In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum: Spaces, Temporalities, and Identities from Separation to Revolution 9781800730595

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Transliteration
Prologue. Identity
Introduction. Greater Khartoum through the Prism of In-Betweenness
Part I. In-Betweenness as a Spatial Dimension
Chapter 1. The Expansion of Greater Khartoum and the Incorporation of Agricultural and Pastoral Production Areas: Creating In-Betweenness, Disrupting Territories
Chapter 2. Governing In-Betweenness: Understanding Village Organization’s Institutional Set-Up in Rural Khartoum
Chapter 3. Young People’s Strategies and Educational Processes: A Case Study from Al-Fath Transitional Zone in Greater Khartoum
Chapter 4. The Emergence of New Political Actors in the City: Disruption of the Political Order, Political Reproduction and Space of Contestation
Part II. In-Betweenness as a Temporal Dimension
Chapter 5. Urban Violence in Khartoum in August 2005 as a Watershed Event
Chapter 6. Time to Sell the Land? The Second Urban Marginalization of Southerners in Greater Khartoum – The Case of Al Mussalass Neighbourhood
Chapter 7. Constructions of Sudanese Nationhood: Singularities and Moments from the Experiences of Southern/South Sudanese
Part III. In-Betweenness as a Belonging Dimension
Chapter 8. Translocal Citizenship of the Margins: Nuer Negotiations of Belonging in Khartoum
Chapter 9. ‘Community’ Citizenship as a Liminal Space for Southern Sudanese Communities in Khartoum
Chapter 10. Marriage Strategies and Kinship Representations: A Space for Sociocultural In-Betweenness within the ‘Political Economy’ of Identities
Chapter 11. Shifting Notions of Endogamy and Exogamy: Religion, Social Class and Race in Marriage Practices in the Upper-Middle Class Neighbourhood of Amarat
Epilogue. Negotiations of Multiple Identities and the Polemics of Living In-Betweenness: In Conversation with Stella Gaitano
Index

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In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum

Space and Place

Bodily, geographic and architectural sites are embedded with cultural knowledge and social value. The Anthropology of Space and Place series provides ethnographically rich analyses of the cultural organization and meanings of these sites of space, architecture, landscape and places of the body. Contributions to this series will examine the symbolic meanings of space and place, the cultural and historical processes involved in their construction and contestation, and how they are in dialogue with wider political, religious, social and economic institutions. Recent volumes: Volume 20

In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum: Spaces, Temporalities and Identities from Separation to Revolution Edited by Alice Franck, Barbara Casciarri and Idris Salim El-Hassan Volume 19

Politics of the Dunes: Poetry, Architecture, and Coloniality at the Open City Maxwell Woods Volume 18

Under the Sign of the Cross: The People’s Salvation Cathedral and the ChurchBuilding Industry in Postsocialist Romania Giuseppe Tateo Volume 17

Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces: Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus Edited by Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried and Kevin Tuite Volume 16

Post-Ottoman Coexistence: Sharing Space in the Shadow of Conflict Edited by Rebecca Bryant

Volume 15

Narrating the City: Histories, Space, and the Everyday Edited by Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg and Anastasia Christou Volume 14

Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State

Edited by Ulrike Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro, Claudia Ghrawi and Nora Lafi Volume 13

Bloom and Bust: Urban Landscapes in the East since German Reunification Edited by Gwyneth Cliver and Carrie Smith-Prei Volume 12

Power and Architecture: The Construction of Capitals and the Politics of Space Edited by Michael Minkenberg Volume 11

Narrating Victimhood: Gender, Religion and the Making of Place in Post-War Croatia Michaela Schäuble

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: https://www. berghahnbooks.com/series/space-and-place

In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum Spaces, Temporalities and Identities from Separation to Revolution

[• • ] Edited by

Alice Franck, Barbara Casciarri and Idris Salim El-Hassan

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Alice Franck, Barbara Casciarri and Idris Salim El-Hassan All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Franck, Alice, 1960- editor. | Casciarri, Barbara, editor. | El Hassan, Idris Salim, editor. Title: In-betweenness in greater Khartoum : spaces, temporalities and identities from separation to revolution / edited by Alice Franck, Barbara Casciarri, Idris Salim El-Hassan. Other titles: Space and place ; v. 20. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Series: Space and place; volume 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020042394 (print) | LCCN 2020042395 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800730588 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800730595 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Khartoum (Sudan)--Social conditions. | Khartoum (Sudan)--Politics and government. Classification: LCC DT159.7 .I525 2021 (print) | LCC DT159.7 (ebook) | DDC 962.62043--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042394 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042395 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80073-058-8 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-059-5 ebook

Contents

List of Illustrationsviii Acknowledgementsix Notes on Transliterationxiii Prologue. Identityxvii Stella Gaitano, translated from Arabic by Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz Introduction. Greater Khartoum through the Prism of In-Betweenness1 Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri Part I. In-Betweenness as a Spatial Dimension Chapter 1.  The Expansion of Greater Khartoum and the Incorporation of Agricultural and Pastoral Production Areas: Creating In-Betweenness, Disrupting Territories Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri Chapter 2.  Governing In-Betweenness: Understanding Village Organization’s Institutional Set-Up in Rural Khartoum Salma Mohamed Abdalmunim Abdalla

29

53

Chapter 3.  Young People’s Strategies and Educational Processes: A Case Study from Al-Fath Transitional Zone in Greater Khartoum70 Hind Mahmoud

vi Contents

Chapter 4.  The Emergence of New Political Actors in the City: Disruption of the Political Order, Political Reproduction and Space of Contestation Clément Deshayes

91

Part II.  In-Betweenness as a Temporal Dimension Chapter 5.  Urban Violence in Khartoum in August 2005 as a Watershed Event Idris Salim El-Hassan Chapter 6.  Time to Sell the Land? The Second Urban Marginalization of Southerners in Greater Khartoum – The Case of Al Mussalass Neighbourhood Alice Franck

119

143

Chapter 7.  Constructions of Sudanese Nationhood: Singularities and Moments from the Experiences of Southern/South Sudanese 170 Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz Part III.  In-Betweenness as a Belonging Dimension Chapter 8.  Translocal Citizenship of the Margins: Nuer Negotiations of Belonging in Khartoum Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

209

Chapter 9.  ‘Community’ Citizenship as a Liminal Space for Southern Sudanese Communities in Khartoum Mohamed A.G. Bakhit

234

Chapter 10.  Marriage Strategies and Kinship Representations: A Space for Sociocultural In-Betweenness within the ‘Political Economy’ of Identities Barbara Casciarri Chapter 11.  Shifting Notions of Endogamy and Exogamy: Religion, Social Class and Race in Marriage Practices in the Upper-Middle Class Neighbourhood of Amarat Peter Miller

253

282

Contents  vii

Epilogue.  Negotiations of Multiple Identities and the Polemics of Living In-Betweenness: In Conversation with Stella Gaitano Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

310

Index337

Illustrations

1.1  Map of Ahamda territory in Khartoum State

33

1.2  Map of central market gardens at the heart of the city

39

1.3  Advertisement for investment in a real estate project on Tuti Island – billboard visible from the Nile Road in Khartoum

40

2.1  Map of the development of Siraw between 1984 and 2010

61

6.1  Waiting for the bus to the South (January 2011 – Al Mussalass)150 6.2  Bus departure to Malakal as part of the return plan (January 2011 – Al Mussalass)

151

6.3  Real estate agent card entitled: I have no money / empty house for rent (November 2016)

159

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of a collective research project initiated

in 2015 in Khartoum surrounding in-between spaces and identity reconfigurations in Sudan’s capital after 2011. We first thank the AUF (Francophone University Agency) and the CEDEJ (Centre d’études et de documentation économiques et juridiques) for funding the twoyear research programme ‘Métropolisation et espaces d’entre deux: jeux d’acteurs, dynamiques de pouvoir et reconfigurations identitaires dans l’agglomération du Grand Khartoum’/‘Metropolization and In-Between Spaces: Interactions, Power Dynamics and Identity Reconfigurations in the Greater Khartoum Conurbation’ and for making it possible to carry out most of the fieldwork inquiries, the results of which are presented in the following chapters.1 Although not every participant in the programme wrote a contribution for this volume, all were involved in the scientific exchanges that led to this book. This collective project was mediated in Sudan by the Khartoum branch of CEDEJ, which has facilitated Franco-Sudanese publications and research programmes over the past twenty years. It has equally engaged in multiple collaborations with Sudanese academic institutions, including the University of Khartoum (UoK). We express our gratitude to CEDEJ for both its financial and institutional support, and for the fact that it offers a unique space for researchers and students from France and elsewhere to collaborate with their Sudanese counterparts in conducting an in-depth study of contemporary Sudan in the context of difficult circumstances informed by the hold of an authoritarian regime. More particularly, our gratitude goes to Jean-Nicolas Bach, who in succeeding Alice Franck as the coordinator of the CEDEJ in Khartoum agreed to continue the project that we had started by taking care to organize and host our exalted workshops. The atmosphere in the centre fostered informal exchanges that have enabled multiple scholars to jointly

x Acknowledgements

explore the multifaceted notion of in-betweenness by dismantling the boundaries between diverse disciplinary fields and that in turn have inspired this publication. Through interactive disciplinary diversity, the collection contributes to a more complex approach to the understanding of in-betweenness as a spatial, social and historicized notion. It underscores the boundaries and porosities between Sudanese identities and spaces and their reconfigurations in the context and time frame of the 2011 secession of South Sudan until the revolution (2018–2019). The contributions of both junior and senior researchers of different nationalities and hailing from diverse social science disciplines (geography, anthropology, development and gender studies . . .) reflect the inspiring work environment at CEDEJ. For having greatly contributed to this fruitful atmosphere, thanks to Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz, Hind Mahmoud Yousif, Khalid al-Rashid, Clément Deshayes, Peter Miller and Alice Koumurian. Still in Sudan, the feasibility of the project has vitally depended on the support of the University of Khartoum, especially the colleagues of the Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, who through their involvement in this programme have continued and strengthened the solid French/ Sudanese scientific collaboration. We are especially indebted to Hassan al-Haj Ali (former Dean of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences) for his patient and constant support for the project and our specific fieldwork; he has facilitated our research team in accessing Sudan, taken the time to meet with members of the team to discuss their subject, allowed us access to his institution’s facilities and shared with us his knowledge during workshops held in Khartoum and once in Paris. We also want to express our gratitude to Munzoul Assal from the Department of Anthropology, who was deeply engaged in the scientific coordination for the UoK side of the research project despite his very busy schedule. In the department of Anthropology, we also need to thank Mohamed Bakhit for his continuous support and his involvement in this French/Sudanese collaboration and the following ones. Special thanks go to Mohamed Abdel Salam Babiker from the Law Faculty of UoK for his active participation throughout the research project; the numerous shared discussions on in-betweenness undoubtedly stimulated the research and inspired this book. We also want to thank Idris El-Hassan for the constancy and rigor of his participation throughout the project, starting from the research methodology and fieldwork, through the relevance of his contributions during the numerous workshops that we held in Khartoum to his huge and attentive support during the publication process. The implementation in 2015 of a doctoral school (UoK, CEDEJ and Paris 8 University) on inequalities in Khartoum, which brought together

Acknowledgements  xi

French and Sudanese students and colleagues, has contributed a lot to our reflection on in-betweenness and to team bonding. Thanks to Catherine Miller, Elena Vezzadini, Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Ibrahim Z. Bahreldin, Mahassin Youssif, Salma Abdalla and Noha Hamza for their enthusiastic participation. Finally, this book as a whole but also most of its contributors have benefited from the scientific and friendly support, wise advice and careful rereading of Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz. The particular role she has taken in this adventure goes far beyond that of expert on Sudan. We are particularly indebted to her. In France, we want to thank our research institutions – LAVUE and PRODIG – which supported this project not only by taking charge of some of our research fieldwork and by participating in the translation of papers and subsidizing the index work but also by offering a space for sharing and welcoming our Sudanese colleagues during workshops and conferences held in Paris. The production of the book was a long process for which we want to thank several people. Thanks to the contributors for their patience in this rich and long adventure (particularly to Kasia Grabska, who always finishes ahead of the deadline). Stella Gaitano deserves special thanks for sharing with us her personal experience and offering the prologue to this book. We also thank the anonymous readers of the manuscript for their enthusiastic review. Their interesting comments on the first draft of this volume enabled us to clarify and sharpen our arguments. Others who deserve special acknowledgement for the book’s final version include: Simon Dix for the English editing, Francesco Staro for the index, Margot Quincy for her availability and her skills on Illustrator and Photoshop and Nathalie Coste for her help in the final layout. In a more familiar and extra-academic context, our warmest thanks go to Ivan, Joséphine, Lucien and Idir for supporting us, obsessed and overwhelmed, during the publication process. We hope in our chapters to have given voice to our ‘respondents’ and to have succeeded in getting into the complexity of the in-between situations, which we wanted to show can be both a source of constraint and creativity. They are to be thanked not only because they are our main source of information but far more because we have shared with them narratives, pieces of daily life, and hope for their country and its peoples. Although our fieldwork and most of our meetings took place during the last phase of the Islamic regime, the production process of this book overlapped with the events of the Sudanese Revolution 2018–2019. We thus shared with our Sudanese colleagues and friends the enthusiasm

xii Acknowledgements

for this great moment of struggle and liberation, while hoping that our work could provide a modest contribution to the understanding of the challenges of in-betweenness for imagining a fairer future for this ‘New Sudan’. Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

Note 1. This volume was published with the support of the LabEx DynamiTe (ANR11-LABX-0046) as part of the ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ programme, and the support of the UMR 8586 Prodig and of the CEDEJ.

Notes on Transliteration

The criteria adopted for the transliteration of Arabic are as follows: ‫ ء‬ ‫ ٔا‬ ‫ ب‬ ‫ ت‬ ‫ ث‬ ‫ ج‬ ‫ ح‬ ‫ خ‬ ‫ د‬ ‫ ذ‬ ‫ ر‬ ‫ ز‬

’ a (also i or u at the beginning of the word) b t t or th * j h kh d z or dh* r z

‫ س‬s ‫ ش‬sh ‫ ص‬s

‫ ض‬d ‫ ط‬t ‫ ظ‬z ‫‘ ع‬ ‫ غ‬gh ‫ ف‬f ‫ ق‬g or q * ‫ ك‬k ‫ ل‬l ‫ م‬m ‫ ن‬n ‫ ه‬h (a at the end of the word) ‫ و‬u, w or o * ‫ ي‬y, i or e *

*according to the Sudanese pronunciation The transliteration of Arabic words of this volume intends to be precise and simple. It does not distinguish between non-emphatic sounds ‫ ز س د ت‬i.e. ‘t’, ‘d’, ‘s’, ‘z’ (similar in English), and the emphatic ones, ‫ظ ض ط ص‬, which have no equivalent in English, and the ‘h’ describes both the English ‘h’ and the pharyngeal dull sound (‫( )ح‬with no equivalent in English). The letter ayn is represented by a reversed apostrophe. Long vowels are not marked. Arabic words are written in italics, with the exception of names of persons, places, institutions, ethnic groups and political movements widely used in written texts. The

xiv  Notes on Transliteration

most common form has been favoured: Port Sudan, Khartoum, Omar al-Bashir, Nuba etc. Arabic words passed in English everyday language are spelled according to the English spelling without italics: i.e. souk, sheikh.

Sudan. © Alice Franck.

Greater Khartoum. © Alice Franck.

Stella Gaitano

Prologue Identity

STELLA GAITANO, TRANSLATED FROM ARABIC BY AZZA AHMED ABDEL AZIZ

To me, identity is an entity akin to the air we breathe and to water, and

maybe it is one of nature’s phenomena that we all share without knowing, or perhaps simply refuse to acknowledge as a concept. The idea that you may be like a cloud cover, shaped and moving and losing certain attributes that constitute part of your makeup, while gaining others but all the while remain yourself. Identity is in flux, becoming strong in certain contexts and weakening in others. We might relegate aspects of it to the background until the need for it announces itself. This need is informed by the state you are in: it may be fear, threats, pride, love and rebellion or a persistent feeling of dissatisfaction. In times past, perhaps, identity was a stable entity where one would possess a single nationality, a single language, a single source of belonging that one did not deviate from except due to the coincidence of a heightened sense of adventure. In such instances, individual essence flourishes through certainties even if they are in fact illusions. When a given nation would believe that it was superior to others, another would take pride in belonging to a race that supersedes all others through its racial purity, or another would believe that it is the source of all humanity, but all with no objective or even specified standard to support this. But now, in this era when everything is blended together, the world is connected through a massive network of information that is difficult for any of us to avoid. In addition there are those changes wrought by immigration emigrating and travel with no return from countries to which we are connected but which sometimes violently eject you towards others that accept you with open arms, despite your internal sense of loss within them and the burden of starting afresh. This new beginning requires the individual to speak a new language, to tame his tongue to pronounce new difficult sounds, to activate speech centres that were untapped through lack of use. It entails the acquisition of a nationality and dissolving into another

xviii  Stella Gaitano

culture without this being related to blood or genes and the diversity of lineages. From this ensues the birth of offspring who are the citizens of the new country by birth, and part of it through language and culture. This leads parents into a conflict propelled by their attempts  – failed or successful – to remind children of their roots that they themselves establish to assuage their pangs of guilt. In an age like this, is racial, religious and cultural extremism meaningful? When you as an individual can no longer live in isolation since the whole world knocks on your doors and windows, and where your space is disturbed and your certainties uprooted, and your tongue and thoughts frequently colonized by the attractive newness. We are living in this age and we must reconcile ourselves to the changes it brings, since individual freedom has been curtailed. Cultural legacies are among the things that should no longer be held to be sacrosanct since all frontiers have been abolished, and even human limits have become unbounded. In certain instances, we feel that we are in an immense magnetic field that attracts all that suits us and services our belonging to the human race. Sometimes we reject and refuse some things we are repulsed by and that make us uneasy, and perhaps threaten our existence. Such that on some occasions we even find a space in the places and environments in which we find ourselves located. However, sometimes we cocoon ourselves like tortoises and construct solid walls. When our measures of evaluation are static, by virtue of a rigid upbringing characterized by seeing threats everywhere, we succumb to isolation and limitations of choice. Even if we are within the abodes of those to whom we have arrived as visitors, we become more attached to our heritage and origins as though we fear for them from the rising tempest. This storm might emanate from others, but in most cases it might erupt from within us when we are permeated with feelings of guilt because we have relinquished parts of our culture and heritage so that they are transplanted by other alien aspects. It should have been incumbent upon us to prove – I do not know to whom – that we have not betrayed the places from which we originated. My mother used to insist on speaking our local language, and it reached the point where we would be severely reprimanded when she spoke in our local language and we responded in Arabic. I cannot fully explain it, for she was conflicted between being the repository of the transmission of the culture to the newer generations within a different environment without the support of other members of the ethnic group, its environment and its everyday practices, and being plagued by the fear of erring: for to her, other languages, cultures and practices constituted the elements of being lost.

Prologue  xix

In my grandmother’s time, she was constrained to marry someone from within the tribe, from within the same village. During my ­mother’s time, the options expanded slightly so that while she had to marry within the tribe it was tolerated that the alliance might be with someone from other neighbouring villages. For my generation, it is permissible to marry into any tribe hailing from South Sudan, but with a certain amount of reservation. However, marrying entirely outside the confines of South Sudan is still considered to be something of a social anomaly that is perceived as a burden to many of those who have had that experience. Despite the large number of individuals who have broken out of the confines of the tribe and South Sudan through marital and familial choices, obstacles still abound, as if one were a traitor or akin to that. Such reactions were appropriate to the extent of the knowledge and life experiences of that generation. They were exacerbated by the constant fear of becoming engulfed with a state that did not respect the diversity of the majority of its citizens, and which incessantly attempted to insert them into a mono-cultural entity. These attitudes were consolidated through negative historical, social and cultural residues which govern the capacities to remain open to certain cultural forms in particular or the distance kept from certain cultures but not others. All of this is informed by the gregarious nature of individuals and their flexibility towards accepting the other, even when this person is considered to be the unjust and wicked individual responsible for their personal misery. Then we witness the transformation of such details from social phenomena to become part of the modus operandi of the higher institutions of the state, and on this basis, discriminatory practices are normalized. From this there emerges an interrogation about the nature of the justifications that oblige one to swear allegiance to the big Nation when this nation does not recognize you as an authentic citizen. Despite the cultural, social and racial discrimination that used to, knowingly or unknowingly, occur in Sudan at that particular time, these residues influenced, and continue to determine, our choices and our senses of belonging as Sudanese, both in the South and the North. For the South and the North are the poles of a conflict that endured for decades and eventually culminated in the independence of the south. But is this the end of the matter? Where is that magnetic force that attracts ­everything – whether we accept it or not – that thing we call essence. The human essence is constructed in a way that surpasses us and it continues on its way until it reaches its ultimate destination. It does not seek permission when it partakes in storing things inside you. This

xx  Stella Gaitano

ultimately affects your interaction with your surrounding environment. The words you utter and your body language are all a part of it: bodily gestures such as a movement of your head and the shrug of your shoulders, and your choice of words and forms of expression. Existential concerns implicate you in adopting the language, culture and customs of those who you consider enemies, or those you have been told are foes or even friends. Extremists may call this alienation, but I classify it as co-existence or living in harmony, and developing the natural capacities for human growth. This can be achieved without rejection, denial or denigration of the local roots you came from and which you might wrongly think diminish your worth. On the contrary, these elements may well mark you as a unique individual. Simply because the individual is liable to be marked, and to bear the signifiers of their belonging to a particular group whether they be positive or negative; the individual bears the marks of the destructive thought patterns of the demented that devour and envelop simple people through gazes and interrogations that do not cease. Once you find yourself at the heart of this beloved dilemma, entirely reconciled with your new existential situation, enthusiastically engaged in acquiring more distinct cultures in addition to those you already possess, the questions abound. How are you an Iranian American? What do you think about the development of nuclear weapons? How does your foreign wife with her strange clothing behave? Are you happy? How is it that you are a Polish man married to an Arab woman? Towards which cultural orientation will the children be directed? How is it that you are an English Muslim man? Will you blow yourself up in a public space someday? Or how are you an African hailing from a group located in the heart of the dense forests of Africa and yet speak Arabic and write in it while your complexion does not allow for that!? Damnation, is it not time for us to demolish such silly frames of reference? All these questions cloud your mind even though you continue to act as if there were nothing strange about all these matters. Yet the persistence of these questions may leave an uncomfortable sentiment within you. You may have moments of guilt based on feelings that you are responsible for abandoning the correct order of things since there is a natural order one should not deviate from. Or it was incumbent upon you not to confuse things unnecessarily. How did we become implicated in all these leaps from one route to another? How were we able to adapt and keep swimming in this maelstrom? Am I obligated to justify myself all the time, to protect myself, my partner and my children from the threat of non-acceptance?

Prologue  xxi

Then comes the phase of maturity and transcendence, of not responding to barbed questions. You are a single individual, yet you bear all these elements within you and have no choice to let any one of them drop. Here your singularity emerges, and in this instance you are ‘in-between’: your nationality is from one country, your language from another, your spouse from a third and your children from two or more countries, and you are all of these elements. While this situation might appear ideal, it is not without its perils and tempests, and it requires a profound comprehension and experience of disaster management. For one to choose this route necessitates a great deal of courage and a sense of adventure and temerity in the face of the humiliations others try to subject you to. In time, you will learn to become more thick-skinned, you will learn to ignore the stares that make you feel as though you have a striped yellow and pink tail, like a multi-coloured cat. You will become complicit with the judgements that others make about you without even trying to get to know you well. Some of them see you as lucky, some see you as mad and some see you as a traitor. The ‘in-between’ is a state that is constantly present: it may be simple, and it may become more complex. Acceptance of difference has now become a natural thing; however, the human reaction is always primal in its expression at the first moment of surprise, because the reaction to those who stand in an ‘in-between’ situation is essentially based on everything that has been accumulated in the subconscious and the brain. All this is in the shape of prototypical images of others, with no effort made to forge a relationship with the other or to acquire real knowledge about them that might surprise us by manifesting the reverse side of the entrenched image of them that has long existed in our minds, or which might finally appear as the half-truth it is. Difference is always present, and will remain so, it will put down rhizomes and become more complex, and the numbers of people who live in an ‘in-between’ situation will be great, especially in light of the current waves of violence that are shaking the entire world. We might consider this age to be one of those ice ages that reorder things after complete destruction. It might be one of the eras responsible for the reestablishment of peace and human fraternity that are not conditional on race, religion and superficial allegiances. The best among us will be those who offer more to humanity for the sake of love, beauty and acceptance of the other, so that it grows to be a daily act that becomes ingrained in the behaviour of future generations. For those future generations! That we should not subject to the ordeal of rejecting a culture and language into which they were born. You should not put yourself in a position where you feel a sense of guilt

xxii  Stella Gaitano

about having brought them into homelands and environments that are in disarray and at risk of acting as the catalysts for conflict and extremism. We should exercise the wisdom that will allow these generations to c­ ontribute – with all their energy – to edifying their new homelands, to become part of them and advantageous assets to them. They should be allowed to embrace and be proud of any alternative belongings they might have and be able to dig up the wealth within them to create a beautiful portrait of diversity wherein they in turn will flourish. Finally, dealing with the situation of ‘in-between’ demands experience and social intelligence in tempering crises that might stem from something as insignificant as a deprecatory question or be as momentous as discovering that your very choices might be subjected to destruction and curtailment by those individuals who are closest to you. Stella Gaitano was born in 1979 in Khartoum, Sudan. Her family comes from South Sudan. She studied pharmacy at Khartoum University. She started writing stories while she was at primary school and later came into contact with intellectuals and political activists, which intensified her writing, and she started to write about herself, her family and her people. Her first short story, ‘Lake the Size of a Papaya Fruit’, inspired by her grandmother, was a revelation for her. The story, for which she was swiftly awarded a literary prize in 2003, is about a girl and her grandmother who have to make their way through life alone after the girl’s parents and grandfather die. Wilted Flowers (2002) is Gaitano’s first book of short stories. It describes the fate of people who have fled from the murderous conflicts in South Sudan, Darfur and the Nuba Mountains and are living in refugee camps near Khartoum. In her latest work, The Return (2015), Gaitano describes the return of many South Sudanese from the North to their newly founded state. She portrays the immense expectations, great hopes and even greater disappointments. Gaitano herself migrated in 2012 from North to South Sudan. She is considered an important voice of her people, who have known both war and expulsion. She writes in Arabic, for which she is criticized by certain South Sudanese colleagues, who see it as  – according to Gaitano  – a ‘colonialist tool’.

‫الهوية‬

‫الهوية عندي شئ كالهواء والماء وربما هي واحدة من مظاهر الطبيعة التي نتشارك فيها‬ ‫جميعا ً وال ندري او اننا ببساطة نقاوم الفكرة ‪ ،‬فكرة ان تكون مثل غيمة تتشكل وتتحرك وتفقد‬ ‫بعضا منك وتكتسب اشياء اخرى ولكنك انت هو انت ‪ ،‬الهوية متغيرة تقوى في مواضع‬ ‫وتضعف في اخرى ‪ ،‬وقد نركن جزء منها الى ان تظهر الحاجة اليها ‪ ،‬وهذه الحاجة تحددها‬ ‫‪ .‬الحالة التي انت عليها ‪ ،‬قد يكون خوف ‪ ،‬تهديد ‪ ،‬فخر ‪ ،‬حب وتمرد او الشعور بعدم الرضا‬ ‫في العصور الماضية ربما كانت للهوية كيان ثابت ‪ ،‬حيت يكون للفرد جنسية واحدة ولغة‬ ‫واحدة وانتماء واحد ال يحيد عنه اال بمقدار ما تتاح له من صدفة او مغامرة ‪ ،‬حينها يقوى كيان‬ ‫الفرد منا بما يحمل من ثوابت حتى ولو كانت مجرد تهويمات ‪ ،‬كأن تظن أمة بانها خير من‬ ‫اخرى ‪ ،‬وان تفخر اخرى بانتمائها لعرق بشري تتفوق على كل االعراق بالنقاء او تؤمن اخرى‬ ‫‪ .‬بانها اصل البشرية جمعاء ‪ ،‬لكن بدون اي اساس موضوعي او معيار محدد‬ ‫ولكن االن في هذا العصر والذي اختلط فيه كل شئ ‪ ،‬تم ربط العالم بشبكة معلوماتية ضخمة‬ ‫يصعب على احدنا االنفالت منه ‪ ،‬باالضافة الى مغريات الهجرة والسفر دون عودة من اوطان‬ ‫تنمي اليها ولكنها احيانا تلفظك بقسوة الى اخرى تستقبلك باالحضان رغم احساسك الداخلي‬ ‫بالغربة فيها باالضافة لعبء ان تبداء من جديد ‪ ،‬هذه البداية الجديدة ترغم الفرد ان يتحدث‬ ‫لغة جديدة وتطويع لسانه على مخارج حروف صعبة كانت مراكزها معطلة بعدم االستخدام ‪،‬‬ ‫واكتساب جنسية جديدة وربما التماهي تماما مع ثقافة اخرى دون ان يرتبط ذلك بالدم والجينات‬ ‫وتكاثر السالالت ومن ثم انجاب اطفال يصبحون بالميالد مواطنين الوطن الجديد لسان وثقافة‬ ‫‪ ،‬مما يدخل االباء في النزاع والتنازع بمحاوالت قد تفشل او تنجح بتذكير اطفالهم بحذورهم‬ ‫التي انبتو عنها كنوع من اسكات تأنيب الضمير ‪ .‬في عصر كهذا هل للتعصب العرقي والديني‬ ‫والثقافي معنى ؟ عندما ال تستطيع انت كفرد العيش منعزال حيث يطرق كل العالم بابك ونوافذك‬ ‫‪.‬ويتم اقالق محليتك وخلخلة ثوابتك وغزو لسانك وفكرك بالجديد المغري في احاين كثيرة ؟‬ ‫نحن في هذا العصر وعلينا التصالح مع مجرياتها حيث الغيت خصوصية الفرد ‪،‬الموروثات‬ ‫اصبحت من االشياء التي ال يجب تقديسها ‪ ،‬والغيت كل الحدود حتى االنسان ذات نفسه ليس له‬ ‫حدود ‪ .‬في بعض االحيان نشعر باننا قطعة مغنطيسية ضخمة نجذب كل شئ الذي يتوافق معنا‬ ‫ويخدم انتمائنا االنساني ‪ ،‬واحيانا نطرد ونرفض بعضها عندما نتنافر معها وال تشعرنا بالراحة‬ ‫وربما تهدد وجودنا ‪ ،‬لذا في بعض االحيان نتماهى حيث وجدنا انفسنا في تلك البيئة ‪ ،‬ولكن احيانا‬ ‫نتقوقع ونصنع حولنا جدر صلبة مثل السالحف ‪ .‬عندما تكون المعايير عندنا ثابتة بحكم النشئة‬ ‫المتزمتة والمليئة بالمهددات ‪ ،‬نستسلم للتقوقع ومحددية الخيارات ‪ ،‬حتى اذا كنا في في عقر دار‬ ‫من اتينا اليهم ضيوفا ‪ ،‬نصبح اكثر تمسكا بموروثاتنا واصولنا كاننا نخاف عليها من العاصفة ‪،‬‬

‫‪xxiv  Stella Gaitano‬‬

‫هذه العاصفة قد تاتي من الغير ‪ ،‬وفي اكثر االحيان قد تأتي من دواخلنا ‪ ،‬عندما يمأللنا االحساس‬ ‫بالذنب الننا تخلينا عن بعض ثقافاتنا وموروثاتنا لتحل محلها اخرى غريبة ‪ ،‬كأن علينا ان نثبت ال‬ ‫‪ .‬ادري لمن اننا لم نخن االمكنة التي انحدرنا منها‬ ‫كانت امي تصران نتحدث لغتنا المحلية وقد يصل االمر الى درجة التعنيف عندما تتحدث‬ ‫بلغتنا المحلية ونجيبها بالعربية ‪ ،‬الن استطيع التفسير تماما ‪ ،‬فهي متنازعاة بين مسؤولية نقل‬ ‫الثقافة الى االجيال الجديدة ‪ ،‬في منظومة مختلفة غير مدعومة ببقية افراد القبيلة والبيئة والطقوس‬ ‫اليومية ‪ ،‬والخوف من الضياع ‪ ،‬فهي تعتبر اللغات االخرى والثقافات االخرى والممارسات‬ ‫‪.‬االخرى عوامل ضياع‬ ‫في زمن جدتي كان مفروض عليها ان تتزوج من القبيلة ذاتها من القرية ذاتها ‪ ،‬في عصر‬ ‫امي توسعت الخيارات قليال قد تتزوج من ذات القبيلة ولكن يقبل على مضدد الزواج من القرى‬ ‫االخرى المجاورة ‪ ،‬في جيلي يمكن ان اتزوج من اي قبيلة في جنوب السودان وعلى مضدد ايضا ً‬ ‫اما الخروج تماما عن جنوب السودان مازال يعتبر شئ من الشذوذ االجتماعي الذي يعتبر عبئا‬ ‫للكثيرين من الذين خاضوا تلك التجربة‪ .‬رغم كثرة الذين خرجو من ثوب القبيلة والجنوب في‬ ‫زيجاتهم واختيار اسرهم ولكن مازالت هناك الكثير من العقبات ‪ ،‬وكأن احدنا خائن او ما شابه‪.‬‬ ‫ردود االفعال هذه كانت مناسبة بقدر معرفتهم وتجربتهم في الحياة ‪ ،‬باالضافة للشعور الدائم‬ ‫بخطر االندثار في دولة ال تحترم اغلب مواطنيها المختلفين ‪ ،‬وتحاول دوما دمجهم في بوتقة‬ ‫‪ .‬واحدة احادية الثقافة‬ ‫ساعد على ذلك وجود الرواسب السالبة بكل انواعها تاريخية ‪ ،‬اجتماعية ‪ ،‬وثقافية قد تتحكم‬ ‫في مدى االنفتاح على ثقافة دون غيرها وفي مدى االنكماش من ثقافة دون غيرها مع االعتماد‬ ‫الكلي على مدى انفتاح الشخص ومرونته في قبول االخر المختلف حتى ولو كان يعتبر الظالم‬ ‫الشرير او الجهة التي تسببت في تعاسته الشخصية ‪ ،‬ثم انتقال هذه التفاصيل من فعل اجتماعي‬ ‫الى المؤسسة العليا للدولة وعلى اساسها يتم التعامل االقصائي ‪ ،‬ثم يأتي التسؤال ماهي المبررات‬ ‫التي تلزم احد ما باالنتماء للوطن الكبيروهذا الوطن ال يعترف بك كمواطن اصيل؟ رغم التمييز‬ ‫الثقافي واالجتماعي والعرقي الذي كان يحدث عن علم او عن جهل في دولة السودان في ذاك‬ ‫الوقت‪ ،‬هذه الراوسب كانت وال زالت تتحكم في خيارتنا وانتماءاتنا كسودانيين جنوبا وشماال‬ ‫‪ ،‬حيث ان الجنوب والشمال هما قطبي صراع دام لعقود وانتهى باستقالل الجنوب‪ .‬ولكن هل‬ ‫انتهى االمر؟ اين ذاك المغنطيس الذي يجذب كل شئ رضينا ام ابينا ما يسمى بالوجدان‪ .‬الوجدان‬ ‫االنساني مصمم بطريقة تمضي في طريقها الى نهاياتها رغما عنا ‪ ،‬وهو لن يستاذنك عندما يريد‬ ‫تخزين االشياء في دواخلك ومن ثم يؤثر كل ذلك في طريقة تعاملك مع البيئة من حولك ‪ ،‬لغتلك‬ ‫المنطوقة وحتى الجسدية منها كاإلماءات وهزة الرأس واالكتاف ‪ ،‬المفردات وطريقة التعبير ‪،‬‬ ‫الوجدان يجعلك تتورط تماما في اكتساب لغة وثقافة او تقليد من تعتبره عدواً ‪ ،‬اوماقيل لك انه‬ ‫عدوا او حتى صديقا ! يسمي المتطرفون هذا استالبا ً ‪ ،‬ولكني اسميه معايشة وتعايش واكتساب‬ ‫عناصر النمو والتطور البشري الطبيعي ‪ ،‬ولكن دون انكار او ازدراء الصولك المحلية التي اتيت‬ ‫منها وتتوهم انها قد تنقص من شأنك ‪ ،‬بالعكس قد يزيد ذلك من الفرادة التي تتمتمع بها كشخص‬ ‫‪ .‬ليس منه اثنين‬ ‫الن الفرد منا بسهولة قد يوصم ويتحمل كل تبعات قومه خيرأ كان او شراً ‪ ,‬تتحمل التفكير‬ ‫‪.‬التدميري للمعاتيه ‪ ،‬تبتلع تتطفل البسطاء بالنظرات واالسلئة التي ال تهداء‬ ‫عندما تكون في قلب هذه الورطة المحببة وانت متصالح تماما مع ذاتك الجديدة والمتحمسة في‬ ‫اكتساب المزيد من الثقافات االخرى اضافة للتي عندك بالطبع ‪ ،‬تأتي االسلئة على غرار ‪ ،‬كيف‬ ‫انك ايراني امريكي ‪ ،‬ما رأيك في تطوير السالح النويوي ؟؟ كيف تتعامل زوجتك الغريبة والتي‬ ‫ترتدي ازياء غريبة ؟؟ هل انت سعيد ؟؟‪ ،‬او كيف انك بولندي متزوج من عربية ؟ الى اي جهة‬ ‫سينتمي االطفال ؟ او كيف انك مسلم انجليزي ‪ ،‬هل ستفجر نفسك يوما في مكان عام ؟ ‪ ،‬او كيف‬

‫‪Prologue  xxv‬‬

‫انك افريقي تنتمي لقبيلة تقع في قلب االدغال وتتحدث العربية وتكتب بها ان لونك ال يسمح بذلك‬ ‫‪ .‬؟ سحقا ! اما آن اوان تحطيم التنميط العبيط هذا‬ ‫كل هذه التساؤالت تقلق بالك ‪ ,‬رغم انك تتعامل بان ليس هناك شئ عجائبي في هذه االمور‬ ‫ولكن هذه االسئلة قد ترسب في نفسك شعور غير مريح ‪ ،‬وتاتيك لحظات تأنيب الضمير كأنك‬ ‫خنت طبيعة االشياء ‪ ،‬حيث لكل شئ طريق خاص يجب عدم الحياد عنها ‪ ,‬او كان يجب عليك‬ ‫اال تخلط االمور اكثر من الالزم ‪ .‬كيف تورطنا في كل هذه القفزات من طريق الخر ؟ كيف‬ ‫استطعنا التكيف والسباحة اثناء هذه الدوامة ؟ هل انا ملزم ان ابرر طوال الوقت ‪ ،‬واحمي نفسي‬ ‫‪.‬وشريكي واطفالي من مخاوف عدم القبول ؟؟‬ ‫ثم تأتي مرحلة النضج والتجاوز وعدم الرد على االسئلة المفخخة ‪ ،‬انت واحد ولكنك تحمل‬ ‫كل تلك االشياء بداخلك وليس لك اي خيار بان تسقط اي واحدة منها ‪ ،‬ويأتي تفردك انت هنا «بين‬ ‫بين «‪ ..‬جنسيتك من وطن ولغتك من وطن اخر وزوجتك من وطن ثالت واطفالك من وطنين او‬ ‫اكثر وانت كل اؤلئك ‪ .‬رغم ان هذا الوضع يبدو عليه المثالية ولكن لها مخاطرها وعواصفها ‪،‬‬ ‫ويحتاج الى الكثير من التفاهم وخبرة في ادارة الكوارث ‪ .‬ليختار احدنا هذا الدرب هذا يحتاج الى‬ ‫الكثير من الشجاعة وروح المغامرة و القدرة على مواجهة الحرج الذي يحاول االخرين ايقاعك‬ ‫فيه ‪ ،‬سوف تتعلم مع الوقت ان يكون جلدك سميكا ً ‪ ،‬وتتجاهل النظرات التي تشعرك بان لديك ذيل‬ ‫مخطط بالصفر والوردي كقط ملعون ‪،‬وتتواطئ مع االحكام التي يطلقها البعض عليك دون حتى‬ ‫‪ .‬ان يتعرفو عليك جيداً ‪ ،‬بعضهم يراك محظوظا ً وبعضهم يراك مجنونا ً وبعضهم يراك خائنا ً‬ ‫البين بين «حالة موجودة دائما قد تكون بسيطة وقد تتعقد ‪ ،‬وقبول االختالف اصبح شئ«‬ ‫طبيعي االن ‪ ،‬ولكن رد الفعل االنساني دائما بدائي في تعبيره عن لحظة االندهاش االولى ‪ ،‬الن‬ ‫رد الفعل تجاه من يقفون «بين بين» يعتمد في االساس على ما تراكم في الالوعي اوعن صور‬ ‫نمطية لالخرين دون محاولة خلق عالقة ومعرفة حقيقية باالخر ‪ ،‬الذي قد يدهشنا حقا بانه عكس‬ ‫‪ .‬تلك الصورة المحفورة في اذهاننا منذ وقت طويل او على االقل هو نصف الحقيقة‬ ‫االختالف دائما موجود وسيظل موجودا وسيتشعب اكثر ويتعقد‪ ،‬وسيكون هناك الكثير من من‬ ‫يعيشون «البين بين» بالذات االن مع موجات العنف الذي يهز العالم اجمع وقد نعتبرها عصر من‬ ‫العصور الجليدية التي تعيد اعادة ترتيب االشياء بعد الدمار الشامل ‪ ،‬وقد يقع على عاتقهم اعادة‬ ‫السالم والتآخي االنساني الغير مبني على العرق والدين واالنتماءات السطحية ‪ ،‬سيكون االفضل‬ ‫فينا من يقدم اكثر لالنسانية ‪ ،‬من يجعل الحب والجمال وقبول االخر‪ ،‬ليكون فعل يومي ينغرز في‬ ‫سلوك االجيال القادمة ‪ ،‬االجيال القادمة الذين يجب اال نرغمهم على رفض ثقافة ولغة ولدو في‬ ‫كنفها ‪ ،‬االجيال القادمة الذين لن نشعر تجاههم بتأنيب الضمير باننا انجبناهم في اوطان وبيئات‬ ‫مغايرة ومن ثم الوقوع في فخ التنتازع والتطرف ‪ ،‬وكمن حسن التصرف في أن يساهمو بكل‬ ‫طاقتهم في تطوير وبناء اوطانهم الجديدة ويكونو جزء منها واضافة وعطاء حقيقيين ‪ ،‬وأن يقبلو‬ ‫‪.‬ويفخرو باصولهم االخرى ومحاولة استثمار ذلك في تحسين صورة التنوع والتعايش معها‬ ‫‪:‬اخيرا‬ ‫التعامل مع وضع «البين بين» يحتاج الى خبرة وذكاء اجتماعي في ادارة االزمات ‪ ،‬قد تكون‬ ‫صغيرة كسؤال خبيث ‪ ،‬او تكون كبيرة عندما تكتشف ان خياراتك نفسها قد تتعرض الى النسف‬ ‫‪ .‬والخذالن من اقرب الناس اليك‬

 Introduction  ]

[•

•

Greater Khartoum through the Prism of In-Betweenness ALICE FRANCK AND BARBARA CASCIARRI

In a global setting, Khartoum may evoke various different images: the

confluence of the Blue and White Niles, or perhaps an arid – and ­perhaps even stark – city; or it might also call to mind images of violence. Images like these are undoubtedly reinforced by the information about the conflicts that have been taking place incessantly since the country’s independence in 1956, and by the city’s rapid population explosion caused by the forced migration inflows, which have resulted in the settle­ment of displaced populations from crisis-ridden areas of Sudan. It is also possible that in the western popular imagination would be the historical fall of Khartoum at the hands of the Mahdi and his loyal followers (Ansar), which led to the death of Gordon Pasha, or the Hollywood film n ­ amed after the city and starring Charlton Heston that immortalized the event. The film is an example of Orientalism par excellence (Said 1978), nurturing problematic representations of the Sudanese as unruly natives and mad dervishes, and thus consolidating the way Sudan was already viewed through the eyes of biased outsiders, through abstract studies, images and representations and travellers’ documents (Slatin 1897, for example). But representations of Khartoum, particularly contemporary ones, of the city life that has developed there, of its different neighbourhoods, of the various spaces that make it up and of the landscapes it offers are still rare compared with other large cities in Africa and elsewhere. This volume emphasizes the importance of empirical research that might make Khartoum more tangible and less of a product of its previous representations. The Greater Khartoum conurbation has long been described as a mirror of Sudan as a whole. The Sudanese capital is made up of three

2  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

towns that symbolize three major historical periods: the city of Khartoum is the original site on which the city was founded during the Turkiyya era (1820–85), although few traces remain of this period; Omdurman symbolizes the Mahdiyya period (1885–98); and Khartoum North represents the period of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium era (1898–1956) (Dubois 1991). The morphology of Greater Khartoum also embodies the power relations that since colonization have been rooted, and developed, between a centre (the Nile Valley) and peripheral regions, and between riverain elites and marginalized populations. Those power relations have been imported and (re)written within the urban fabric and translated into urban spaces with extremely strict centre-periphery gradients (Denis 2005). However, this reflection of Sudan at an urban level should not be allowed to obscure the fact that dynamics transcend barriers and that people and city dwellers cross borders. By choosing the notion of ‘in-betweenness’1 as the core idea and shared lens of this book, this project seeks to focus on processes rather than borders and to destabilize the classic dichotomies that are widely used to describe Sudanese society and its state and capital city: Arab/African, Christian/Muslim, Northerners/ Southerners,2 centre/periphery, urban/rural, city dwellers/migrants and traditional/modern, among others. The notion of in-­betweenness should be understood both as an academic plea to overcome, or at least discuss, these binary representations, and as a useful tool for various situations of liminality and understanding the multiple in-between spaces within the agglomeration of Greater Khartoum. The common perspective that gives this book its consistency is the result of a collective cross-disciplinary research programme,3 which provided an opportunity to conduct extensive fieldwork in the Sudanese capital at a time of major reconfigurations: after the independence of South Sudan in 2011, which had multiple implications for Khartoum, with the departure of the Southern Sudanese population and the rise of inflation and poverty linked to the loss of most oil revenues; after the start of the civil conflict in the new state of South Sudan in 2013 and the continuation or resurgence of conflicts in peripheral regions (Darfur, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile and Eastern region), which once again drove displaced persons towards Khartoum; and before the revolutionary movement, which started in December 2018 and led to the fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, after thirty years in power. Despite the fact that an abundance of research on Sudan has been carried out in Khartoum – for reasons that have to do with both accessibility in a country plagued by numerous conflicts in peripheral areas and with an authoritarian regime that controls the movements of ­researchers – the city itself has rarely been the primary subject of a monograph

Introduction  3

(El-Bushra 1976; Pons 1980; Gertel 1993; Simone 1994; D’Errico 2016), with the exception of the contributions by urban planning scholars, who have recommended a variety of road maps in an attempt to control and channel the city’s demographic growth more efficiently or to address the ‘developing’ city’s dysfunctions and challenges (Doxiadis 1959; MEFIT 1974, 2009; Bannaga 1996, 2000; Pantuliano et al. 2011). One of the ambitions of this book is to fill in this gap by portraying the city of Greater Khartoum, which is both singular and ‘ordinary’, in line with Jennifer Robinson’s concern for examining all cities – and not just global or Western ones – so as to avoid making assumptions about how they are configured, the models that shape them and the individual and collective urban initiatives that contribute to the production of the city (Robinson 2006). The initial aim of the research programme that lies as the origin of this collective work was to investigate the Greater Khartoum conurbation and its diverse places and spaces, its rapid transformation over the past decade, with a specific focus on ‘in-between spaces’. In our view, working on hard-to-understand spaces ‘structured by paradoxes, . . . where it seems that everything can be found, or at least everything that can challenge the understanding of contemporary urban evolutions’ (Dumont and Bossé 2006) can open up new perspectives on the Sudanese capital, which is often described as dual, fragmented and segregated, and as a reflection of the political dynamics between the country’s centre and periphery. Our research, in contrast, explores intermediary spaces and forms, the porosity of spatial and social borders; the relations among different neighbourhoods and between the various populations, groups and individuals that make up the largest Sahelian city (with its more than six million inhabitants (CBS 2018)). By examining in-betweenness, we capture multiple dynamics that operate beyond the visible and invisible boundaries of this city and the diversity of urban experiences and ultimately shed light on the complex and distinct political, social and economic transformations that have transpired within Greater Khartoum.

