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BOOK REVIEW

How Competition Leads to the Kalashnikov

by Heywote Bekde
* Greenwar: Environment and Conflict, published by The Panos Institute. UK price £7.95.
ANTI-government troops are only kilometres from Addis Ababa.
decades of fighting in the Sudan show no signs of abating, and there is virtual anarchy tn Mogadishu.
But civil ware in Ethiopia. Sudan and Somalia are only some of the many conflicts tn the Sahel today — the conflicts that have become large enough to attract media attention.
Less know are the many small-scale, eveiyday tensions that exist throughout the region between farmers and pastoralists, refugees and lo cals, all jockeying for position and access to the diminishing resources of land and water — and all of which have the potential to erupt into violence
This was clearly demonstrated in the violence and the disruption of diplomatic and trade links that occurred between Mauritania and Senegal in 1989 over what started as a grazing rights dispute in the v overcrowded Senegal river val ey. where competition for illy survival ts fierce.
The Sahel region comprises a ( lumber of countries on the them borders of the Sahara desert. reaching from Mauritania and Senegal tn the west to Ethiopia and Somalia in the east.
Competition for land and water Is not a recent phenomenon in the region. It has always been part of daily life, as Mahamet Hissene, a Chadian Journalist with the Ministry of Information, writes in a new book. "Greenwar: Environment and Conflict". In his account of pastoralists in Chad. Hissene says that ritual provocation Is common and considered healthy, and is even encouraged amongst youngsters:
"Everyone must assert their authority to get access to water, pasture, wild fruit and berries." However, he stresses that real fights were rare and "knowing how to avoid them as important as winning them"
Competition went hand inhand with sharing. Farmers
often allowed pastoralists to graze their cattle on the stalks of the recent harvest In return their fields were fertilised by cattle manure.
But when resources become scarce, human kindness and traditional checks and balances come under strain
Today, with land being Increasingly appropriated for farming and cash crops, with the ever Increasing population and with the successive droughts and deteriorating environment. the daily competition for basic survival ts fiercer and more easily spills over into violence and sometimes open warfare.
In eastern Sudan, pastoralists have lost much of their traditional grazing land to farms, and with the encroaching sand dunes and droughts, they are pushed more and more on to marginal lands, and into areas on the Ethiopia-Sudan border where armed bandits (faloul) roam.
Falul are people who have themselves been displaced by drought and the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and are also trying to survive with their only possessions —firearms.
Violence and war are now common tn the Sahel, and the availability of firearms all over the region means that even in the smaller disputes arms raay be used It ts not uncommon to see young cattle herders with Kalashnikovs casually slung over their shoulders
"Greenwar" quotes a former Senegalese farmer, now a smuggler: "When the land Is no longer fruitful and the authorities have abandoned us peas anta, we am only survive by u^g book argues that by ad dressing environmental Iscrues and working towards a more equitable resource allocation, the small disputes might be avoided — and so might the wars In the Sahel —Panos