Chol Mangok knows all his cows by name. His family cares for more than two hundred. He dresses like a shepherd: a green tunic, a cane, a short-brimmed white hat and a necklace of blue balls that he caresses with rough, calloused hands. Chol, 75 years old, although he does not know his age, walks among the animals in an earthy esplanade dotted with small smoky bonfires and low rectangular huts where herding families live. He caresses the very long horns of the beasts and compliments them. “This she has had many offspring; Have you seen the horns of that one? she looks what a pretty skin color this one has.” In the Mangek camp, outside Tonj, in northeastern South Sudan, thousands of cattle gather every evening. It is a rarity. With a nomadic soul, if so many families with their animals congregate daily in that place, it is because they are driven there by hunger, the absence of safe pastures due to war and direct violence: every year cattle thefts between tribes, especially among the Dinka, Nuer and Murle, they cause dozens of deaths in the country. On October 20, the penultimate attack occurred: 18 people were killed during the cattle rustling of hundreds of animals on the outskirts of Tonj.
The Chol elder says that he would like to be a nomad forever but for five months it has been impossible.
— The floods have destroyed the pastures and we have had to take our herd to other places, but there they attack us and we cannot defend ourselves. That is why we have come here. For a while.
For Chol, as for most South Sudanese, cows are everything. A symbol of status and prestige, in the African country they are used as a dowry payment in marriages, to formalize compensation after blood feuds or as a kind of informal bank. In the country, of 11.2 million inhabitants, there are more cows than people: 13 million horned animals.
They are also a way of waging war.
Several experts and community leaders have insisted for years that the historic cattle rustling, a centuries-old practice, has become one more weapon in the war. In addition to the increase in mortality due to the greater presence of firearms among herders —disputes that were previously settled with bows or arrows now end at the point of Kalashnikov—, the study The militarization of cattle rustling in South Sudan denounces that “ Political leaders have strategically manipulated these local conflicts to mobilize armed herders for their interests.” According to the study, there is no doubt: the systematic exploitation by these politicians of ancestral cattle rustling practices "has inflamed the current conflict." Despite this, they regret, the role of community violence is not part of the peace dialogue to seek a political solution.
The researcher Iffat Idris, from the British Institute for Development Studies, points to the leadership in her study "Livestock and conflict in South Sudan" and denounces that thousands of cows are now concentrated in the hands of a few. “The political and military elites have used resources obtained during the war and post-independence to acquire huge herds that, in turn, serve to endow them with status and prestige, cultivate contacts and gain followers (…) or even pay the dowries of marriage to his soldiers to ensure their loyalty.
Several herders in the Mangek camp also denounce the partisan use of government disarmament campaigns. Achol shepherdess Bath Mawith, who lives with her eight children and her flock, protests that the authorities took their weapons from them but left them defenseless against their rivals. She suspects it was a way to weaken them and strengthen a tribe loyal to the local governor. “The government came and took our weapons by force. We didn't want to and it's not fair. Our rivals have weapons and they burned down my house. That is why we have come here with our cows. It is the first time in my life that we do not have weapons to defend ourselves and we do not feel safe.”
Despite its growing role, cattle rustling alone does not explain the suffering in South Sudan. To the violence, which continues unleashed despite the peace agreement and the unity government signed in 2020 between the Dinka president, Salva Kiir, and the Nuer vice president, Riek Machar, has been added the impact of the extreme floods of the last months, which have flooded crops and pastures. Without grass to feed their livestock, thousands of herders have lost various animals. The desperate displacement of herds has in turn generated new conflicts with sedentary communities that see the arrival of the animals on their lands and wells as a threat to their survival.
The situation is so critical that there was little room for worsening. But it has gotten worse.
Muzamil Sebi, responsible for The Save the Children in the country, warns that the rise in prices due to the war in Ukraine has left many South Sudanese with empty pantries. “The war in Ukraine,” he explains, “has disrupted food supply chains. The situation is particularly serious in South Sudan, because we receive food from neighboring countries and the cost of gas and fuel has increased prices.
Widespread government corruption also seeks to fish in that troubled river. A coordinator of a large NGO in the African country requested anonymity from this newspaper to denounce a political use even of hunger. “There is a savage manipulation of humanitarian aid, many times even forcing the displacement of civilians to one place or another as a factor in attracting aid and the money and business that this means.”