‘Daring to Explore the In-Between’: Transcending Urban Divisions The focal point of the research project on Greater Khartoum was the plurality of in-between spaces: spaces that are hard to grasp and delineate, are constantly being re-qualified and that can be looked at on multiple levels.4 These areas of interface, of ‘uncertainty’, of transition, of contact between built and non-built environments, between rural

4  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

and urban areas and between neighbourhoods with different functions, status (planned area vs squatter settlements or IDP camps, for example) and forms can be understood as spatial discontinuities (Brunet 1968). Since the 2000s, new studies have investigated in-between spaces by looking (again) into the city’s production both in the north and in the south in examining the sustainability, dynamics and specific identities of these spaces, particularly in the context of the development of peri-urban areas (Baker 1995; Stadnicki 2008; Legoix 2009). While the latter do indeed lie at the heart of this analysis, the focus on in-between spaces also includes interstitial spaces, enclaves and brownfield sites in city centres, among others, all of which contribute to a theoretical elaboration around the ‘third space’ (Entrikin 1991; Soja 1996) and its margins at various levels (Rey and Poulot-Moreau 2014). This drives us to interrogate the notion of in-betweenness and to observe the relationships among these spaces and the processes of innovation and hybridization that emerge within them (Sansot 1996; Chaléard and Dubresson 1999; Merle 2011; Le Gall and Rougé 2014). In the case of the Greater Khartoum conurbation, this particular theoretical orientation means adopting a novel approach to urban peripheries, which have long been considered to be homogeneous and dominated by the city centre (Lavergne 1997; Pérouse de Montclos 2001; Choplin 2006), and paying particular attention to the reconfigurations that have occurred over the last decade (Abusharaf 2009; Abdel Aziz 2013; Crombé and Sauloup 2016). Since the 1980s, the Greater Khartoum conurbation has often been seen as an archetypal example of a ‘city in crisis’ because of the fact that it has served as a place of refuge for a plethora of internally displaced people and refugees from neighbouring countries. The violent and problematic urban policies that were established to manage these ‘newcomers’ in the 1990s (De Geoffroy 2009; Denissen 2013; Assal 2015) have reinforced the city’s dual image, which harks back to the colonial period and the division of its urban spaces into different classes (Sikainga 1996; Casciarri 2016). Hence we are presented with a city that is often described as incoherent and a reflection of unequal power relations in the country and uneven development between its centre and peripheries (Roden 1974; Denis 2007; Assal 2011). As an effect of its explosive growth, peripheral areas and residential spaces on the margins of the city have become the norm. These in-between spaces (between the city and the desert) that have become neighbourhoods have evolved, leading to a process of differentiation, and so this encourages us to be careful not to present an erroneous vision of these peripheral spaces as homogeneous or compartmentalized.

Introduction  5

Starting in the 2000s, when the country joined the small circle of oil-producing countries and the neoliberal economy prevailed (Ahmed and Marchal 2010), the Sudanese capital underwent unprecedented transformations that included a reinvestment of central spaces (Bartoli 2006; Sauloup 2011) and the expansion of urban services towards the city’s peripheral zones (Beckedorf 2012; Crombé and Sauloup 2016). The petrodollars of the 2000s were thus largely invested in Greater Khartoum’s real estate, as this was the sector that provided the safest area of capitalization in Sudan’s economic and political context (Denis 2005; Franck 2016a). Construction boomed throughout the city, and colossal Dubai-like urban projects were launched in both the centre (Choplin and Franck 2015) and the urban periphery (Franck 2016a), where luxury residential compounds were built alongside poor neighbourhoods and former IDP camps. This transformation provides a clear illustration of the country’s acceptance of globalized forms of economic endeavour, notably through mechanisms of financialization for the production of towns, which then affected the capital city (Swyngedouw et al. 2002; Barthel and Verdeil 2008; Elsheshtawy 2008; Barthel 2010; David and Halbert 2010). Equally, the focus on in-between spaces also challenges the classic dichotomy between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. Our hypothesis is that until recently this dichotomy had a broad influence on Sudanese studies, as well as on disciplinary approaches such as anthropology, geography and law, even beyond Sudan. For example, in the case of anthropology, which is a prolific and long-established discipline in Sudan, the implicit assumption that Sudan is fundamentally ‘rural’ persisted for many years, leading anthropologists to contribute to the rich academic corpus on the country’s rural contexts while overlooking urban issues.5 This trend has recently seen a reversal, with a greater focus on the urban, and with Khartoum as a primary setting (Abusharaf 2009; El-Hassan 2015; Assal 2011, 2015; Assal and Abdul-Jalil 2015; Bakhit 2016; Abdalla 2018). Notwithstanding this, a gap remains, and Greater Khartoum’s recent transformations and accelerated expansion plead for new research that investigates urban environments, with the objective of not just capturing residual traces of rural life in urban spaces but of comprehending the complex interweaving of sociocultural factors in the in-between hybrid spaces where rural meets urban. For the first time, the capital’s in-between spaces appear to be sites under tension: coveted and disregarded in equal measure, they have been subjected to further changes since South Sudan’s independence in July 2011, which exposed a period of uncertainty. The economic difficulties caused by the loss of the majority of oil revenues have had

6  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

serious ramifications, even in the capital. This fraught context makes studies of the capital’s in-between spaces all the more relevant, in order to observe whether the previous decade’s transformations in the real estate sector have continued and to analyse the strategies adopted by the populations that have become South Sudanese (citizens of a new country) rather than Southerners, Janubiyyn (Sudanese citizens from the Southern region of a united Sudan), within the city. The southbound migration of South Sudanese populations after their country’s independence, followed by a forced northbound migration towards Khartoum, in particular after the onset of the 2013 civil war in South Sudan, raises a plethora of questions on the dynamics affecting poor (and mainly peripheral) neighbourhoods, whose populations appear to have shrunk after 2011. It is also pertinent to examine the fate of the neighbourhoods that are currently hosting these populations and to question whether they are in fact the same ones they inhabited previously or if new places have emerged out of these patterns of mobility. To quote the words of a geographer who worked in Khartoum in the 2010s: ‘These changes shed new light on diverse situations of relegation, and on the forms of mobility and contact between two urban worlds that are too often presented as irreconcilable. The complexity of socio-spatial divisions can be seized by comparing urban representations and practices, which produce both relegation mechanisms and strategies aimed at combating them’ (Sauloup, unpublished). A study of in-between spaces provides an entry point for revealing the complex processes at work in Sudan’s capital while also converging with the approaches taken by studies on ‘the production of cities’ and research that investigates the urban phenomena arising out of marginal spaces (Navez-Bouchanine 2002; Dorier-Aprill and Gervais Lambony 2005). This approach focuses specifically on the fluidity of these phenomena, on forms of hybridization, on the actors’ multiple belongings, on the diverse forms of urban resistance to change and on the regulatory models that emerge from and within these spaces (Berry-Chikhaoui and Deboulet 2000). Starting from in-between spaces, our project moved on to an examination of how they create and reveal new spaces of negotiation, new places, new practices, and new borders through urbanisation processes over time, and how margins are experienced in different ways. The project’s initial spatial and geographic approach was therefore complemented by a sociocultural perspective on the ‘in-between’, so as to decipher other borders and other processes of marginalization or inclusion, and more broadly to highlight certain identity-related ­reconfigurations in post-2011 Greater Khartoum.

Introduction  7

From Marginal Spaces to Overlapping Alterities: The Porosity of Sociocultural Boundaries The value of expanding the in-between perspective away from its dominant spatial approach towards a sociocultural dimension became increasingly apparent during our back-and-forth field trips to Greater Khartoum and through sharing our reflections over the course of the research project. Although it is referred to by different concepts (such as ‘liminality’ or ‘hybridity’), the same focus on in-betweenness may be found at the core of a long-standing anthropological debate: a retrospective insight, from classic works to recent post-modern ones, shows that anthropologists have envisaged the complexity and heuristic value of the notion of in-between when applied to immaterial spaces and sociocultural orders. The following overview,6 which traces the contribution of four seminal anthropological approaches, helps us enrich the wider debate on this notion, which was initially launched and framed by geographers. First, we owe the reprisal and development of Van Gennep’s analysis of ‘rites of passage’ (1909) to Victor Turner (1969): in this work, the notion of liminality was seen as a moving situation between two stable conditions marked by transition, an absence of clear-cut frontiers, uncertainty and even danger (Fourny 2014). More precisely, for Turner, notably in ritual contexts, liminality becomes a powerful indicator of the construction of the self, the production of symbolic values and community cohesion, which is not subject to the rigidity of ordinary structural classification or to what he defines as a ‘status system’. Georges Balandier (1967), who ‘decolonized’ the predominant academic thinking of the 1950s and 1960s by championing ‘dynamic anthropology’, can also be considered a pioneer of a vision built around the notion of in-between. His critique of the binary opposition between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ looks at syncretic and shifting spaces as the crucial object of an innovative perspective on social processes in African societies while also pointing out the role of colonial ideologies in reducing the complexity of dominated peoples thanks to dichotomic and hierarchical categorizations. A third contribution that approaches sociocultural dynamics from a similar perspective is provided by Fredrik Barth: his book Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) marked the decline of essentialist approaches to ethnicity-related phenomena, and more generally to identity issues. After this epistemological renewal, these objects were no longer regarded as monolithic reified entities but rather as osmotic spaces undergoing processes of constant negotiation: the fluid borders

8  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

between ‘sameness’ and ‘otherness’ allow anthropologists to capture the plasticity of cultural practices when shifting from their content to an analysis of such unstable borders. Finally, a fourth approach in this evolution towards acknowledgement of the sociocultural in-between as an analytical tool is associated with the spread of interpretative anthropology. Regardless of one’s personal appreciation of this ‘postmodern’ or ‘postcolonial’ turn, the success of categories of hybridity (and therefore of processes of hybridization) has driven researchers’ focus towards moments and spaces of circulation and reconfiguration as the core keys for comprehending fluidity, interdependence and complexity in contemporary social worlds. The emergence of the notion of hybridization in anthropological debates, which occurred at the same time as the decline of ‘Great Theories’, and whose corollary was the dismissal of binary oppositions, triggered a methodological and epistemological turn whose influence has been growing ever since, whether through the theoretical approaches of authors like Clifford Geertz (1973, 1988), Arjun Appadurai (1996) and Homi Bhahba (1994) or the development of field methods such as ‘multi-sited ethnography’ (Marcus 1995). In spite of the criticism that has been directed at its ideological biases (Friedman 1997), the notion of hybridity has thus become an emblem of ‘global cultural dynamics’ (Kraidy 2005). Aside from the place taken by postmodern scholars within this intellectual reshaping, other less mainstream authors have also nurtured the debate: for example, James Scott (1998) added a political concern to the revaluation of fluid spaces as he focused on the role of ‘high modernist’ states and capitalist economies – driven by purposes of ‘legibility and simplification’ aimed at the control and exploitation of the dominated – in rigidifying, dichotomizing and quantifying more complex local realities. These references, which were borrowed from a mostly anthropological tradition whose reflections have become a platform for cross-­ disciplinary debate, helped us with our analysis of Greater Khartoum’s reconfigurations through the paradigm of in-between spaces. In fact, the spaces whose mobility and fast-paced multidimensional transformations we have referred to above play host to social groups that in the process of defining themselves as communities (homogeneous, torn by contradictions, in conflict and in opposition with other groups or with the state) are shaped by this spatial dimension while in turn reshaping spaces and places themselves (De Certeau et al. 1994). In this context, identity issues emerge as being crucial to the reconfigurations we observed in Greater Khartoum over the period of our research. Ethnic and tribal affiliations, another traditional object of study for social sciences (particularly anthropology) in Sudan, have once again been revived to serve

Introduction  9

the needs of the moment. This contradicts the assumptions that relegated expressions of ethnicity or ‘tribalism’ to rural areas, and reveals the plasticity and constant renegotiation of these categories (Bonte, Conte and Dresch 2001; Abdul-Jabar and Dawod 2003; Bonte and Ben Hounet 2009). Far from being confined to the universe of local representations, this reconfiguration of the map of the capital’s inhabitants’ ethno-tribal belongings – whether real or claimed – has also been a major lever in influencing state policies. For instance, the regime made ambivalent use of native leaders (sultan or sheikh) to tackle public order issues as part of a revisited Native Administration (Abdul-Jalil 2015) and drew from customary law and community institutions for the management of legal affairs where Islamic standards were not considered to be as efficient as they needed to be (Casciarri and Babiker 2018). During this same period of booming urbanization, which went hand in hand with the development of a growing sense of ‘legal insecurity’ (F. von Benda-Beckmann and K. von Benda-Beckmann 2006) for the majority of Greater Khartoum’s population, the question of belonging and otherness also emerged from the issue of access to land in an urban context. This had an impact on the margins and interfaces between urban and rural areas, such as the former villages that had been integrated into the capital (Assal 2015) or spaces that had previously been controlled by pastoral groups (Casciarri 2018). These spaces represent both a spatial and sociocultural in-between due to a reconfiguration of ethno-tribal solidarity that aimed to consolidate the land-based anchoring of local groups while also integrating the discourses and categories of a ‘modern’ state institution. Similar processes can also be observed in terms of access to economic resources, as was the case, for example, with access to water, an issue that became crucial as a result of  the capital’s recent urbanization. Local practices indicate the end of the  alleged ­dualism between state-led and private sector management: the Sudanese State’s de facto privatization and its disengagement in favour of private interests (Beckedorf 2012) has led to the re-emergence of a third pole in urban (Arango 2015), peri-urban (Zug 2013) and recently integrated rural areas (Casciarri 2015): this was the ‘commons’, a sort of in-­between socio-economic sector that came to be of strategic importance for the survival of those citizens who were neglected by the neoliberal metropolis. Finally, the period surveyed also reveals sociocultural negotiation spaces at the smaller family or household level: this appears, for instance, in the reformulation of social gender relations (Ali 2015) and marriage strategies, or in the understanding and practice of kinship systems and networks (Schlee and Watson 2009). The context of post-2011 Sudan pleads for an extensive study of the multiple processes

10  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

through which belonging is defined and negotiated in terms of ethnicity, tribal affiliation, nationalism, religion, kinship or gender, (Casciarri et al. 2020) in all cases in relation to spatial anchoring. Without overstating the importance of the milestone date, it appears that the broader context produced by the event generated a number of revealing examples of what we refer to here as a ‘sociocultural in-between’, leading us to consider these reconfigurations by means of a detailed examination of the role played by the temporal dimension in this context.

Post-2011 Greater Khartoum: Tackling the Temporal Dimension of the In-Between, and Understanding Uncertainty and Openness One of the strengths of this project is that is dedicates particular attention to the processes  – that is, the temporal dimension  – of current reconfigurations, whether they be spatial or identity-based. In addition, these various transformations are rooted in a specific context and in longer-term developments, and they need to be considered as a part of this process. Because it refers to a phenomenon of transition, the notion of the ‘in-between’ implicitly requires taking the temporal dimension into account. Rey and Poulot-Moreau write that an ‘in-between space’ is not necessarily bound to disappear: it can also acquire greater depth and autonomy through specific forms and experiences (Rey and PoulotMoreau 2014). In their view, these spaces are directly connected to in-between timelines, according to two time-bound models of spatial organization that need to be revisited today: the model of the densely populated city as we know it and the rural agricultural model (ibid.). Along with these spatial transformations, the notion of the ‘in-between’ raises questions about the practices and social experiences of borders and/or margins and leads us to question various situations of liminality and the trajectories that are followed by certain actors, spaces and representations. The process of passing from one situation to another lies at the heart of this reflection on the ‘in-between’. Examples of this might include the passage from the informal to the formal (and vice versa) in the case of certain activities, actors or political and social movements, or the passage from the public to the private sector or to the hybrid forms mentioned above. Studies on migration also often resort to the term ‘in-between’ to refer to migrants’ fragile appropriation of the territories they travel across, or to the transient nature of host and waiting spaces, as well as to migrants’ multiple anchoring points and senses of belonging (Marcus 1995; Cortes 2000). In the latter case, the ‘in-between’ can be

Introduction  11

both a strategy for accessing various resources and an interiorized experience (‘in-betweenness’) that can become part of their identity over the course of time. The notion of the ‘in-between’ enables us not only to question the durability and fragility of reconfiguration dynamics but also, more broadly, to analyse uncertainty and openness. The period that began with the partition of Sudan in 2011 brought with it multiple forms of uncertainty at various levels. From a politico-economic standpoint, President Omar al-Bashir’s military Islamist government appeared to be threatened on the one hand by the economic difficulties brought about by the loss of the majority of the country’s oil revenues (Verhoeven 2015; ChevrillonGuibert 2018), which were now channelled towards South Sudan, and on the other by the political negotiation process that unfolded during the partition, which revived tensions in other marginalized regions around the country as well as within the state apparatus. The previous decade (2000–2010) had expanded economic, and to some extent political, horizons, notably with the signature of the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) with the South in 2005,7 but the independence of South Sudan confirmed the failure of national state-building and turned out to be a lost opportunity for the Khartoum regime to project itself into the future. The period that followed South Sudan’s independence saw a shrinking of political and social spaces at various levels (Deshayes 2016; Bach et al. 2020). The partition of the country reactivated the Khartoum regime’s fantasy of a homogenous Arab and Muslim Sudan (Franck and Vezzadini 2016; Casciarri et al. 2020) and illuminated its inability to combine the ‘diversity’ of Sudan and redress unequal regional development. It has had a direct impact on the populations of South Sudanese origin, the Janubiyyn, who live in the North, and in Greater Khartoum in particular, as their residence and citizenship status has remained more than uncertain in the aftermath of South Sudan’s independence (Manby 2012; Vezzadini 2013). Certain categorizations were reactivated, such as ethnicity, which forms the basis for identifying Southerners, whose access to urban services and rights to the city (Lefebvre 1974; Morange and Spire 2015) have so far been left unresolved in Greater Khartoum (Abdel Aziz 2018), thus echoing the other forms of uncertainty mentioned above, such as legal and land insecurity. In the meantime, this population has adopted extremely diverse strategies to tackle this uncertainty,8 challenging assumptions as to its homogeneity. The outbreak of the civil war in South Sudan in December 2013 heralded even more uncertainty, making it difficult for the populations affected by the conflict (who were once again forcibly displaced) to take decisions about

12  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

where to settle, which imposed a period during which they lived in a liminal situation (‘in-between’ being defined as lying outside the formal normative structures of society for any extended period of time). As we will see, however, such hybrid configurations of these social and spatial ‘in-betweens’ are not limited to exemplifying post-2011 uncertainty and insecurity and may constitute a resource for coping with it. The uncertainty and economic difficulties of daily life have affected not only Southerners but all Sudanese citizens, in particular urban dwellers, who are more dependent on the market economy. Rampant inflation, a lack of liquidity, the cut-off of the development programmes that had been launched in the previous decade and the persistence  – and reinforcement – of the regime’s practices of authoritarianism and patronage – in a context in which a decade of oil revenues had raised citizens’ expectations  – gradually and silently increased hostility and resistance towards the regime. Throughout this book, we have deliberately made no assumptions about the break the separation of South Sudan provoked for the different actors in Greater Khartoum; we have preferred to pose questions about the break itself. Was 2011 a watershed, and for whom? Did 2011 herald a new era or a transitional period, or was it a period when time remained suspended? From this perspective, we wanted to explore whether temporal issues have played a role in defining the trajectories of urban populations, in particular those of Southern origin, and how this period makes sense in the context of Sudan’s broader history. Ultimately, the goal of our concluding analysis was to evaluate whether it has created new categorizations of populations (both self-categorization and categorization by others), reinforced old dichotomies, underscored a common Sudanese identity or generated new in-between belongings. However, an unanticipated revolutionary movement emerged in the country’s cities in December 2018 and unfolded and evolved over several months before manifesting itself in concrete terms in front of the Army HQ in Khartoum, leading to the fall of Omar al-Bashir on 11 April 2019 after thirty years in power. It is therefore now legitimate to see the years between 2011 and 2019, ‘from secession to revolution’, as an in-between period in which, with hindsight, uncertainty can be seen as openness.

The Contributions to the Volume Our excursion through certain intellectual social science debates has confirmed to us that in-betweenness can be a fruitful and pertinent lens through which situated realities of Sudan’s recent context may be

Introduction  13

observed; however, we should still clarify that this paradigm or notion is in itself charged with diverse ranks of significance. At an initial level, in-betweenness operates mainly as an analytical category to which scholars increasingly turned after theoretical approaches based on binary opposites lost their credibility: in-betweenness would thus refer to more of a conceptual domain, as the production and testing of a tool that best suits targeted social dynamics. At a second level, in-betweenness concerns spaces and people that are exploited, marginalized or denied because of their liminal situation: in this case, dominant actors (primarily the state but potentially other economic or political agents as well) take advantage of this condition and even promote the creation of such spaces because it corresponds to their logic for holding on to power, all the while perpetuating socio-spatial injustices. At a third level, however, the notion is neither a merely academic device nor a tool for domination: here, in-betweenness takes the form of an opportunity for liminal groups in hybrid situations to access greater freedom in order to break free of the constraints of clear-cut binarism and exploit the openness granted by margins and interstices in a creative and emancipatory manner. In the case of binaries, too, whose dichotomic framework persists while contents and borders move, not one of these three meanings of in-betweenness is exclusive or more accurate than the other: the three levels interact, overlap and in some way co-produce themselves in a dialectic relationship. In the approach we followed in our research, we wanted to allow our insights to open up to this multilevel significance of in-betweenness. This overlap is visible throughout this book. The eleven chapters share a unique feature: they are all based on ethnographic surveys that were carried out for the most part after 2011, and they all invite us to think about the relationship between data and how they are interpreted through the general notion of ‘in-betweenness’. Some stress one of the three levels we have mentioned above, while others develop an analytical argument more than an empirical one, and others yet seek to stress how all the levels overlap. We have sought to permit this variety within a generalized unity: that is, a cross-cutting perspective that combines empirical data and theoretical reflection, and which stems from the in-betweenness approach in social sciences. The contributions are structured around three axes and grouped into three sections, each of which develops one specific aspect of in-betweenness: the first focuses on in-between spaces in Greater Khartoum that are the site of disputed claims to the city; the second examines how the in-­ between mediates a disrupted sociopolitical landscape over time; and the third explores how in-betweenness supports the negotiation of diverse manifestations of alterity. The prologue is a biographically-inspired piece

14  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

by the author Stella Gaitano and is emblematically entitled ‘Identity’. The author explores her individual and familial experience as a South Sudanese who grew up in Khartoum; she writes in Arabic and is married to a man from North Sudan. Her literary piece is a reminder of the challenges of constantly living with or between these two cultures, in a society that has been divided by history and whose identities are constantly being reactivated, and sometimes instrumentalized. Her prologue embodies most of the dimensions of in-betweenness we have mentioned above, in particular by anchoring the independence of South Sudan to a personal experience. As well as heralding the chapters that follow, it gives them a new perspective. The first part of the book (‘In-Betweenness as a Spatial Dimension’) focuses on urbanization dynamics and how actors engage in agro-­ pastoral activities and modes of interaction with the different spaces of the city as a consequence of these dynamics. The first chapter by Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri analyses the transformation of urban/rural relations from a cross-disciplinary (geography and anthropology) and comparative perspective. The authors compare two case studies that examine agricultural spaces in the centre of the city and pastoral land in the far reaches of the Sudanese capital. Because of the farming and pastoral activities that are carried out there, both these productive spaces can be seen as the ultimate in-between spaces. They are changing fast under the effects of urbanization and the land and real estate dynamics of the oil-rich years (2000–11), with the country’s economic expansion and neoliberal turn. These case studies provide an insight into the increase in land disputes and the markings of status and identity that unfold in these areas. In Salma Abdalla’s chapter, she further explores the theme of urban sprawl and rural fringes in Greater Khartoum by studying the villages that have gradually been absorbed into the Sudanese capital. Abdalla’s analysis focuses not so much on a spatial in-between as on an administrative and institutional in-between and the multiplicity of regulatory models in terms of planning and access to services. Through a case study of the village of Siraw, in Omdurman, her chapter describes the process of administrative incorporation the city has undergone and shows how these in-between situations can create both opportunities and constraints for the inhabitants: today, service providers are present in limited numbers in the new neighbourhoods because of the persistence of old village institutions, which can lead to contradictory operations. Hind Mahmoud’s chapter investigates another periphery of the city of Khartoum and confirms the great diversity of in-between spaces. El Fath is a residential neighbourhood in the remote western periphery of Greater Khartoum that was planned in the 2000s as a relocation site

Introduction  15

to host displaced populations who had been evicted from more central areas and informal neighbourhoods or areas that were being ‘rationalized’: it is an archetypal space of relegation, not only because of its distance from the city centre but also because urbanization of the area is under way. The author analyses access to schools and education in a neighbourhood where the residents’ extreme economic and social vulnerability can hinder access to such services. Hind Mahmoud highlights the differences between girls’ and boys’ educational trajectories from the standpoint of a scholar of gender studies, analysing the ambiguities of an educational system in which it has become increasingly common to pay for education services. In the fourth chapter, Clément Deshayes reviews the period during the run-up to the separation of the South, which was marked by the emergence of protest movements. These movements, which stem from civil society and are not new political parties, form a sort of hybrid social space that disrupts traditional Sudanese order and political space. The chapter elaborates on the in-between paradigm by analysing both the activists’ multiple affiliations and their social mobility trajectories, as well as the way their actions unfold throughout the city to target different population groups. The chapter sheds new light on the revolutionary movement that emerged in late December 2018 and brings a new perspective to it, as it questions the future of these ­reconfigurations of Sudan’s political space The second part (‘In-Betweenness as a Temporal Dimension’) opens with a contribution by the anthropologist Idris Salim El-Hassan, who examines a momentous, unprecedented demonstration of violence in the city based around a divide between Northerners and Southerners as distinct blocks. This episode, which was accompanied by riots, took place prior to South Sudan’s separation, but it is very closely linked to it, as the events occurred in Khartoum after the death of John Garang (SPLM/A leader) on 30 July 2005, three weeks after he was sworn in as Vice President of a still-united Sudan. Garang was the charismatic leader of the Southern rebels and freedom fighters and was supposed to be Vice President of Sudan during the interim period between 2005 and 2011. John Garang represented the pro-unity camp within the SPLM movement, although his leanings were a topic of controversy. His death severely compromised the possibility of national unity. The chapter looks back at this irruption of violence into the capital, which remains one of the rare violent manifestations of the North–South conflict ‘imported’ into Khartoum and reinforced identity-based divisions. The weighty reverberations of this event are brought to light by the fact that it is often alluded to by the South Sudanese interviewed in Khartoum for other chapters in this publication (see the articles by Alice

16  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

Franck, Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz, Katarzyna Grabska and Mohamed Bakhit) and might perhaps be seen as yet another breaking point, on a par with the separation of South Sudan. Following in El-Hassan’s footsteps and the focus on temporalities, the second chapter by Alice Franck reviews the housing strategies of South Sudanese populations after 2011, based on a study of land transactions in a peri-central working-class neighbourhood of Greater Khartoum. This case study investigates how the populations directly affected by the separation have negotiated their place in Khartoum since the 1980s, and how they are attempting to retain it in a context of legal uncertainty and in a situation in which the capital’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods are no longer immune to land speculation. The temporal dimension plays a key role in the analysis of the families’ diverse strategies. The third and final contribution to this second part, by Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz, exposes the liminality of Sudan’s national construction by examining the presence in Khartoum of Southern/South Sudanese people who were forcefully displaced by the North–South conflict. The chapter elaborates on the place occupied and negotiated by this population within the city in the long-term and how – despite their own diversity – they frame themselves in the midst of multiple Sudanese others. The temporal dimension is essential to her argument, in the sense that the lengthy period over which she considers these displaced populations’ experience of Khartoum is perceived by them as a series of continuous present moments, indicating that their experience of time is non-linear and is informed by specific events. While their presence in the city remains fragile and uncertain, the ways in which they inhabit the capital over time constitute the means by which they state claims to alternative forms of citizenship. The author uses the notion of the ‘in-between’ as an important analytical tool for connecting experiences of spatial relegation in the city with the failure of national construction and inclusive citizenship. She provides an insight into identity formations and the complexities of being Sudanese that transcend legalistic notions of citizenship and that have not been resolved by the secession/independence of the South. The last part of the book (‘In-Betweenness as a Belonging Dimension’) focuses on how belongings, affiliations or, in broader terms, identities are enacted by the diverse social actors presented in each of these chapters by either avoiding to face differences or striving to overcome the challenges of alterity. The section begins with a chapter by Katarzyna Grabska that addresses a category that has been particularly affected by the events of 2011: in a detailed ethnography, she analyses the attitudes of Southern people (in particular Nuer) towards ‘trans-local citizenship’, which are the product of years of war, displacements and returns. She

Introduction  17

shows that the iconic significance of the Southern groups’ ‘in-between’ experience gives them scope for an active and differentiated negotiation of identity and place – in spite of their imposed marginalization – in both the city and the national community. In the second chapter in this section, Mohamed Bakhit pursues his reflections on the experiences of Southern people in post-2011 Greater Khartoum by presenting a case study of Al-Baraka, a shantytown on the capital’s eastern fringes. This population’s loss of their IDP status following the secession of South Sudan shows how social actors can implement and elaborate on a form of ‘community citizenship’ in a socio-spatial and statutory in-­between that can make up for the failings of ‘legal citizenship’. In Barbara Casciarri’s chapter, she revisits a traditional anthropological subject area  – kinship structures and marriage strategies  – based around the conceptual paradigm of in-betweenness. The author compares three distinct case studies: two pastoral groups from the north and west and a working-class neighbourhood in the capital. She highlights how the plasticity of the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ revealed by matrimonial practices provides an arena for negotiation that reaches beyond the familial space, becoming part of a ‘political economy of identity’ that runs throughout the history of the Sudanese State and its relations with local populations. The theme of marriage strategies is also addressed in the next chapter, in which Peter Miller presents data from a study of the upper-class neighbourhood of Amarat. The author provides original data on an area of the capital that to date has been almost totally ignored by social science literature. Miller also shows that in spite of a common understanding of marriage strategies as an in-between space, Amarat has for historical and social reasons remained locked in a form of class homogamy that manifests itself as endogamy within a patrilineal tribal group – as is the case in rural Sudan. Following these three sections, each of which targets one of the three chosen dimensions of in-betweenness, the final piece is an interview with Stella Gaitano by two of the researchers working on the project who are equally intimately acquainted with the question of cultural and identity-related in-betweenness. The interview opens a fruitful dialogue that illustrates the creativity and relevance of an approach based on in-betweenness and acts as a mirror of the prologue. We decided that it would be the most fitting epilogue, marking an ‘open-ended’ conclusion to the broader reflections in the book. At the time of writing this introduction, there are still many remaining questions regarding the changes within the Sudanese political apparatus and the mark the revolutionary movement will leave on the practices and representations of Khartoum’s spaces and its inhabitants.

18  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

This uncertainty makes it all the more important to study the post-2011 period for the clues it provides for understanding the events of 2018 and 2019. While the revolutionary momentum has highlighted a deep and shared demand for justice and peace and has given rise to inclusive slogans such as ‘Hey (you) arrogant racist, we are all Darfur’ that transcend old ethno-tribal divides and marginalizations (Casciarri and Manfredi 2020), an in-depth understanding of this movement means going beyond an event-driven view, supported by extensive qualitative fieldwork. Rather than reframing our chapters towards teleological explanations, or guiding contributors to update their arguments retrospectively, therefore, we have taken the view that this book, which was written before the revolutionary movement at a time of great difficulty and uncertainty about the future of the country, also reveals the radical changes that were about to take place. The uncertainty that began after the separation of South Sudan eventually led to a new period of instability and unpredictability, and although it is still unclear whether this new phase has brought the previous one to a close, it is possible to look at it in terms of ‘openness’, as another case of a fluid, hybrid and interstitial situation that our reflections on the plurality of in-between spaces may help our readers to understand. Alice Franck is Associate Professor of Geography at Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne University, UMR PRODIG. She was the coordinator of the CEDEJ-Khartoum between 2013 and 2016. Her Ph.D. research was on urban agriculture in Greater Khartoum (Sudan) and was followed by the study of urban landed dynamics and urban livestock production. Within the recent context of the Sudanese capital city’s urban development, land property conflict is one of the core topics of her research together with issues of socio-spatial and political reconfigurations after the independence of South Sudan, about which she co-­edited a special issue of Égypte/Monde arabe (vol. 14, 2016, Sudan, ‘Five Years After the Independence of South Sudan’). Following her perspective on urban livestock production, she recently began a new field of research that questions the places, shapes and stakes of ritual animal death in the urban space through the Muslim ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’(with J. Gardin and O. Givre), ‘Blood and the City: Animal Representations and Urban (Dis)orders during the “Feast of the Sacrifice” in Istanbul and Khartoum’, Anthropology of the Middle East 11, special issue ‘Man and Animal Relationships in the Middle East’, edited by M. Mashkour and A. Grisoni (2016).

Introduction  19

Barbara Casciarri holds a Ph.D. in Ethnology and Social Anthropology from the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris (France). Her fieldwork has focused on economic and political anthropology issues among pastoral Arab-speaking groups of Sudan (1989–2016) and among Berber-speaking pastoralists and Arab-speaking farmers in South-Eastern Morocco (2000–6). She was the coordinator of the CEDEJ (Centre d’Etudes et Documentation Economique et Juridique) in Khartoum between 2006 and 2009. Since 2004, she has been Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University Paris 8 (France). She co-edited two special issues of Nomadic Peoples (‘Pastoralists under Pressure in Present-Day Sudan’, 2009, and ‘Water and Pastoralists’, 2013), a special issue of Journal des anthropologues, ‘Anthropologie et eau(x)’ (2013) and two collective volumes on Sudan, Multidimensional Change in Sudan 1989–2011: Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities (Berghahn Books, 2015, with M.A. Assal and F. Ireton) and Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan (Brill, 2018, with M.A. Babiker).

Notes 1. The plurality of the notion, which lies at the heart of our project, will be elucidated throughout this book. It will appear from here on without quotation marks. 2. In the Sudanese case that we are dealing with, the expressions North and South, as Northerners (Shimaliyyn in Arabic) and Southeners (Janubiyyn in Arabic) do not refer only to geographical localizations but fully embody the conflicting history and the political identities within the country, and later (after 2011 and the separation) between two distinct states. Furthermore, the Arabic expressions that designate the two entities (North and South) and their populations did not change after the separation. This is why these terms will be capitalized in this book. 3. This cross-disciplinary research project (2015–2017) was entitled ‘Métropolisation et espaces “d’entre deux”: jeux d’acteurs, dynamiques de pouvoir et reconfigurations identitaires dans l’agglomération du Grand Khartoum’ (‘Metropolization and In-between Spaces: Interactions, Power Dynamics and Identity Reconfigurations in the Greater Khartoum Conurbation), and was funded by CEDEJ-Khartoum and the AUF. 4. This expression ‘Daring to explore the in-Between’ (‘Oser les entre-deux’) is borrowed from Julie Le Gall and Lionel Rougé’s introduction to a special issue dedicated to ‘in-between spaces’ (Le Gall and Rougé 2014). 5. Some older exceptions include Pons (1980), Kameir (1988) and Lobban (1982).

20  Alice Franck and Barbara Casciarri

6. We note that first, for the sake of economy in this introduction, the following authors and their works are only presented as general overview without offering more complex reflections, and second, far from being ‘schools of thought’ in the strict sense, they are viewed as four key approaches that implicitly opened the way to the later formulation of approaches based on the notion of in-betweenness. 7. The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005 ended the conflict between the Southern rebels (under the leadership of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its armed branch, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and the Khartoum regime that had been ongoing since 1983. It created a transition period after which the S ­ outherners would decide either in favour of separation or unity. According to the CPA, both parties needed to work to make unity more attractive. Both parties failed, however, and in January 2011, the referendum led to the partition of Sudan, which was officially completed on 9 July 2011. 8. Just in terms of mobility, Southeners followed multiple strategies: some individuals would have returned to the South before or after independence of South Sudan, making use (or not) of the return plan that has been in place since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005, while some others might have remained in Khartoum, or moved between different locations. Some families with multiple places to stay and spatial belongings might have sent some members to the South in order to gauge the situation before relocateing the whole family in the South (Grabska 2014; Franck 2016b; De Geoffroy 2009).

