prohibition about crossing the frontier made all the more frustrating by the absence of any progress at Addis Ababa over a grazing agreement or frontier rectification. By the spring of 1935 Symes accepted the fact that any boundary change was simply out of the question but pressed for the grazing agreement which would let his DCs into Ethiopia. By the autumn of 1935, any hope of a conclusion to this question dissipated before Ethiopian preoccupation with the Italian military buildup and increasing sensitivity toward any encroachment upon their territory. Reluctantly, the British Foreign Office gave way despite strong protests from Sir Sidney Barton at Addis. The foreign secretary saw "no objection to the adoption by the Sudan Government if they consider it necessary the proposal to give discretion to local administrative officers to cross the frontier when and where the interests of good order and public security demand their personal intervention." This was all that Elliot-Smith and Corfield required. Symes cautioned them not to set up courts or collect taxes, but simply to be a "friendly mediator." The British officials on the Ethiopian frontier, understood precisely what was meant to be a "friendly mediator".

We will complete our focus on Anuak History in a forthcoming article.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 49, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

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