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Introduction  21

Abusharaf, R.M. 2009. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Abu Sin, M.E., and M.R.J. Davies. 1991. The Future of Sudan’s Capital Region: A  Study in Development and Change. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Ahmed, E., and R. Marchal. 2010. ‘Multiple Uses of Neolibralism: War, New Boundaries and the Reorganization of Government in Sudan’, in F. Gutiérrez and G. Schonwalder (eds), Economic Liberalization and Political Violence: Utopia or Dystopia? London: Pluto Press, pp. 173–206. Ali, N.M. 2015. Gender, Race and Sudan Exil’s Politics: Do We All Belong to This Country? Lanham: Lexington Books. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Arango, L. 2015. ‘Ethnographies de la gestion de l’eau à Tuti (Khartoum, Soudan) et Cano de Loro (Carthagène, Colombie): Histoire, localité et politique dans une perspective d’anthropologie urbaine comparée’, Ph.D. thesis, Paris: University of Paris 8. Assal, M. 2011. ‘From the Country to the Town’, in J. Ryle et al. (eds), The Sudan Handbook. Suffolk: James Currey, pp. 63–69. ______.  2015. ‘Old Timers and Newcomers in Al-Salha: Dynamics of Land Allocation in an Urban Periphery’, in B. Casciarri et al. (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 15–32. Assal, M., and M.A. Abdul-Jalil (eds). 2015. Past, Present, Future: Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute. Bach, J.-N., R. Chevrillon-Guibert and A. Franck. 2020. ‘Soudan: jusqu’au bout du régime al-Inqaz’, Politique Africaine 158(2). Bhabha, Homi. K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Baker, J. 1995. ‘Survival and Accumulation Strategies at the Rural-Urban Interface in North-West Tanzania’, Environment and Urbanization 7(1): 117–32. Bakhit, M.A.G. 2016. Identity and Lifestyle Construction in Multi-ethnic Shantytowns: A Case Study of Al-Baraka Community in Khartoum, Sudan. Bayreuth: Lit Verlag. Balandier, G. 1967. Anthropologie politique. Paris: PUF. Bannaga, S.E.I. 1996. Mawa, Unauthorised and Squatter Settlements in Khartoum: History, Magnitude and Treatment. Zurich: Ministry of Engineering Affairs, in collaboration with Habitat Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. ______. 2000. Al-Shorouk: The Organisation of Villages in the State of Khartoum. Zurich: Ministry of Engineering Affairs, in collaboration with Habitat Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Barth, F. (ed.). 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Barthel, P.-A. 2010. ‘Arab Mega-Projects’, Built Environment 36(2): 133–45.

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Introduction  23

Cortes, G. 2000. Partir pour rester: survie et mutation des sociétés paysannes andines (Bolivie). Paris: IRD. Crombé, L., and G. Sauloup. 2016. ‘Autoritarisme, hybridation et pratiques du pouvoir dans le Grand Khartoum: une étude des services de l’eau et du commerce de rue’, L’Espace Politique 30(3), available at https://journals. openedition.org/espacepolitique/4018. David, L., and L. Halbert. 2010. ‘Logiques financières globales et fabrique de la ville’, in Jacquet et al. (eds), Regards sur la Terre 2010: Villes: changer de trajectoire. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 90–108. De Certeau, M., L. Giard and P. Mayol. 1994. L’invention du quotidien: II. Habiter, cuisiner. Paris: Gallimard. De Geoffroy, A. 2009. ‘Aux marges de la ville, les populations déplacées par la force: enjeux, acteurs et politiques: Etude comparée des cas de Bogota (Colombie) et de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Ph.D. Dissertation. Paris: University of Paris 8. Denis, E. 2005. ‘Khartoum: ville refuge et métropole rentière’, Cahier du Gremamo, La ville arabe en movement 18: 87–127. ______. 2007. ‘Inégalités régionales et rébellions au Soudan’, Outre-Terre 3(20): 151–68. Denissen, I. 2013. Negotiating Urban Citizenship: The Urban Poor, Brokers and the State in Mexico City and Khartoum. Amsterdam: Dutch University Press. D’Errico, M. 2016. The Tropical Utopia: Khartoum – British Colony, 1898–1910. Treviso: Terra Ferma. Deshayes, C. 2016. ‘Émergence de nouveaux groupes contestataires urbains et dynamiques de la semi-clandestinité au Soudan’, Confluences Méditerranée 98(3): 61–73. Dorier-Aprill, E., and Ph. Gervais Lambony (eds). 2005. Vies citadines. Paris and Berlin: Mappemonde. Doxiadis. 1959. The Future of the Capital: A Long-term Program and the Master Plan of the Capital. The Government of Sudan. Dubois, C. 1991. ‘Morphologies de Khartoum: conflits d’identité (1820-début de XXème siècle)’, in H. Bleuchot, C. Delmet and D. Hopwood (eds), Soudan: histoire, identités, idéologie. Oxford: Ithaca Press, pp. 13–33. Dumont, M., and A. Bossé. 2006. ‘L’au-delà des villes contre l’entre-deux des villes’, EspacesTemps.net. Retrieved 3 July 2020 from https://www.espacestemps.net/articles/contre-l-entre-deux-des-villes/. El-Bushra, E.-S. 1976. An Atlas of Khartoum Conurbation. Khartoum: University Press. El-Hassan, Idris Selim. 2015. ‘Old Omdurman and National Integration: The Socio-historical Roots of Exclusion’, in M. Assal and M. Abdul-Jalil (eds), Past, Presents and Future, Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: CMI, pp. 81–94. Elsheshtawy, Y. (ed.). 2008. The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development. London: Routledge. Entrikin, J.N. 1991. The Betweenness of Place: Toward a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Fourny, M-C. 2014. ‘La frontière comme espace liminal: Proposition pour analyser l’émergence d’une figure de la frontière mobile dans le contexte alpin’ Revue de Géographie Alpine/Journal of Alpine Research 101(2): 2–11. Franck, A. 2016a. ‘Insécurité foncière généralisée à Khartoum: quand les titres de propriété ne protègent plus des prédations publiques’, Métropolitiques. ______. 2016b. ‘Le Grand Khartoum sans Sudistes: Recompositions post-CPA dans le quartier populaire de Mussalass (Omdurman)’, Égypte/Monde arabe 14(1): 85–111. Franck, A., and E. Vezzadini. 2016. ‘Introduction: Sudan, Five Years after the Independence of South Sudan’, Égypte/Monde arabe 14(1): 11–22. Friedman, J. 1997. ‘Global Crises, the Struggle for Cultural Identity, and Intellectual Porkbarrelling: Cosmopolitans versus Locals, Ethnics, and Nationals in an Era of De-Hegemonisation’, in P. Werbner and T. Moddod (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed Books, pp. 70–89. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. ______. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gertel, J. 1993. Krisenherd Khartoum, Freiburg Studies in Development Geography. Germany: Breitenbach. Grabska, K. 2014. Gender, Home and Identity: Nuer Repatriation to Southern Sudan. New York: James Currey. Hale, S., and G.A. Hale. 1971. ‘Urban Bibliography of the Sudan: 1900–1971’, African Urban Notes 6: 150–81. Kameir, E.-W.M. 1988. The Political Economy of Labour Migration in the Sudan: A Comparative Case Study of Migrant Workers in an Urban Situation. Hamburg: Institut für Afrika-Kunde. Kraidy, M.M. (ed.). 2005. Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Lavergne, M. 1997. ‘La violence d’Etat comme mode de régulation de la croissance urbaine: le cas de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Espaces, Populations et sociétés 1: 49–64. Lefebvre, H. 1974. Le droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Le Gall, J., and L. Rougé. 2014. ‘Oser les entre-deux!’, Carnets de géographes 7, available at https://journals.openedition.org/cdg/496. Le Goix, R. 2009. ‘Suburbs, Boomburbs and Exurbs: A Multilevel Approach of Contextual Effects and the Production of Suburban Morphologies: Methodological Framework and Exploratory Results in Paris Metropolitan Region’, 5th International Conference of the Research Network Private Urban Governance and Gated Communities, 30 March–2 April 2009. Santiago, Chile: University of Chile. Lobban, R.A. 1982. ‘Class and Kinship in Sudanese Urban Communities’, Journal of the International African Institute 52(2): 51–76.

Introduction  25

Manby, B. 2012. The Right to a Nationality and the Secession of South Sudan: A Commentary on the Impact of the New Laws. The Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa. Marcus, G. 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of World System: The Emergence of Multisited Ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117. MEFIT. 1974. Regional Plan and Master Plan of the Three Towns - Beautification Programme of Khartoum – The Physical Survey. MEFIT Consulting Engineers and Centecs. 2009. Khartoum Structure Plan (KPP5), Vol. 1 Part 1, Khartoum. Khartoum State Ministry of Planning and Physical Development, October. Merle, A. 2011. ‘De l’inclassable à “l’espèce d‘espace”: l’intermédiarité et ses enjeux en géographie’, L’information géographique 75(2): 88–98. Morange, M., and A. Spire (translated by Oliver Waine). 2015. ‘A Right to the City in the Global South?’, Metropolitics. Retrieved 4 July 2020 from https://www.metropolitiques.eu/A-Right-to-the-City-in-the-Global.html. Navez-Bouchanine, F. (ed.). 2002. La fragmentation en question: des villes entre fragmentation spatiale et fragmentation sociale? Paris: L’Harmattan. Pantuliano, S. et al. 2011. City Limits: Urbanisation and Vulnerability in Sudan: Khartoum Case Study. London: Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute. Pérouse de Montclos, M.-A. 2001. Migrations forcées et urbanisation: le cas de Khartoum. Dossiers du CEPED no. 6. Pons, V. (ed.). 1980. Urbanization and Urban Life in the Sudan. University of Hull. Rey, V., and M. Poulot-Moreau. 2014. ‘Chercheures d’entre-deux’, Carnets de géographes 7. Retrieved 4 July 2020 from https://journals.openedition.org/ cdg/416. Robinson, J. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London: Routledge. Roden, D. 1974. ‘Regional Inequality and Rebellion in the Sudan’, Geographical Review 64(4): 498–516. Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Random House. Sansot, P. 2004. Poétique de la ville. Paris: Editions Payot et Rivages. Sauloup, G. 2011. ‘Les marchands de rue de Khartoum 2: Métropolisation et citadinité au cœur de la capitale soudanaise’, master’s thesis. University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. ______. unpublished. À la recherche d’une ville divisée? Les métiers précaires dans l’étude du Grand Khartoum. Schlee, G., and E. Watson (eds). 2009. Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa: Volume II: Sudan, Uganda, and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands. New York: Berghahn Books. Scott, James. C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. London: Yale University Press. Sikainga, A.A. 1996. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Simone, T.A.M. 1994. In Whose Image? Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Slatin, R.C. (Pacha). 1897. Fire and Sword in the Sudan: A Personal Narrative of Fighting and Serving the Derwishes 1879–1895. London. Soja, E. 1996. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real Imagined Places. Cambridge: Blackwell. Stadnicki, R. 2008. ‘San’â: limites de la ville et identités urbaines’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditérranée 121–22: 115–32. Swyngedouw, E., et al. 2002. ‘Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large-Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy’, Antipode 34(3): 542–77. Turner, V., 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Van Gennep, A. 1909. Les rites de passage. Paris. E. Nourry. Verhoeven, H. 2015. Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan: The Political Economy of Military-Islamist State Building, African Studies Collection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vezzadini, E. 2013. ‘État, nationalité et citoyenneté au Sud-Soudan’, Afrique contemporaine 246(2): 123–24. Von Benda-Beckmann, F., and K. Von Benda-Beckmann. 2006. ‘Social Insecurity, Natural Resources and Legal Complexity’, in C. Eberhard and G. Vernicos (eds), La quête anthropologique du droit: Autour de la démarche d’Etienne Leroy. Paris: Karthala, pp. 221–48. Zug, S. 2013. ‘Between Capital Exchange and Moral Entitlements: Integrating Morality in Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to Understand Water Gifts in Khartoum, Sudan’. Dissertation. Fribourg: University of Fribourg.

Part I

[•] In-Betweenness as a Spatial Dimension

[•  Chapter 1  •]

The Expansion of Greater Khartoum and the Incorporation of Agricultural and Pastoral Production Areas Creating In-Betweenness, Disrupting Territories ALICE FRANCK AND BARBARA CASCIARRI

Greater Khartoum and the Incorporation of Pastoral Farming and Agricultural Production Areas

T

he aim of this chapter is to analyse urban–rural linkages in Sudan’s capital region (Greater Khartoum and Khartoum State). We focus on the processes that are provoking significant changes both in production relations in these areas and in the way the centre has dealt with its peripheries following the recent expansion of the city and the incorporation of adjacent rural spaces. No longer countryside but not yet city, these in-between spaces (Chaléard and Dubresson 1999), which are both relegated and coveted, can help us understand urban policies that write off certain populations and their activities. The prominence of land issues has been marked by increased competition and conflicts, particularly since the 2000s, following the economic growth trends stimulated by the influx of petrodollars and the implementation of liberalization policies (Gertel, Rottenburg and Calkins 2014). A study of these areas allows us to acquire a broader understanding of Sudanese political, economic and sociocultural contexts, with a focus on the dynamics of reshaping the capital’s urban fringes. It also serves as an entry point for analysing changes in the country between the last ‘globalization’ phase (1990s–2000s) (Casciarri, Assal and Ireton 2015) and the separation of South Sudan (2011).

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Our approach seeks to shift the researcher’s view from the city (centre) to its margins (periphery), which are losing their rural connotations as a result of being diluted by the urban dimension and seem destined to be considered merely as an epiphenomenon of urbanization. While stressing the connection to macro-scale dynamics, we focus mainly on the microscale level, grounding our reflections on urban–rural linkages in two empirical fieldwork studies, one on the pastoral populations of Khartoum State’s rural zone and the other on intra-urban spaces involved in agricultural production. The classic urban–rural dichotomy that these comparative ethnographies call into question has had a powerful influence on Sudanese social science studies; in particular, anthropology, which, as the leading discipline in the country’s academic tradition, has often overlooked analyses of urban contexts (Arango 2015) by consolidating the colonial bias and its ideology regarding the essentially rural (and therefore tribal) ‘nature’ of Sudan (Grandin 1982). The binary categories used by researchers, as well as by politicians and planners, are proving to be less and less adequate as a means of understanding the complexity of the relational dynamics and sociocultural, political and economic reconfigurations that have marked the past few decades of the capital region’s expansion. Our critical interpretation of the urban–rural dichotomy in Sudan, which we seek to replace with the idea of a dialectic relationship between these two elements (Glesener and Kmec 2010), leads us to go beyond the idea of a simple articulation (or ‘syncretism’ and ‘hybridization’) of urban and rural spaces. Our aim here is to demonstrate how in a contemporary context this process can be alternatively defined as the manifestation of a dominant logic of (post-)rural subordination. Without falling into the rut of studies on ‘urban bias’ (Lipton 1976), it seems to us to be crucially important to look at the phenomenon of the material dispossession of the productive and reproductive foundations of rural groups, which are being even further marginalized by urbanization (Harvey 2008). This also leads us to highlight the existence of an ‘ideological invisibilization’ of the roles of pastoral and agricultural production as an outcome of their subordinated incorporation through the expansion of the city, which then causes the role of the local sociocultural components embedded within their production systems to be eradicated and leads to these groups being viewed and evaluated solely in terms of their efficiency and economic functionality. With a view to the political insight required of an analysis of urban–rural relations, we hypothesize that in the context of the metropolises of the Global South, if one can move beyond the urban–rural dichotomy, a path opens up to a deeper understanding of both the reproduction of previous forms

The Expansion of Greater Khartoum  31

of domination and the production of new ones: the expansion process generated by urbanization creates an ‘in-between’ that is connoted as a misclassified socio-spatial entity strongly marked by inequality and injustice dynamics (Dupont 2005): ‘The non-city is no longer exterior to the urban; it has become a strategically essential terrain of capitalist urbanisation’ (Brenner 2012). As a consequence, an approach based on in-betweenness operates not only as a tool for criticizing the dualism of binary clichés but also as a category with a role in creating disrupted territories with conflicting futures. This phenomenon is on view in both our case studies: although urban and rural spaces may no longer be seen as hermetic entities, they have not yet become homogenous spaces either, and the importance of an analysis in terms of the domination of a city over the countryside, or of urban elites over rural groups, falls within the broader framework of the ‘urbanisation of neoliberalism’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002; Morange and Fol 2014). In order to understand the long-established relationship Sudan’s capital has with its more or less immediate environment and agricultural and pastoral activities, or to appreciate the logics of the current urban transformation, we first need to briefly describe the capital’s morphology. Greater Khartoum is a conurbation of three cities – Omdurman, Khartoum and Khartoum North  – at the point where the White Nile and the Blue Nile converge. In an environment noteworthy for its aridity, the two Niles form an oasis that allows the Sudanese capital to include agricultural activities, thanks to irrigation. These activities stretch not only along the banks of the Niles but also across large projects on reclaimed desert lands close to the city limits.1 This unusual morphology has given rise to diverse property regimes that represent a contrast between valley lands and semi-desert lands rather than an urban–rural divide. The former are usually under full ownership (milik hurr) and have long been registered (Land Registration Act 1925), while the latter are regulated by customary law and collective property, at least for so long as the government does not claim ownership of the land based on the Unregistered Land Act 1971 (Casciarri and Babiker 2018). Lastly, this diversity is evidenced by another dichotomy between irrigated land for farming and grazing lands or land for rain-fed agriculture. These are the environmental background and forms of land tenure into which urban growth and its accompanying needs – in particular the increasing demand for housing land (ard sakaniyya)  – are expanding (see map of Greater Khartoum). The capital has spread from the centre (the confluence of the two Niles) to the outskirts of the three towns. In the case of Khartoum, this means expansion into the space between the two Niles beyond the border of

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Jezira State, while for Omdurman and Khartoum North it means expansion into the Bayuda and Butana deserts respectively (Dubois 1991), and the city’s population now exceeds 6 million inhabitants (CBS 2009). While the issues of ethnic recomposition, urban sprawl and illegal land occupation have gone hand in hand with the capital’s population explosion and are the urban authorities’ main focus of concern and action (Bannaga 1996; De Geoffroy 2015), it was not until the 2000s, when Sudan joined the circle of oil-producing countries, that the capital and its urban–rural relations were profoundly transformed at the  expense of agricultural activities, under the impact of the new profitability of the ‘urban fabric’. The rapid and brutal restructuring of the centre of the city bears witness to the fact that oil revenues have been massively reinvested in urban land: colossal projects are taking shape, notably on agricultural land in the city centre (see our second case study), while an extension of the road network has been accompanied by the expansion of the city and land speculation as far as the northern and southern borders of Khartoum State, reaching land that is governed by customary law and still managed collectively (see our first case study).

The Post-nomadic Pastoral Ahamda in Khartoum State: Incorporation, Invisibilization and Subordination Originally, the Ahamda were a nomadic group of the Butana region, but in recent decades they have undergone a gradual process of sedentarization and can now mainly be found in the rural areas of Khartoum State. They continue to ascribe an important role to pastoralism within a productive land occupation system that has its roots in the exploitation of the resources available on their tribal and collective land (Casciarri 2009b, 2018) (Figure 1.1.). In contrast to the stereotypical view of nomadic pastoralists as autarkic, self-sufficient and isolated groups, the Ahamda have always built relationships with an ‘outside world’ (Khazanov 1984) that includes urban centres, in order to market their livestock products or to find work, and their ‘multi-resource economy’ patterns (Salzman 1996) have enabled them to avoid swelling the ranks of impoverished urbanized nomads (Mohamed Salih 1984). Nevertheless, although the city may be a familiar and long-standing co-actor in their social environment, urban development and the wider economic conjuncture that have impacted ‘globalized’ Sudan over the past fifteen years (Gertel, Rottenburg and Calkins 2014; Casciarri, Assal and Ireton 2015) have added a new dimension to this relationship. The sharp acceleration of the capital’s expansion, added to land-grabbing of pastoral land, which

The Expansion of Greater Khartoum  33

Figure 1.1  Map of Ahamda territory in Khartoum State. Source: B. Casciarri, designed by Alice Franck.

has been encouraged by legal frameworks that classify it as ‘vacant land’ (Elhadary and Abdellatti 2016), has reached and impacted part of the Ahamda’s territory. Its incorporation into urban dynamics through a process of land-grabbing, which might be interpreted as the group subordination to economic interests of new actors, has triggered new conflicts (between individuals, and between and within groups) and has become a catalyst for socio-spatial injustices, emphasizing the urban– rural dialectic in the context of a neoliberal urbanization (Morange and Fol 2014).

The Gradual Expropriation of ‘Tribal Lands’ and the Exacerbation of Conflicts among ‘Nomadic Tribes’ as a Result of Neoliberal Urbanization The material and ideological invisibilization already suffered by the Ahamda (Casciarri 2015a) combined with their reduction to the mere status of ‘producers for the city’ are two long-term phenomena their

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community shares with all Sudanese pastoralists, who have been affected by the dynamics of marginalization that have persisted since the colonial era (Mohamed Salih 1990; Casciarri and Ahmed 2009).2 In our case study, it was more specifically their relative proximity to the capital that set the stage for a general territorial expropriation and led to their ‘customary rights’ being ignored. At this stage, it is worth summarizing the main actors and dynamics of the expropriation, which took place over a fifteen-year period, and mention the strategies the Ahamda ­implemented to withstand the attacks against their territorial bases.3 For the Ahamda, from the early days of British colonization up to the present day, expropriation has been characterized by alternating periods of intense conflict, fluid phases of negotiation and periods of stability and normative codification. The first phase (1899–1950) was initially marked by frequent conflicts with other nomads in the region, when the Ahamda began a process of territorial and tribal recomposition outside their original area (Casciarri 1997), followed by the consolidation of their rights over collectively owned and managed land. This consolidation was helped in part by the British Native Administration, which implemented the demarcation of ‘tribal territories’ and the appointment of ‘tribal chiefdoms’, thus strengthening the presence of their gabila (tribe) in the area.4 A second phase of relative stability lasted throughout most of the postcolonial era (1950–1995). Despite the abolition of the Native Administration structures in 1970 and the confirmation of the state-owned status of unregistered lands, the isolation and limited profitability of the Ahamda’s territory gave them the freedom to use their lands based on principles of customary law, linked to the structure of the gabila, a set of rights that were defined orally and used as legal support in the rare cases of intertribal conflict. The third and final phase (1995– 2015) took place during a period when changes at a national level, partly framed by global trends and the expansion of the capital (Denis 2005), heightened competition for access to land (Franck 2015). The Ahamda’s lands suddenly became attractive to the new economic players, and for new uses. Since that time, attacks on their ‘tribal property rights’ have become a part of daily life for the community, who find that they have lost their exclusive use of, or sometimes even the right of access to, a large part of their former land.5 At the same time, the continual process of land-grabbing led by external actors for uses that compete with the Ahamda’s pastoral, agricultural and residential practices has begun to trigger conflicts with neighbouring tribes, including those with whom a long and historical process of negotiation had led to mutual recognition and the status quo of the respective tribal territorial rights. Over a span of eight years (2007–15), three conflicts arose with two pastoral groups

The Expansion of Greater Khartoum  35

and a group of villagers from the Nile, some of which, despite the joint intervention of local chiefdoms and the state courts, were still under way at the time of our most recent fieldwork in 2015 (Casciarri 2015b and 2018). While this situation, which might be defined as a ‘situation of intertribal micro-conflict’, may look like a harsh confrontation between ‘rural folks’ – thereby fuelling the recurring stigmatization of pastoral tribes as ‘aggressive’ and ‘ungovernable’ – its genesis needs to be grasped in terms of urban–rural restructuration and urbanization policies being promoted by the centre that ignore the equitable inclusion of its peripheries. The strategies the Ahamda put in place to cope with this microscale intertribal land-grabbing (Casciarri 2015c) demonstrate that certain dualisms that are often associated with urban–rural opposition (state versus tribe, customary law versus state or Islamic law, written versus oral, collective versus individual or community versus market) are not workable categories  – at least not as dichotomies  – when it comes to understanding the ongoing dynamics. Indeed, one might note a general trend inspired by practices of ‘institutional bricolage’ (Cleaver 2002), according to which former tribal authorities (sheikhs and ‘omda) operate simultaneously with local state institutions (for example, lajna sha‘abiyya, ‘popular committees’6), new ad hoc bodies are created (for example, lajna al-ard, ‘land committees’ driven by young tribesmen), and institutions that have fallen into disuse are reactivated by the renewal of either state-led systems or cooperative organizations (for example, jama‘iyya zira‘iyya, ‘agricultural cooperatives’) or informal tribal-led informal justice traditions (for example, ‘arrifiyyn, ‘customary law experts’). The multiple patterns of hybridization that are established through the legal practices of these former nomadic pastoralists (Casciarri 2018), without denying the crucial legitimation in the name of collective tribal appropriation grounded in common patrilineal kinship, show that the notion of an ‘in-between space’ expanded from a purely physical and territorial space to a fully social one can be a useful tool for analysing the contexts in which urban–rural boundaries are being reshaped.

Ambivalent Uses of the ‘Tribal Paradigm’: Decentralized Despotism and Class Formation as the In-Betweenness of Neoliberal Incorporation of Rural Areas The embeddedness of different forms of collective exploitation of resources in a territory regulated by ‘customary law’ and the multifunctional institution of the gabila make up the practical and moral universe that supports the Ahamda’s land claims and inspires joint action to

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defend them. Nonetheless, we need to decrypt the ambiguities of the ‘tribal paradigm’ if we are to understand the current dynamics of the reconfiguration of urban–rural relations. In the Sudanese context, tribes have historically been shifting entities with fluid borders, especially in the nomadic environment (Grandin 1982). Their claims to collective land rights never had the exclusive connotations and clear-cut demarcation that were fostered later on by the introduction of colonial systems of indirect government (Mamdani 1996). The state’s attitude here has been ambivalent, if not contradictory. Following the colonial Native Administration, which redrew, reinforced and institutionalized tribal territorial borders in association with their ‘traditional’ chiefdoms, the fight against tribalism in the postcolonial era, which ended with the abolition of the Native Administration in 1970, continued to reduce the influence of tribal representatives for several decades. In contrast, the Islamic government that has been in power since 1989 initiated a policy of revitalization of the prerogatives of tribal chiefdoms in 1994 in order to support tribes instrumentally, in line with the state’s interest in controlling local populations and their conflicts (Casciarri 2009a and 2015a). The Ahamda case is a perfect illustration of these ambiguities, firstly because the Sudanese State has been reluctant to fully support the collective land rights of a gabila that it helped re-tribalize in 1994, and secondly because it demonstrates that neither the tribe versus state or tradition versus modernity dichotomy nor the urban versus rural ­actually work. In terms of the gabila and its internal relations, the tribal paradigm reveals its flaws: resorting to tribal institutions can be seen both as a bulwark against commodification of the territory (based on values of egalitarianism, sharing and inalienability) and as the delimitation of an arena for power struggles in cases where a local elite exploits tribal solidarity to confront land expropriation while at the same time pursuing individual interests through strategies of connection with an ‘external’ power. In this regard, unlike what happened in urban contexts, popular committees (lajna sha‘abiyya) became ‘quasi-tribal’ institutions after spreading across rural areas. Despite the fact that unlike tribal leaderships these committees are intended to be based on territorial rather than kinship criteria due to settlement patterns in pastoral zones as well as norms of residence and endogamy, local popular committees are de facto ethno-tribally homogenous, as they are made up of people of the same lineage. This configuration might have allowed the Ahamda to believe that together with the former tribal leaderships their lajna sha‘abiyya would also be in a position to defend the interests of the gabila, even in cases of conflict with the state. However, in cases of

The Expansion of Greater Khartoum  37

expropriation mentioned above, the lajna sha‘abiyya operated as a hindrance to potential resistance to the state’s expropriation actions and more recently as the expression of an elite willing to disassociate itself from the tribe’s collective interests and be co-opted by the interests of private investors. We can therefore see the convergence of two analytical perspectives. First we have the perspective (inspired by postcolonial studies) that considers the colonial legacy of indirect administration systems as a sort of ‘decentralized despotism’ that reasserts the privileges and powers of the state and favours urban groups over rural populations, who are deprived of real citizenship status (Mamdani 1996). Second, there is the perspective (inspired by Marxist anthropology) that saw the manifestation of class formation dynamics in the emergence of tribal elites and in which tribal rhetoric stood as an ideology capable of disguising the real convergence between dominant tribesmen and capitalist interests exploiting resources and rural populations (Asad 1970; Ahmed 1979; Saeed 1982). The trends underlined by the two analytical perspectives have merged during a recent phase in which spatial and quantitative disruption has been matched by the qualitative imposition of a dominant ideology: while the former has resulted in increased dispossession of former tribal and collective lands, the latter denies any social dimension to pastoral lands by reducing them to their functional, marketable use for the benefit of private and state economic actors. This dual movement is a major feature of the unequal urban–rural relations on the outskirts of Sudan’s capital today.

The Market Gardening Areas of Tuti and Abu Se‘id in the City Centre: Integration, Invisibilization and Disappearance The second case study concerns the evolution of intra-urban market gardens on Tuti Island (in the heart of the confluence of the Niles) and Abu Se‘id (on the west bank of the White Nile). In the first place, these two areas, which are located in the oasis of the capital, point to the complementary bonds that united the city with the cultivation of marketable foodstuffs (Chaléard 1996), which developed from the ex-nihilo creation of the Sudanese capital in 1821 (Franck 2007). The farming activities that forged the early integration and singular identity of these districts and their populations within the city are now being widely challenged by a private and public appetite for real estate development. It is on these agricultural lands in the city centre that the development of huge building complexes, the result of functional and neoliberal

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town planning, are drawn up and designed, providing residential zones (villas and luxury apartments), business districts and recreational areas (Choplin and Franck 2010). The transformation of the central market garden neighbourhoods has begun and is taking place in the two areas in varying, and conflicting, ways (Franck 2015).7 Our aim here is to review the stakeholders’ strategies in this classic functional and land-related transformation from the standpoint of the urban–rural dialectic and to demonstrate to what extent ‘in-betweenness’ is, or is not, a space for hybridization and institutional and social negotiation.

The Invisibilization of Agricultural Activities, Negation of the Complexity of Local Land Tenure and Trampling on Property Rights The early integration and agricultural identity of these areas can be read in terms of land issues: the land on the banks of the Nile Rivers (in Khartoum as well as in the rest of the Nile River Valley) was among the first to be registered individually under the full ownership system during British colonization. Freehold status (milik hurr) is rare: abandoned from around 1970 in favour of a leasehold system (milik hikr), it conflicts with collective tribal lands (see the first case study) in the sense that land ownership is individual and subject to an official written title, taking it to the top of the hierarchy of forms of appropriation in terms of land tenure security (Assal 2015). The case that interests us here relates to the first case study on pastoral land, in that the history of land appropriation has de facto offered to the tribal communities (gabila) settled on this land (through Muslim inheritance rules and the practice of endogamy) formal recognition of their status as native inhabitants (through indigenousness or ‘old-timers’ (ibid. and chapter 2 of this book)) of the confluence, settlement of which in some cases dates back to before the city. Thus, although ownership is individual, agricultural land in these areas was until recently usually owned by homogenous tribal communities, who negotiated at a local level to find the means of carrying out collective and family arrangements and management of land and its products (for the case of Tuti, see Arango 2015). Ownership title specifies not only status (full ownership versus leasehold property) but also the exclusive use of the land for agricultural, residential or – more recently – i­ nvestment purposes. In 2009, two events transformed the landscapes of these two market garden districts, bringing the land-grabbing and real estate dynamics at work up to date. First, construction of the bridge between Tuti and Khartoum was completed, providing access to the island by car for the

The Expansion of Greater Khartoum  39

Figure 1.2  Map of central market gardens at the heart of the city. Designed by Alice Franck.

first time. The real estate projects that followed this connection to the city centre oscillated between private proposals for the construction of luxury residences and incentives provided by the New Khartoum Structure Plan 2009–2033 (MEFIT 2009) to reduce traffic congestion and develop tourist and recreation areas in the city centre, with the planned construction of two additional bridges between Tuti and the two other cities of the Greater Khartoum conurbation and a ring road (Bahreldin and Eisa 2014; Arango 2015). On the west bank of the White Nile, digging began in Abu Se‘id in 2009, halting farming work and resulting in the active mobilization of landowners. Two ‘waterfront’ developments that resemble neoliberal urban developments aesthetically as much as operationally (public–private partnerships) (Michel et al. 2011) were ready to emerge: Hay al-Mal wa al-A‘mal (Business and Luxury District) and Medinat al-Noor (City of Light). It is important to note that in the case of Abu Se‘id, Khartoum State requisitioned all the agricultural land in the ‘common interest’ and sold it to private investors from the Gulf and Egypt before completing the compensation processes with the landowners, while in Tuti, no project of any size has been confirmed at this stage. There are no signs of major construction sites on the island yet, although there have been newspaper articles about future urban developments on the island, as well as a billboard on the Nile

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Figure 1.3  Advertisement for investment in a real estate project on Tuti Island – billboard visible from the Nile Road in Khartoum. Photo by Alice Franck, 2009. Translation of the Arabic text: ‘Come and participate with us . . . come and live with us . . . The Tuti Island Company’. This billboard confirms that forces from within Tuti are driving the changes on the island.

Road (Figure 1.3.). The land transaction records at the Khartoum Land Registry and the organization of resistance by the island’s community also testify to the ongoing dynamics.8 More than its location, the ongoing speculation calls into question the agricultural status of the land, since a change of zoning from agricultural to housing or investment involves long, expensive and opaque administrative procedures that are negotiable depending on the community and personal ties with the various levels of power. At an urban level, the public authorities, especially the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities and Khartoum Federal State, are at the forefront of the transformation of these areas, since they exercise control over land transfers – whether or not they are the initiators of these projects – and are therefore in a position to earn significant revenues from any transactions. The invisibilization of the productive capacity of these areas favours the development of real estate projects. The ties between agricultural activities and landowning families are declining in Khartoum as elsewhere, due to both the younger generations’ higher education levels and professional diversification, and to the low value attributed to working the land, which is no longer practised by many landowners, who

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prefer to employ sharecroppers or farm labourers (Lobban 1982; Franck 2007). The relationship between resisting the pressures of urbanization and maintaining ties to agricultural production has been undermined over the course of several decades, opening the door to a conception of the land not as a resource (in term of production and identity) for the group working on it but as a tradable and alienable commodity. The productive function of these areas is rejected or devalued by city dwellers and urban planners, who focus on their aesthetic, recreational or tourism-related assets (Hamid and Bahreldin 2013; Refaat 2015), by civil servants in agriculture-based departments, who view them as marginal in terms of productivity in comparison with large mechanized farms9 (Schumacher et al. 2009) and, ultimately, also by landowners, who delegate the farming of their land to marginalized migrant populations (Franck 2007). In this context, the aggressive real estate dynamics have generated multiple more or less heightened levels of tension within the market garden areas of the city centre between landowners, within families, among agricultural labourers and towards local leaders and external actors (private investors and public authorities). In the case of Abu Se‘id, in 2009, this tension led to an open (and legal) conflict that directly involved the Governor of Khartoum State. The start of construction work on these real estate projects compels occupants (owners and labourers) to conform their administrative paperwork (registration of inheritance, cadastral records, title deeds and usufruct agreements) with a law that often presents a challenge to customary rights (‘urf) and local (informal) land arrangements or agreements established by families, neighbours and communities to prevent land from being divided up and sold (Arango 2015: 199–200). By ignoring these in-between land situations, the phenomenon of formalization brought about by market dynamics therefore leads to oversimplifying the forms of land use, to denying the ‘historical depth of land tenure contexts’ (Michel et al. 2011) and ultimately to ignoring the social embeddedness of land issues. Since 2009, the defence of property rights has filled the days of these two market garden areas. While an official title and the freehold regime of the land (milik hurr) are powerful arguments used by the inhabitants of these market garden areas in their fight against external actors (Abu Se‘id) or in their search for a compromise with them (Tuti), it is also possible to grasp, through their collective stategies, their ambivalence towards agricultural activities and ‘tradition’ (rural and tribal), and therefore towards the city and the state.

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The Unexpected Urban Farmer: Ambivalent Uses of Agricultural ‘Tradition’ and Tribal Paradigm The collective strategies developed by the inhabitants of these two market garden areas to defend their rights are largely based around what has been termed ‘institutional bricolage’ (Cleaver 2002). In particular, the creation of ad hoc committees drives the negotiations with the public authorities in both Abu Se‘id and Tuti. At the same time, in both cases, popular committees – lajna sha‘abiyya – are playing a more or less contested intermediation role. In Abu Se‘id, where joint and individual legal actions coexist, some members of the lajna sha‘abiyya have participated in both the ad hoc committee and subsequently in the parliamentary commission created out of the dispute. In Tuti, one of the main sticking points in the negotiations on changes on the island has been identifying the optimal level of representativeness of the inhabitants between the three committees operating at a local level: the lajna sha‘abiyya, the lajna al gawmiyya lil-takhtit (the ‘national committee for planning’, which was created in 2011 to deal with this issue, which is not unrelated to the resurgence of past conflict situations)10 (Arango 2015: 306) and a ‘committee of wise men’ (Franck 2015). These three committees would have been overhauled in 2014 at the instigation of the Commissioner of the Khartoum locality due to disagreements among them, resulting in the creation of a single committee, the lajna tatwir Tuti (the ‘Tuti Development Committee’), whose name is reminiscent of another community initiative dating from 1946, the ‘Tuti Development Company’ (Arango 2015: 119). The circulation or simultaneous presence of the same elites within the various local bodies appears in both case studies, in Abu Se‘id and in Tuti. It is worth noting, however, that there has been recourse to traditional authorities (sheikh or ‘omda) as a bulwark against the commodification of land in Abu Se‘id but not in Tuti, demonstrating the disparities in the revitalization of traditional authorities in urban areas.11 In the dispute that broke out in Abu Se‘id in 2009, the tribal ties between the landowners in the Hay al-Mal wa al-A‘mal project, who belong to the Fitahab and Zanakha groups, and the owners of the agricultural lands in the Medinat al Noor project, which affects the Jammu‘iya group, south of the al-Dabasin Bridge, were clearly in play: the length of time the tribes had been settled on this land and the high value of the land involved (Nile land in the heart of the capital that had been registered under full ownership) were both discussed during a joint meeting at the climax of the dispute.12 The gabila came to be both an arena for contestation and community mobilization and a space for promotion of the tribal elite. In the case of Tuti, the leaders

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of the various committees are well-known political, economic and social figures from the island. Here, claims of having long since given up the tribal system seem to be seen as progress, or at least as a sign of access to education. The question of tribal affiliation has similarly been set aside, while paradoxically (or perhaps as a result) the originally dominant community on the island has managed to maintain the image of a homogenous ‘traditional’ community in which only the Mahas would be represented13 (Lobban 1982; Arango 2015). Although both agricultural areas are located in the city centre, the way each of the two communities position themselves socially as urban dwellers differs greatly and has been clearly brought back into play by the transformation of these agricultural spaces. Incongruously, the ‘people of Tuti’ (nas Tuti), who appear to belong to the dominant urban class (Hale 1973), who systematically stress their high level of education and the large proportion of the population of the island who work as civil servants (Mohamed 1989), and who until now seem to have retained a certain amount of collective control over the development of the island, tend to describe themselves as farmers. For some islanders, the stronger ties they have managed to keep up with agricultural activities explain their difference to the people of Abu Se‘id and the different ways the two areas have evolved.14 As far as Abu Se‘id is concerned, the population’s attachment to the land and agricultural work is also advertised in the defence of their interests, but in fact, collective mobilization only intervened after the resale of the land, when construction work had already begun and discord had started to develop within the group in the form of individual legal action, discontent with traditional tribal figures and, at this time, clear displeasure with the compensation the farmers have received.

Conclusion The contribution of an interdisciplinary perspective to a wider analysis of contemporary rural–urban relations was the main motive for comparing these two case studies. By looking at the urban–rural dialectic relation, anthropologists (case 1), who are often constrained by a focus that is limited to the ‘target group’ and that take the whole social group as the unit of analysis (in this case the gabila, a multifunctional institution with an idiom inspired by the notion of common patrilineal filiation), can be inspired to adopt broader insights on spatial, territorial and economic recomposition and consider them in tandem with the dynamics of the urban policies of the centre. At the same time, geographers (case

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2), who focus on spaces and give priority to redefinitions of patterns of land occupation, productive uses and policies with spatial effects, are encouraged to take account of underlying sociocultural patterns as an inevitable perspective and to understand global sociocultural configurations as a meaningful way of comprehending spatial and territorial transformations. The merging of anthropological and geographical approaches15 seems to us to be a fruitful perspective – even beyond the case of Sudan  – for acquiring a global understanding of the current mutations in the urban peripheries of the south and making a fresh analysis of the complex relationships between urban and rural areas. The case studies we have brought together here are two sides of a single phenomenon: the expansion of the dynamics that characterize the city’s urbanization processes, the driving forces behind which are land requalification of rural areas that were previously devoted to agriculture and pastoralism, and the dispossession of groups for whom appropriation and exploitation of their land have a deep historical foundation that is often not based on any kind of written codification. There are some differences between the two cases: the first is in a desert region beyond the city limits in the strict sense and is mostly dedicated to extensive herding, while the second is in the heart of the capital and is mainly devoted to market gardening. They share a common denominator: the actors behind the land-grabbing processes come usually from outside the local area and promote the restructuring of access to land under the pressures of a convergence of interests between a dominant national political class and a global economic elite. Other meaningful analogies between the two cases also need to be mentioned. For instance, there is the fact that the actors responsible for the dispossession disassociate the ‘land’ from the ‘people’ who live and rely on it. It seems that the complexity of these societies, whether they be pastoral–rural or agricultural–urban, for which access to land is embedded within their sociocultural systems and the physical use of land cannot be separated from a universe of shared values and practices, is being deliberately ignored. As a result, property becomes disembodied from its local socio-institutional foundations, and the dominant misconception of any form of production (pastoral or agricultural) undertaken for reasons other than commercialization and profit brings with it the invisibilization of the role played by agriculture and pastoralism within the city or on its margins. On this first invisibilization rests a second, the violation of local ‘land rights’: this is undoubtedly more brutal and simpler to achieve in the case of pastoral populations, who have long been the primary target of marginalization, but it is a phenomenon that now also affects urban populations who used to enjoy privileged ownership

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status, and who had previously defended a space for agricultural production within the city. The common result of these dynamics is the spread of a situation of ‘legal insecurity’ (F. Von Benda-Beckmann and K. Von Benda-Beckmann 2006) that has affected the daily lives and livelihood strategies of these groups for at least fifteen years. In this context, if local actors creatively promote multifaceted strategies, drawing on various resources from their normative and institutional universes as a basis for their territorial and land claims, phenomena of internal stratification and the seeds of future conflicts are a visible consequence of this situation. The recomposition of the urban–rural relationship therefore goes beyond a strictly spatial connotation, taking the form of a real disruption of not only social relationships to land but also relationships between social groups (and within them), with phenomena of statutory reclassification and new power struggles. An approach that questions these processes through the prism of the ‘urbanisation of neoliberalism’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002) and within the framework of ‘rural-urban in-betweenness’ suggests fruitful lines for further investigation. This will not only help to ratify the dismissal of an obsolete dichotomy between the urban and the rural, but also stimulate new theoretical and comparative debates on the local foundations of processes initiated by global capitalism and the potential scenarios for new inequalities, stratifications and conflicts faced in a dramatic fashion by the material and social reproduction of many contemporary communities. Alice Franck is Associate Professor of Geography at Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne University, UMR PRODIG. She was the coordinator of the CEDEJ-Khartoum between 2013 and 2016. Her Ph.D. research was on urban agriculture in Greater Khartoum (Sudan) and was followed by study of two different issues: urban landed dynamics and urban livestock production. Within the recent context of the Sudanese capital city’s urban development, land property conflict is one of the core topics of her research together with issues of socio-spatial and political reconfigurations after the independence of South Sudan, about which she co-edited a special issue of Égypte/Monde arabe (vol. 14, 2016, Sudan, ‘Five Years after the Independence of South Sudan’). Following her perspective on urban livestock production, she recently began a new field of research that questions the places, shapes and stakes of ritual animal death in the urban space through the Muslim ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’: (with J. Gardin and O. Givre) ‘Blood and the City: Animal Representations and Urban (Dis)orders during the “Feast of the Sacrifice” in Istanbul and Khartoum’,

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in Anthropology of the Middle East, volume 11, special issue ‘Man and Animal Relationships in the Middle East’, edited by M. Mashkour and A. Grisoni (2016). Barbara Casciarri holds a Ph.D. in Ethnology and Social Anthropology from the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris (France). Her fieldwork has focused on economic and political anthropology issues among pastoral Arab-speaking groups of Sudan (1989–2016) and among Berber-speaking pastoralists and Arab-speaking farmers in South-Eastern Morocco (2000–6). She was the coordinator of the CEDEJ (Centre d’Etudes et Documentation Economique et Juridique) in Khartoum between 2006 and 2009. Since 2004, she has been Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University Paris 8 (France). She co-edited two special issues of Nomadic Peoples (‘Pastoralists under Pressure in Present-Day Sudan’, 2009, and ‘Water and Pastoralists’, 2013), a special issue of Journal des anthropologues, ‘Anthropologie et eau(x)’ (2013) and two collective volumes on Sudan, Multidimensional Change in Sudan 1989–2011: Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities (Berghahn Books, 2015, with M.A. Assal and F. Ireton) and Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan (Brill, 2018, with M.A. Babiker).

Notes   1. These large agricultural projects have symbolized the country’s potential and ‘modernity’ since the colonial era (Bernal 1997). For a view of the notion of ‘modernity’ in Sudan, see also Seri-Hersch (2012).   2. In a review of the relationship between the state and the nomadic populations of Sudan, Mohamed Salih (1990) noted the persistence of a ‘livestock development’ perspective, relegating pastoral farmers to the simple function of producers for an urban or external market, as opposed to a perspective of ‘pastoral development’, which would take them into account as a subject with social and cultural patterns and needs.   3. For more details, see other articles (Casciarri 2015c and 2018) addressing the issue of the Ahamda’s ‘legal practices’. Our observations are based on fieldwork carried out between 2006 and 2015, as well as on the ethnography we conducted for our thesis (1989–1995), which provides a significant historical overview for these analyses. Further developments in the area of land-grabbing and related conflicts that may have appeared after this fieldwork period have not been taken into account in this chapter.   4. Although ‘tribes’ were not invented by colonization, scholars have highlighted the importance of the intervention of the colonial powers in

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establishing and institutionalizing ‘tribal rights’ and the relative indigenous leaderships, the effect of which was particularly visible in the case of nomads (Grandin 1982; Abu Shouk 1998).   5. The detail of the territorial intrusions beginning in 2001 (and the respective intertribal conflicts) can be found in two articles (Casciarri 2015c and 2018).   6. The popular committee represents the narrowest administrative level. This local state institution embodied control by the central power at a local level rather than popular participation and the decentralization reform that gave rise to it (Révilla 2020).   7. For more details on these conflicts, see Franck (2015). Our observations are based on short-term fieldwork on land-grabbing and related conflicts in these market gardening areas that have occurred on a regular basis (2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016) since our thesis on urban agriculture (2001–5).   8. One example, among others, of a newspaper article that exposed the community’s fears of real estate developments on the island can be found at https://www.bbc.com/news/10121573 (last accessed 25 November 2020).   In 2011, we were finally given access to the Khartoum Land Record Office and had the opportunity to have a look, in the true sense of the word, at the Tuti cadastral register, which testifies to intense land transactions, especially before the construction of the bridge, and demonstrates that these transformations were initiated internally by Tuti (Franck 2015).  9. The large-scale mechanized farms (whether irrigated or not) exemplify the choices that have been made in Sudan in terms of rural development since colonization (Young 2017). In contrast, the smallholdings that characterized Khartoum’s market gardening areas wrongly appear to be less productive. 10. Luisa Arango confirmed that Tuti does not have a permanent institution in charge of resolving collective issues. She identified three historical moments when ad hoc committees were set up to face situations affecting the community: during the revolution of Tuti in 1944, which refers to a fight against a land grab by the colonial authority on Tuti island; to deal with the exceptional Nile floods in 1946 and 1988; and finally in 2011 to negotiate planning for the island with the government (Arango 2015: 306). The ‘Tuti revolution’ against a land-grab by the government is a fundamental event for the community of Tuti that resonates with the current context. 11. Disparities in the reactivation of the Native Administration in Sudan have been noted at various levels: certain rural areas never lost their traditional authority figures, while others, after being reactivated, were introduced into the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in urban areas (including Greater Khartoum) or other rural areas that have been more ‘resistant’ to revitalization (Abu Shouk 1998; Casciarri 2001 and 2009). 12. The meeting on 25 January 2009, which took place at the Nadi al Nujum (Abu Se‘id) just after the start of the construction work on agricultural lands and the organization of a sit-in, was devoted to establishing a collective

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consensus among all landowners affected by expropriation for the two projects. 13. ‘Tuti is characterized by a unique unity, that all Islanders can be considered as a one large family, as they are dependents of the same grandfather. This means that the social structure is very homogeneous’ (Mohamed 1989). The insular nature of Tuti has contributed to this phenomenon, as well as to the construction of the identity of the community, which is descended from a group of Nubian Mahas, whose settlement on the island dates back to the fifteenth century, before the foundation of the city. 14. Interview dated 17/03/2016 with a member of the ‘Tuti Development Committee’. 15. This reflection has been carried out in the context of an interdisciplinary project focusing on the recomposition of ‘in-between’ spaces in Greater Khartoum (‘Métropolisation et espaces “d’entre-deux”: jeux d’acteurs, dynamiques de pouvoirs et reconfigurations identitaires dans l’agglomération du Grand-Khartoum’ CEDEJ/University of Khartoum/Université de Paris 8).

References Abu Shouk, A.I. 1998. ‘From Tribes to Nazirates’, in E. Stiansen and M. Kevane (eds), Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa. Leiden: Brill, pp. 120–44. Ahmed, M.A. 1979. ‘Tribal Elite: A Base for Social Stratification in Sudan’, in S. Diamond (ed.), Towards a Marxist Anthropology. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 321–35. Arango, L. 2015. ‘Ethnographies de la gestion de l’eau à Tuti (Khartoum, Soudan) et Cano de Loro (Carthagène, Colombie): Histoire, localité et politique dans une perspective d’anthropologie urbaine comparée’, Ph.D. dissertation. Paris: University of Paris 8. Asad, T. 1970. The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe. London: Hurst & Co. Assal, M. 2015. ‘Old Timers and Newcomers in Al-Salha: Dynamics of Land Allocation in an Urban Periphery’, in B. Casciarri et al. (ed.), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 15–32. Von Benda-Beckmann, F., and K. Von Benda-Beckmann. 2006. ‘Social Insecurity, Natural Resources and Legal Complexity’, in C. Eberhard and G. Vernicos (eds), La quête anthropologique du droit: Autour de la démarche d’Etienne Le Roy. Paris: Karthala, pp. 221–48. Bahreldin, I., and A.M. Eisa. 2014. ‘Spatial Changes and Urban Dynamics in Tuti Island’, International Conference on the Role of Local Communities in Disaster Mitigation (Tuti as Case Study). Khartoum: International University of Africa.

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Bannaga, S.E. 1996. MAWA, Unauthorised and Squatter Settlements in Khartoum: History, Magnitude and Treatment. Ministry of Engineering Affairs and Habitat Group: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Bernal, V. 1997. ‘Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development: The Gezira Scheme and “Modern” Sudan’, Cultural Anthropology 12(4): 447–79. Brenner, N., and N. Theodore. 2002. ‘Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberism”’, Antipode 34(3): 349–79. Brenner, N. 2012. ‘The Hinterland Urbanized’, Architectural Design 86(4): 118–28. Casciarri, B. 1997. ‘Les pasteurs Ahamda du Soudan central: Usages de la parenté arabe dans l’histoire d’une recomposition territoriale, identitaire et politique’, PhD dissertation, Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. _______. 2001. ‘“La gabila est devenue plus grande”: Permanences et évolutions du “modèle tribal” chez les pasteurs Ahamda du Soudan arabe’, in P. Bonte, E. Conte and P. Dresch (eds), Émirs et presidents: Figures de la parenté et du politique dans le monde arabe. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, pp. 273–99. ______. 2009a. ‘Hommes, troupeaux et capitaux: le phénomène tribal au Soudan à l’heure de la globalisation’, La tribu à l’heure de la globalisation, Special issue, Etudes Rurales 184: 47–64. ______. 2009b. ‘Between Market Logics and Communal Practices: Pastoral Nomad Groups and Globalization in Contemporary Sudan’, Nomadic Peoples 13(1): 69–91. ______. 2015a. ‘De l’altérité et invisibilité des groupes pastoraux au Soudan: Repenser les études soudanaises en partant de leurs marges mobiles’, Revue canadienne des études africaines 49(1): 147–73. ______. 2015b. ‘Ethnographie des pratiques légales autour de la revendication des droits fonciers chez les groupes pastoraux de l’Etat de Khartoum’, in B. Dupret and Y. Ben Hounet (eds), L’année du Maghreb, Dossier XIII: Pratiques du droit et propriétés au Maghreb, pp. 39–60. ______. 2015c. ‘Water Management among Sudanese Pastoralists: End of the Commons or Silent Resistance to Commoditization?’, in B. Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 140–60. ______. 2018. ‘Claiming Tribal Land Rights in a Global Context. Institutional Bricolage and Definitions of ‘Urf (Customary Law) among Pastoralists in Khartoum State’, in B. Casciarri, M.A. Babiker (eds), Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan: Lands, Courts and the Plurality of Practices. Leiden: Brill: 66–84. Casciarri, B., and M.A. Ahmed (eds). 2009. ‘Pastoralist under Pressure in Present-Day Sudan’, Special Issue of Nomadic Peoples 13: 1. Casciarri, B., M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds). 2015. Multidimensional Change in the Sudan 1989–2011: Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford/ New York: Berghahn.

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Casciarri, B., and A.M. Babiker (eds). 2018. Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan: Land, Courts and the Plurality of Practices. Leiden Studies in Islam and Society, Leiden: Brill. Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). 2009. National Census 2008. Chaléard, J.-L. 1996. Temps des villes, temps des vivres: L’essor du vivrier marchand en Côte d’Ivoire. Paris: Karthala. Chaléard, J.L., and A. Dubresson. 1999. Villes et campagnes dans les pays du Sud: Géographie des relations. Paris: Karthala. Choplin, A., and A. Franck. 2010. ‘A Glimpse of Dubai in Khartoum and Nouakchott, Prestige Urban Projects on the Margins of the Arab World’, Built Environment 36: 64–77. Cleaver, F. 2002. ‘Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness of Natural Resource Management’, The European Journal of Development Research 14(2): 11–30. De Geoffroy, A. 2009. ‘Aux marges de la ville, les populations déplacées par la force: enjeux, acteurs et politiques: Etude comparée des cas de Bogota (Colombie) et de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Ph.D. dissertation. Paris: University of Paris 8. ______. 2015. ‘What Place in Khartoum for the Displaced? Between State Regulation and Individual Strategies’, in B. Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 201–25. Denis, E. 2005. ‘Khartoum: ville refuge et métropole rentière’, in S.-A. Souiah (ed.), La ville arabe en movement. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 87–127. Dubois, C. 1991. ‘Morphologies de Khartoum: conflits d’identité (1820-début de XXème siècle)’, in H. Bleuchot, C. Delmet and D. Hopwood (eds), Soudan: histoire, identités, idéologie. Oxford: Ithaca Press, pp. 13–33. Dupont, V. (ed.). 2005. Peri-Urban Dynamics: Population Habitat and Environment on the Peripheries of Large Indian Metropolises: A Review of Concepts and General Issues. CSH Occasional Paper 14. New Delhi: Centre de Sciences Humaines. Elhadary, Y. and H. Abdelatti. 2016.’The Implication of Land Grabbing on Pastoral Economy in Sudan’, World Environment 6(2): 25–33. Franck, A. 2007. ‘Produire pour la ville, produire la ville: étude de l’intégration des activités agricoles et des agriculteurs dans l’agglomération du grand Khartoum’, Ph.D. dissertation. Paris: University of Paris X Nanterre. ______. 2015. ‘Urban Agriculture Facing the Land Pressure in Greater Khartoum: The Case of New Real Estate Projects in Tuti and Abu Se’ïd’, in B. Casciarri et al. (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989– 2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn: 33–51. Gertel, J., R. Rottenburg and S. Calkins (eds). 2014. Disrupting Territories: Land, Commodification and Conflict in Rural Sudan. London: James Currey. Glesener, J.E., and S. Kmec. 2010. ‘Introduction’, Articulo-Journal of Urban Research, special issue 3 ‘Revisiting Urbanity and Rurality’, 1–4.

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Grandin, N. 1982. Le Soudan nilotique et l’administration britannique (1898– 1956). Leiden: Brill. Hale, S. 1973. ‘Nubians in the Urban Milieu: Greater Khartoum’, Sudan Notes and Records 54: 57–65. Hamid, G., and I. Bahreldin. 2013. ‘Environmental Sustainability in Greater Khartoum between Natural Assets and Human Interventions’, International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development 4(2): 100–10. Harvey, D. 2008. Géographie de la domination. Paris: Les prairies ordinaires. Khazanov, A. 1984. Nomads and the Outside World. Cambridge University Press. Lipton, M. 1976. Why Poor People Stay Poor? Urban Bias in World Development. London: Temple Smith. Lobban, R. 1982. ‘Class and Kinship in Sudanese Urban Communities’, Journal of the International African Institute 52(2): 51–76. Mohamed, S.E.M. 1989. ‘Community Development Project in Tuti Island: The Case of Tuti Development Company’, master’s thesis. Khartoum: University of Khartoum. Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. MEFIT. 2009. Khartoum Structure Plan 2009–2033, three volumes. Michel, A. et al. 2011. ‘Introduction: les enjeux du foncier urbain pour le développement. Nouveaux marchés et redistribution des responsabilités’, Revue Tiers Monde 206(2): 7–20. Mohamed Salih, M.A.1984. Pastoralists in Town: Some Recent Trends in Pastoralism in the North West of Omdurman District. London: Overseas Development Institute. ______. 1990. ‘Government Policy and Pastoral Development in the Sudan’, Nomadic Peoples 25–26: 65–78. Morange, M., and S. Fol. 2014. ‘Ville, néolibéralisation et justice’, Justice spatiale 6: 1–31. Saeed, A. 1982. ‘The State and Socio-economic Transformation in the Sudan: The Case of Social Conflict in South-Western Kordofan’, Ph.D. dissertation. University of Connecticut. Salzman, P.C. 1996. ‘Introduction: Varieties of Pastoral Societies’, in U. Fabietti and P.C. Salzman (eds), The Anthropology of Tribal and Peasant Pastoral Societies: The Dialectics of Social Cohesion and Fragmentation. Como: Ibis, pp. 21–37. Seri-Hersh, I. 2012. ‘La modernité dans l’historiographie du Soudan: Usages convenus d’un concept nébuleux?’, Cahier d’études africaines 208(4): ­ 905–35. Schumacher, J. et al. 2009. ‘Spatial Expansion and Water Requirements of Urban Agriculture in Khartoum, Sudan’, Journal of Arid Environments 73: 399–406.

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Refaat, M.H. 2015. ‘Urban Architecture for Sustaining Local Identity of Cultural Landscapes: A Study of Water Front Development in Khartoum, Sudan’, International Journal of Development and Sustainability 4(1): 29–59. Révilla, L. 2020. ‘Les Kayzan au quartier: milieu partisan et trajectoires de distinction dans les quartiers populaires du Grand Khartoum’, Politique Africaine 158(4): 33–55. Young, A. 2017. Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development and State Formation. African Studies Series. Cambridge University Press.

[•  Chapter 2  •]

Governing In-Betweenness Understanding Village Organization’s Institutional Set-Up in Rural Khartoum

SALMA MOHAMED ABDALMUNIM ABDALLA

P

‘

Introduction: Peri-urban as Expression of In-Between Urban and Rural

eri-urban’ zones are widely recognized as areas where urban meets rural, or areas in-between urban and rural. Peri-urbanization therefore especially occurs in regions where formerly rural areas and suburbs are absorbed by urban sprawl.1 Generally, the role and function of these in-between landscapes with both rural and urban characteristics seem to be increasing. Scholars such as Simon, Mcgregor and Thompson (2006) have conceptualized the peri-urban interface as zones that are ‘characterized by strong urban influences, easy access to markets, services and other inputs, ready supplies of labour, but relative shortages of land and risks from pollution and urban growth’ (ibid.:10). Scholars have written that in view of the two-way influences and interactions, peri-urban zones may be considered to be both in-between spaces and part of the adjacent rural area for the purposes of a holistic approach to rural research and development, a concept that has been developed mainly by geographers since the late 1970s to take into account the transformations that have affected both cities and rural spaces. Although some scholars and practitioners have paid attention to the experience of in-between spaces in Sudan, an empirical and theoretical gap on this issue still exists. This study therefore analyses a case of rural– urban in-betweenness in Greater Khartoum. In particular, it outlines the policies typically adopted by the Sudanese government to regulate in-between interfaces in Khartoum, including its resettlement and integration policies and the incorporation of peri-urban (formerly rural)

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villages within the physical block of Greater Khartoum. A special administrative entity named the ‘Village Organization Unit’, established for this purpose as part of the Ministry of Physical Planning in Khartoum State, is analysed following an outline of the background and development of rural–urban in-betweenness in Khartoum. The chapter questions the creation of this special department and asks how in-betweenness has been perceived by the government. It seems, in fact, that for government officials in-between spaces have been viewed as a burden on the city’s infrastructure, and policies have been put into place to correct the problems caused by these areas. I present a case study from the village of Siraw, which is located in the Southern Suburbs Administrative Unit of Omdurman Locality. The case of Siraw represents a significant example of an in-between space, as it is situated on the outskirts of Khartoum’s urban space, and Siraw is considered to be a former rural area. This case study therefore reveals the way in which the government has perceived and administered these in-between areas. This chapter is based on qualitative field research conducted in Khartoum, Sudan between 2010 and 2012. A triangulation approach was applied in the course of data collection, in which I utilized a number of data collection techniques including sixty in-depth interviews, informal discussions, focus group discussions, observation, mapping, media items such as newspaper articles and television and a content analysis of policy papers from the relevant government institutions. In Siraw, which is the main case study for this chapter, I used participatory and anthropological methods to reveal the lived experiences, meanings and perceptions of the community regarding their socio-economic realities across age, class, ethnicity, marital status and other intersectional socio-economic issues.

Khartoum Rural–Urban In-Betweenness: Practices and Conception Over the past few decades, following waves of internal migration and a series of urban planning policies and practices, Greater Khartoum has expanded geographically towards its previously rural hinterlands, which has placed enormous pressure on the villages located on its outskirts. It is estimated that in 2008, the rural population living in Khartoum’s villages represented 10 per cent of the total population and 15 per cent of Khartoum’s urban poor (Pantuliano et al. 2011). Seasonal migration of labourers to Khartoum also brought many thousands of people into the capital, and the city’s population growth has also been driven by internal

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displacement since the 1970s. A series of natural disasters, including a severe drought and famine in the Sahel-Saharan area of the country in the 1970s and early 1980s, resulted in the arrival of thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), including as many as 120,000 from Darfur, Kordofan and South Sudan in the mid-1980s (Pantuliano et al. 2011: 4–6). According to the United Nations definition, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border. (UNHCR)

In the context of Sudan, this displacement has occurred as a result of both armed conflict and natural disasters. However, the two groups who migrated to urban centres – IDPs as a result of wars and IDPs as a result of natural disasters – have undergone different sets of integration processes in their host communities. On the one hand, the authorities in Khartoum have treated unplanned settlements of conflict-driven IDPs as illegal squatter settlements, and in response, the government has initiated and implemented special interventions to regulate their presence in the city (Bannaga 1996; S.M. Abdalla 2014). Natural disaster-driven IDPs, on the other hand, such as the Hawawir and the Kababish nomadic groups, who migrated to Omdurman as a result of the drought that struck their homelands in Kordofan in the 1970s and 1980s, have been hosted by and integrated into the villages around Khartoum (S.M.A. Abdalla 2018: 102). Terms such as ‘economic migrants’ or ‘poor migrants’ are widely used as labels to place migrants arriving in Khartoum into a single large box of vulnerable and helpless groups. These groups are often described as lacking the necessary skills for the urban context and having low literacy rates (M.A. Abdalla 2008: 46); however, to paint the entire community of urban migrants with the same brush neglects significant aspects of these communities who inhabit in-between spaces, because they have diverse backgrounds, varied aspirations and various capacities. Since the 1970s, rural–urban relationships in Sudan have attracted academic attention, and various attempts have been made to arrive at a clear-cut definition of what constitutes ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ in the Sudanese context. For instance, El-Bushra (1973: 68) has argued that

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the administrative functions offered by a settlement and the services provided to it are among the major factors for determining whether a given place is urban or rural. In El-Bushra’s view, the provision of social services is largely associated with an urban lifestyle in Sudan and is used as an indicator of ‘rurality’ or ‘urbanity’. However, by perceiving rural and urban areas in a static manner, this approach ignored the fluidity of emerging in-between spaces where urban areas are expanding to rural peripheries and rural populations are transforming their villages into urban areas. Munzoul Assal’s study of dynamics within Khartoum’s urban periphery has demonstrated that rapid transformations are taking place in its urban suburbs. Against the backdrop of conflicts over resources in Sudan, this study shows that the characteristics of the processes of change from village to neighbourhood include population growth, land-grabbing and the dual nature of urban planning (Assal 2015). In debates around urbanization in Khartoum, rural villages have generally been under-researched, with the exception of Tuti Island (Hills 1965; Lobban 1971; Davies 1994; Arango 2015). Urbanization  – that is, population growth, social change and state policies  – has had an undoubted effect on these villages in both a material and cultural sense. In particular, reception of these waves of migrants has placed enormous pressure on the poor existing services. The host communities become minorities in their own land and are subject to changing power relations, threats of land confiscation and burdensome government policies. Nisrin Elamin’s study of a successful resistance to a land-grabbing deal between the government and a Saudi businessman relating to traditional land in peri-urban Um Doum in Central Sudan has revealed the expansion of state control over land ownership for the benefit of the elites (Elamin 2018). The following section introduces the case study of the village of Siraw, including its socio-historical background.

Case Study: The Context of Siraw on the Fringes of a Growing Capital Located on the western bank of the White Nile, the village of Siraw is part of the Southern Suburbs Administrative Unit (Al-Rif Al-Janubi) in Omdurman Locality (Mahaliya). The village lies on the edge of the city, in the transitional zone between rural and urban Western Khartoum. Figures from Omdurman Locality and the Local Popular Committee show that Siraw has approximately 8,080 inhabitants (Central Bureau of Statistics 2009).

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The first group that inhabited the area, at least four generations ago, was the Jammu‘iya tribe (gabila), which traces its history in the area back to the arrival of the Mahdi in Khartoum in 1884. For many years, the Jammu‘iya community’s economic activities relied on seasonal vege­table cultivation near the Nile and transport and trade in the Omdurman market, as in the words of an elderly Jammu‘iya woman: This area was originally inhabited by the Fitihab, a branch of Jammu‘iya. There were only a few families. But now it has expanded, and the houses have increased tremendously. Agriculture on the banks of the Nile was our main activity, but now there are more employment options. It was a small village, and we were almost isolated. Our fathers paid taxes to the government. But now the population has increased, and many people have come here from different tribes. We don’t understand them. (Haja Zeinab, personal interview, Siraw village, 13 March 2010)

The Jammu‘iya group occupied the West Bank of the White Nile for some 30 or 40 miles south of Omdurman and as far north as Qoz Nefisa, near the Sabluka Cataract (MacMichael 2011). One indicator used by the Jammu‘iya group to confirm their autochthonous rights and status as ‘being original’ in the area is their inherited access to land in Siraw and their exclusive ownership of it (chapter 1 of this book). In the context of the ambiguity of ‘collective-tribal’ lands in colonial and postcolonial Sudan, the form of land tenure in Siraw, as in the other villages surrounding Khartoum city, is freehold ownership or the customary ownership of land tenure by the native inhabitants. Customary land tenure ‘is acknowledged in Khartoum, where land rights are ostensibly controlled and allocated according to traditional practice or such rights due to precedence or development’ (Bannaga 2012: 3). Because the Jammu‘iya were recognized as the indigenous tribe in the village, they enjoyed a high social status within the social stratification of the Siraw community and inherited the title of Chief. A Chief was a native leader under the native administrative system that goes back to British colonial rule in Sudan (1896–1955). The British rulers adopted indirect governance as their mode of administration and used the native administration system to ease the burden of governance on them and to manage Sudan’s complex society. Under this system, tribal leaders, ‘omda, village sheikhs and chiefs were given local administrative and judicial authority, especially to collect local taxes and settle disputes. In villages like Siraw, this native system has survived to the present day despite the abolition of the native system by postcolonial regimes. Al-Mak, the tribal chiefs, and sheikhs such as Mak al-Jammu‘iya still play a significant role at a

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local level, especially in settling land disputes. In recent years, the Mak institution has begun to collaborate with the state structure, especially popular committees at a local level. In the 1980s, other groups such as the Kababish2 and Hawawir3 nomads gradually migrated to Siraw from Western Sudan because of the drought that struck the Kordofan region in the 1970s and 1980s (National Population Council 2007). In an interview with a Jammu‘iya community leader in Siraw, he explained how they hosted the Hawawir and Kababish groups: Initially, Siraw was a village composed of only a few Jammu‘iya families. In the 1980s, Hawawir and Kababish took refuge here because a drought struck their homelands. We accommodated them. We gave them land for free. I would challenge them if they told you we took a single penny from them. They paid nothing. In fact, we thought when the drought was over and they decided to go back it would be a disgrace if they arrived home and told their people we sold them our land. They stayed with us. (Haj Mahmoud Abbas, personal interview, Siraw Village, 3 March 2010)

The two groups took refuge in Siraw in particular because of earlier intermarriages with the Jammu‘iya that had begun in the 1960s. A brother of the Jammu‘iya Chief, Babiker Abbas Mansour, had lived in Kordofan and married into the Kababish. When the drought struck Kordofan, the Chief’s brother returned home, and his in-laws followed him to Siraw. They came in waves, and he hosted them. Eventually, they settled in Siraw, as reported in the following excerpt from an interview with a 65-year-old Kababish member in Siraw: The Jammu‘iya are our in-laws. We came to Siraw in waves, not as a single group. Some of us arrived in the 1970s, while the majority arrived in around 1984/1985. We came as a result of the drought. We became one unit with them. The village only had a few houses. At first, we used to come seasonally for agricultural work but then we settled here. We have a proverb that says ‘home is where you make your living, not where you are cherished.’ (Ali Balla, personal interview, 5 February 2011)

The Jammu‘iya have donated a considerable part of their land to relatives who came from Kordofan seeking protection and refuge from the drought that had struck their home areas. These donations are explained by the attributes of generosity and hospitality that are a part of the

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cultural make-up of the Jammu‘iya tribe. In addition, the area was still considered to be a long way from the city and had not yet attracted many buyers. Some believe that the Jammu‘iya, the indigenous rural inhabitants, welcomed the Hawawiri and Kababish for pragmatic reasons, and that the Jammu‘iya were seeking alliances with groups like the Kababish and the Hawawir in order to populate Siraw and increase the labour force for agricultural work. Also, the land was not as highly valued as it is today, as a 40-year-old Hawawir from Siraw recounts: This area here expanded from a few houses belonging to Jammu‘iya. In the 1970s, we started to populate the area; the services improved and the population became a mixture of Jammu‘iya, Kababish and Hawawir. After the Omdurman Islamic University campus was built [on the northern border of the village], the area developed more, and people started to move to the area from Omdurman and Khartoum. The Jammu‘iya only began to sell their land in the 1990s. The largest number of people moved to the village in around 1995 from all kinds of ethnic groups. Many people who moved in from other states enticed their relatives to come and buy land in Siraw. There was an ambition to change the place into a city. (Hawari, personal interview, 28 January 2011)

According to the people of Siraw, during the 1980s and 1990s the village still maintained a rural way of life, as was mentioned to me by both the villagers from Siraw and the authorities in Khartoum and Omdurman. A 40-year-old male member of staff at the Al-Rif Al-Janubi Administrative Unit, which oversees Siraw, describes the situation in the following excerpt: Earlier, life in Siraw used to be simple and proceeded at a slow pace. Now, the situation has changed. Social relations have also changed in the area. Al-Mak used to be the only leader and everyone was loyal to him. This is no longer the case now: popular committees are active and they represent the people instead. Siraw might still look like a village, but its people are active, and they are seeking to change their situation to achieve a city lifestyle. (Magdi, personal interview, Salha, 7 January 2010)

In this interview, the employee of the Salha Administrative Unit describes the shift from what he views as the ‘simple life’ to a city lifestyle. For the government officer, a simple lifestyle is a feature of the rural way of life. It includes the cultivation of vegetables along the banks of the White

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Nile and the practice of rearing livestock, which have remained the main economic activity. Both informants in Siraw and officials in the relevant government circles confirmed that the area was relatively remote from the urban centre and suffered from a lack of social services. For them, the area’s rural orientation was reflected in the inhabitants’ employment in agriculture and their lack of access to social services from the centre of Khartoum, such as electricity and water. Increasingly, especially during the 1990s and 2000s, Siraw, which had once been seen as a peripheral area of Greater Khartoum, attracted different groups from various tribes from all over Sudan. Some of the newcomers I interviewed were originally from Eastern Sudan, River Nile State, Darfur, Blue Nile State, Jezira State and the Northern State. This demographic transformation in the village is not exceptional and is common to the entire capital. It is caused by the high rates of rural–urban migration as a result of the disastrous droughts that have impacted Sudanese people’s mobility over the past four decades. Greater Khartoum has historically been the main recipient of rural–urban migration (Al-Awad and Almustafa 1979: 134–38). Usually, these migrant groups come to Greater Khartoum voluntarily or involuntarily, due to push and pull factors. Some come to the city looking for opportunities in education, training and jobs, while others come to raise their standard of living and gain access to social services (Badi 2009: 13). Besides the rural–urban migration towards Khartoum, urban–urban migration trends can also be clearly seen. People move to Khartoum from other urban centres all over Sudan in search of better housing opportunities. These individuals usually migrate to Khartoum and settle in the peripheral areas on the borders of the city such as Siraw because land prices and settlement are more affordable compared with the centre. The population growth is also linked to infrastructure development, such as the completion of al-Dabasin bridge (south of Siraw) and the new airport project (to be located 40 kilometres from the centre of Khartoum), making the southern part of Omdurman closer to the centre. It was for these reasons that many newcomers settled in Siraw village at the end of 1990 and during the 2000s. The map4 below illustrates the massive immigration and population growth in Siraw from a small village inhabited by the Jammu‘iya, Kababish and Hawawir in 1984. The map shows that there was a slight population increase between 1984 and 1991. Ten years later, in 2001, the population of Siraw doubled as newcomers from different tribes started to multiply in the area. The extensive population growth of the village therefore occurred between the years 2001 and 2010, when a large number of people settled in the area.

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Figure 2.1  Map of the development of Siraw between 1984 and 2010. Draft, Salma Abdalla; design, Michael Wegner.

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In this kind of fast-growing settlement in-between rural and urban areas, there is usually a huge gap between the infrastructure provided by the government and the growing population’s demands for services, so the government attempts to plan the area in order to make services accessible. This makes a suburb such as Siraw a place of dynamic interaction between the population and physical planning officers. It is worth mentioning that I often encountered this classification by the people of Siraw during my fieldwork, where they identified their area as in-between rural and urban. However, this in-betweenness is not static, as they see the village as evolving into a city. On other occasions, when it benefits them, the people of Siraw consciously claim the status of a village. One example of this is when the Ministry began to plan the area and categorize it as a first-class area (urban). The people of Siraw resisted this classification because it would have led to high fees during the land registration. In the following section, I will explain how the state responded to this situation and what type of policies were put in place and what this reveals about the state’s attitude towards in-between spaces in Khartoum.

In-Between Spaces: The Institutional Village Organization Set-Up The villages around Greater Khartoum that are located in-between rural and urban areas existed before the expansion of the capital’s urban development towards them. Villages such as Karrari, Garri and Soba Sharig and the Jammu‘iya villages in Southern Omdurman are associated with political and historical events that are themselves tied to the history of the city. These villages expanded gradually without any interference from state institutions, which resulted in unplanned neighbourhoods, which then resulted in a lack of social services. State officials often justify the lack of services such as water and electricity in these areas as being due to a lack of ‘open streets’. To their minds, without urban physical planning, it is difficult for the government to expand its services. It is this narrative of urban planning before the provision of social services that made physical planning a priority for the local committees responsible for the provision of services in areas such as Siraw. With the expansion of the city towards its hinterland and the development of squatter settlements around it, the state decided that it was necessary to organize and regulate these villages, and the Village Organization Administration (Idarat Tanzim al-Qura) was founded to

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this end (Alhadi 2006: 2). I will now offer a detailed explanation of how this administration was established. According to a 70-year-old retired urban planner, during the Nimeiry regime (1969–1985) all the villages around Khartoum were considered to be squatter settlements (sakan al-a‘shawaiy). As a result, the Squatter Settlements Alleviation Administration was established as part of the Ministry of Planning. The term ‘alleviation’ was soon perceived to be inappropriate because the villages had existed long before, like the Jammu‘iya communities in Southern Omdurman. The department was therefore renamed the Squatter Settlements Treatment Administration because the former term ‘alleviation’ would have meant demolishing all the illegal settlements in these villages. The new term ‘treatment’ was intended to acknowledge the old village structure, and instead of demolition, physical planning solutions, such as the expansion of streets without affecting the inhabitants of the villages, were introduced. It later emerged that there were unplanned settlements on the outskirts of the villages, and so the administration was split into two divisions: the first dealt with illegal squatter settlements and the second was for village organization (Idarat Tanzim al-Qura). The Village Organization Administration (Idarat Tanzim al-Qura) was therefore established in 1972 with the objective of merging the villages around Khartoum into the urban fabric. In 1986, the unit became part of the Land Management Administration. It was seen as one of the land distribution departments and was merged into the Urban Development Administration as part of the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities (MPPPU). In 2001, the Village Administration merged with the Random Settlement Administration.5 According to the administration’s definition, a village is a ‘group of people belonging to one race (‘irq). They share livelihoods – as farmers or pastoralists  – and live in an identified geographical space’ (Alhadi 2006: 1). In my conversations with officials at the Village Organization Administration, they explained that the idea of connecting the Khartoum region’s surrounding villages with the urban setting had already come up when Sudan was granted political independence in 1956. Consequently, Village Development Committees (Lijan Tatwir al-Qura) were formed and attached to the Ministry of Local Government (Wizarat al-hakomat al-mahaliya). The Village Organization Administration was established in 1972 as the result of a ministerial act by the Ministry of Settlement and Public Works (Wizarat al-Iskan wa al-Ashghal al-‘amah). The main task of this administration was to ‘fuse the rural communities with the urban fabrics of cities’ (Alhadi 2006: 2).

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The administration was implemented at the beginning of the 1990s in the form of different hubs and a series of technical processes, in collaboration with related departments such as the Civil Engineering, Planning and Registration Administration, and incorporated a number of different activities. First, cadastral surveys were carried out in villages by the Administration in order to build a comprehensive register of targeted hiyazat6 properties, identifying details of ownership, the type of tenure and the precise location and establishment of the villages based on 1983 aerial photographs.7 Second, social surveys of the individuals and groups who lived in the targeted villages were conducted. Data from these surveys were recorded in order to identify the native inhabitants’ land ownership in the village. The Village Organization survey forms were then distributed and filled in by the inhabitants and certified by the Popular Committee (Lajna Sha،abiyya) and the administrative units. After this, individual interviews were conducted with the owners claiming hiyazat. Following the Tanzim Al-Qura ministerial act of 2001, a decision of entitlement (or not) was taken. Thereafter, physical planning of the village was implemented based on the cadastral surveys that had been carried out. Streets were enlarged and services were provided. Approved maps were then created, and any clashes with them were removed. Appeal committees receive inhabitants’ appeals against these decisions, and appeals can also go to the High Court in order to obtain justice.8 In practice, however, when the Village Organization Administration translates these ideas into action, it faces various challenges of the kind one official relates in this interview excerpt: Sometimes, politics interfere with development and State ideology affects [the work]. This has a [negative] effect on the economic and physical development aspects . . . The map of the Salha area (including Siraw Village) was redesigned five times because they made mistakes every time and people built wrong and they had to change it again.9

During implementation at a local level, officials in the Settlement Unit at the Ministry of Physical Planning face various constraints, such as the rejection of urban planning implementation from the people’s side. Interference from law enforcement institutions and the lengthy land registration bureaucratic procedures are seen as being among the challenges facing the implementation of planning missions. The staff at the Ministry believe that it is especially the long-time residents in these villages, such as the Jammu‘iya, who resist any kind of change and planning proposed by the state. Government officials believe that the native

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leaders (sheikhs) in these villages oppose these changes because they fear they will lose a significant amount of power and control when these villages are finally planned, and in some cases considerable sources of income. It is anticipated that land registration will automatically grant owners independence from popular committees and ensure access to social services. The practitioners at the Ministry of Planning expressed their discontent with the media’s way of explaining and simplifying the procedures: as they describe it, ‘there is a lack of information’. Another aspect that was observed following close contact with the staff at the Ministry is the generational conflict. This is more evident between old urban planners with decades of field experience with ­villagers on the one hand, and new engineers with their emphasis on technical and engineering rationales on the other – a situation that has resulted in tension, mistrust and sometimes even conflict. A 65-year-old urban planner expressed his dissatisfaction with a recently graduated female engineer’s work in the following excerpt: [They make] mistakes in the [village] treatment because these villages are Tanzim Qura, not planning. You see [he points at a map in front of him], this is not good work. No, it is [village] treatment, not planning. These villages are sick . . . they are sick, they need an antibacterial injection and in some cases tablets to be treated. OK. However, she [the recently graduated engineer] went there and she cannot do it, but she puts pressure on the people. Then she puts in more services than are needed: why?10

The metaphor used by the senior urban planner when he described the old villages around Khartoum in terms of a ‘sick body’ in need of antibacterial treatment is very revealing. His attitude demonstrates the perspective of state institutions when they view peri-urban villages as marginal areas and establish an implicit dichotomy with ‘healthy’ urban areas. The quote also demonstrates frustration with the perspective of the new generation of engineers, who rely on pure engineering practices, computer programmes and modern technology without considering people’s interest on the ground.

Conclusion This chapter has illustrated that urbanization and internal migration in Sudan have contributed to the construction of in-between spaces on the margins of Greater Khartoum. These in-between spaces are

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characterized by a form of socio-economic in-betweenness in which rural and urban lifestyles seem to coexist side by side. A typical aspect of these in-between areas is the fact that they are neither in the city nor in rural areas exerts a great deal of pressure on existing social services and the population’s efforts to provide them. Active members of the community organize themselves and mobilize their social and political networks in order to provide social services in the area. Conflicts over land ownership and belonging are also typical of these areas. Physical planning processes bring the community into direct contact with the state – a process that involves both negotiations and confrontations. With population growth and development of the village, the community came into contact with the government, which emerged as an important actor in the area that had to be negotiated with. From the perspective of the government, these in-between areas that are seen as villages or random settlements need to be ‘organized’ so that services can be provided and they can be controlled. A special government department has been created to regulate these in-between areas. The officials in these units are sensitized to the older residents, who have historically inhabited these areas and are reluctant to transform them. In contrast, the newcomers have proved to be more accessible to the state officials, as they share the same vision of merging these in-between areas into the urban fabric. In-betweenness was also observed within the government unit that is responsible for regulating the villages around Greater Khartoum. This chapter has demonstrated that the Village Organization Administration has witnessed several structural changes, including the merger and spinoff of units and changes in the Ministries it reports to. The process of regulating the in-between spaces includes both social and technical processes. The social processes involve practices such as identifying the types of groups that inhabit these spaces in order to design a plan that suits them. The technical processes include a land ownership resolution process that utilizes both legal and engineering expertise. However, implementation of these plans is far from being straightforward, and it is often faced with lengthy bureaucratic procedures, as well as political interference. The in-between nature of these areas has resulted in contradictions between political and practical interests. When the policies are implemented, government interventions have often been contested and resisted by local inhabitants, who seem to be disadvantaged by these processes. A generational conflict has also surfaced between officials from the older generation and their younger colleagues.

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Salma Mohamed Abdalmunim Abdalla is a political scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between religion and politics, the political economy and development. She holds a position as a postdoctoral researcher within the economy of violent religious activism at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric) at the Norwegian University of Life Science (NMBU). Before joining NMBU, she won a postdoctoral grant from the Volkswagen Foundation Cooperative Research Projects in Social Sciences in SubSaharan Africa. She holds a PhD degree in Political Geography from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Khartoum, Sudan. Salma has provided policy advice to Life and Peace Institute in the Horn of Africa, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University and to the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Germany.

Notes  1. Peri-urban is a concept that is used interchangeably with rural–urban fringes and urban transition zones.   2. For more details on the Kababish group, see Asad (1970) and MacMichael (2011).   3. For more details on the Hawawir group, see MacMichael (2011).   4. The data used to produce this map include multiple aerial photographs collected from the archives of the Ministry of Physical Planning.   5. Kamal Salih, personal interview, retired urban planner at the Ministry of Urban Planning, Khartoum, 23 January 2011.  6. Hiyazat (sing. hiyaza) possession is the control a person intentionally ­exercises over a thing with the aim of possessing it.   7. The year 1983 was used as the reference year by the administration officials because after that many changes occurred in the structure of the land and the settlements because of the 1984 drought.   8. Personal interviews: Kamal Salih, 23/01/2011; Abdalla Khaeiry, 31/01/2011; Eng. Najmaldin Alhadi, 02/02/2011.   9. Interview, Kamal Salih, Khartoum, January 2011. 10. Interview, Kamal Salih, Khartoum, January 2011.

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References Abdalla, M.A. 2008. Poverty and Inequality in Urban Sudan: Policies, Institutions and Governance. Leiden: African Studies Centre. Abdalla, S.M. 2014. ‘Contradicting State Ideology in Sudan. Christian-Muslim Relations among the Internally Displaced Persons in Khartoum. Case of Mandela and Wad Al-Bashīr Camps’, in J.A. Chesworth and F. Kogelman (eds), Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses. Leiden: Brill, pp. 49–82. Abdalla, S.M.A. 2018. Charity Drops: Water Provision and the Politics of the Zakat Chamber in Khartoum, Sudan. Berlin: LIT Verlag. Al-Awad, J., and M.Y. Almustafa. 1979. Immigration and Internal Migration in Sudan. Khartoum: University of Khartoum Press. Alhadi, N. 2006. Village Organisation and Random Settlements Legalisation. Khartoum: State Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities. Arango, L. 2015. ‘Some Theoretical Models, Methods and Concepts of Urban Anthropology in Sudan: The Case of Tuti Island Revisited’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 49(1): 197–213. Asad, T. 1970. The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe. London: C. Hurst. Assal, M. 2015. ‘Old-Timers and Newcomers in Al-Salha: Dynamics of Land Allocation in an Urban Periphery’, in B. Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 15–33. Badi, S. 2009. Migration and Population Dynamics in Sudan. Khartoum: Sudan currency print company. Bannaga, S.E. 1996. MAWA, Unauthorised and Squatter Settlements in Khartoum. Zurich: Ministry of Engineering Affairs, in collaboration with Habitat Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. ______. 2012. ‘Khartoum Experience in Land Management’. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 48th Annual World Congress of the International Society of City and Regional Olanners ISOCARP, Perm, Russia. Central Bureau of Statistics. 2009. Fifth Population Census 2008. Retrieved 6 June 2012 from www.cbs.gov.sd. Davies, H.R.J. 1994. ‘A Rural “Eye” in the Capital: Tuti Island, Khartoum, Sudan’, GeoJournal 33(4): 387–92. doi:10.1007/BF00806421. Elamin, N. 2018. ‘“The Miskeet Tree Doesn’t Belong Here”: Shifting Land Values and the Politics of Belonging in Um Doum, Central Sudan’, Critical African Studies 10(1): 67–88. El-Bushra, E. 1973. ‘The Definition of a Town in the Sudan’, Sudan Notes and Records 54: 66–72. Hills, L.G. 1965. ‘The Tuti Community’, Sudan Society 3: 1–20.

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Lobban, R. 1971. ‘The Historical Role of the Mahas in the Urbanisation of Sudan’s “Three Towns” with Special Reference to Two Communities: Tuti Island and Burri al Mahas’, African Urban Notes 6(2): 24–38. MacMichael, H. 2011. A History of the Arabs in the Sudan and Some Account of the People who Preceded them and of the Tribes Inhabiting Dárfūr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. National Population Council. 2007. Features and Dynamics of Population in Sudan. Khartoum: National Population Council Secretariat General. Pantuliano, S. et al. 2011. City Limits: Urbanisation and Vulnerability in Sudan. Khartoum Case Study. Available from https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org. uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/6520.pdf. Simon, D., D. McGregor and D. Thompson. 2006. ‘Contemporary Perspectives on the Peri-Urban Zones of Cities in Developing Areas’, in D. McGregor, D. Simon and D. Thompson (eds), The Peri-Urban Interface: Approaches to Sustainable Natural and Human Resource Use. London: Earthscan/James and James, pp. 1–17. UNHCR. ‘IDP definition’. Retrieved 1 June 2020 from https://emergency.unhcr. org/entry/44826/idp-definitionl.

[•  Chapter 3  •]

Young People’s Strategies and Educational Processes

A Case Study from Al-Fath Transitional Zone in Greater Khartoum HIND MAHMOUD Introduction

Khartoum has long been a refuge for many internally displaced people

(IDPs) as a result of the famine and drought in Western Sudan and the escalation of the war in South Sudan in the mid-1980s. This prominent population has settled in Greater Khartoum – Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North1  – and is mostly concentrated in the peripheral areas of the three cities. In 2003, before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the government decided to relocate some of these IDPs to areas of North-West Omdurman, approximately 40 kilometres from the centre of the capital, in an area named Al-Fath city. Al-Fath is composed of four zones and was conceived by urban authorities as the ‘final settlement’ destination for IDPs who had previously settled in Khartoum State, and specifically for new migrants arriving from Darfur due to the 2003 conflict. Development of the area was also influenced by a surge in economic migration to the capital (Islam 2006). The government’s reasoning behind this decision to relocate there some IDPs from more central areas was to make use of the land originally occupied by IDPs so it could be sold to people with higher economic status. Those who had the economic capacity to be able to purchase this land (in US dollars or their equivalent) were the beneficiaries of an economic boom caused by the growth of oil incomes2 (Almosharaf 2014).

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The Al-Fath area cannot be classified as either rural, urban (Sadati 2015) or peri-urban (in the sense of expansions of villages that eventually become part of the city), but rather as a new planned extension of Khartoum isolated in a rural area. It is in a transitional phase: that is, in a state of liminality. This chapter argues that Al-Fath is in a transitional phase: it is not yet a fully fledged part of Greater Khartoum, and is therefore in a state of in-betweenness. The area lies on the periphery of the city and is not excessively built-up. Al-Fath is a place where Sudanese citizens from different walks of life are still being allocated land at low cost (3,000 SDG/170 USD per 200 square-metre plot) within its four different zones. Although the inhabitants of Al-Fath were initially mainly IDPs (Abusharaf 2009: 152; De Geoffroy 2015), the government no longer classifies them as such. In addition, the inhabitants expressed that they no longer saw themselves as IDPs; they view Al-Fath as one of the final settlements, establishing their perception of themselves as permanent settlers in Khartoum. Although they live in the Sudanese capital, life in the area continues to pose serious challenges, and the members of the local community have therefore had to develop a variety of livelihood strategies in order to support themselves. The in-betweenness of Al-Fath is manifested by a low level of integration, and although it is theoretically within the wider city in terms of services and mainstream culture, Al-Fath’s own culture still very much resembles that of a village. At this stage, Al-Fath is an in-between place. Most of its inhabitants are from lower socio-economic strata, and the area is host to a large number of destitute female-led households and labourers in an urban setting, who can afford the cheap land. The in-betweenness of Al- Fath’s inhabitants has clearly led them to be the most vulnerable of Khartoum’s population. Residents have to build their own homes on the land allocated to them. A lack of resources and services caused by its remoteness makes access to a decent standard of living challenging because residents must travel for two hours by bus in order to reach the city centre for work. In the face of these challenges, the inhabitants of Al-Fath find themselves engaged in finding a place in the urban space through different livelihoods. Some have succeeded in making money by using the area’s resources, such as by exploiting recycled materials from the surrounding landfill site, and they need to take every opportunity to gain access to land ownership and to the jobs and education that will improve their lives. Many of the individual interviews reveal that individual strategies are developed at a micro level to invert the adverse circumstances that prevail within the area. These strategies must be considered as resources in themselves, and noteworthy among them is education, when it can

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be accessed. I therefore argue that education is an element that can illustrate the in-betweenness of the place – which still remains in a transitional phase, with services that are still being developed – and its evolution within the broader city environment, and thus needs to be studied.

The Interface of Education and the Transitional Status of Al-Fath This chapter addresses how education becomes a tool and a process for countering vulnerability and how in the case of Al-Fath links between the specificity of the neighbourhood and access to school can be analysed through the notion of in-betweenness. It examines how girls and boys in the area of Al-Fath 2 (which was selected because it is the most densely populated3 and most developed of the four zones4) keep up and continue their education under less than conducive socio-economic circumstances. This offers a link to an understanding of vulnerability and how education illustrates an important aspect of the in-betweenness of the area. It therefore becomes relevant to uncovering how the pursuit of an education imposes costs on these young people and demands sacrifices of them, since the educational challenges that the young people from the area face are intimately tied to their difficult socio-economic conditions. This chapter is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the importance of education and presents my methodological approach. The second looks at the specificity of the area and why I have framed it as an in-­between space and stage. I then outline the role of education as a relevant site of observation for addressing vulnerability issues, and I elaborate on this by using case studies and life stories from Al-Fath and applying the notion of in-betweenness as a tool for exploring how young people construct livelihoods, access education and build social networks in the face of great difficulties. Thirdly, I discuss how this element fits into broader themes such as vulnerability, education, mobility and livelihood on the basis of gender as a variable factor. Finally, I offer some concluding remarks. The methods used in this chapter are based on the findings of qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2015 and 2016 in the only two secondary schools (Years 9–11)5 in Al-Fath 2, one of which is for girls and the other for boys. It is noteworthy that these schools are located in Al-Fath 2, which is the most developed zone within the area, with the main market and hospital being located there. There are no other public schools. The distance between the boys’ school and the girls’ school is 4 kilometres. The targeted individuals were students of both genders in

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same-sex schools between the ages of 14–20, who were therefore in a transitional stage between childhood and adulthood. I visited them separately, since there was no mixing. I also conducted unstructured interviews with 18 students from both genders and 6 focus group discussions (FGD: 3 females and 3 males). In addition, I interviewed officials such as the principals, teachers and social workers from the two schools. I also interviewed the director of the locality in order to discover its budget resources and other related information.

Schools as Transitional Sites and Indicators of a Control Regime in Khartoum Schools serve as the means by which the government relays its messages to young people, but they are also controlled environments that cannot be accessed without permission. This significant element in this new expansion of Khartoum contributes even further to the idea that schools significantly mark the in-betweenness of the area and its inhabitants. During my fieldwork, I was shocked by the number of administrative steps I had to take to access the schools for interviews. I had to obtain a research permission letter from the Federal Ministry of Education, and approval of all my written questions, which the Ministry needed to see before I was even allowed to apply. It was only when I was armed with these documents that I was able to enter the principal’s office at the girls’ secondary school. The principal of the school was a pious middle-aged woman, and when I met her in her office she was reading the Quran and did not say very much, instead directing me to the vice-principal’s office. I then spoke to the vice-principal, who was very helpful and organized the interviews over a two-week period. When I asked why the authorities insisted that a stamped permission letter needed to be obtained from both the offices of the locality (mahaliya) and the Federal Ministry of Education, she explained that as a school administration they were under strict instructions not to allow research without a letter. This is a result of a December 2014 story by a journalist6 that earned enormous press coverage because it was about contraceptive pills in the school bags of female secondary schools students.

Presenting the Vulnerability of Al-Fath The levels of vulnerability might suggest that the inhabitants were more liable to have a diminished capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and

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recover from the impact of natural or man-made hazards (International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC 2006)). The concept of vulnerability is relative and dynamic, although it is most often associated with poverty; however, it can also manifest itself when people are isolated, insecure and defenceless in the face of risk, shock or stress (external environment). The context described above demonstrates that the residents of Al-Fath were exposed to generalized vulnerability at individual and collective levels. It is illustrated by the fact that they were subjected to risk, shock and stress before they even reached Khartoum due to environmental factors such as drought and wars, which affected their livelihoods in their home regions and was the reason behind their mass migration to Khartoum. In a study about Southern Sudanese residing in Khartoum conducted between 2000 and 2008, Abusharaf (2009: Appendix B, 152, 159) has shown that Al-Fath was created as a relocation zone for residents of Shikan in 2005. While this confirms that the area is in fact a relocation area, Abusharaf’s assertion intimates that resettlement was taking place in a camp in the desert. My own fieldwork in 2015 suggests that this categorization as a camp has been superseded by the fact that the area is taking on a more permanent, planned residential structure where it is being planned. Many of the inhabitants previously occupied peripheral areas of Khartoum such as Al-jekheis, Al-khodair, Mayo, al Sallama, Soba al-Aradi (South Khartoum) and Dar el Salam (the people who lived in these places were the first to inhabit Al-Fath). The areas they left behind were then replotted and occupied by new, better-off inhabitants; for example, the ‘gentrified’ districts previously known as Al-jekheis and Al-khodair have now been renamed Sabrine and Al-Waha respectively. In the case of people arriving from other precarious neighbourhoods of Khartoum that were less isolated from the city, the relocation process removed them from basic services and income-generating opportunities. Furthermore, after all these populations had poured into Khartoum, they were faced with further stress, since they were subjected to heavy-handed evictions from their previous homes. The government evacuated people by force, using the police and the army equipped with bulldozers, who ordered the resident population to leave their houses and then demolished the area and cleaned it up. This resulted in a tremendous loss of previous houses and violence between the people and the authorities, sometimes leading to tragedy, as happened in Soba on 18 May 2005.7 My findings indicate that many of these relocated people are now permanently settled on their own privately owned residential plots. Despite

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this improvement, they only have a informal possession certificate (hiyaza), which is less secure than land property title (shihadat bahth) for freehold or leasehold property, which ensures that the land is free from encumbrances and is issued by the government through the Land Registry Office in the Land Department under the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities (Assal and Abdul-Jalil 2015: 81–95, and chapters 1 and 2 in this book). While the hiyaza is an individual agreement with the owner (who may have inherited it from his ancestors due to having lived there for a long period), it is not legally registered with the Ministry of Physical Planning and not yet subject to plans, making the inhabitants vulnerable to losing it to the government. While acquiring land is an achievement, the people of Al-Fath continue to be deprived of basic needs. When they arrived there in 2004, they found themselves facing the challenge of a lack of a basic infrastructure, such as clean water, electricity, roads and sanitation, and social services such as healthcare and education. Although the young people find themselves in situations of stress and shock due to suddenly being faced with a new and challenging environment, their vulnerability can be reversed, as I show through the concrete example of education. Education offers the possibility of moving beyond the confines of a place through integration into different sectors of the labour market. In spite of problems with access, these markets expose young people to wider economic and social opportunities.

Access to Schooling in Al-Fath Education plays a part in the construction of livelihoods, which are intimately linked to the capacity of humans to develop and implement strategies to ensure their survival. A Livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (both material and social resources) and activities required to ensure a means of living (Carney 1999), and generating an adequate ­sustainable livelihood8 therefore facilitates the passage of these adolescent school pupils to a higher quality of life. This opportunity is provided by the presence of two secondary schools in the area that were built by the authorities in 2008 but completed and opened in 2011. These dates are subject to debate, however, as there are differing opinions on when the schools were actually founded. According to members of the local population it was in 2008, whereas according to one of the principals it was in 2011. Unlike other public schools in greater Khartoum, these two schools are made of concrete and are built on two stories. Each school consists of thirteen classes and is furnished with desks and chairs. Despite the

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material and structural advantages of having two furnished two-story schools, they are not very different from other visibly more disadvantaged schools in Khartoum and are in reality faced with similar challenges (Gasim 2010), including a lack of access to clean tap water and electricity, a scarcity of textbooks and inadequate libraries with insufficient computers and internet access. They also lack qualified teachers because teachers who graduate from the local teaching colleges each year are required by the Ministry of Education to teach in these schools, which are located in hazardous areas, for the first two years of their career. For this reason, the schools sometimes make use of outside tutors, who are highly experienced teachers, but these initiatives are funded by the students themselves, which subjects students who cannot afford this privilege to greater pressure to find the added funds. Each class has an average capacity of 85 students (with the average number of girls being slightly higher at 100), although when the schools first opened they were not at full capacity. According to the school registrar, three years prior to the interview there were only three classes for year one, whereas in the year of my research, the school had admitted six classes in year one, meaning that the following year the second level would have six classes and so on, with the same average number of students per class. The total number of students in that year was 1,116 boys and 1,540 girls (2016–17). Despite its potential to be an invaluable resource, gaining an education has proved to be a challenge due to the prevailing circumstances in Khartoum, which will be discussed below.

Access to Education, Mobility and Social Capital Al-Fath’s secondary schools were among the most attractive elements that inspired people to move to the area. Education allows families to face and fight harsh realities. I will now review the elements that affect access to education in Al-Fath.

In-Between Private and Public Education According to a copy of Sudan’s annual budget, the funds allocated for education in 2016 amounted to only 1 per cent of the total, while in comparison expenditure for defence and security is at roughly 25 per cent. Limited allocations for education have persisted for the past two decades, leading the local education authorities to develop a tendency

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to shift the burden of education costs to families, and in the context of poverty and a male-biased culture, the losers tend to be females. This general situation also affects the schooling system in Al-Fath, which resembles other parts of Sudan. It can be both private and public at the same time, not only within the same school but also within the same class. This new system and approach places education in a position in-between private and public education within the same public schools. While public schools do not charge for tuition, all students must pay a compulsory 160 SDG fee as an operating cost. This money is used to buy water and custodial services, as well as other utilities for the school. Some students may also have to pay annual fees like those for private schools. The locality (mahaliya)9 imposes fees on students with low marks. For example, if the top mark is 280 points and a student obtains 140 points, which is the lowest passing mark, they must be admitted under the umbrella of what is called the Teachers’ Union Programme. This programme is a private union that works closely with the Ministry of Education in order to contribute towards salaries. It allows students with lower marks to stay at school but requires them to pay additional fees that are not paid by students with higher marks. These fees are paid to the Teachers’ Union, and they go towards the teachers’ salaries and other expenses relating to the union, such as the teachers’ clinic. The Ministry of Education sets the passing range annually. The pass mark may be from 140 to 160, or above or below those numbers, depending on the percentage of students who pass the national exam. The Al-Fath area is dominated by students with low marks and students who have failed. This is due to many factors, including parental preoccupation with securing basic living requirements such as electricity and running water, as well as the illiteracy rate among parents. The result of this is that more students are admitted under the Teachers’ Union Programme umbrella. We therefore find Teachers’ Union lessons occurring more frequently. The fees last year were 700 SDG per student, divided into two parts: 500 SDG for the Teachers’ Union and 220 SDG for the Locality Education Office. The locality controls its share by giving every student a final exam sitting number. A student who cannot pay her or his exam fees for any reason is not allowed to sit the final exam, which means that exam fees and registration numbers are outside the school management’s control. The head teacher referred to the mechanism used by the locality as belrass, meaning that the locality takes its money by counting heads. The term belrass is usually used in Sudan to count animals; the use of such an unusual term in this context seems to me to be an indicator that

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the poor community is being used as an income generator or source of money, even if one overlooks the offensive symbolic meaning of belrass. In addition to school fees, extra payments are imposed on Al-Fath students. For example, female students must pay individually for the school’s teacher and study guides, such as past exam papers, along with the optional extra after-school classes due to the shortage of textbooks. Exam fees are also compulsory, as are extra after-school classes for all male students to raise the English language and mathematics standards in the class. These classes cost 3 SDG per student per day. The burden imposed by these expenses makes it more difficult for the people of Al-Fath to access education.

Limited Mobility Another difficulty affecting the education of adolescents in the Al-Fath community is limited mobility, as it is a long way from other inhabited areas (40 kilometres from Khartoum). There is reduced potential for mobility because of a lack of infrastructure such as roads, electricity (which reduces the possibility of mobility at night), and sewage removal services. In addition, the large size of the area, with the high housing density and large population of the sprawling neighbourhood, makes it difficult to access the limited resources. Furthermore, according to the Locality Unit Head Office, which disclosed that only about only 50 per cent of the total area is inhabited, the area is not fully populated, and in some areas, the percentage is much lower. As a result, the dangers associated with travelling alone along remote paths, or in the dark, may cause some parents living in remote locations to withdraw their daughters from school at a young age (or not send them at all) if they have to walk on their own. Women’s and men’s mobility are structured differently due to different levels of access to resources, social norms and safety-related issues (Whitzman 2007). Mobility is a multifaceted phenomenon that has a significant impact on women’s empowerment. With regard to gender-based analysis, it therefore becomes essential to evaluate the differing effects on gender due to cultural beliefs and norms, which is an equally important – or in some cases the most important – factor dictating daily mobility (Silvey 2000: 145). Girls have been socially restricted because of cultural norms and denied opportunities to travel abroad alone, whereas boys are allowed to. This is illustrated by the answers provided in the group discussion, where almost all the males who participated in the study demonstrated an unshakable ambition and dreams of migrating overseas when asked about their future goals. Females, on

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the other hand, tended to state an ambition to marry before finishing secondary school if their husbands would allow them to continue school after marriage. Data from the 2008 census confirm that only 11 per cent of male and 12 per cent of female students in Sudan complete their secondary school education (World Bank 2012). Secondary school attendance also shows disparities between rural and urban areas, as well as between genders. In the context of Al-Fath, according to the school’s vice principal, the number of girls leaving school after the 2016–2017 academic year was relatively high (more than 100 out of a total of 1,540 left after the end of the year). Restricted mobility can reduce women’s economic opportunities by limiting their choice of work location, their access to information relevant to their work and the freedom to combine jobs in the informal or formal sectors. In the case of Al-Fath, this explains the broad segregation between boys and girls in income-generating activities. While 92 per cent of the boys were in work, only 21 per cent of girls were working, or had worked, during their holidays. Girls play a greater role in unpaid household labour and are commonly unskilled and poorly remunerated. This reflects the theoretical insights of Mayer, and restates the question of the interplay between social and spatial mobility with regard to deprivation (in spatial mobility): ‘Those who for some reason – should this be mental, social, geographical or economic – do not have access to all kinds of latest-standard mobility will only have a limited choice of options and therefore a disadvantageous position both on consumer and labour markets’ (Mayer 2005). This means that girls have limited opportunities to develop a livelihood that will eventually lift them out of persistent poverty; instead, they are forced to make choices that will keep them impoverished, such as marrying early. Eventually, many girls are condemned to lead a life that is very similar to that of their mothers and grandmothers before them, remaining in the same vicious cycle of poverty.10 In the main, students in Al-Fath work in activities that consist of assisting on market stalls and with small family businesses, or engaging in their own informal commerce and services such as selling water or street-vending. The hours and times of paid work vary but frequently include working the whole weekend and at either or both ends of the school day.

Lack of Social Capital and Resources The group discussions reveal that the only social capital available in Al-Fath – including informal networks – is mosques or the scene club.

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The scene club is a space resembling a cinema, with a number of televisions screens in the same yard, so that the audience can choose which programme to watch, instead of one cinema screen. While the mosque is mostly for men and old women,11 the khalwa in Al-Fath is for women.12 Organized sports in Sudan are generally the preserve of men,13 and Al-Fath is no exception. There have been a few sporting initiatives for women in recent years, such as the bicycle race held in Omdurman in July 2018,14 which was sponsored by the French Embassy, and the women’s football team that was started up at the Comboni school.15 However, neither of these has included women from the Al-Fath area. From my observations, and from interviewing teachers and students at the girls’ school in Al-Fath, there are no sporting activities, or even a volleyball net, which can be found in the boys’ yard (the same yard is used for breaks and sports activities when necessary; it is simply divided in two with a net). In fact, the only sport played in Al-Fath is football, and it is only for boys, who gather in their neighbourhood and organize games; however, not one single team is registered with the Sudan Football Association, despite the neighbourhood’s large population.

Health Concerns Omdurman’s rubbish and medical waste landfill site, which is only about one kilometre from the girl’s school, and which regularly catches fire, must be mentioned here. When I arrived at the Al-Fath girls’ secondary school, there was a strong smell of smoke. When I questioned the principal about its impact on the students, she replied: ‘Yes, it has a negative health impact on them.’ She showed me the daily school record, in which fifteen cases of dizziness, loss of consciousness and respiratory problems were recorded. They had occurred during one of the fires at the landfill site; it is usually two days before the smokes clears. The situation was so severe that the school had to hire a rickshaw, or ‘tuktuk’, to rush the students to hospital. The surface area of houses in Al-Fath is usually no more than 200 square metres. The built area is only one or two rooms, and the rest of the space is an empty yard, known as a hosh,16 which is used at night as a place for members of the extended family such as uncles, aunts and grandparents to sleep because of the hot weather. The school counsellor at the girls’ school told me that as a result of the lack of privacy in their homes, there is a tendency for girls to suffer from insomnia and even incidences of sexual harassment.

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The Challenges Facing Students Wishing to Continue Their Education Our cases studies show that obtaining an education – which is a marker of potential social mobility – was constrained by the prevailing circumstances in the area and contributed to its state of in-betweenness. On one occasion, while I was in the principal’s office at the girls’ secondary school arranging my interviews, a shy student came in wearing a long blue military-print blouse and trousers, with half her face covered by a white headscarf (tarha), leaving only her eyes visible. She had come to ask about the possibility of postponing payment of her exam fees. The teacher replied that she was sorry and wished that the decision was within her control. She asked the girl to return at the end of the day, in the hope that some money would be available in the piggy bank she keeps on her desk for voluntary donations, similar to a Sudanese custom called al-kashif,17 which is a financial contribution made by guests to help a family in good times and bad. For instance, it is offered at both weddings and funerals, and everyone contributes according to their means. In girls’ schools, this has led nearly all female teachers to show solidarity by developing strategies to overcome the financial difficulties their pupils encounter by creating individual or group financial support systems, like the donation box in the vice-principal’s office, to which teachers, parents, visitors and the students themselves contribute. It is interesting to note that women in Sudan are able to participate in al-kashif to the maximum extent. I have analysed the cases of two female students at this school, one of whom is engaged and does not work, while the other works but is not engaged. The first is that of a sixteen-year-old female secondary school student named Fatima. She is in the second year (in Sudan, the first stage lasts for 8 years, followed by 3 years of secondary school), and so one year away from graduating from high school. She is originally from the northern state of Shendi. She was born in Aqarya Algadeema (old village) but settled with her family in Al-Fath after her previous home was demolished in 2007. This was a significant event that most informants identified as al-taksir (demolition) due to the severity of the evictions, which saw homes being torn down by bulldozers. Fatima is the oldest of a family of six: her mother is a 37-year-old homemaker, her father, who is 42, works as a vegetable seller in the market in Al-Fath, and she has a 15-year-old sister and two young brothers of primary and nursery school age.

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Fatima has never worked to earn money; however, she has to wake up for dawn prayers at 5:00 AM, after which she has to prepare tea and breakfast for her little brothers, dress them in their school uniforms and take them to school before making her own way to school. She has to serve lunch and dinner after returning home and also has to make kisra (a sour sorghum crepe used as a bread as a source of energy). She also has to help her little brothers with their homework assignments and complete her own before 9 PM, which is when the shared neighbourhood generator is switched off (she would otherwise need to resort to candles as a source of light to finish her homework). Unlike Fatima, her younger sister does not go to school, as she had to nurse their mother when she was in hospital for three months the year before. This prolonged stay resulted in her missing too much school, and she ended up abandoning her education and is now responsible for doing the cleaning and the laundry in the household. Fatima is engaged to her paternal cousin (wad al ‘amm). It is an arranged marriage she has no objection to. She will move to her future husband’s home in his village in the north in two months’ time, during the school holidays. She agreed to this marriage on the condition that she would be able to complete her secondary education after the wedding, as promised by her paternal uncle. This marriage pattern shows that while the family lives in Khartoum, where many ethnic groups live side by side, they are preserving the traditions of the Northern Nile Valley culture, where the marriage tradition of wad al ‘amm is accepted as a way of preserving wealth within familial lineages (Boddy 1989). My second case study introduces sixteen-year-old Remaz, who was born in Khartoum. Her family is originally from Darfur, but her parents migrated to Khartoum during the famine in 1988. She is a student but works during the weekend and the summer to earn money for her schooling. She was forced to leave Soba in 2013, but unlike Fatima, she has not been obliged to marry early. She lives in Al-Fath 3 with her divorced mother and her 18-year-old secondary school student brother. She has no knowledge of her father’s whereabouts. The locality paid for the cost of transportation from Soba to Al-Fath 3 without consulting the family about the move. She arrived to find that they had been allocated a 200 m² piece of vacant land. With her brother and neighbours, she built a rakuba (a veranda made of wood) from local building materials. Since her house is a long way from the school, she has to use public transport. She does not do any chores at home before she leaves for school, and so has to make up for this when she returns home. She sometimes draws with henna or helps her mother with her work in

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the Al-Fath area during the weekends (Friday and Saturday) and has a full-time job as a vegetable harvester on a farm near Al-Fath during the summer holiday. Her brother and mother help earn her school fees. Her brother works as an unskilled construction labourer during the weekends and holidays, and her mother works full-time as a tea-maker (sitta shay) in Al-Fath. Remaz is saving money to take an English course, which indicates her aspirations and need for upward social mobility.

Analysis These two case studies reveal the differences between an IDP girl born in Khartoum (Remaz) and a girl who is an economic migrant from a rural area (Fatima); while the former is working to try to improve her situation, the latter has accepted an early arranged marriage. I observed that access to education has been influenced by the lifestyles expected of the girls. Girls in Al-Fath typically often spend a great deal of time on household chores and looking after sick family members or children, as in Fatima’s case. This outcome is determined by gender roles that have been traditionally accepted by society over the course of time (Hochschild 2003). The example of Fatima and her sister illustrates the fact that girls are traditionally raised to be mothers and housewives. Parents train their children to fill certain roles in society and in the home. Fatima’s circumstances demonstrate the phenomenon of child marriage,18 which occurs across different segments of Sudanese society, although it manifests itself differently from one community to the other. In Sudan, approximately 1 in 3 girls are married before their eighteenth birthday (UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2016). In the Sudanese context, child marriage is undoubtedly fostered by gender inequality (traditional patterns of gender socialization give women and girls limited scope to exercise agency, and therefore limit their choices and decision-making), tradition, poverty and insecurity. It is widely acknowledged that the social disadvantage and economic precarity that correlate directly with livelihood patterns can increase the probability of becoming a child bride (El-Nagar et al. 2017). While the patriarchal structure of society is less visible in the well-­ established urbanized areas of Khartoum, it is very noticeable in a community such as Al-Fath. For example, certain customs such as early marriage are still predominantly organized by males and exclude women from decision-making roles. This contrasts with the patterns of gender socialization that exist in other parts of Greater Khartoum such as Abu Roaf and Beit Al Mal (Old Omdurman), where women have played a

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prominent role in connecting extended families across the various districts through cross-marriages (El-Hassan 2015). Despite these normative models, the situation in Al-Fath is defined by a wider phenomenon – as illustrated by the two examples – where girls continue their education despite difficulties and diverse backgrounds. This is significant because their numbers exceed those of boys. This finding stands in contrast to studies that illustrate that the gender gap is very wide in terms of education, which is mainly influenced by women raising their daughters to be good mothers, and adolescent girls’ public interactions are restricted (El Nager 2012).

Male Labour and Education Male students generally have to work during holidays and at weekends, and usually both. This is the case of Omer, a Rizeigat Arab nomad from Western Sudan, who is a very young-looking 15-year-old. He is a regular student in the first grade and lives near Al-Fath in a rural village of only 70 houses called Al-sheikh Musa. He has to wake before sunrise to say his prayers and prepare with his 12-year-old brother for their 50 to 60 minute walk to school, since they have no access to transport (they have no money, and there is no service). Omer has five siblings, including two sisters, one of whom is 18 and married. His older brother, who is 22, is also married. His father works on his donkey cart (karro) selling water in Al-Fath. Omer works on the donkey cart at weekends so his father can rest. However, he gives his father all his earnings, which amount to about 50 SDG per day. He has to complete his homework before sunset as there is no electricity in his village. Omer says he will continue his education. From this perspective, although he has to walk a long distance, and although his father has to travel from the village, these long distances could be equally problematic for others living in the area, since it is huge and lacks transport, but in fact, Al-Fath becomes an opportunity: as an in-between space, it becomes a zone of transition that connects limited sources of livelihood with the potential success that comes with hard work. Another student is Abdel Rahman, who is eighteen years old. He is originally from Sennar but was born in the Dar Al Salam IDP camp. He is not sure whether he will be able to complete his education, but he hopes to. He is in year two and attending Teachers’ Union classes, a programme that allows students with lower marks to continue to go to school by paying additional fees that are not paid by students with higher marks. He pays for his education himself, as his father is no longer working due to severe eye damage he sustained from his job as a

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blacksmith. Abdel Rahman contributes to the household by working as a car washer or assistant driver outside Al-Fath at weekends. He has a great deal of responsibility. When asked how he feels about studying and working at the same time, Abdel Rahman replies ‘What should we do? It is our duty to take care of our family’. While boys in the second year of secondary school are supposed to be fifteen, or at the most sixteen, the students at Al-Fath secondary school are older: due to family instability caused by moving from place to place, some have missed years of school because the area had no schools when it was created. The case of Abdel Rahman is supported by other focus group discussions that make it clear that it may sometimes be necessary to suspend an education in order to take paid work to earn money for tuition and hidden costs. This is also one of the reasons why the age range of the students is relatively high, and there is some evidence that a work-­ suspension relationship affects school performance.

Equal Access to Education and Divergent Gendered Labour Market Outcomes Although the goal of providing equal educational opportunities for girls and boys exists in this area and has been successfully implemented as part of government policy, gender difference in school attendance is to the advantage of girls: boys are predominant among early school leavers, while many girls succeed in obtaining a school leaving certificate.19 However, while young women have the same opportunities to enter secondary school as young men, this is not actually reflected in gender equality in the professional labour market and does not ensure the implementation of gender mainstreaming (GM).20 Both girls and boys remain unskilled and poorly rewarded. The income-generating activities they engage in show considerable segregation between boys and girls because of girls’ limited mobility. According to both the school principals and my interviews with teachers and students, 80 per cent of boys work, or have worked, during their holidays, while girls show a low ability to find work due to the fact that they play a greater role in unpaid household labour, and because of their limited mobility.

Conclusion Beyond the elements of education that have been discussed within this chapter, inhabiting the area of Al-Fath and the specificities within it

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cements the concept of the in-betweenness. This is evidenced in the lives of two girls cited in this text, Razan and Fatima. The concept equally exposes the differences between them. For instance, in the case of Razan, while she maintains a tradition of work that is practised by females in her region of origin (Darfur), unlike them she is not obligated to hand over her earnings to male kin (Ali 2015: 164). From this perspective, one might argue that she maintains a link to tradition but she manages to invert such traditions in gaining her financial independence. In this respect, Al-Fath provides the possibility of witnessing the practice of traditional cultural norms, but it equally allows for the possibilities for change. By not serving as an extension of the past, the area proves to be truly a zone of in-betweenness. On the other hand, Fatima tries to maintain marriage practices while continuing her education and therefore she maintains traditional/rural cultural expectations. In her case, the in-betweenness of Al-Fath is manifested in the fact that it is the meeting point between rural and urban lifestyles. In the situation of boys, Al-Fath provides the space to move out of poverty; they are committed to work and saving money to continue their education in order to transition out of the difficult circumstances that had made their families IDPs and residents of the area in the first place. Paradoxically, through the efforts of these boys, the place transcends its original function as a space of relegation and offers the possibility of some upward social mobility and income. We see that the in-betweenness of the area is multifaceted and is made visible by the diverse practices of its different population groups and individuals with different social biographies that impose different choices and sacrifices. Hind Mahmoud is currently a Ph.D. candidate for the Sustainable Rural Development Programme at Ahfad University for Women, where she obtained a master’s degree in gender and development. She has a particular interest in adolescent livelihood strategies, urbanization and vulnerability. As a feminist researcher, she represented Sudan at a Fistula meeting held in Kampala in 2006 and has organized campaigns to raise funds for Abbo Fistula centre in 2005, Suba children’s hospital in 2007, Jaffar Ibn Ouf children’s hospital in 2010 and Al-Fath secondary schools in 2016. Between 2012 and 2014, she was a Research Associate at the Gender Unit, Development Studies and Research Institute, University of Khartoum. She participated in the project ‘Metropolization and

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In-Between Spaces: Interactions, Power Dynamics and Identity Reconfigurations in the Greater Khartoum Conurbation’ (AUF/CEDEJ/ UoK).

Notes  1. Between 1980 and 2008, the population of Khartoum increased from 850,000 to 5,274,321 (CBS 2008).   2. Until the second half of 2002, Sudan’s economy was booming on the back of increases in oil production, high oil prices, and large inflows of direct foreign investment.   3. There is a high density of housing and population (105 blocks x 615 houses/ block = 64,575). The average number of members of each household is six. The population reached 251,000 in 2007, an approximate increase of 2.7 per cent per annum.   4. This information is taken from an interview with Mr Nazar M. from the Al-Fath Locality Unit Head Office, conducted on 17/6/2013.   5. The Sudanese schools system is divided into two stages: asas (foundation) (years 1–8) and thanawi (secondary) (years 9–11), after which students are in a position to access undergraduate education provided that they achieve high grades.   6. Asmaa Istanboul was arrested and questioned by the security forces after writing this article. Her article is available from the Alrakoba website. http://www.alrakoba.net/news-action-show-id-175329.htm.   7. Seven people were found guilty of killing fourteen policemen on that day. They were all sentenced to death and executed in 2010. Article available from SudaneseOnline website: http://sudaneseonline.com/board/260/msg/ -1263469960‫م‬-2005‫سوبا‬-‫احداث‬-‫في‬-‫الشرطة‬-‫شهداء‬-‫بقتل‬-‫المدانين‬-‫في‬-‫االعدام‬-‫حكم‬-‫تنفيذ‬.   8. A livelihood that is resilient to shock and able to maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future while not undermining the natural resource base (Chambers and Conway 1991).  9. Every locality has an education office that concerns itself with schools located in the area. 10. The ‘vicious cycle of poverty’ has been described as a phenomenon in which poor families remain impoverished for at least three generations: that is, for enough time for the family not to include any surviving ancestors who possess, and can transmit, the intellectual, social and cultural capital necessary to stay out of or change their status. 11. The mainstream Sunni interpretation of Islam claims that it is not obligatory for women to go to the mosque. In any case, it is not customary in Sudan. 12. The khalwa is a class for the study of religion and the Quran. 13. ‫ (كرة القدم النسائية فى السودان بين الدين و‬-27/11/2008‫المركز السودانى للخدمات الصحفية‬ ‫ )طبيعة المرأة‬available from https//www.sudaress.com/smc/896 [Women’s Football in Sudan between ‘Religion’ and the Nature of Women].

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14. https://sd.ambafrance.org, accessed 9 July 2018. 15. Comboni School is a missionary school, and most of its students are Christians. 16. The hosh is an empty uncovered space in Sudanese houses that looks like a walled terrace. It is generally used for sleeping at night, although some families with large houses do not use it for this purpose. 17. It is seen as a well-established tradition that is accepted by everyone, from the poor to the rich, and on all occasions, relatives, friends and neighbours pledge to make a (non-mandatory) financial contribution. 18. According to UNICEF, child marriage is defined as any formal marriage or informal union where one or both of the parties are under eighteen years of age. Sudan legislation. 19. There were 69 girls and only 31 boys in the top one hundred students awarded Sudanese Academic Certificates in 2015. 86 per cent of the students were from Khartoum, and 14 per cent from the rest of Sudan. 20. Gender mainstreaming is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality.

References Abusharaf, R.M. 2009. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ali, H.E. 2015. Darfur’s Political Economy: A Quest for Development, Routledge. Almosharaf, H.A. 2014. ‘The Causes of Sudan’s Recent Economic Decline’, IOSR Journal of Economics and Finance 2(4): 26–40. Ashley, C., and D. Carney. 1999. Sustainable Livelihoods: Lessons from Early Experience. Department for International Development. Assal, M., and M. Abdul-Jalil (eds). 2015. Past, Present and Future: Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: CMI. Boddy, J. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ______. 2009. ‘Endogamy and Alliance in Northern Sudan’, in G. Schlee and E.  Watson (eds), Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa: Volume II: Sudan, Uganda, and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 103–16. Carney, D. 1999. Approaches to Sustainable Livelihoods for the Rural Poor. Overseas Development Institute. Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). 2008 Census. Chambers, R., and G. Conway. 1991. ‘Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century’. IDS Discussion Paper. 296. De Geoffroy, A. 2015. ‘What Place for the Displaced in Khartoum: Between State Regulation and Individual Strategies’, in B. Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in the Republic of Sudan (1989–2011):

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Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 201–25. El-Hassan, I.S. 2015. ‘Old Omdurman and National Integration: The Sociohistorical Roots of Exclusion’, in M. Assal and M. Abdul-Jalil (eds), Past, Present and Future: Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: CMI, pp. 81–95. El-Nagar, S. et al. 2017. ‘Girls, Child Marriage, and Education in Red Sea State, Sudan: Perspectives on Girls’ Freedom to Choose’, CMI. Retrieved 30 January 2019 from www.cmi.no/publications/6326-girls-child-marriage. El-Sadaty, Fahima Zahir. 2015. ‘Urbanization and social change in the Sudan’ in M. Assal and M.A. Abdul-Jalil (eds), Past, Present and Future: Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute, pp. 69–80. Gasim, G. 2010. ‘Reflecting on Sudan’s Higher Education Revolution under Al-Bashir’s Regime’, Comparative & International Higher Education 2(2): 50–53. Hochschild, A.R. 2003. The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. San Francisco: University of California Press. IFRC. 2006. ‘Disasters and Vulnerability’, In What Is VCA? An Introduction to Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment. Geneva: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Islam, M.R. 2006. ‘The Sudanese Darfur Crisis and Internally Displaced Persons in International Law: The Least Protection for the Most Vulnerable’, International Journal of Refugee Law 18(2): 354–85. Mayer, P. 2005. ‘The Normal Mobility of Tourism: A Research Outline’. Retrieved 11 October 2016 from www.cosmobilities.net/download/Miscellaneous/ Mayer_Tourism_and_Mobility.pdf. Muggah, R. 2014. ‘Deconstructing the Fragile City: Exploring Insecurity, Violence and Resilience’, Environment and Urbanization 26(2): 345–58. Nichols, A., and Z.J. McDade. 2013. ‘Long-Term Unemployment and Poverty Produce a Vicious Cycle’, Urban Institute. Retrieved 17 September 2018 from www.urban.org/urban-wire/long-term-unempl​oyment-and-po​verty​ -produce-vicious-cycle. Osman, O.M. 2014. ‘‫ م‬2005 ‫تنفيذ حكم االعدام في المدانين بقتل شهداء الشرطة في احداث سوبا‬ [Death Penalty Carried Out on Those Convicted of Killing Policemen in the Events in Soba in 2005]’, SudaneseOnline, 10 January 2014. Retrieved 14 October 2017 from sudaneseonline.com/board/260/msg/1263469960. html. Silvey, R.M. 2000. ‘Stigmatized Spaces: Gender and Mobility under Crisis in South Sulawesi, Indonesia’, Gender, Place & Culture 7(2): 143–61. UNICEF. 2916. ‘High Level Meeting on Accelerating Progress on Ending Child Marriage in Africa.’ Retrieved 4 November 2018 from https://www.unicef. org/media/media_100859.html. Whitzman, C. 2007. ‘Stuck at the Front Door: Gender, Fear of Crime and the Challenge of Creating Safer Space’, Environment and Planning A 39(11): 2715–32.

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Willemse, K. 2007. One Foot in Heaven: Narratives on Gender and Islam in Darfur, West-Sudan. Leiden: Brill. World Bank. 2012. The Status of the Education Sector in Sudan (English), Africa Education Country Status Report, Africa Human Development Series. Washington, D.C: World Bank Group. Retrieved 25 February 2017 from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/424741468129613991/ The-status-of-the-education-sector-in-Sudan. ‫ ‘كرة القدم النسائية في‬.‫المركز السوداني للخدمات الصحفية نشر في المركز السوداني للخدمات الصحفية يوم‬ ‫[ السودان بين «الدين» وطبيعة المرأة‬Women’s Football in Sudan between “Religion” and the Nature of Women]’. Sudaress, 27 January 2008. Retrieved 12 March 2017 from www.sudaress.com/smc/896.

[•  Chapter 4  •]

The Emergence of New Political Actors in the City

Disruption of the Political Order, Political Reproduction and Space of Contestation CLÉMENT DESHAYES

L

ike many other capitals in Africa and the Middle East, Khartoum has witnessed extensive social and political conflict since the end of the 2010s. Before the Sudanese uprising (Deshayes and Vezzadini 2019) and the multiple transformations that accompanied it, the city had been the stage of numerous conflicts over land,1 water,2 privatization, education,3 the price of basic goods, the civil wars in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile4 and a demand for a change of regime. In September 2013, the rise in prices caused by cuts in subsidies provoked massive demonstrations by the population supported by the opposition and protest movements. The demonstrations were violently put down by the regime. According to the Sudanese Doctors’ Union, at least 210 people were killed, and thousands of demonstrators and activists were arrested. In November and December 2016, another civil disobedience movement called for a strike following a new reduction in subsidies. These claims by the Khartoumese were for the most part brutally repressed by the regime. Along with these various expressions of discontent, a number of new sociopolitical actors began to emerge in Khartoum (Deshayes 2016). This chapter focuses on the events and dynamics prior to the revolution that began in December 2018. Before describing some of the events that are crucial for the development of this chapter, it is important to stress the fact that the country was ruled with an iron fist by the National Congress Party (NCP) and President Omar al-Bashir from the 1989 coup until 2019 and has faced massive economic, social and political transformations (Casciarri, Assal

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and Ireton 2015). The coup of 30 June 1989 put an end to the civil government led by Sadiq al-Mahdi, which had been in power since the 1986 elections. The military junta dissolved political parties and unions and imprisoned political leaders. In the early 1990s, the government launched a number of societal reforms, especially economic liberalization and a process of Islamization. The liberalization matched both the political views of the NCP and pressure from international organizations (Marchal and Ahmed 2010). Privatization transformed the urban space but also reduced the state’s social action, especially in the education and health sectors. Islamization took different forms, but the one that interests us here – ‘the public order laws’5 – which represented an attempt to control public morality, involved tighter controls over the urban public space and excluded significant segments of the population. When added to the fierce repression of discontent throughout the 1990s, this control created a mostly depoliticized urban space, with the exception of expressions of support for the regime. The situation began to change in the middle of the 2000s. The three cities of Greater Khartoum continued to expand under the migration pressures of war and economically displaced persons from Darfur, South Sudan, Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, albeit at a slower pace. The oil money of the 2000s and the continuing liberalization exacerbated socio-economic inequalities and helped create a rapidly transforming and segmented urban space (Choplin 2006). Despite the civil war in Darfur, the signature of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement by the SPLM/A6 in 2005 ended the war between North and South and brought about a relative degree of openness for political and associative activities. During the second part of the decade, numerous associations and local NGOs became active, supported by a significant presence of international NGOs and organizations. Political activities in universities started up again, with new waves of activists who joined existing unions or created student associations. Political parties in exile or that had been operating clandestinely were able to return to Sudan and recommence their activities, albeit under the control of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS). The actions of the SPLM and its related groups also began to be public. Despite this relative openness of public activities, repression of political dissent remained intensive, especially with regard to Darfurian groups and certain political parties, such as the Sudanese Communist Party. The re-election of Omar al-Bashir as President in 2010, the 2011 self-determination referendum over South Sudan and the separation of the South in July of the same year brought this period to a conclusion. The regime began to take back control by gradually closing down local

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NGOs, especially those that addressed issues of human rights, women rights, freedom of speech, discrimination against minorities and the ongoing Darfur civil war, and expelling international NGOs, intensifying repression against its opponents and targeting activists. The independence of South Sudan was also the starting point for a serious economic crisis, with the loss of 70 per cent of the country’s oilfields, a heavy burden for a state budget already weakened by liberalization and the cost of the wars. This crisis, coupled with the privatization of the state, the departure of Southerners and their return a few years later (Franck 2016 and Chapter 6) and the continuous arrival of persons from Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, who had been displaced by the war, boosted the transformation of Greater Khartoum and the process of segmentation of the city. In this context, new sociopolitical urban groups have emerged since 2010 (Kadoda and Hale 2015). They are characterized by an absence of hierarchies, an emphasis on local action and a reliance on networking and are often described as ‘grassroots groups’. Whether this definition is actually correct is questionable. A number of studies have recently used the idea of grassroots groups in various cases and contexts, often forgetting to analyse the power-based relationships or domination relations inside the groups, within the social space of which they are a part. This term is also often used by international ‘moral entrepreneurs’ (Becker 1963; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999) of democratization in Africa and elsewhere (Guilhot 2005). We will use the terms ‘protest movements’ or ‘political movements’ to describe them and will focus on their actions, organization and trajectories and the careers (Fillieule 2001) of their activists, including in relation to their political and identity construction (Mathieu 2002), emphasizing how they are incorporated within the social structure and the power-based relationship to which they belong. The first movement to appear in 2009 was Girifna, which literally means ‘We’re fed up’. It originally began as a campaign to encourage Sudanese citizens to turn out to vote against Omar al-Bashir at the 2010 general elections. Shortly thereafter, another new movement called Al-Taghiyyr Alan  – ‘Change Now’  – emerged in 2010. Both movements rapidly expanded their activities in various cities, but the capital remained the main space for their political actions. Girifna evolved from a movement linked to a specific campaign into a permanent group in 2010–2011 and made intensive efforts to construct an open-­structure focus on radical street actions to overthrow the regime without building long-term alliances with opposition political parties. In contrast to Girifna, Al-Taghiyyr Alan (ATA) developed a pyramidal structure with a skills-based selection of members, also with the objective of

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overthrowing the regime. This group also promoted street-level actions. While ATA maintained significant channels of exchange with political parties and civil society organizations, Girifna was more selective and less open to discussing and coordinating with other groups. Most of the founders and original members of these movements had previous experience of political involvement: the oldest activists had been politically active since the late 1990s, although the involvement in political parties, student unions and NGOs of the majority of its activists dates back to this transition period in the second part of the 2000s (Deshayes 2019a). Our aim in this chapter is to analyse the various activities of these actors, both inside and outside the new movements, mainly at a micro level. By so doing, we will be able to observe the various effects and plays of categorization, incorporation and self-definition, all of which blur the lines between political parties, local and international NGOs, student associations and unions, charities and youth organizations. We will also look at the different age categories of the activists, which have been used by various participants (including parties and unions) and the powers that be as a tool for delegitimization, and have also been used by the new actors to distinguish themselves from traditional organizations, which stand accused of reproducing a patriarchal vision of politics that excludes the young from positions of power. The question of ‘in-betweenness’ is particularly relevant here in relation to the categorization of these new movements, which are bringing disruption to the Sudanese political space. We will also try to illustrate the tensions in group structures and the political arena, which create multiple affiliations at the level of individual trajectories. Starting from our fieldwork data, we will explore the structure of the interactions of these groups with other more economically and socially marginalized groups in a segmented city such as Khartoum. In other words, we will attempt to understand the ways in which these new groups both challenge the political order and participate in its renewal. This approach enables us to question the temporality of the mobilization and social experiences (Gaxie 2002) so as to be able to gain an understanding of the in-betweenness issue. We will try to make the question of the social construction of categories –in our specific case political categories  – intelligible. The concept of in-­ betweenness includes various dimensions alongside ideas of temporality and historicity and a spatial approach. It also questions the mobility of social groups and actors between different social categories or fields (Bourdieu 1992, 2000). By including the question of mobility, processes are analysed in terms of continuity and ruptures, and emerging actors are studied as a part of different social dynamics rather than as new external competitors on the fringes of the political arena. This will lead

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us to explore the possibility that at the same time as they are challenging the political order these groups are unintentionally reproducing, and contributing towards reinforcing, the lines of class and political and racial exclusion in Greater Khartoum. We will question the concept of in-betweenness at both a spatial and social level by exploring the issues of class and racial belonging, jamming the political space and generational ruptures and continuities. We will use this concept as more of an operating tool than a theoretical framework, which will first allow us to perceive the social and political structure of the city through an object that disrupts part of the sociopolitical order. We will then use this tool to adopt a dynamic approach to questioning the evolution, reproduction, fluidity, rupture and continuity of a social space or structure. Finally, it will stimulate a reflection on the stakes of categorization and the social struggles around it. This chapter is based on ethnographic research in Khartoum with activists from different movements, especially Girifna and Sudan Change Now, and more especially on biographical interviews and observations that took place during several sessions of fieldwork conducted in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. The interviews (biographies and informal interviews, individual and collective) were mainly conducted with activists from the two movements, although former members, family members and friends, members of other political groups and activists in exile in Europe (France, England and Germany) were also interviewed. All the interviews paid particular attention to past experiences of activism, to social, tribal and economic belonging, to family histories, to mobility in the city, to living places and to international extroversion (Bayart 1989).

Disrupting the Political Order through Innovative Forms of Action The two groups have organized an innovative (McAdam 1982; Pommerolle 2007) and contentious (Tilly 1984) repertoire that has significantly affected political dissent in Sudan. The most noticeable aspect of their actions has been an attempt to repoliticize and reappropriate public spaces in the city, which can be defined as authoritarian spaces (Planel 2015). The question of the space of contention is decisive here as a structural dimension, with its stakes of constraint and opportunity, but it is also analysed through the symbolic meaning given by the actors to places (Sewell 2001; Aruyero 2005). Certain areas of Greater Khartoum have had a long history of struggle, while others are perceived as the fiefdom of a political party or ethnic group, or as being dedicated to

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displaced people, or wealthy or working-class inhabitants. The symbolic, memorial and social perception of a space by the activists has a major impact on where they decide to organize their political activities. The riots and demonstrations of the past have left their symbolic mark on specific locations. This means that the movements are constrained by their spatial and social environment but also participate in shaping it (Aruyero 2005). The Sudanese movements organized various types of action. Activists used public speeches in markets and bus stations, on public transport and outside universities to reach the maximum number of people. Usually, one activist spoke while two others held up a banner with the colours of the movement (orange in the case of Girifna) and a slogan, while others distributed flyers. This kind of action was not completely new to Sudan, but it had been rare in the last decade. The innovative component was the way this action was systematized with work on imagery and communication. Activists also used graffiti with slogans and the names of their movement on city walls to mark their presence and target the regime’s public advertising. For instance, during the 2015 presidential elections, Girifna and ATA started a joint campaign known as ‘the blood elections’, in which they called for a boycott. Activists from Girifna’s ‘Street Action Committee’7 painted Omar al-Bashir’s face blood red on NCP posters. This kind of action regularly disturbs the political landscape and is usually organized by ATA and Girifna in tandem. Examples of it can be found in the ‘Sudan Revolts’ campaign of 2012, the ‘Abena’ campaign of 2013 and ‘the blood election’ campaign of 2015. Sudan Revolts was a campaign to encourage people to take to the streets during the anti-austerity demonstrations of June and July 2012, which were mainly led by students. Girifna was particularly active in organizing and helping the demonstrators in areas of Omdurman. ‘Abena’, which means ‘We refused’, was a joint campaign that began during the summer of 2013 with the objective of provoking an urban uprising to overthrow the regime. While some campaigns responded to a specific political event, such as the elections in 2010 and 2015, others called for popular uprisings, as in 2012 and 2013. Following the brutal repression of the demonstrations and riots of 2013, which were caused by a rise in petrol prices, the movements abandoned the strategy of ­calling for mass demonstrations. The extensive use of new media and tools of communication was a particular innovation of these emerging groups. Both began to record different types of video. Some adopted a humorous tone, such as the one in which a Girifna activist washed a T-shirt with Omar al-Bashir’s face on it with a Girifna soap to make al-Bashir disappear.8 Many others sought

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to attract the public’s attention to specific problems, however, as was the case with the videos produced by ATA that included interviews of tribal leaders in the Blue Nile area to raise awareness of the ongoing war.9 ATA was an especially prolific producer of videos, which included broadcast videos to introduce the movement, edited videos of demonstrations and videos introducing the movement’s vision for change. Girifna and ATA gradually gave up recording excerpts from public speeches because the National Intelligence Security Service (NISS) adapted its repressive tactics to use the videos to charge activists. The security services targeted online political activities, making arrests and creating fake accounts in order to monitor and follow activities. The groups were also very active on the internet, creating websites, a YouTube channel and Facebook and Twitter accounts, publishing significant activities to spread their messages. Some of these pages and communications were translated into English so they would reach people abroad. In order to deal with the security apparatus, and by a process of ‘exchanging punches’, the movements made their digital activities secure and adjusted their street activities (Dobry 2009; Combes and Fillieule 2011). Their actions attracted a large number of young Sudanese from urban areas and contributed towards weakening the classic political parties, which were already in crisis. Sudanese opposition parties such as Sadiq al-Mahdi’s Umma Party and the Sudanese Communist Party, two of the most influential political parties in Khartoum since independence (1956), lost some of their sway (Marchal 1996). Their weakness10 was due in part to the fact that they had been banned and had been operating clandestinely or from exile during the 1990s. Although they were now legally allowed to exist in Sudan, they were subject to strict control from the authorities. At present, these classic organizational structures, alongside the unions, are neglected, and the creation of new organizations is especially attracting younger activists, who are more attuned to the types of action and discourse promoted by these groups. Girifna and ATA have tried to organize and expand a network of activists engaged in a national campaign of dissent and local struggles in different Sudanese cities and abroad, and in the organization of advocacy and networks to extend the political arena, but with mixed results. The emerging protest movements are also very critical of the traditional political parties because of their failure to renew their members and their tendency to negotiate with the regime. To a certain extent, the emergence of the new movements demonstrates the failure of the classic parties and unions to represent a collective identity of struggle and to produce a framework (Goffman 1974; Benford and Snow 2000) that resonates with different segments of the population.

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It is important to underline, however, that a significant segment of these activists has either a strong family political history or political experience in official parties, student unions, associations and NGOs. They often have multiple affiliations, too, meaning that they also belong to other political or associative groups. For instance, numerous ATA activists were also members of the Sudanese Communist Party or the Sudanese Congress Party. Nevertheless, they do not hold the same positions in the political parties and the new movements. Many young communists participate or are involved in Girifna and ATA because, as they say, ‘you can’t have responsibility in the parties until you’re 50 or 60’11 and ‘the party is not evolving much’.12 One activist said, ‘I’m staying in the Communist Party, I’m doing the job in my neighbourhood, but the party needs to move forward, to address the people, so I got involved with . . . to make things move. I’m not in line with the direction, but I am a communist.’13 These examples illustrate the frustration young people feel with traditional parties. A large number of activists who had been sidelined by their parties’ leadership became involved in these emerging groups, but as far as the parties were concerned, it did not add value to their activist capital (Matonti and Poupeau 2004). On the contrary, the Sudanese Congress Party, an expanding party with a liberal perspective that is quite aggressive towards the regime, is recruiting youth activists and giving them key positions. These recruits (some of whom were already with the SCP) are mainly from the ATA and usually have a specific background in NGOs or international organizations. They have brought political know-how and activist skills to the party. The SCP then uses these emerging groups as nurseries or training centres for new activists. Nevertheless, activists joining the SCP remain involved with the new movements, and are therefore also acting within overlapping spaces at different levels of involvement with significant fluidity (Dobry 2009) between the different fields. This fluidity includes a variation of the value of incorporated resources and skills and trends of desectorization with the entry of new actors from different backgrounds who introduce new know-how into a political arena that had been very closed in the past. It needs to be underlined here that we are using the term political arena or field in the sense of a structured and autonomous field (Bourdieu 1992, 2000), even though it may not necessarily depend on elections and the race for positions of power. The field has its own rules, its own dominant and outside players, a specific recruitment process and sometimes even a cursus honorum. The appearance of ATA and Girifna is jamming and disrupting the normal game in the field and causing a crisis and a transition among political actors. One might question the emergence of an activist field alongside the partisan one,

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with different practices, recruitment processes, trajectories and values; however, it seems that these movements sit astride and overlap different fields rather than creating an independent one, a hypothesis that is also excluded by the inclusion of a large number of activists within the political parties. This issue of fluidity and multi-membership is central to the question of the self-definition of these groups and their fluctuating categorization, and the creative positioning in the urban arena destabilizes the traditional rules of the game in different arenas, as well as the system of exchanges among the various fields, especially political parties, student associations, NGOs and other associations. The question of defining and categorizing the movements is raised emphatically in the interviews. For instance, the self-definition offered by members themselves is often shifting and blurred, generating intense debate within the groups. It is a definition that frequently stands in opposition to other models used by political organizations, charity groups and NGOs, but there is more to it than that: ‘We’re not like the old parties’;14 ‘We don’t do that for money or to have connections with the international community’;15 ‘We’re a youth movement’, ‘political movement’,16 ‘revolutionary movement’,17 ‘horizontal movement’:18 These are recurrent formulations the activists use in their discourses simultaneously and with no sense of contradiction. The following excerpt from an interview with a SCN activist is particularly meaningful as regards its definition of the group: C: How do you define your group? A: We’re a political movement based on a pacifist approach . . . not completely pacifist but not armed. What we want to do is a social movement really . . . C: What you mean by that? A: I mean we want to build a force, a youth force to promote a social change. Not only a political change but more than that. Not the change the old activists have been talking about for a long time, something to change slowly from the community by the youth. It’s a long process, so we are working on a political change but also on a social change. And this one is more long and difficult because the community is really traditional.

While many of these quotes illustrate a critical approach towards pre-­ existing groups, they also demonstrate the political aspect of the self-­ definition in a broad sense, inasmuch as they position themselves in relation to these groups. We can also analyse how they are perceived and labelled (Becker 1963) by other political actors, the press and the

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population. This labelling clearly places these new groups within the political sphere. It is also a product of the assertion of an identity based on practices and values and the production of different discourses, based in our case on social justice and a globalized democratic lexicon of human rights, liberal democracy and equality between men and women. This involvement generates a process of collective identification founded not only on values and practices but also on common experiences of protest and a shared understanding of injustice.

Activist Trajectories: Tension, Innovation and Circulation Two different types of involvement trajectories can be observed among the activists from both movements: an associative trajectory and a political trajectory. We will distance ourselves from Olson’s (1965) approach, which is based on a calculation between cost and benefit and the resource mobilization theory, and which cannot offer a satisfactory understanding of political involvement, especially in the case of authoritarian power and emerging groups. Instead, we will base our analysis on the socio-historical trajectories of activists from a qualitative and dynamic perspective, and we will also be mindful of the gratification or symbolic retribution (Gaxie 1977) of involvement in specific social spaces. The first type of trajectory is political. Most activists are from families who are already involved in political parties or unions. Most are close to the Communist Party, although some have family members in other political groups like the Ba’ath or the DUP. In addition, many of them have had a very marked experience in the student unions of public universities such as Khartoum University, Nilein University, Sudan University and Juba University before relocation to South Sudan. They all perceive their activities within unions or student associations as intensive moments of learning and training to acquire specific political skills, including negotiating with other groups, organizing speeches and protests and publishing and distributing flyers. For many, it was also a time when they experienced political violence through ‘initiation rites’ inside the unions, physical confrontations with supporters of the regime and brutal repression by the security apparatus. Also, many members of other political groups studied or are studying in these universities, especially Khartoum University, giving the activists the opportunity to create an important network of interpersonal and political relations with members of other political parties. Along with these activists with a strong political trajectory, we see those who came to activism though their professional careers. We will

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call this subgroup the associative trajectory. Many activists from this group have no experience in opposition political parties or unions, but they do have professional experience with NGOs or international organizations (sometimes as volunteers, although their jobs have usually become permanent and remunerated) (Pommerolle and Siméant 2008). The data we collected show that they frequently studied communications or human rights and have had the opportunity to travel abroad to train or study. They often attended private universities, meaning that they are financially better-off than the members of the first trajectory. Although there may be significant disparities among members of each cohort, this associative group is wealthier than the first group. Also, they do not share the same experiences, skills or salary, which depend on the type of NGO or international organizations they working for. Furthermore, the ideologies of NGOs and international organizations can vary very much from one to another. They have more international extroversion experience, they are better-off, they have higher university degrees and they have less experience of political street violence or repression than the first group. It is the fruitful meeting of these two trajectories that generates these groups’ innovative actions and skills. The encounter between political and NGO experiences enriches the repertoire of protest but also creates certain internal tensions. The group is an interlacing space of resources, skills and networks, as well as a place of intense learning of new activist skills from different fields: NGOs, international organizations, political parties and student unions. Some activists push for more rationalization, specialization and performance in their activities and organization, while others underline issues such as the centrality of street propaganda and political alliances. The emergence of these groups is not a homogeneous phenomenon; on the contrary, it is pulled in a different direction as a result of the tensions caused by the social structure. The high degree of uncertainty in their stormy relations with the state and the political arena further reinforces the heterogeneity of these groups. One of the final important factors in the jamming of the political field is the unwillingness of these movements to take power: their objective is to overthrow the regime and promote social justice and an end to discrimination without actually taking power. They19 do not want to run for elected positions, seeing themselves more as a ‘lobby’ or ‘pressure movement’ in their relations with political parties. As one activist said, ‘We won’t be in government but we will influence them,’20 thus constructing what the activists call a ‘social movement’. This alternative positioning within the political space without following the rules of the field has destabilized the political parties. This has been achieved

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thanks to the movements’ dynamism and their ability to recruit a significant number of young people in a short time. This alternative positioning, which is an important part of the movements’ political identity, has led to a major move away from the production of interdependent syncretic discourses, practices that lie at the intersections of different political arenas. As an example from the Sudan Call,21 ATA is a part of the civil society initiative that makes up one of the Call’s branches, but it takes part in direct discussion with political delegates and political parties at meetings. In addition to an internal organization that creates tension among people with different social experience and economic status, its positioning vis-à-vis other organizations also brings about divergence within the groups along other lines. There has been conflict among the members of Girifna regarding permission to affiliate with other groups. Indeed, the ongoing membership of other political groups that are seen as non-progressive, traditional or liberal has created significant clashes within the group in Sudan and abroad (Deshayes 2019a). ATA has also faced a crisis with the decision of prominent members to be part of the Sudan Call and opposition to this option on the part of the majority of the movement, who refuse to be associated with the ‘old politics’ and to take part in negotiations with the regime through the Sudan Call. While these groups’ innovative and creative side may be apparent, we must also underscore the historical continuities in the social trajectories of the members, their families and some of their practices. Ideas flow between groups in different directions, and it is therefore not uncommon to borrow from other groups. To a limited extent, some parties and associations have begun using some of the practices launched by the emerging political movements. This appropriation depends first on the presence of members of these organizations who have multiple memberships, and second on the relative value attributed by the organizations to the embodied practices of members within emerging political movements. This acquired value also relies on the position occupied by the organization in the political landscape. For example, while the Communist Party ousts or sidelines activists from the new movements, the SCP promotes them. However, the SCP is a small, expanding party that fuels its expansion by using well-trained activists from these political movements or the Darfuri students association. These new forms of activism have also circulated on their own, however, and it is now quite common to see political parties such as the SCP, or even certain parties from the Islamist movement, using the same propaganda tools.

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Generational Ruptures and Transgenerational Legacies The second question relating to in-betweenness and categories in the case of these movements focuses on generational issues. The majority of activists are young, or define themselves as such. We must emphasize that not all social groups in society feel equally empowered or are legitimate political actors. The stigma of being young in the political field is a significant one and does not correspond to the actual fact of being young but rather to a perception that someone is young and immature. The terms ‘young’ and ‘youth’ are used in this chapter to signify a person who is considered by society to be young and who exhibits characteristics other than those that are considered to be attributes of an older person, which in Sudan normally implies being married and having children, and therefore being socially respectable. These definitions of young, older and adult are obviously associated with the context and have a relative contextual value. One can be perceived as young for an extended period of time in Sudanese society, with a substantial gap between rural and urban communities and between social classes. The activists I interviewed were between 24 and 39 years old; some were younger, while very few were older. It is noticeable than most of the activists are not married and do not have children until quite late. For the most part, when they do marry, they divorce after just a few years.22 This situation needs to be described for two reasons. First, divorce is not an exception in Khartoum or in the social classes the activists belong to, but it is still not very well accepted socially. The second reason is that the activists associate their divorce with their high level of involvement. Indeed, some former activists withdrew from the groups after marrying and having children in favour of a more traditional and less dangerous type of high-risk activism (McAdam 1986) in a political party. Most believe that their activities that are perceived as dangerous are not appropriate for a person with a family and thus do not fit into the idea of a socially acceptable person. Youth is an ambiguous category for men in particular because it is a time when they are searching for honour and assertion, but it is also a time of immaturity and irresponsibility in Arab Muslim societies (Rivoal and Peatrik 2015). The contexts we are studying are marked by the lengthening of the period of youth and hindrances to the mechanisms for transition to adulthood due to economic conditions and social transformations. Part of the social space developed through homology for the functioning of a family based on seniority and the transition to adulthood, this

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obstacle leads to ‘young people’ being excluded and marginalized from political decision-making. In the arrangement of political relationships, young people are therefore considered to be ‘social cadets’ (Bayart 1989) because of these social relationships based on seniority. It should be clarified that there are two ways in which young people are socially dominated: first in the family environment, where there is a separation in the order of power between adults, young people and children – between older and younger (Meillassoux 1975); and second in society, where the post-independence generations have captured power in many countries in Africa and the Middle East and have made significant efforts to control young people (Mbembe 1985). While young people share a common position with regard to the way forms of power are arranged, they are no less numerous and are crossed by many fracture lines, the most obvious of which is gender. The actors I describe are usually presented as members of youth groups and consider themselves to be apart from the workings of the political parties or major NGOs. They base this distinction on the fact that political parties and NGOs are controlled by ‘older’ people whom they believe engage in practices that they view as obsolete and respons­ ible for stagnating society. The ‘youth’ also react against political parties whom they feel do not allow them enough space inside them. They feel frustrated, for instance, by the fact that you can be seen as being shabb ‘young’ in these parties until you are in your 40s or 50s.23 There is an inherent ambiguity between the self-definition of youth in opposition to older politicians and being viewed as being lower in the political arena because of their youth and the discourses of many activists, who explain that they only left the traditional parties because they did not find enough space inside them. For these activists, opposition to the old parties comes from their negative experience. Girifna defines itself as a youth movement, while ATA rejects this classification, as its founders find that it is too reductive and has a potentially negative image. In this opposition, we begin to glimpse the dividing lines between the common representations of ‘youth’. In Girifna, it is openly thought of as a revolutionary agent, or at least the bearer of social transformations. Here, we see some of Comaroff and Comaroff’s intuitions underlining the historical construction of the category of ‘youth’ around discourses of modernity (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000). These transformations and images make it a dangerous social group for the established order, whether it been political, moral or patriarchal. In a political order built on seniority by homology, images linked to the immaturity of youth are part of the process of disqualifying a ‘young’ political world and are sometimes reproduced by actors such as ATA.

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In this context, young people are usually seen as a driving force for change, not only by international foreign policy developers, who target them as recipients or collaborators (Bonnefoy and Catusse 2013), but also by society (Diouf 2003). This creates a kind of paradox: on the one hand, young people are considered to be a factor of change by means of their unique position between tradition and modernity, between being outside and inside the country, while on the other they are perceived by the political and traditional social orders based on patriarchal norms as a risk and an instability factor. The powers that be and social institutions perceive these initiatives as arising from a class – young people – that has been excluded from the arenas of power, and as an agent that weakens their authority (Mbembe 1985; Bayart 1989). To these representations of young people, the state has added the idea of a risk or threat to order and tackles it in three ways. First, it tries to delegitimize these groups by adopting a patronizing tone to describe them as inherently irresponsible, violent and behaving unacceptably.24 Second, it deals with them for the most part by the use of surveillance and police controls. Third, it tries to highjack initiatives and develop specific policies that seek to include young people socially and economically by depoliticizing the initiatives. Demographic changes (the official estimate in 2011 underlined the fact that over 60% of the population was under 25), along with economic and urban transformations, pose a challenge to young people’s political and social integration. In urban areas, there is a certain degree of amalgamation between the influence of local and globalized cultures. This process creates tension between both and has important consequences for the role of young people in the urban social and political sphere. Furthermore, they have gained unprecedented autonomy, notably through consumption, cultural goods and the use of mass media (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000; Bayat 2010). When it is linked to social and economic transformations, this autonomy causes changes and identity and religious evolutions among young people (Bayat and Herrera 2010), who are perceived to be in the best position to give voice to both a language of universal rights and a local language. These processes are associated with the reconfiguration of national and urban territories and forms of social organization, belonging and loyalties. They are accompanied by the erosion and liberalization of the state and to a certain extent by a reduction in family obligations. Girifna and ATA play host to several generation-based subgroups (Péchu 2001; Bennani- Chraibi 2003). Within these generations there is a multiplicity of groups based on belonging, affinity, shared history and neighbourhood. Our data analysis has enabled us to identify two

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main generational subgroups. The first is a group of male activists over 35. They began their political activities in student unions, mainly the Democratic Front and the Communist Party of Khartoum University in the mid-1990s at a time of violent repression, and although their involvement never ceased, they distanced themselves from them or left their political parties. They are now working and have been married and divorced. A second generation, which is more significant in number, is made up of activists between 25 and 30 years of age. They began their political or associative activities during the period between 2005 and 2010, at a time of optimism and relative openness. Many of them met during this time and joined Girifna and ATA in the early years, when these movements were on the rise. They were deeply affected by the repression of September 2013, are more wary of parties, and are assuming increasing importance in the movements’ decision-making processes. The question of youth and militant generations therefore arises acutely in the case of these protest movements. In a break from, and in opposition to, the militant models of their elders, the Sudanese ‘youth’ movements are also criss-crossed by generational divisions. The first generation, which is more marked by political and union trajectories, has often opposed the second generation, which was born under the Ingaz and has more associative trajectories. Political domination based on age and seniority has thus often been reproduced in the relations among militants and has created a good deal of tension within the movements (Deshayes 2019a). Within the different generations, especially the second, we find subgroups based on shared university experiences, mainly at Khartoum University but also in places like Wad Nubawi, Abassiya, Imtidad and Shajara. We should emphasize that both before and since independence Khartoum University has been the place where most of the sociopolitical elite studies, and it has provided the majority of the political and administrative staff of the political parties and the state (Sharkey 2003). The neighbourhood is central to the constitution of different groups and their capacity to organize demonstrations. It is also a factor of solidarity and protection from the security apparatus. It is thus interesting to look into these other subgroups, not at a temporal level but through the urban space. Indeed, social-economic and regional belonging is translated in the capital’s urban space.

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Closing the Political Space or Political Renewal? The new groups are mainly made up of individuals with relatively important educational and social capital. In most cases, their members are graduates of public and private schools in Khartoum. A significant number have a master’s degree, and some have a Ph.D. Some have done part of their studies outside Sudan (in Europe or other African countries). Economically speaking, they hail from middle- and upper-class families with a large number of civil servants, physicians, military and businessman among their number. Many activists were still students at the University of Khartoum and other universities when they became involved in the groups, but the majority now work for associations, in communications and consultancy or as engineers and teachers. The overwhelming majority are from the riverine Arab tribes of the Nile Valley or are Nubians, with a limited presence of other Arab tribes from Kordofan and Jezira. Many of their family members formerly had important positions in the administration, the army and the security services and/or in large companies before the arrival of the NCP in 1989. Their families often belong to what has been defined by Sudanese anthropologists as a colonial and postcolonial ‘tribal elite’ (Ahmed 1979). They lost their positions during the political and administrative purges of the 1990s and were economically and socially weakened by the repression of the same decade. This is particularly central to the trajectories of those with a political background, who often come from ‘well-known’ or ‘old’ families who have social or political prestige but are often not as wealthy as they were before the coup. These are families with a certain prestige that has been acquired through their history, their long-term presence in the centre of Khartoum, their wealth and the positions occupied by their members, and they are well known. In short, many of them belong to the upper class, but it is a dominated and relegated fragment of the one that existed before the 1989 coup. These activists come from families who have lived in Khartoum for at least one or two generations. Their family homes are in the centre of Omdurman (Abu Roaf, Banat Gharb or Sharq, Abassiyya, Molazamiyyn and Hay Al-‘Omda), Khartoum (including Imtidad, Sahafa, Riyad and Arkawit) or North Khartoum. Their neighbourhoods are mainly middle and upper class and central. Only a minority of them live in peripheral neighbourhoods such as Kalakla, Haj Youssif or Um Badda. We should also note that they show great daily mobility inside the city, moving between different places, from work to home and to cafés and universities, mainly in central Khartoum. If we only look at where they live

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and their urban mobility, it is clear that these groups have no particular contact with the peripheral areas of Greater Khartoum, which reveals the high degree of segregation inside the city. This can be illustrated by the following excerpt: A: Why have you been there? Mayo [a former IDP camp, a working-class peripheral neighbourhood of Khartoum] is a dangerous place. I’ve never been. C: Why have you never been? It’s just a popular area. You’ve never been there for your political activities? A: Not even to buy Marissa [laughs]. I don’t go there – it’s dangerous for me at night.25 C: How is it dangerous? A: Because of my skin colour; they come from the South and don’t really like people with light skin like me. I understand why, but I just don’t go.26 I took a bus to go to see someone for a meeting. It’s a Darfurian and Nuba area (Haj Youssif) and the guys on the bus were really rude to me; they were yelling at me, harassing and insulting me a bit. I was the only Arab, like . . . [shows discomfort] with a white skin like me in the bus. I got scared a bit because I’m use to going to most parts of the city by bus, but in these areas people are really aggressive with us, especially as I was on a bus, which means I’m poor so I don’t have relations, so they can say what they want for once.

This example is one of many that show the significant social differences based on skin colour and the perception of ethnic or tribal belonging. Social lines based on belonging usually overlap between where people live and their economic status. In these examples, the association between skin colour, ethnic belonging and supposed dangerousness is striking, as is the idea that spaces where certain groups live reinforce the concept of a city segmented on social, economic (El-Hassan 2015) and racial grounds. This segmented city was planned by the regime in an authoritarian manner (Lavergne 1997). Urban policies therefore participate in the segmentation of the city. Dissent and the movements’ actions fit within the social fabric, and racial domination (which we see through the eyes of the privileged in this chapter) creates a distance between the activists and certain dominated groups. It is striking in this case that activists can favour protests in some central areas because of a relative socio-economic and ethnic homogeneity and limit their protests in other areas with different characteristics. These observations reveal significant tensions between the discourses of integration and equality in a globalized vocabulary of the groups that

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wish to reach areas of relegation and stand up for the dominated population and their limited presence in these areas. Their presence might take the form of immediate actions at different times of the year, mainly in places of connection such as markets, bus stations and universities rather than in the heart of those areas, with a view to having access to people from all areas. Some of the interviews also revealed ambiguities between a widespread discourse and specific ones about areas that are described as dangerous and populated by thieves, and perceived as being more dangerous for ‘people like us’, meaning lighter-skinned people, Arabs or the well-to-do. This does not describe all the members of these new movements, but to a certain extent it does reveal some of the tensions between different areas, varying motilities and the overlapping spaces of a segmented city. For those living in areas with a significant population from war zones, especially Darfurians and Nubas, these political movements are usually perceived as representing members of the elite and as belonging to the dominant segments of society in terms of ethnic groups and social status (Mahmoud 1984). Where one does note cooperation or support, there remains marked distrust on the part of people from the margins, who experience significant social injustice and racism in the city, along with the idea that the old Khartoumese are mobilizing for reasons of their own eco-political discontent and struggle for power. It is noticeable that the youth groups that have emerged from the marginalized areas follow a different pattern: they are associated more with political parties that represent the interests of people from the margins of the country or take the form of cultural defence associations. In this context, one might wonder whether the emerging groups should not be considered as a class movement (Atak 2014) or as a reproduction of an internal struggle for power and position within the dominant sectors of society, which repoliticize only parts of a segmented urban fabric. The December revolution, which points to militants from higher social classes and a certain tendency to reproduce social hierarchies based on class, geographic origin and gender, might call this result of our survey into question, but it seems to us that the revolutionary process in all its complexity has not abolished spatial injustices (Bakhit, Ibrahim and Medani 2019) and that class-based dynamics (El-Gizouli 2019) in the process of contesting and appropriating power are still at play. The question of the place of these protest movements has been forcefully debated since the revolutionary process that began in December 2018 and is still continuing at the time of writing. Girifna and ATA have been permanently weakened by the repression, the failed mobilizations

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of 2012, 2013 and 2016 and the departure of many of their leaders for foreign countries. The connection between these movements and the revolution is not necessarily massive at an individual level, but Girifna and ATA have also become too marginal on the urban political scene in recent years, and there are some issues that raise questions. First of all, it is noteworthy that activists from these movements who are also members of other organizations have often redirected and reinvested their energies in initiatives such as the Association of Sudanese Professionals or revolutionary neighbourhood committees. The resemblance between movements such as Girifna and ATA and the revolutionaries of 2018–2019 is also quite striking in their slogans, speeches and militant practices, including the way they take to the streets (Deshayes and Vezzadini 2019; Deshayes 2019b) or claim their youthfulness (Bayat 2017). We can therefore hypothesize that because they create a space for protest between different social, political, associative, university and union spaces, and between different political generations, these movements have been among the factors that have disseminated an original and creative repertoire of action beyond militant opposition circles. Clément Deshayes is an anthropologist. He teaches at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University. His Ph.D. entitled ‘Struggle in the City: Political Ethnography of Two Contestation Movements (Girifna and Sudan Change Now)’, defended in 2019 at Paris 8 Saint Denis University, received a special distinction of the jury awarded by the Institute for the Study of Islam and Muslim World Societies. He also recently published (with Elena Vezzadini in 2019) ‘Quand le consensus se fissure: Processus révolutionnaire et spatialisation du soulèvement soudanais’, Politique Africaine 154: 149–78. His research focuses on the emergence of new contestation groups in the urban areas of Sudan and on urban social movements in Sudan.

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Notes   1. Conflicts over land ownership and urban planning have been a recurring issue in Khartoum for many years, but they have been more intense in the past few years following the deaths of three demonstrators in Jereif (12 June 2015) and a number of injured during the repression. Many areas, such as Jereif, Shajara and Soba, have been affected by authoritarian relocation or land speculation.   2. Several demonstrations and localized struggles broke out after 2013 following repeated shortages of drinking water in many neighbourhoods, including at Fitehab, Kalakla, Shajara and Salma (see Casciarri and Deshayes 2019).  3. Numerous strikes and clashes have been reported in many universities across the country. Some universities in Khartoum, including Sudan University, the Holy Koran University and Khartoum University, experienced such strikes caused by conditions in dormitories, the right to fee exemptions for Darfurian students based on the Doha peace agreement, allegations that University of Khartoum land is being sold and the termination of subsidies on goods. These movements have faced clashes with supporters of the regime and have usually been violently suppressed by the security services.   4. In Khartoum’s universities and in some neighbourhoods, Darfur’s student associations are highly active alongside some cultural associations in the fight against discrimination and the continuation of crime in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile and the domination of the Riverine people.   5. Public Order laws are mainly issued based on Sudan’s 1991 Criminal Code, especially Articles 151 and 152, and the Khartoum Public Act Order of 1998, and are implemented by the public order police.   6. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) is an armed movement that was involved in the second Sudanese civil war after 1983. The SPLM signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese regime in 2005. This peace agreement called for a self-determination referendum to be held for the Southern regions, jointly organized by the government and the SPLM/A.   7. Girifna is organized into different horizontal committees, the most prominent of which is the Street Action Committee. Each member can choose which committee he wants to be part of.  8. ‘Girifna Soap Ad’. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o6Rxc_JZK​ gandfeature=youtu.be (retrieved 10 January 2017).  9. ‘Sudan Changenow’. See: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnrOW​ ORfd7zHo5DjfyTxslw (retrieved 26 September 2018). 10. The Sudanese political field revolves around four different groups. The first, and most historically predominant one, is the group of sectarian political parties. The two main parties, which have shared power during each period of democracy since independence, are the Umma Party of Sadiq al-Mahdi

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and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of the Mirghani family, as well as the Khatmiyya Brotherhood, which is also led by the Mirghanis. A second group of parties is linked to the Islamist movement, and includes, among many others, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the Popular Congress Party (PCP), which was created and led by Hassan Tourabi until his death in 2016. The third is a group of secular parties, which are often allies but have significantly different economic and nationalist perspectives. It includes the Sudanese Communist Party, the Ba’ath parties, the Haag, and on its fringes, the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP). The last substantial group is made up of armed groups, which are allied despite the tensions within the Sudan Revolutionary Front (the SRF), the powerful SPLM-North and the Darfurian groups SLM/A, SLM/MM, JEM. Many parties from different backgrounds are grouped within the Sudan Call (despite important tensions, splits and reconciliations) in opposition to the regime. 11. To preserve the anonymity of the interviewees, their names and any information that might lead them to be identified have been changed. Interview with Hassan, 37, Khartoum November 2015. 12. Interview with Mohamed, 26, Khartoum, June 2016. 13. Interview with Khaled, 24, Khartoum, December 2016. 14. Mohamed A., 26, Khartoum, October 2015. 15. Sarah, 32, Khartoum, December 2016. 16. These two expressions were repeated around a dozen times each, mainly by younger activists in the movements and usually with other descriptive sentences. 17. Ahmed, 27, Khartoum, October 2015. 18. Samar, 24, Khartoum, May 2016. 19. Non-participation in the elections provoked debates inside ATA, but the majority of its members refused the idea of participation by the movement. 20. Mohamed O., 39, Khartoum, December 2016. 21. Sudan Call, which was signed in December 2014, is a political agreement that unites the opposition forces (the National Consensus Forces, the Umma Party), the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SPLM-N, JEM, SLA/ AW, SLA/MM) and the Civil Society Initiative. The agreement calls for the establishment of a democracy and the end of war. 22. During my fieldwork, of the seven couples I met and interviewed who married during that time at least one half of each couple was involved in activism, and only one marriage lasted more than five years. 23. Interview with Hassan, 37, Khartoum November 2015. 24. After the clashes at Khartoum University in 2016, the university created a committee to fight ‘students violence’, and various declarations by officials have linked youth violence to irrational or immature behaviour or to ‘difficulties with handling love deceptions [sic]’. 25. This sentence is an example of a discriminating stereotype of South Sudanese; the marissa is a traditional alcohol mainly from Southern regions. 26. Interview with Ali, 28, Khartoum, November 2016.

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References Ahmed, A.M. 1979. ‘“Tribal” Elite: A Base for Social Stratification in the Sudan’, in S. Diamond (ed.), Toward a Marxist Anthropology. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 321–35. Aruyero, J. 2005. ‘L’espace des lutes: Topographie des mobilisations collectives’, Actes de la recherché en sciences sociales 160: 122–32. Atak, K. 2014. ‘D’Istanbul à Rio de Janeiro, des soulèvements de classe?’, Revue Internationale et Stratégique 93: 81–89. Bakhit, M., S. Ibrahim and R. Medani. 2019. ‘The Spatial Dimension of the Four Month Long Sudanese Uprising’, Noria Research, Special Issue, May 2019. Bayart, J.-F. 1989. L’État en Afrique: La politique du ventre. Paris: Arthème Fayard. ______. 1999. ‘L’Afrique dans le monde, une histoire d’extraversion’, Critique Internationale 5: 97–120. Bayat, A. 2004. ‘Globalization and the Politics of the Informals in the Global South’, in A. Roy and N. Al Sayyad (eds), Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives in the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. Maryland: Lexington Books, pp. 79–102. ______. 2010. ‘Muslim Youth and the Claim of Youthfulness’, in L. Herrera and A. Bayat (eds), Being Young and Muslim. New York: Oxford University Press. ______. 2017. Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Becker, H.S. 1963. (translated in 1985). Outsiders: Sociologie de la deviance. Paris: Métailié. Benford, R., and D. Snow. 2000. ‘Framing Processes and Social Movement: An Overview and Assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–39. Bennani-Chraibi, M. 2003. ‘Parcours, cercles et médiations à Casablanca: tous les chemins mènent à l’action associative de quartier’, in M. BennaniChraibi and O. Fillieule (eds), Résistances et protestations dans les sociétés musulmanes. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 293–352. Bonnefoy, L., and M. Catusse. 2013. Jeunesses arabes: Du Maroc au Yémen: Loisirs, cultures et politiques. Paris: La Découverte. Bourdieu, P. 1979. La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, Le Sens Commun. ______. 1980. ‘Le capital social’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 31: 2–3. ______. 1992. Les règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil. ______. 2000. Propos sur le champ politique. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Casciarri, B., M.A.M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds). 2015. Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn.

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Casciarri, B., and C. Deshayes. 2019. ‘Nous sommes assoiffés!’: quelques réflexions à partir des mouvements récents de protestation pour l’accès à l’eau dans les villes soudanaises’, in D. Blanchon and B. Casciarri (eds), Accès à l’eau en Afrique/Accessing Water in Africa, actes de la conférence de Nanterre, 2016, Espace et Justice series. Nanterre: Presses de l’Université de Nanterre, pp. 211–33. Choplin, A. 2006. ‘Fabriquer des villes-capitales entre Monde Arabe et Afrique Noire: Nouakchott (Mauritanie) et Khartoum (Soudan) étude comparée’, Ph.D. dissertation. University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Comaroff, J., and J. Comaroff. 1999. Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa, Critical Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ______. 2000. ‘Réflexions sur la jeunesse: Du passé à la postcolonie’, Politique Africaine 80: 90–110. Combes, H., and O. Fillieule. 2011. ‘De la répression considérée dans ses rapports à l’activité protestataire: Modèles structuraux et interactions stratégiques’, Revue Française de Science politique 61(6): 1047–72. Deshayes, C. 2016. ‘Émergence de nouveaux groupes contestataires urbains et dynamiques de la semi-clandestinité au Soudan’, Confluences Méditerranée 98(3): 61–73. ______. 2019a. ‘La révolution soudanaise ou l’apogée d’une décennie de contestation de l’ordre politique?’, Noria Research, Special Issue, May 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2019 from https://www.noria-research.com/fr/la-rev​ olution-soudanaise-ou-lapogee-dune-decennie-de-contestation-de-lor​ dre-politique/. ______. 2019b. ‘Lutter en ville au Soudan: une ethnographie politique de deux mouvements de contestation (Girifna et Sudan Change Now)’, Ph.D. thesis in Anthropology. University Paris 8 Saint Denis. Deshayes, C., and E. Vezzadini. 2019. ‘Quand le consensus se fissure: Processus révolutionnaire et spatialisation du soulèvement soudanais’, Politique Africaine 154: 149–78. Diouf, M. 2003. ‘Engaging Postcolonial Cultures: African Youth and Public Space’, African Studies Review 46(2): 1–12. Dobry, M. 2009. Sociologie des crises politiques. Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po. El-Gizouli, M. 2019. ‘Class Dynamics, Dissemination of the Sudanese Uprising’, Noria Research, Special Issue, May 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2019 from https://www.noria-research.com/fr/class-dynam​ics-diss​emina​ tion-of-the-sudanese-uprising-2/. El-Hassan, I.S. 2015. ‘Old Omdurman and National Integration: The Sociohistorical Roots of Exclusion’, in M. Assal and M. Abdul-Jalil (eds), Past, Presents and Future: Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: CMI, pp. 81–95.

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Fillieule, O. 2001. ‘Post-scriptum: propositions pour une analyse processuelle de l’engagement individual’, Revue Française de science politique 51(1–2): 199–215. Franck, A. 2016. ‘Le Grand Khartoum sans sudistes? Recompositions post CPA dans le quartier populaire de Mussalass (Omdurman)’, Egypte/Monde Arabe 14: 85–111. Gaxie, D. 1977. ‘Économie des partis et rétributions du militantisme’, Revue Française de Science Politique 27(1): 123–55. ______. 2002. ‘Appréhensions du politique et mobilisation des expériences sociales’, Revue Française de Science Politique 2–3: 145–78. Goffman, E. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Guilhot, N. 2005.  The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and the Politics of Global Order. New York: Columbia University Press. Herrera, L., and A. Bayat (eds). 2010. Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. New York: Oxford University Press. Kadoda, S., and S. Hale. 2015. ‘Contemporary Youth Movements and the Role of Social Media in Sudan’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 49(1): 215–37. Lavergne, M. 1997. ‘La violence d’Etat comme mode de régulation de la croissance urbaine: le cas de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Espaces, Populations et sociétés 1: 49–64. Mahmoud, F.B. 1984. The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? London: Zed. Marchal, R. 1996. ‘Soudan: vers une recomposition du champ politique?’, Revue du monde musulman et de la méditerranée 81–82: 93–117. Marchal, R., and E. Ahmed. 2010. ‘Multiple Uses of Neoliberalism: War, New Boundaries, and Reorganization of the Government in Sudan’, in F.  Gutierrez and G. Schonwalder (eds), Economic Liberalization and Political Violence: Utopia or Dystopia. London: Pluto Press, pp. 173–206. Mathieu, L. 2002. ‘Rapport au politique, dimensions cognitives et perspectives pragmatiques dans l’analyse des mouvements sociaux’, Revue Française de Science Politique 52(1): 75–100. Matonti, F., and F. Poupeau. 2004. ‘Le capital militant: Essai de définition’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 155: 5–11. Mbembe, J.A. 1985. Les jeunes et l’ordre politique en Afrique Noire. Paris: L’Harmattan, Logiques Sociales. McAdam, D. 1982. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ______. 1986. ‘Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer’, American Journal of Sociology 92(1): 64–90. Meillassoux, C. 1975. Femmes, greniers et capitaux. Paris: Maspero. Merle, A. 2011. ‘De l’inclassable à “l’espèce d‘espace”: l’intermédiarité et ses enjeux en géographie’, L’information géographique 75(2): 88–98. Olson, M. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard Economic Studies.

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Péchu, C. 2001. ‘Les générations militantes à Droit au logement’, Revue française de science politique 51(1–2): 73–103. Planel, S. (ed.). 2015. ‘Espaces autoritaires, espaces (in)justes?’, JSSJ Justice spatiale / Spatial justice 8, available at https://www.jssj.org/article/espaces-autoritaires-espaces-injustes/. Pommerolle, M.E. 2007. ‘Routines autoritaires et innovations militantes: Le cas d’un mouvement étudiant au Cameroun’, Politique africaine 108: 155–72. Pommerolle, M.E., and J. Siméant (eds). 2008. Un autre monde à Nairobi – Le Forum Social Mondial 2007 entre extraversion et causes africaines. Paris: Karthala. Rivoal, I., and A.-M. Peatrick. 2015. ‘Les “jeunes” dans le sud de la Méditerranée’, Ateliers d’anthropologie [online] 42. Sewell, H. 2001. ‘Space in Contentious Politics’, in R. Aminzade (ed.), Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 51–88. Sharkey, H. 2003. Living with Colonialism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Tilly, P. 1984. ‘Les origines du répertoire de l’action collective contemporaine en France et en Grande-Bretagne’, Vingtième siècle: Revue d’Histoire 4: 89–108.

Part II

[•] In-Betweenness as a Temporal Dimension

[•  Chapter 5  •]

Urban Violence in Khartoum in August 2005 as a Watershed Event IDRIS SALIM EL-HASSAN Introduction

This chapter aims to provide a description and analysis of the inci1

dents that took place in Khartoum in the wake of the announcement of the tragic death of John Garang in a plane crash on 30 July 2005. At the time, Garang was the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) and First Vice-President of the Government of National Peace, sharing power between the NCP (National Congress Party (the ruling party)) and the SPLA/M in Sudan. On Monday 1 August 2005 (Black Monday, as it was dubbed by the media), following the announcement of John Garang’s suspicious death,2 Khartoum witnessed massive widespread riots and acts of violence (to be detailed below) among civilians of a magnitude that had not seen in forty years. The violent protests were started mainly by Southern Sudanese (Southerners)3 living in Khartoum, who suspected that his death was a planned assassination plot hatched by the Northern regime in Khartoum. They regarded Garang as their leader, saviour and hero in the long war between Northern and Southern Sudan before they became two separate states (Sudan and Southern Sudan) in 2011. The relationship between Southern and Northern Sudan has a long and protracted history marred by the stigma of slavery and violent confrontations during the nation-building process in Sudan (for more details on this, please refer to Chapter 7 in this collection by Azza A. Abdel Aziz; see also Oduho and Deng 1963; Ruay 1994). There are also written materials on these violent acts because of their intensity (see, for example, Medani

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2005; Ministry of Cabinet of Ministers 2005; El-Hassan 2005a; Women’s Center for Peace and Development 2005; El-Hassan 2008b; Al-Atabani 2012; Beber, Roessler and Scacco 2014). This chapter aspires to add to the existing body of literature by exploring the elements that may have contributed to that violence, but it also goes further, arguing that the events might be seen as constituting an in-between situation: that is, as a historical landmark in a long-term series of interrelationships extending from the past to the present that will most probably also have an impact in the future. I will argue that the violent events in Khartoum represent an important historical moment in an extended period of conflict caused by unbalanced development and accentuated by the stigma of slavery, ethnic bias and marginalization impacting Southern Sudanese. As I will explain, these factors underlie the violence in question among civilians.

Methodology and Conceptualization To substantiate the argument proposed in the introduction, the following methodology was employed. The chapter starts off by drawing a general outline for conceptualizing the topic. A brief review of the literature on urbanization trends and urban violence in general then follows in order to situate my arguments within the current debates on the issues under review. This is followed by the data collected, which focuses on the spatial locations where the major incidents of violence occurred; the main socio-economic characteristics of the participants; the types and availability of education, health services and other amenities; and participation in social, economic and political activities.4 The data-gathering methods included the standard anthropological tools of participant observation, through interviews with individuals who took part in the violence as participants, activists, media, government officials and administrators. In addition, daily papers, official reports and media reports were also used as primary sources. Books, articles and internet materials also constituted important secondary sources for reporting on and describing the events. In terms of conceptualization, the study will analyse the context of the violent events of August 2005 as an in-between situation, as alluded to above, and as will be developed further below. In order to accomplish this, the chapter examines the relevant social and physical settings, the possible causes of the violence and the social characteristics of the actors and their actions and reactions. It also discusses the role of the state, civil society organizations, the media, religious institutions, religious

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personalities, community leaders and politicians in intensifying or cooling down the events through their interventions. All of the above will be situated within the framework of the urbanization of wider Khartoum and development in Sudan at large under the changing conditions of a globalized world. This study postulates that the complexity of the violent events that followed the death of John Garang cannot simply be explained from a perspective that examines the structural aspects of the interacting individuals, groups, events, institutions and locations or times as discrete or opposing entities. The entire scene was highly dynamic, and none of the interacting elements would ever be the same as before, either during or after the processes of interaction. Here, the in-between perspective entails scrutiny of the details of the processes at the locations of interaction: I will not attempt to approach the subject through fixed, structural notions, because in this case, the outcome of the due processes is openended and cannot be predicted. As a result, the concept of in-between was found to be helpful for gaining a better understanding of the events of 2005 from a theoretical standpoint. The concept of in-between could be looked at as close to the Japanese notion of ‘ma’, which means ‘negative space’. The concept includes many meanings, however, and is not restricted to physical space alone. It refers to the ‘gap’ between two or more opposite or similar elements that somehow coexist and yet do not remain the same when they interact. The area that constitutes the linking space between them is not neutral: rather, it is a meeting point for negotiated interactions. As such, it is a space of ambiguity and ambivalence, and the outcome of communications between the elements or relationships is never certain. This means that if one wants to appreciate their dynamism, there is no point in studying their structural relationships alone. It would be more fruitful, I think, to view these relationships as processes of negotiation within a framework of time and space (in a figurative sense). The competency of the philosophical underpinnings and the implications of the concept of in-betweenness for dealing with amorphous situations have enabled novel writers, film-makers, musicians, fine art artists and physical and social scientists to employ it in their respective fields and not leave it to architects alone (Farhady and Nam 2009).5 The concept of in-between is used in this study to denote Garang’s accident in terms of time and space within a fluid urban setting: that is, as a watershed moment that led to an in-between period that ended with South Sudan’s independence in 2011. Within this moment in history there were many instances of in-betweens  – for example, social, political, economic, spatial and demographic – as we will discuss below.

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Chapters 6, 8 and 9 of this book also offer many other examples of the multiplicity of in-between Southerners’ particular experiences while living in Khartoum.

The Dimensions of Urban Violence The urbanization phenomenon has developed tremendously worldwide, touching or impacting almost all aspects of social dynamics (UNCHS (Habitat) 1996). Living in urban settings has its own peculiarities. The city encompasses a large number of populations with major variations in their ethnic, occupational, cultural, social and political backgrounds and orientations. Their relationships depend on the type and standard of employment, social position, education, qualification, neighbourhoods and the like, rather than on blood, kinship or other ascribed characteristics. As such, the city is always in a state of flux and interaction among various components within specific historical contexts, which both affects and is affected by its inhabitants and other elements operating within it (UNWUP 2018). Each city has its own identity, which is reflected in turn by its own forms of violence and the reactions they elicit. Each type of urban violence therefore requires a different type of analysis that is appropriate to its particular situation. The events in Khartoum illustrate how its history of population make-up and residential settings can help us understand the kind of violence that took place in August 2005 and the responses it generated. The general characteristics of urban violence6 are that it involves large numbers of the urban population and revolves around issues of marginalization, lack of privilege and discrimination. It is usually triggered by a dramatic incident that may result in massive destruction of property and probably a considerable number of deaths and injuries with long-lasting consequences. Researchers have identified several types of urban violence – p ­ olitical; social (communal and ethnic); economic; environmental; institutional; and criminal anomic7 – all of which have a negative social and economic impact on the state and society at large. The most common and widespread types of violence in the world today are political, social and criminal anomic. The term political violence means collective civil violence against the state, or violence by the state against certain groups among its own population. It includes riots, insurgency, rebellions, revolutions and civil strife and in my opinion is often triggered by dissatisfaction with the state’s poor political, economic and social policies and performance. Social and ethnic violence, on the other hand, may involve

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conflict and fighting between rival ethnic, racial or religious groups. Racial, ethnic and religious identities can be tapped for mobilization against real or perceived disparities in cultural, social, political and/or economic opportunities. Finally, criminal anomie is generally indicative of weak social cohesion in the society in which it is found. However, it is difficult, I think, to separate categories of violence from one another, as any aspects of one of them might be found in others at different stages of their development. Despite any similarities between the different forms of urban violence throughout the world in general, each case will have its own unique characteristics and processes, depending on its socio-economic historical context, its root causes and issues of contention, the actions and reactions of the social groups and institutions involved and, finally, the response by the state machinery.8

General Background to Khartoum’s Urban Violence Sudan has experienced cycles of violence  – more specifically armed conflict  – throughout its recent history, including killing, burning ­ and sacking, among its various segments, whether they be kingdoms, tribes, ethnic groups or even extended families.9 For example, in the period immediately following independence, violent acts were common in Southern Sudan in 1955 and during the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s.10 However, when Sudanese people mention major acts of violence, they are generally referring to the North/South conflict,11 which lasted from 1955 to 1972 (Alier 1990) and from 1983 to 2005: that is, for thirty-nine years. As a rule, Khartoum has been spared much of the violence associated with the North/South war or, more broadly, conflicts in the peripheral provinces of the country. Nonetheless, it has its share of violence in record. A few examples will suffice: 1 March 1955; Mulid (the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday festival) events in 1963; and the bloody clashes of December 1964 between Southerners and Northerners, in which many Southerners were slaughtered. A number of journalists and radio commentators tended to liken the December 1964 disturbances to those of August 2005 in terms of the widespread deaths of a large number of innocent people, and because both conflicts were between civilians and not between the government and other parties, as in the other cases. What, then, differentiates the events of August 2005 from the others I have mentioned above? Firstly, the other incidents were localized and limited to tribal, ethnic or factional groups, and they did not develop to become long-term

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national issues. Secondly, the war in the South was between the GoS (Government of Sudan) and the SPLA/M (the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement) and their allied militias and was located geographically in South Sudan and did not reach Khartoum. Hence, despite its catastrophic results, the combatants were primarily military or semi-military: the civilian victims, who were almost exclusively Southerners, were just caught in the middle of the battles. For Northerners in Khartoum, those who died in the war in the South ‘died there’, in a faraway place. They experienced it through the news they saw in the official media and the stories told to them by returning Northern fighters. Thirdly, the August 2005 events in Khartoum affected many areas of greater Khartoum. In just a few hours in the first days, these places were full of burned houses and shops, dead bodies, wrecked cars and damaged property belonging to Northerners as a result of attacks by Southerners. These events were directly associated with the promotion of the CPA12 (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement), which was seen as a blueprint not only for peace between North and South but also for solving problems with other peripheral regions such as the east and west (Darfur), where wars were also being fought. Any threat to the CPA similar to what happened in Khartoum would send a warning signal to any fighting groups in other parts of Sudan intending to embark on a settlement process. Finally, Khartoum is popularly described as a microcosm of Sudan due to the sheer size of its population (between 6 and 7 million) and the fact that it represents all the inhabitants and cultures of Sudan (Beber, Roessler and Scacco 2014). Sudan’s power and wealth are mostly concentrated in Khartoum, and so anything of significant magnitude taking place in Khartoum would be likely to have an impact at a national level. The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan (GoS) in the North and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) in the South on 9 January 2005 ended the 21-year war (1983–2005) between ‘North’ and ‘South’ Sudan (CPA, 2005) and ushered in a six-year transitional period that finally ended with the separation of the South from Sudan in 2011. The war resulted in the massive destruction of production systems and resources, damage to the environment and the death of more than two million people in Southern Sudan (El-Hassan 2008a). Severe episodes of drought and desertification worsened the situation even further. As a result, more than two million persons went to live in IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) ‘camps’ on the outskirts of Khartoum, which also housed non-Southerners, or in squatter areas with only minimal medical, education and other services and amenities. As IDPs, they had meagre resources and skills at their disposal, and they led difficult and

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economically precarious lives in the urban centre, living on the political, economic and social margins of urban society (Hamid 1996; Assal 2004, 2008; Jacobsen 2008; El-Hassan 2015c; and Chapter 6 and 9 of this collection). For many people, especially IDPs and marginalized urban groups, the CPA offered hopes of an end to all these hardships.13 It is very important here to emphasize that wealth and power-sharing, which constitute the essence of the CPA, is actually the backbone of SPLA/M’s idea of New Sudan and it fought for its realization. When realized, it is expected that all forms of injustices faced by the marginalized  – regardless of their rural, urban, ethnic or regional backgrounds – will be redressed; including the IDPs (the majority of whom are Southerners). The CPA stipulates that wealth and power-sharing is to be implemented through the proposed post-conflict restructuring programmes to be carried out and supervised by the Joint Assessment Mission (JAM). The JAM matrix laid the foundations for ensuring equitable wealth and power-sharing to end the development imbalances between the various parts of Sudan in general, and between the North and South in particular (JAM, 2005). In the eyes of many people, especially the marginalized, Garang had impressive charisma and stamina and symbolized the hero and saviour who would fulfil the promises the CPA contained. His death seemed to have dashed any dreams of prosperity and peace or any change to the fragile coexistence between the different groups who shared the broader area of Khartoum. His death sparked the latent hostilities between Southerners and Northerners; to explode briefly before manifesting in public riots.

Khartoum’s Peaceful Setting Shocked by Latent Tensions This section links the Khartoum urban setting to the eruption of the latent tensions of inequalities and marginalization that shattered its peaceful appearance.14 Greater Khartoum comprises Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman. Each has its own history and development.15 Although there are marked differences between the three cities, there are some common features that characterize Greater Khartoum as a whole. One-third of Sudan’s total population lives in Greater Khartoum (6–7 million), and its population is increasing at an accelerating rate of 4.8 per cent due to war, drought and other causes of displacement (National Population Council 2007; and CBS 2001). Many people come to Khartoum in search of better health and education services, while others come for better life chances. The root causes of this phenomenon lie in imbalanced developmental policies, which have resulted in

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a concentration of services, wealth and power in the capital (Suliman 2012). This has been intensified by global developments and the growth of the capitalist system and the privatization policies adopted by the outgoing Inqaz (Salvation) regime (1989–2019). The regime’s poor political and economic policies made it unable to cope with the negative impact of global events on Sudan. On the other hand, revenues from the recently discovered oil were squandered due to an absence of proper planning, corruption and a lack of accountability. Consequently, a stratum of extremely wealthy persons emerged who showed off their magnificent houses, expensive cars and luxurious lifestyles. This led to a widening in the social differentiation gap on the one hand, and raised ambitions and expectations on the part of the marginalized on the other. The events erupted, according to public opinion, between Southern Sudanese and Northern Sudanese as two opposing ethnic blocs  – Africans and Arabs respectively.16 Employing the concept of in-between, this chapter argues that in addition to the ethnic element, the violence had its foundations in historical grievances, accentuated by a recent socio-economic and political marginalization of groups other than Southerners alone. Although the death of Garang acted as the trigger, this study argues that the violence was the result of a long process of incorporating Sudan into the globalized world economy following the discovery of oil in the country in the mid-1990s. Although the perpetrators of the riots were ethnically mixed and shared the characteristic of living in marginal areas in Khartoum, both socially and spatially, the events were nonetheless immediately ascribed to the Southerners; however, most Southerners were actually living in in-between geographical, social, cultural and political spaces. Today, deprived groups live on the margins socially, politically and geographically (on the outskirts), while at the same time they are largely excluded from the market economy. Their ethnic origins in Sudan are quite varied: they come from the south, from the west and (albeit rarely) from the east, and many of them live in the same IDP camps, squatter areas or precarious neighbourhoods. On the other hand, street boys and girls and the homeless, who number over 30,000 (Women’s Centre for Peace and Development 2005), find refuge on street corners or in abandoned or unfinished buildings, as well as in the underground drainage system in the centre of the capital. They live off petty theft and begging or eat leftovers they find in garbage bins. They are not limited to any one ethnic group or to any specific geographical or cultural area of Sudan (El-Hassan 2015 c). Many of the marginalized groups have been cut off from their traditional social systems and values while also not being fully incorporated

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into ‘normal’ urban economic, political, cultural or social circles. They are abandoned by the state and civil society, with no effective mechanisms for catering for their needs. For their part, they do not feel that they are well integrated into the urban milieu of Khartoum, or that they contribute to it. They formed the core of the rioters in August 2005.

Chronicle of the Riot Events The urban violence in Greater Khartoum began on Monday 1 August 2005, immediately after news of the death of John Garang had been broadcast (he had actually died the day before).17 Later on, it became apparent that the government was late announcing the news, as the international media had already done so.18 Hence, even before the government’s declaration, rumours were rife in the city, and anxiety and confusion were building. Matters came to a head when rumours circulated that the Northerners were implicated in Garang’s death. The violence erupted while people were going about their usual business at around 9 o’clock on the Monday morning. The troubles began simultaneously and instantly in the three towns. Thousands of Southerners took to the streets of Greater Khartoum in protest and went on a rampage, attacking and burning businesses and houses and killing and beating pedestrians and shop owners. In some areas, cases of rape were also reported. The centre of Khartoum, where the SPLM HQs were, was the stage for the first outbreak of rioting and was where the most violent acts occurred. Large numbers of rioters also gathered around the SPLM offices in Deim (south of the centre of Khartoum) and the unrest began. However, some other places and districts, including Deim (even if there are conflicting references about this district), Sahafa, Khartoum 2, Taef, Jebel Awlia and Kalakla, were not affected at all. In Khartoum South, rioters marched from the Mandela and Mayo IDP camp along the main streets to the adjacent working-class residential areas near the shopping areas and began attacking houses and shops and throwing stones at passing cars and passers-by, but the bulk of the attacks targeted the shopping areas and the main bus stops. The rioters continued marching northwards until they reached Sahafa and the Imtidad via Mohammed Najib Street, which separates Deim from the affluent Amarat district. They did not attack houses there, although the attacks on cars and shops along the main roads continued. In Khartoum North, the riots extended to the market place, the Ezba, Hillat Kuku and Haj Yousif popular quarters and their surrounding areas. In Omdurman, the affected areas were Muhandiseen (upper class)

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and Um Badda, Fitihab, Abu Se‘id, Wad al-Bashir and Thawra (all working-class areas). The unrest resulted in massive damage, ranging from human loss (estimated to be between 70 and 130 dead and 357 injured) to an estimated economic cost of SD 120 billion (around $100 million).19 The targets were homes (Haj Yousif, Muhandiseen, Kalakla and the centre of Khartoum); markets (Souk Sitta, Haj Yousif, the gold market in the centre of Khartoum and the Thawra 14 market); shops and supermarkets (Haj Yousif, Sahafa and Siteen Street in Taef); pharmacies (Muhandiseen and Kalakla); factories (Waha Air Coolers in the Khartoum North industrial area); car showrooms (Dal, Khartoum South); the Skoda car showroom (in the city centre); furniture showrooms (Khartoum 2 and Khartoum North); stationery shops (Khartoum North); schools (Haj Yousif, Jereif Gharb and Kalakla); petrol stations (Omdurman and Haj Yousif); mosques and churches (Jereif Gharb); administrative offices (Um Badda, Haj Yousif and Khartoum South); police stations (Haj Yousif); banks (Industrial Bank, Haj Yousif); and popular restaurants (Haj Yousif). The weapons used by the protesters included knives, machetes, clubs, hammers, whips, Molotov cocktails and live ammunition. The acts of violence ranged between intimidation, terror, rape, robbery, arson, killing and combinations thereof. The places that were not attacked varied: they included, for example, the middle-class areas of Amarat, Manshiyya and Taef (except for the main streets) and the low-income residential areas of Remaila, Burri, Hilla Jadida in Khartoum, Shambat, Mazad in Khartoum North and districts in Old Omdurman, Thawra and Libya popular market. It is also noticeable that no Sudanese Copts (Orthodox Christians of Egyptian origin) or their properties were attacked nor were any foreigners. The assaults were primarily directed against people who were presumed by the Southerners to be Northerners (Arabs). The Copts and foreigners are easily distinguishable from Northerners by skin colour. Though the participants in the riots on the first day were multi-ethnic (Al-Atabani 2012: 318), Northerners described them as Southerners. Among those rioters some were Southerners (mainly Dinka, John Garang’s tribe); some were non-Arab Northerners (including Nuba, Fur and others who identified as Africans); and some were displaced, shammasha (homeless and street boys), vagrants, criminals and deprived people. They were mostly young – teenagers of both sexes and children. The colour of their skin generally, but not always, defined the two major opposing groups of Southerners and Northerners. Anyone who has lived in Sudan for some time well knows how difficult it is to differentiate between groups on the basis of skin colour, as there are ‘black’ Northern

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Arabs and ‘fair-skinned’ Africans among the various ethnic groups in Sudan. On the second day – Tuesday – and on the days that followed, the Northerners, discovering that they were not being protected by the police, took matters into their own hands, organizing themselves and beginning counter-attacks during which similar, if not more terrible, atrocities were committed. Many Southerners, who were mainly identified by their darker colour, were either killed, chased out or arrested, and their makeshift dwellings burned down, while the little property they owned was looted or set on fire. In actual fact, the actions and reactions by the two groups ultimately turned into an ethnic (Northerners vs Southerners) and racial (Arabs vs Africans) rift. The counter-attack was carried out by Northerners in the affected residential areas and by those who anticipated aggressions against them. Their sense of solidarity was mainly based on neighbourhood and/ or the conduct of collective prayers in a particular mosque. In other areas  – especially in Omdurman and Khartoum North  – Jammu‘iyya and Batahin groups gathered on the basis of tribal affiliations, as was also the case with ethnic Mahas from Tuti and Jeraif and the Kababish and Hassaniyya from Western Omdurman. As I have mentioned previously, other ethnic groups such as the Jaaliyyin, Shaigiyya, Dangolawi, Zaghawa, Fellata and others also acted and took sides based on their social ranking rather than ethnic affinity. Again, not all Southerners acted jointly. The Nuer forces under General Paulino Matep20 abstained from any form of aggression; on the contrary, they were fairly instrumental in cooling the situation down later on. During the height of the strife, some Kababish (Arabs) families living in the Wad al-Bashir IDP camp (Omdurman) refused to leave the camp and were fully protected by the displaced Dinka (Southerners), who themselves were under siege from neighbouring Jammu‘iyya (Arab Northerners).

The Responses of the Government and Civil Society As I have mentioned, the counter-attack by Northerners on the second and subsequent days was a result of their feeling that they had been abandoned by the state’s security and political machinery. Likewise, there was a noticeable absence of organized civil society, NGOs and non-governmental political bodies. Accordingly, Northerners in the threatened areas refrained from going to work so that they could protect their districts, families and homes. Spontaneous leaders emerged from among the youth and elders and took on the task of mobilizing, organizing and

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leading the masses and watch groups. Mosques played an important role as focal points for rallying people and holding consultation meetings, as well as being centres of information. Important messages and announcements were communicated from the minarets and loudspeakers of mosques, not only to the surrounding neighbourhoods but also to more distant areas. Effective communication and coordination were thus secured, especially at times when the telephone network failed. Some Imams (prayer leaders) took the opportunity to pass on their own political agendas of opposition to the CPA. The effectiveness of neighbourhood solidarity groups in the centre of Khartoum varied according to the social rank of the particular residential area: people were more united in working-class areas than they were in wealthier residential areas. In the tribal areas on the fringes of Khartoum, the Jammu‘iyyn (Omdurman) and Batahin (Khartoum North) Arab ‘tribal’ groupings used their traditional war drums to call upon people not only to protect themselves but also to attack neighbouring IDP camps in Wad al-Bashir (Omdurman) and Takamul (Khartoum North) and other squatter areas where Southerners lived.21 Dozens of Southerners were killed during the retaliations. Their makeshift dwellings were set on fire, they were chased out of the areas dominated by Northerners and they were even banned from walking down streets and prevented from using public transport. Shopkeepers also refused to sell to them. In the more homogeneous areas of Khartoum (like Tuti Island),22 the response was different but extremely rapid. On the same day as the events, the Mahas (inhabitants of Tuti Island) gathered together and decided to drive out all ‘foreigners’ (i.e. non-Northerners (non-Arabs)) from the island for good. Every family of ‘foreigners’ who agreed to leave was given about $40 to support themselves until they were able to find a solution to their problem somewhere else. It was expected that the crisis would be managed by qualified, official authorities and civic organizations at all levels, but in reality, this was not the case. The performance of the government’s political, administrative and security machinery was anything but satisfactory. The ­decision-making process was very slow and indecisive, even though there were indicators that the political and security bodies had been alerted to the potentially dangerous consequences earlier. For reasons unknown, they opted for inaction. The police absence was explained later by its senior officers, who claimed that their forces had been deployed to guard the most sensitive installations, such as electricity, water and petrol stations, as a priority, and that they never believed that matters would escalate to such an unprecedented degree. For the

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general public, this proved that the political system was not qualified to handle the situation at any level, particularly at the grassroots. The formal committees of the National Congress Party (the governing political party) and the Popular Committees of the residential quarters (which were also part of the NCP) did not record any kind of presence, and nor did the popular organs of the SPLM. Government, university and private research institutes were helpless and did little during the troubles to explain or clarify matters to the general public, and they did not even try to calm people down. These bodies included, among others, the Strategic Studies Institute, the Future Studies Institute, the Middle East and African Studies Centre, the University of Juba Peace Institute and the Disarmament and Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) unit. The governmental media apparatus limited its input to talk shows and interviews, with no in-depth formulation or analysis but rather empty generalizations with ideological overtones. The National TV succeeded in one respect, however, when it curtailed the rumour of General Matep’s death by having him deny it in person live on television. The aim of the rumour was to involve Matep’s Nuer forces, which had abstained from participating in the events until that time. If the rumours had succeeded, the situation would have been even more complicated. People in Khartoum relied on external media sources to follow the news of what was going on, mainly the BBC and Al-Jazeera. The daily papers were generally much better at reporting than the National Radio and TV stations, but they too suffered from a lack of top professionalism and materials and skills. At a social level, the crisis uncovered the weaknesses of civil society organizations when it came to dealing with situations such as these – especially those who claimed expertise on issues of conflict management and resolution. Christian and Muslim religious associations were also very slow to react to the incidents, although, as I mentioned earlier, mosques were active during the events, albeit by taking sides and not making a positive contribution to the solution. The Coptic and other churches did not come out strongly enough at this stage to prove their efficacy. Things were left in the hands of young people on both sides, which led to catastrophic consequences in some cases. Nonetheless, the interventions by Muslim and Christian leaders at a later stage were fairly successful in defusing the situation, even though they did not restore full trust between the fighting groups. With a few exceptions, Friday sermons in mosques were devoted to enlightening people on the significance of social peace and good relations of coexistence. The churches, in particular the Coptic church, also contributed

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positively towards ending the skirmishes through public addresses and media messages. During the third stage – which followed the onset of the events and the retaliatory actions – the security forces began to correct their mistakes. By that time, however, the extent and depth of the unrest were far greater than they could handle, given their meagre resources and limited capabilities. Some local government administrators took the initiative to reconcile belligerent parties – for example, disagreements between the Batahin ethnic group and the Takamul IDP camp-dwellers in Khartoum North or between the Jammu‘iyya ethnic group and the Wad al-Bashir camp residents in Omdurman. The Sultans (the tribal chiefs of Southern tribes in Khartoum) subsequently succeeded in quietening down those under their authority and extended the hand of peace to Northerners who had been wronged. They were also the link between their own people and government bodies for improving relations between the two sides, reassuring their people by returning belongings that had been confiscated by police earlier on and helping the authorities to gain control over the situation. SPLM personnel also visited the affected areas and individuals and held meetings to rectify the situation. The SPLM knew that it would suffer politically in the future if the violence continued. By the end of the events, the government had formed an investigative committee to find out what had led to the disturbances and evaluate and assess the damages incurred (Ministry of Cabinet of Ministers 2005). The committee did not, however, include any representatives from the South or any sociologists, political scientists or experts in psychology; its members were primarily politicians, bureaucrats, security personnel and judges. Evidently, the focus here was on security and legal and administrative matters, and not cultural, social or economic issues. The public’s general understanding of what happened at the time was that it was an expression of a feeling of dismay and anger that overcame the Southerners, who saw their hopes for a better future at the hands of Garang dashed before their very eyes and held the Northerners ­responsible for it. Other explanations were also offered, however, including that what happened was an explosion of the grudges that had long been harboured by Southerners; that a reaction by northerners against Southerners in the following days was to be expected, given their feelings of insecurity and the failure of the police and other parts of the state apparatus to protect them; that street boys, vagrants and homeless youth had fuelled the situation; and finally, that certain outside powers had a stake in worsening relations between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’.

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A number of solutions were therefore suggested as to how to deal with the situation: Southerners had to choose between ‘unity’ and ‘separation’; the vagrants had to be sent out of Khartoum; and the foreign conspiracies needed to be exposed (Ministry of Cabinet of Ministers 2005). A rapid examination of these positions reveals how impressionistic and shallow they were, insofar as they offered no in-depth appreciation of a situation as complex as that of Sudan. Furthermore, they seem to have focused on appearances rather than the root causes. The risk here was that if these opinions had been widely disseminated by the mass media they might have instigated negative political policies, leading to dangerous actions by all concerned. Moreover, if the real causes were not to be properly addressed, future recurrences of the violence would be quite plausible. The next section attempts to offer a deeper understanding of the August 2005 events following the broader review of the incidents, their locations, the people and institutions involved, the actions and reactions of the different participants, the damage caused and the subsequent ramifications of the events.

Analysis and Conclusion It is now evident that the August 2005 violence in Khartoum cannot be fully conceptualized and grasped in structural terms alone: the urban context and its relevant constituent elements are not static; rather, they are amorphous and in a continuous state of change, the form of which depends on their mode of interaction and the nature of the situation in which they exist. However, while the situation plays a role in altering the constituent elements, it is also simultaneously changed by them in turn through the same process. We must not forget that all of this took place within a spectrum of changing time and space. The complexity of the temporal and spatial dimensions of such a landmark, dynamic situation can best be handled by applying the concept of in-between I have presented above. In the aftermath of the events, however, certain issues need to be considered when dealing with the concept of in-between. First, the events clearly reveal that the ‘Northerners’ and ‘Southerners’ categories are neither conceptually precise nor factually accurate. Each group can only be identified by recognizing their physical features in conjunction with their social, situational and geographical contexts. Not all Northerners are Arabs or Muslims; nor are all Southerners from Southern Sudan non-Arabs or Christians. The mistrust between Northerners and

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Southerners, has a long history of deep-rooted grievances and grudges that was violently revealed and reactivated by the death of Garang, although some other marginalized individuals have participated in the riots, irrespective of their ethnic, geographical origin or religious backgrounds. As an example on how the events have reinforced this mistrust, in the Kalakla district of South Khartoum during the days that followed Garang’s death, housewives demanded to be trained to use arms so they would be able to protect themselves while their husbands were away at work. However, we have to stress here that within popular neighbourhoods, IDP camp and squatter areas marginalized populations  – Southerners and Northerners – had developed relations of friendliness and peaceful coexistence. Nonetheless, in general, the culture of violence and use of arms had become quite widespread and may come to the fore again in the future. Second, the events left deep psychological scars on traumatized children, teenagers and men and women on both sides (see Chapters 6 in this volume). In some cases, people were burned alive in front of their watching children. Horrifying scenes of fires and destruction were widely displayed on television and other mass media.23 Third, the police and other security personnel whose mission was to restore calm and order went on a rampage, burning all the squatter dwellings and chasing their occupants out. Electronics and valuable items were confiscated from their owners if they could not show proof of purchase. They were intimidated, terrified, beaten and threatened with firearms. These rough, and in some cases inhumane, acts by the security forces were extended to all squatter settlers, irrespective of their ethnic origin. The magnitude of the consequences of these events led to a growing awareness among civil society organizations in Khartoum of the significance and urgency of spreading and reinforcing social peace and that there was a need for persistent, strong support for and reinforcement of trust if social peace was to prevail. Many intellectuals, artists and actors from different ethnic backgrounds participated in peace-keeping campaigns in various areas inside and outside Khartoum. As I have mentioned, the role played by Sultans (Southern tribal leaders) and Muslim and Christian religious leaders was instrumental in this regard. Some youth organizations staged football matches and other forms of competition between different ethnic groups living together in one locality (in Soba, for example). Some women’s organizations from mixed social backgrounds took gifts of food items and clothes to IDP camps with the objective of re-establishing trust. It becomes clear from a closer examination of these data that Khartoum’s urban context is both complex and fluid. It is argued here

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that there might not be any point in analysing the events in structural terms such as Southerners versus Northerners, tribal and ethnic affiliation, camps or squatter areas versus regular residential quarters, skin colour, ethnic background, the locations of the events, place of origin or time intervals. ‘Structural’ characterizations such as these all hamper our ability to analyse complex, fluid situations. Many components of the situation incorporate elements that are also found in others. The ‘space’ in which an interaction occurs has its own logic, and it is one of processes, not structures. It can only be grasped by giving consideration to the in-betweens of space, time, relations, actions and responses of the constituent components. The reasons for this are either political (for example, even though General Matep’s Nuer forces were from Southern Sudan, they did not take the Southerners’ side) or depend on socio-economic and occupational positions (owning homes in high-class areas like Riyad and Manshiyya). It turned out that ethnicity and religion were not always to be the determining factors in what stance either Northerners or Southerners took. Being a Muslim did not save people from maltreatment or eviction if they were ‘Southerners’, and there were Muslims among the first demonstrators. This is not to say that all these aspects were completely irrelevant, however: Stores owned by Copts (Christians) were not touched, and Southerners and Northerners did not attack people of their own belonging. Skin colour, on the other hand, seems to have been the sign of identification more than any other, unless this is proven otherwise. For one thing, it was readily recognizable. Arabic and dialects were of less significance. The basis of the Southerners’ group solidarity rested on their tribal affiliation and on their status as marginalized, which might also include various people and groups who were not from the South. In the case of the retaliators, for example, neighbourhoods formed the base of their cohesion and solidarity more than ethnicity, kinship or extended family relations. The importance of this chapter is that it offers an understanding that the events of August 2005 were not particularly an issue of Southerners versus Northerners, nor were they merely political or simply passing disturbances provoked by groups acting irresponsibly. These groups form an integral part of Sudan’s social fabric, and they have found themselves in a difficult situation involving many compounded in-betweens, including ethnicity, socio-economic position, political interests, religious affiliation, spatiality, historical moments, marginalization, skin colour, grievances and hopes, among others. This is not to deny that the instigators of the events were mainly Southerners (even these were mostly Dinka). From this perspective, ‘Southerners’ could be interpreted as ­encapsulating the injustices and inequalities of all marginalized groups.

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From the perspective of sustainable development, the troubles appear to have been inherently embedded in the unequal development between urban and rural areas on the one hand and the centre (the capital) and other parts of the country on the other. Staggering inequalities do exist between urban and rural areas, and even within urban centres themselves, with regard to the distribution of services and opportunities, especially health and education (Suliman 2012). Poverty is estimated to be between 60 and 90 per cent, and the gap between the well-to-do and the poor is widening (UNDP and Sudan Government 2012), further increased by the wealth generated from the newly discovered oil. The expansion of higher education without creating new job opportunities also raised the unemployment rate to unprecedented levels. This state of affairs was also aggravated by an absence of safety networks, weak state institutions, ineffectual civil society organizations, ineffective media and weak community solidarity and leadership. The consequent marginalization of large numbers of the population of Sudan entailed, as one would expect, the exclusion or limited participation of the deprived groups in the social, economic, political and cultural spheres of social interaction. In conclusion, because of increasing marginalization and the widening stratification gap due to the misdistribution of oil revenues, which at the same time led to high expectations and frustration, the possibility of a recurrence of wider urban violence is quite realistic. Idris Salim El-Hassan graduated with a BSc (with honours) and MSc in Anthropology/Sociology from the University of Khartoum and has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut, USA. He has taught and supervised numerous graduate students at the universities of Khartoum (for more than thirty years), King Saud (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, International Islamic University, Malaysia. He has been a visiting Scholar/Professor to the University of Bergen, Norway, University of Addis Ababa and the University of United Arab Emirates. He is the author of several books including Religion in Society: Nemeiri and the Turuq (1993), Sudanese Perspectives in Science, Knowledge and Culture (2003) and Cultural Forms among IDPs in Khartoum (2014) – in Arabic. He has taught and/or published many articles on research methodology, gender, education, conflict, culture and religion in various journals and edited collections. Professor El-Hassan is also senior researcher in academic research collaborations with the Christian Michelsen Institute, Bergen University and CEDEJ.

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His current research interest is migration and refugee studies. His last publication was ‘South Sudan “Arrivals” in the White Nile State (Sudan) Not citizens, Not IDPs, Not Refugees: What Are They?’ Sudan Working Paper Number 7 (Bergen: Christian Michelson Institute, December 2016).

Notes   1. The data for this chapter go back to the events relating to the death of John Garang, the leader of the SPLA/M and – at the time – the recently appointed Vice-President, who died in a helicopter crash while returning from Uganda three weeks after he was sworn into office in July 2005.  2. For a brief report on the final document by the investigation panel on the John Garang accident, see: https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/ news/1150224/pilot-caused-garang-crash (accessed 10 July 2020).   3. As used here, the term ‘Southerners’ only denotes people who came from South Sudan. Moreover, Southerners (even those who came from South Sudan) are not one unified group either socially or politically, or in terms of their socio-economic status (see Chapter 9 of this book).   4. While it is true that some or all these elements existed before the events took place, and still exist today, I argue here that the major reason why the violence was ignited by the Southerners is that the sudden shock of the death of John Garang – who was a charismatic leader – killed their hopes of better living conditions, which he had led them to expect. His dramatic death also dashed their dreams of eliminating the stigma of being treated as second-class citizens.   5. In my view, therefore, the concept of in-between is broader than the concept of liminality, which has been used in psychology, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences, because the concept of in-between considers social, political, spatial, time, physical aspects, inter alia. See Thomassen (2014).   6. For additional material on violence, see Fourchard and Segatti (2015) and Horowitz (2003).   7. ‘Anomic’ usually means a state of lawlessness and/or a reaction against or a retreat from the regular social control of society – https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Anomie (accessed 13 July 2020).   8. The Khartoum case I will discuss below demonstrates that the bloody and destructive incidents of August 2005 and those in Paris, which happened during the same period, are not completely devoid of similarities. See El-Hassan (2006).   9. In recent years, there have been incidents of widespread fighting between different ethnic groups: Rizigat, Missiryya, Fur and Zaghawa in Western Sudan; Dinka, Nuer, Taposa, Shilluk and others in the South; Hadendwa,

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Beni Amir, Amarar and Rashaida in the East; and the groups around Shendi in the North. 10. For a more detailed description of these events, see Republic of Sudan (1955); Bashir (1968); and Deng (1995). 11. For more information on causes of conflicts in Sudan, refer to Johnson (2003). 12. For more details of the CPA and other peace agreements in Sudan, please refer to Ahmad (2010); and Sudan Government and SPLA/M (2005). 13. This was clearly demonstrated by the huge turnout of millions of people who came to welcome him when he arrived in Khartoum on 8 July 2005, just three weeks before his tragic death. These were not Southerners only; other people of different ethnic and social backgrounds also came to welcome him. 14. In the following discussion, all the descriptions of Khartoum and Omdurman are taken from my two articles on Khartoum and Omdurman respectively: El-Hassan (2015a) and (2015b). 15. Details of the history, composition and development of Khartoum and Omdurman can be found in El-Hassan (2005a) and El-Hassan (2005b). 16. The term ‘Africans’ is sometimes used by Southerners and others who claim to belong to Africa geographically, historically, culturally and by physical features, as opposed to Arabs, who believe that their ancestors originally came from the Arab Peninsula and that they are culturally part of the Arab world. The two terms can best be grasped in their ideological and political contexts. 17. For a more detailed description of the events, see Medani (2005); Ministry of Cabinet of Ministers (2005) and El-Hassan (2005a, 2005b). In the Sudanese press, see al-Ray al-Aam, daily newspaper (2005), 2 and 3 August; and al-Sahafa, daily newspaper (2005), 2 and 3 August. 18. Different reasons were given for the delay of the announcement by the government: some people thought that the government wanted to make sure the news was real; others speculated that coordination by the government units was poor; yet others explained it as the party wanting to check how the public in the north would respond in case of civilian turmoil. 19. For more details on the human and material costs, see Al-Atabani (2012: 318–19). However, these numbers may be seriously underestimated, as there were no proper records. 20. A leading Nuer tribe army officer with well-armed and experienced militias stationed in the southern area of Khartoum. At the time, he was a government ally and opposed the SPLA/M, who were predominantly Dinka. He later abandoned the Sudan Government and left for South Sudan after it gained its independence in 2011. 21. Some of the above accounts were either experienced first-hand in Taif and neighbouring areas, where I lived, or have been taken from interviews and casual chats with students, acquaintances and others living in various parts of Greater Khartoum.

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22. Tuti is an island on the Blue Nile just at the point where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet to form the River Nile. Many of its inhabitants are well-educated and work in Khartoum as senior government officials or professionals (see Chapter 1 in this book). 23. The information on cases of trauma was collected from eyewitnesses who had experienced them personally or from their children or a family member, and not from medical records.

References Abdel Raheem, M. 1970. The Problem of Southern Sudan: Its Nature, Development and the Role of British Colonial Policy in Its Making (in Arabic). Khartoum: Al Dar al Sudaniya. Ahmad, A.M. 2007. ‘Sudanese Trade in Black Ivory: Opening Old Wounds’, Occasional Paper, no. 31. Center for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Cape Town, SA. ______. 2008. Sudan: Roots and Dimensions of the Crisis (in Arabic). Cairo: Madaric Publishers. ______. 2010. Sudan Peace Agreements: Current Challenges and Future Prospects, Sudan Working Paper (SWP), no.1. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute. Ahmed, A.G.M., and G. Sorbo. 1989. Management of the Crisis in the Sudan: Proceedings of the Bergen Forum, 23–24 February 1989. Bergen: Centre for Development Studies, University of Bergen. Akol, L. 2001. SPLM/SPLA: Inside an African Revolution. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. ______. 2003. SPLM/SPLA: The Nasir Declaration. New York: Universe, Inc. Al-Atabani, H. 2012. Identity and Ethnic Diversity in the Conflict Between North  and South Sudan 1955–2005. Khartoum: Women’s Research Centre. Alier, A. 1990. Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dis-honoured. Oxford: Ithaca Press. Assal, M.A.M. 2004. Displaced Persons in Khartoum: Current Realities and Post-war Scenarios. Cairo: The Population Council. ______. 2006. Whose Rights Count? National and International Responses to the Rights of IDPs in the Sudan. Brighton: Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalization and Poverty, Sussex University. ______. 2008. ‘Rights and Decisions to Return: Internally Displaced Persons in Post-war Sudan’, in K. Grabska and L. Mehta (eds), Whose Needs Are Rights: A Rights-Based Approach to Forced Migration. London: Palgrave, pp. 239–58. Bashir, M.O. 1968. The Southern Sudan: Background to Conflict. London: C. Hurst and Co.

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Beber, B., P. Roessler and A. Scacco. 2014. ‘Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan’, The Journal of Politics 76(3): 649–65. Casciarri, B., M.A.M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds). 2015. Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics). 2001. Sudan in Figures 1988–2000. Khartoum. Conte, C. 1976. The Sudan as a Nation, trans. R. Hill. Milan: Giuffré Editore. Deng, F. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington: The Brookings Institute. El Battahani, A. 2001. ‘Democracy, Economic Growth and Poverty in Sudan’, in Proceedings of the Conference on Democracy, Sustainable Development and Poverty: Are They Compatible?Addis Ababa: Development Policy Management Forum (DPMF), pp. 157–76. El-Hassan, S.I. 1993. Religion in Society: Nemeiri and the Turuq. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. ______. 1997. ‘Conflicts and Prospects in Sudan and the Horn of Africa’, The European Journal of Development and Research 9(2): 176–84. ______. 2005a. ‘A Sociological Perspective on the August 5 Events’. Paper presented at a workshop organized by the Fredrich Ebert Foundation, Khartoum, on 24 August 2005 (in Arabic). ______. 2005b. ‘Management of Conflict Resolution in the Sudan’, in A. al Hardallo (ed.), Naivasha Protocols and Future of Peace in Sudan. Khartoum: Fredrich Ebert, pp. 132–48 (in Arabic). ______. 2006. ‘Cultural Diversity in Sudan’s Peace Agreement’, in N. Kabbalo (ed.), Culture and Development. Khartoum: Cultural Action Center, pp. 129–50 (in Arabic). ______. 2007. ‘Cultural Diversity and Conflicts in the Sudan’, in alTayeb Haj Attiya (ed.), Issues in Cultural Pluralism in the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press (in Arabic). ______. 2008a. ‘Managing the Process of Conflict Resolution in the Sudan’, in A. Nhema and P. Zeleza (eds), The Resolution of African Conflicts: The Management of Conflict Resolution and Post-conflict Reconstruction. Oxford: James Currey; and Athens: Ohio University Press. ______. 2008b. ‘A Sociological Look at the Urban Violence Events of August 2005 in Khartoum’, in Shams al-Din Daw al-Bait (ed.), National Reconciliation and Healing of Wounds in the Sudan. Khartoum: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, pp. 79–96 (in Arabic). ______. 2014. Cultural Forms among Internally Displaced Persons in Sudan. Second edition; Khartoum: Madaric Publications (in Arabic). ______. 2015a. ‘Khartoum: A Portrait of an African Colonial City’, Dirasat Ifriqiyya 53: 7–27. ______. 2015b. ‘Old Omdurman and National Integration: The Socio-historical Roots of Exclusion’, in M. Assal and M. Abdul-Jalil (eds), Past, Presents and Future, Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: CMI, pp. 81–95.

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______. 2015c. ‘The Socio-cultural Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Khartoum as a Neglected Dimension’, Discourse 8–9: 81–99. Elnur, I. 2009. Contested Sudan: The Political Economy of War and Reconstruction. London and New York: Routledge. Farhady, M., and J. Nam. 2009. ‘Comparison of In-Between Concepts by Aldo Van Eyck and Kisho Kurokawa through Theories of “Twin Phenomena” and “Symbiosis”’, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 23. Retrieved 26 November 2020 from https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ jaabe/8/1/8_1_17/_pdf. Fourchard, L., and A. Segatti. 2015. ‘Xenophobic Violence and the Manufacture of Difference in Africa: Introduction to the Focus Section’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence 9(1): 4–11. Garang, J. 1971. The Dilemma of the Southern Intellectual. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. ______. 1995. ‘The Problem of the North’, Consolidated Text of Speeches Delivered During the Visit to Washington DC, December 10–20 1995. Published and distributed by the SPLM/SPLA Mission to USA and Canada. Gasm al Seed, A. 2008. Identity and the Disintegration of the Sudanese State. Khartoum: Azza. Hamid, G. 1996. Population Displacement in the Sudan: Patterns, Responses, Coping Strategies. New York: Centre for Migration Studies. Horowitz, D.L. 2003. The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Oakland: University of California Press. Ibrahim, I., A. Elobodi and M. Holi. 2003. Poverty, Employment and PolicyMaking in Sudan: A Country Profile. Cairo: ILO Office. Jacobsen, K. 2008. Internal Displacement to Urban Areas: The Tufts-IDMC Profiling Study Khartoum, Sudan. Geneva: Feinstein International Centre, Tufts University, in collaboration with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. JAM (Joint Assessment Mission) – Sudan. 2005. Framework for Sustained Peace, Development and Poverty Eradication. Khartoum. Johnson, D. 2003. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Oxford: James Currey. Kameir, A.W. (ed.). 2005. John Garang’s Vision of New Sudan: Rebuilding the Sudanese State. Cairo: Roya Publishers. Malwal, B. 2005. Sudan’s Latest Peace Agreement: An Accord that is Neither Fair nor Comprehensive, a Critique. Omdurman: Abdel Karim Marghani Cultural Centre. McCandless, E., and T. Karbo (eds). 2011. Peace, Conflict, and Development in Africa: A Reader. Switzerland: University for Peace. Medani, K.M. 2005. ‘Black Monday: The Political and Economic Dimensions of Sudan’s Urban Riots’. Middle East Report Online. Retrieved 26 November 2020 from https://www.mediamonitors.net/black-monday-the-political​ -and-economic-dimensions-of-sudans-urban-riots/. Ministry of Cabinet of Ministers. 2005. Events of the Bloody Monday. Khartoum: Consultants’ Forum, General Secretariat.

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National Population Council. 2007. Features and Dynamics of Population in Sudan. Khartoum: National Population Council Secretariat General. Report 2007. Niblock, T. 1987. Class and Power in the Sudan. Albany: State University of New York Press. Nugud, M.I. 2003. Slavery in Sudanese Society: Development, Characteristics and Abolition, Documentation and Critique. Khartoum: Azza (in Arabic). Nyaba, P.A. 1997. Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider’s View. Kampala: Fountain. Oduho, J., and W. Deng. 1963. The Problem of Southern Sudan. London: Oxford University Press. Republic of Sudan. 1955. Southern Sudan Disturbances: August 1955, Report of the Commission of Enquiry. Khartoum: McCorquodale and Co. Ruay, R., and D. Akol.1994. The Politics of Two Sudans: The South and the North 1821–1969. Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute for African Studies. Sorbo, G., and A.G.M. Ahmed. 2013. Sudan Divided: Continuing Conflict in a Contested State. New York: Palgrave. Sudan Government.1968. Report of the Committee for Restructuring Sudan’s Civil Administration. Khartoum. ______. 2001. Proceedings of The National Conference on Public Administration (in Sudan). Three volumes. Khartoum: Ministry of Labour and Administrative Reform. Sudan Government and SPLA/M. 2005. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Nairobi: Kenya, 9 January. Peace Research Institute, University of Khartoum. Suliman, I. 2012. Wealth Sharing Measurements in Sudan. Khartoum: Peace Research Institute. Thomassen, B. 2014. Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. UNCHS (Habitat). 1996. ‘An Urbanizing World’, Global Report on Human Settlement 1996. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the UNCHS. UNDAF. 2002. ‘Sudan: Common Country Assessment (CCA) 2002–2006’. UNDP and Sudan Government. 2012. Sudan National Human Development Report: Geography of Peace: Putting Human Development at the Centre of Peace in Sudan. Available at https://www.undp.org/content/dam/sudan/ docs/Sudan_NHDR_2012.pdf. UNWUP. 2018. ‘Revision of World Urbanization Prospects’. Retrieved 11 June 2020 from https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup. Voll, J., and S. Voll. 1985. The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State. Boulder: Westview Press. Women’s Center for Peace and Development. 2005. ‘A Study of August 5 Events’. Khartoum: Women’s Center for Peace and Development. World Bank. 2003. ‘Sudan Stabilization and Reconstruction: Country Economic Memorandum’. Report No. 24620 – SU.

[•  Chapter 6  •]

Time to Sell the Land?

The Second Urban Marginalization of Southerners in Greater Khartoum – The Case of Al Mussalass Neighbourhood ALICE FRANCK

This chapter expands on an earlier research carried out in August 2012,

approximately a year after South Sudanese independence, on property transactions concluded by Southerners who had been living in Greater Khartoum until that time. It focuses specifically on the working-class neighbourhood of Al Mussalass1 (Omdurman) and on the departure of a number of its Southern inhabitants to the new state of South Sudan. This initial research was based on a survey2 that demonstrated that there was a lively property market in the neighbourhood between 2011 and 2012 associated with the departure of Southerners towards the South. This allows us to consider the interim period3 (2005–2011) as a time of uncertainty, and therefore an in-between time for populations of Southern Sudanese origin (Franck 2016). Based on three complementary pieces of fieldwork carried out in 2016, 2017 and 2018,4 the aim of this article is to analyse the consequences of property sales in Khartoum by South Sudanese families who have now (as of 2018) returned to the neighbourhood due to the outbreak of the civil war in the new state of South Sudan in December 2013. This leads us to re-examine and reinterpret the period of 2005–2018 by re-emphasizing the process of urban marginalization (illustrated here by a focus on property transactions) – of which Southern populations in Khartoum have been long-term victims (Lavergne 1999; Jacobsen, Lautze and Khaider Osman 2001; Pérouse de Montclos 2001; De Geoffroy 2009; Franck 2016) – and identifying the ruptures, consistencies and in-betweens associated with the history of property ownership by some Southerners who are now South Sudanese.5 From there, I expand on the theme of how South Sudanese independence

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has affected the narratives of belonging in the city and how the notion of being ‘other’ has become entrenched, as the Southerners remain the neighbours of people who have not been affected by mobility in an urban environment that had previously been fairly diverse. I will do so by using the example of Al Mussalass neighbourhood. Through this perspective, I first go back to the challenges of negotiating a place in the city since the 1980s and during the transition period (2005–11), before going on to explore the later negotiations (post-2013) through the property ownership pathways of Southern families who have returned to Khartoum. My aim is to identify the current processes of urban integration and exclusion by examining the discourses of members of the South Sudanese population in the city of Khartoum and life in Al Mussalass neighbourhood, in the hope that this will ultimately contribute to a better understanding of their position in (North) Sudan, which is characterized by in-betweenness.

Life as a Southerner in Khartoum: Negotiating a Place, and Then Leaving It The secession of South Sudan on 9 July 2011 reopened the issue of the place and status of the populations of Southern origin living in the Greater Khartoum agglomeration. As I mentioned previously, the problems faced by these populations were associated with acquiring a place in the city and accessing the property market and have been a central concern for the populations involved, for politicians (Bannaga 1996) and for the urban scholars who have studied the Sudanese capital since the mid-1980s. The 1980s were dark years for Sudan, as it simultaneously suffered from a severe economic crisis, a serious drought in the Sahelian region (1984–85) and the resumption of the North–South civil war in 1983.6 All these factors propelled hundreds of thousands of people on to the roads, in particular towards Khartoum. The demographic movements of the 1980s and 1990s profoundly transformed the composition of the Sudanese capital’s population, challenging the demographic hegemony of Northern populations (a word that denotes the populations of the Nile valley, who are also known as the riverain elite) and the inherited national social (or racial) stratifications (Sharkey 2008) that can be seen at a city level (Denis 2005). While the displaced persons in Khartoum are not exclusively of Southern origin, the South Sudanese populations who were forcibly displaced by the war have been the emblematic embodiment of a

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category that is identified in various international cases as IDP (Internally Displaced Persons). The use and instrumentalization of this category by the Northern powers when they established their security-based and discriminatory urban development policy led to those populations (who were judged to be less assimilable than others) being marginalized and relegated to the outskirts of the city. The populations of Southern origin had to a greater or lesser degree assimilate themselves into this category (Bureau 2011), which assigned them to remain ‘Southerners’ (Janubiyyn, in Arabic) and therefore ‘displaced’ (nazihin, in Arabic) in Khartoum, even where the second, and sometimes third, generation of Southerners had been born there.7 At the time the peace agreement was signed in 2005, displaced person in the capital alone numbered around 2 million, of whom about 1,100,000 were of Southern origin8 (Assal 2006; De Geoffroy 2009: 193), out of a total population of Khartoum of just over 5 million.

Negotiating a Place in the City and Access to a Plot of Land The Greater Khartoum agglomeration has played a significant role as a city of refuge, taking in hundreds of thousands of displaced persons from South Sudan. However, the urban policies that were increasingly implemented during the 1990s (when Omar al-Bashir’s military– Islamist regime came to power) resulted in all migrating populations being relegated to the outskirts of the city, with Southerners being particularly discriminated against. There was therefore a clear differentiation between those populations who were identified as being able to integrate a priori into the ‘urban fabric’ more easily –9 who were more often than not directed towards a plot of land in the Dar Es Salams10 and planned neighbourhoods, notably in the case of environmental refugees from the west – and those who were judged to be less assimilable – that is, displaced persons from the South, whom the authorities were more likely to ‘install’ in IDP camps, which were initially considered to be temporary (Bannaga 1996; Lavergne 1997; Choplin 2006; De Geoffroy 2009). This policy was also linked to the shifting meaning of ‘displaced persons’ (nazihin, in Arabic), whom the Ingaz regime11 defined particularly as Southerners (Janubiyyn) rather than as other populations who had been displaced by force. Although over the course of time, those urban policies were largely thwarted by the sheer magnitude of forced displacements they have nonetheless generated in a greater concentration of Southern populations in the four official camps that were established in the capital after 1991 (Mayo, Es Salam, Jebel Awlia and Wad al-Bashir). ‘According to a study carried out in 1999, the migrants from

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the South (not including Nuba) represented 58 to 77% of the population in the camps, but in the areas with planned or squatted settlements they represented 39 to 48%’ (Loveless, cited in De Geoffroy 2009: 101). At the same time, a higher number of people from the west of the country were settled in the Dar Es Salams and neighbourhoods for replanning and relocation. The difference was above all in terms of property ownership, since until development and land registration began in the camps at the beginning of the 2000s, settlement was considered to be temporary, thereby making on-site regularization and the acquisition of property impossible. This discriminatory urban policy of housing Southerners in camps has been largely discontinued, and access to land ownership on the urban peripheries of Greater Khartoum was finally equal to, if not more common than, eviction, resulting in the creation of precarious planned neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city. These neighbourhoods bring regionally and ethnically heterogeneous populations together, but their composition reveals the influx of migrants dating from the 1980s and 1990s, in that they are principally made up of people from marginalized regions and groups in Sudan in terms of both political representation and structural development (Roden 1974; Denis 2007). In this way, regional and ethnic origins in the Sudanese capital are transposed into property ownership with very clear gradients that move outwards from the centre to the periphery. ‘Almost without exception, origin and date of arrival determine one’s position in the city: modalities of inclusion, as well as security of settlement’ (Denis 2005: 102). Certain authors have gone as far as to talk of a ‘black belt’ in Khartoum, referring to the ‘African’ character of the populations in outlying neighbourhoods, as opposed to the more Northern or ‘Arab’ city centre (Choplin 2006). Al Mussalass neighbourhood, where I conducted my fieldwork, is situated in the inner periphery of Omdurman and is a perfect example of a working-class neighbourhood. Formerly a squatters’ location in the 1980s, it was replanned at the beginning of the 1990s. While it is not technically an Internally Displaced People’s camp, its demographic composition embodies the country’s violent migratory history. In addition to South Sudanese people, it houses many from the border regions, including Nuba, mixed families (from the North and South) and people from Western Sudan, in particular Darfur. Al Mussalass reveals a heterogeneous nature that is frequently masked by the IDP categorization used in official and international institutional settings, a simplistic classification that fails to take into account the mixing and blending of populations in the peripheral neighbourhoods of the Greater Khartoum agglomeration (Abusharaf 2009; Ahmed Abdel Aziz 2013).

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According to the information I gathered, the illegal occupation of Al Mussalass area began around the mid-1980s, before the area was reorganized during the 1990s. This was explained by one homeowner in the following terms: I have been here since Al Mussalass existed. Mine is one of the first houses. When I arrived, there were three houses. That was in 1985. I came from Kadugli12 because of the war. When I arrived, it was a squatter settlement (a‘shawaiy). People came here because it wasn’t too far out. . . . It was empty land, farmland. We didn’t buy the land from the government but from citizens.13 Then we had it registered.

While some families bought their plots from citizens, numerous other families benefited from the allocation of plots by the urban authorities during the replanning phase in 1992 (Bannaga 1996; Franck 2016). This was fully in line with the Greater Khartoum urban development policy, which was characterized by both violent evictions and a massive allocation of plots of land (Franck 2020). For the lucky ones, these sometimes took place on site, as in the case of Al Mussalass; however, more often than not they were in areas further and further from the centre. These latter relocation areas were meant to take in the most vulnerable of those who had been evicted (for a concrete example of a relocation area outside the city, see Chapter 4 of this volume). In March 1992, evictions had affected 425,000 people, and they were carried out with such brutality that it shocked international public opinion (Lavergne 1997: 59). These operations, and the violent methods used, are a constant in urban policy: one might cite the Shikan evictions in 2004 and those in Soba Aradi in May 2005, where the methods employed were criticized by the attending international representatives (De Geoffroy 2009; Franck 2020). As was the case elsewhere, allocation of land in Al Mussalass was subject to intense competition among the displaced people who were candidates for property regularization, and more generally among those seeking access to the property market. This fed clientelism and corruption at various levels of the selection process. The eligibility criteria14 established for access to a plot of land inevitably led to a recomposition of the space that adversely affected the populations who had settled there illegally and favoured the less vulnerable. This is why although Al Mussalass neighbourhood was not well-off it was far from taking in the agglomeration’s most vulnerable populations. Those who were not able to cover the costs of registering allotted land – however low they may have been – were most likely to be relegated to peripheral neighbourhoods. Al Mussalass has been an inner suburb not far from the rest of

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the city (see the quote above) from the very beginning, but the construction of a second bridge over the White Nile in 2001 linking Khartoum to Omdurman brought the neighbourhood even closer to the city centre. During the favourable economic period of the 2000s, which was marked by oil exploitation, property prices in Khartoum rose and speculation increased, especially in less affluent peri-central areas like Al Mussalass (see also Casciarri 2016). This was the context at the time the resident Southern populations left Al Mussalass and the Sudanese capital in general  – where access to property had represented a major challenge for all families since the 1980s – and headed back South.

Leaving a Plot in Khartoum to Set up Home in the South (2005–11 and beyond) The survey I carried out in 2012 showed a neighbourhood buzzing with property sales linked to Southerners’ departure for and return to the South. Half the 61 plots I reviewed had seen a change of tenant and/ or owner since the signing of the peace agreement in 2005. However, most Southerners seem to have waited until 2011, the year of the self-­ determination referendum, and the official independence of South Sudan that followed six months later, before they took the decision to sell their land. The number of transactions increased even further in 2012 (Franck 2016). If we attempt to reinterpret this property history in the light of the political events that affected the country – the two Sudans and therefore ultimately their citizens – we see that neither the signature of the peace agreement in January 2005 nor the census of April 2008 or even the elections of April 2010 had any particular impact on sales or relocations in the neighbourhood, in spite of the strong impetus to return to the South due to these events (census and elections) that were largely orchestrated by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) – the South’s main rebel organization, which had become the South’s main party and political organ. In effect, the question of returning was highly politicized after the peace agreement was signed, due to the demographic consequences of two future separate countries and negotiations as regards power relations and the distribution of resources between North and South Sudan (Denis and Dupuy 2008; De Geoffroy 2009: 359). Apart from the wider political issues, the interviews also refer to the deterioration in relations between the various groups living in the Sudanese capital following the death of John Garang in a helicopter accident three weeks after he had become Vice-President of Sudan, in August 2005. Garang had been the

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iconic leader of the Southerners’ rebellion, and his death (which was considered to be suspicious) provoked racial riots between Northerners and Southerners in Greater Khartoum for the first time (as described in the previous chapter of this book). These altercations left their mark on the collective memory of many South Sudanese, who viewed them as revelatory in terms of the challenges of continuing to live with Northerners. The stories I collected in the neighbourhood often referred to the riots in order to point out that Al Mussalass was different from other places because there had been no violent incidents, thanks to the police and/or the support of the whole population. Look, I’ll explain the issue of sales. When John Garang died, what happened after his death and before independence, the Arabs came and wanted to kill us in Al Mussalass. The Northerners (Shimaliyyn) came in cars and wanted to kill us. The police came and told them to leave, that the people in Al Mussalass hadn’t killed anyone, so they left. After that, people were afraid and thought other things like that could happen. If you don’t sell your house they’ll take your house if you don’t have a property deed. (Interview with Sukara (in Arabic), November 2016) The day John Garang died, we left [the neighbourhood] in groups and set up blockades, because there was a problem in Wad al-Bashir [one of the two IDP camps in Omdurman] – criminals were coming here to steal from the shops and fight. We left, and they were stopped from touching things belonging to people. There was no difference between us, Dinka, Arab, Shilluk – we were all together. One night, a group of 15 people wanted to destroy the Southerners’ houses. The people all got together to protect the neighbourhood, Arabs, Shilluk and others. The group became frightened and ran away. (Interview with Origi (in Arabic and English), October 2017)

It is quite understandable that by touching an area that had hitherto been spared the violence of the North/South civil conflict such racial rioting rekindled the historic rivalry between Northern and Southern populations and contributed to the fact that many Southerners no longer felt at home in the Northern capital. However, the wait-andsee attitude adopted by many Southerners during the six years of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) transition period (2005–11) makes it pertinent to view this period as a form of in-betweenness (on this subject of a return to South, see Grabska 2014). The importance of this is shown by the fact that after the self-determination referendum of

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January 2011 the rate of departure from Al Mussalass neighbourhood accelerated, a development that might be seen as having marked the end of this period of uncertainty and in-betweenness. It came as no surprise that a momentum for departure ensued, because it had been expected that the secession movement would win a crushing victory. In fact, it was sparked by the results of the referendum and the approach of official independence, which undoubtedly stimulated departures to the South from the neighbourhood. Additionally, the ambitious plan for the return of South Sudanese populations, which had been agreed in the (CPA) by the national union government (represented by the National Congress Party (NCP) and the SPLM) and was supported by the international community, was behind schedule. In the case of Al Mussalass, it was implemented during this period, and therefore contributed towards the acceleration in the number of departures. In January 2011, numerous bundles of belongings of all sorts could be seen in the streets and the main square of the neighbourhood, testifying to the imminent implementation of the return plan, and I myself witnessed a bus departing for the South towards Malakal (the capital of the Upper Nile State).15

Figure 6.1  Waiting for the bus to the South (January 2011 – Al Mussalass). Photo by Alice Franck.

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Figure 6.2  Bus departure to Malakal as part of the return plan (January 2011 – Al Mussalass). Photo by Alice Franck.

The transformation of resident profiles during 2012 confirmed the persistence of this dynamic. Given that the official separation of the two countries took place during the rainy season (July 2011), the departures that were directly linked to this event were put off until the following dry season at the beginning of 2012. The same year also represented another turning point marked by a number of incidents between Sudan and South Sudan, notably the armed Heglig episode on the border and oil zone of South Kordofan in April 2012, which greatly affected the local communities in the area. 2012 was also the year in which the secession clauses began to be implemented. This was to have a significant effect on the ‘new’ South Sudanese community in Khartoum: there were numerous uncertainties concerning nationality, the status of residents in the North and the possibility of working in the North and owning a house there, and all these elements combined to affect people’s decisions and influence the possibility of selling up and leaving. The factors involved in any decision to return to the South were obviously complex and involved more than just national political contingencies. They were equally influenced by family and personal circumstances. A departure and return to the South did not necessarily mean making the decision to sell a property owned in Khartoum that for many

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had been hard to obtain: although it represented the capital necessary to set up in the new state, it would have also represented some security against the contingencies of life in the troubled politico-economic context of South Sudan and/or in the case of an abandoned return to the South. When the decision to sell a house in Khartoum was taken, it made the return to the South more final for the families concerned. Although it would have been pragmatic to keep a safety net, most of the South Sudanese families we met in the neighbourhood accepted the risk of selling their homes in Khartoum. The factors that triggered the decision to sell emerged from the survey and offered information on the way many Southern families perceived the environment in Khartoum and the Northern Sudanese. Their attitudes reflected the likelihood of continuing to live there after independence. The journey made by Suzanne’s family serves as a model for the compromises and movements of other families during the transition period, as well as after separation. We came to Mussalass in 1993. Before, we lived in Dar Es Salam 17 (Omdurman) [a neighbourhood designated for displaced persons]. We own this house . . . [In fact, they no longer do: see later in the interview]. Before, there were 15 of us or more living here in this house. But my father went to Torit [Eastern Equatoria] in July 2011. My mother went there with the youngest children, in October 2010. My father works – well, worked – with the UN here. He went to the South (al-Janub) before 2010 but came back to Khartoum and finally left in 2011. Our belongings [the house is almost empty] went to the South long before the referendum in a car my father hired as far as Kosti, and then in a container on a barge on the Nile. After the referendum, journeys became more difficult. Now, in this house, there are nine of us: two sisters, some cousins . . . young people. We are all students. We finish next year and then we’ll leave. In fact, we already sold the house about 4/5 months ago [April/May 2012] and now we are renting, 500 guineas a month to stay here. . . . We voted for separation, of course! We are part of those who caused the secession. We want freedom. The Arabs are contemptuous. On public transport, they look at us unpleasantly. It’s more difficult for us [Southerners] since separation. If it wasn’t for our studies and getting diplomas, we would have gone already . . . Torit? It’s nice! (silence) It’s difficult, but it will be OK. I went there for four months in 2010 and came back to Khartoum. The climate is nice, European. If it wasn’t for my exam [university], I would go straight away. (Interview with Suzanne, August 2012)

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In this family’s case, the decision to sell their plot was taken in the Spring of 2012 once the parents were settled in the South but while the house was still occupied by the young people (who were studying at Khartoum University), whether or not they belonged to the extended family. Living in Khartoum now meant that these young people had to pay rent. This situation seems to have become common in this neighbourhood and elsewhere in Khartoum and highlights the separation of families and different generations caused by the independence of South Sudan. It also shows that the in-between period extended beyond 2011. Belated property sales were seen with many of the plots I surveyed. There were cases of long-distance sales in 2012, and in 2013, cases of families having first rented out their property before deciding to sell once they had ensured that family life in South Sudan was feasible. The spring of 2012 seems to have marked the end of the wait-and-see attitude of a majority of the Southerners living in Khartoum, and it is important to look again and to analyse the reasons cited to explain the sales. In these instances, it is possible to see the influence of hesitation and doubt on certain families, the desire to accept the possibility of settling in South Sudan, different interpretations of political discourses and events, the feeling of a lack of choice and the fear of land confiscation with the gradual implementation of laws and measures establishing new frameworks of Sudanese citizenship (North and South). The secession of South Sudan and the process leading up to it (in particular the procedures for voting in the referendum (Kindersley 2015)) profoundly transformed the foundations of Sudanese nationality. Until that time, it had been based on criteria of descent and birth,16 but now, starting from the organization of the self-determination referendum and the Southern Sudan Referendum Act of 2009, Sudanese nationality was, for the first time, dressed up with ethnic criteria17 (Manby 2012: 22). The law on South Sudanese nationality – which the two parties present at the negotiations had not succeeded in agreeing on during the peace process – was made public in June 2011 and included the criteria of the Southern Sudan Referendum Act, using ethnic origin as the basis for South Sudanese nationality. A first response from the (North) Sudanese government came in July 2011,18 with declarations in the press by politicians pressuring South Sudanese residents in the North to regularize their situation before April 2012. In the aftermath of this, the law on Sudanese nationality was amended several times, and a new condition relating to revocation was added in August 2012: ‘Nationality will be automatically revoked if the person acquires de jure or de facto South Sudanese nationality’ (Vezzadini 2013: 124). Insofar as this amendment contradicts other paragraphs of the

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same law that are still in force (in particular those concerning the possibility of attaining dual citizenship), it leaves the way open for an ambiguous and discretionary application of the law, a risk heightened by the fact that many Southerners have serious problems with providing the official documents they need for regularization (Assal 2011). The implications of these manoeuvres regarding nationality were important for the property market, as ‘since colonial times, no foreigner has had the right to own property or land in Sudan’ (Vezzadini 2013). Similarly, the opportunities available to the South Sudanese communities to find work, obtain healthcare or study in the North became problematic, if not precarious. The many property transactions registered in Al Mussalass neighbourhood in the spring of 2012 reflected the April deadline set by the Sudanese authorities in July 2011 for Southerners to comply with the law. These transactions happened in a context in which the negotiations on the rights and protection of the citizens of the two states residing in one country or the other –which had begun in March 2012 – were supposed to lead to the signature of an agreement in April 2012, but the negotiations were halted due to the outbreak of an armed conflict between the two countries at the same time. The anticipated agreement, which was known as the Four Freedoms Agreement19, was especially intended to guarantee Sudanese people freedom of residence, freedom of movement, the freedom to undertake an economic activity and the freedom to acquire and dispose of property in both states. The fact that the agreement was not signed in April 2012 worried many Southerners in Khartoum and probably accelerated the sale of their properties at around the same time. Under the patronage of the African Union, the Four Freedoms Agreement was finally signed on 27 September 2012 along with seven others (including agreements on the transport of South Sudanese oil, security and the establishment of a demarcation zone at the border), but none of them were ever implemented.20 Economic difficulties linked to a loss of employment following the independence of South Sudan are also given as one of the reasons for selling property in Khartoum and leaving. Along with the generational separations I mentioned earlier, social disparities among members of the Southern communities played an important part in decision-making processes in the neighbourhood. A family’s means were of ultimate importance when taking the decision: for instance, the most vulnerable tenant families or those who had property deeds that were not in the correct form were thus prevented from selling their house in order to fund a fresh start in the South, whilst other, more prosperous families were either in a position where they could sell their homes or did not need the money from such a sale and could even

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rent out their homes. However, financial means were not the only factor that determined the decision to leave or remain: education and access to information (specifically regarding the rights of the South Sudanese community) played an important role in the strategies deployed by many families, as the following interview with Nuweila demonstrates: The government [of the North] frightened people [Southerners] and they left. The Health Minister declared that if a Southerner was ill he wouldn’t be treated; he wouldn’t get so much as an injection. They [the Southerners] were afraid, they left. The problem is also work; the Southerners can’t work here anymore, except privately and even then . . . The only people left are young people who are studying and retired people who worked for the government, who are waiting for their retirement payment to travel. My aunt waited months for hers and in the end she left without it. I have three months left to finish my medical studies at Bahri University and then I’m leaving. But we won’t sell the house; my little brother is staying to finish his studies. And perhaps then we’ll sell. Can’t a foreigner own a house in a country other than his own? You see, there are people who got their house without paying, and they were afraid that the government would take it back, so they sold up and left. Us too, the land authorities gave us this land, but there was nothing, and at the time this neighbourhood was far out. The people [the Southerners] wanted to stay, but after July 2012, with the question of nationality, three or four months ago, people got frightened that what they had would be taken away so . . . they left. Look at us for example. We are waiting for a status and for papers. For the moment, there’s no passport, no possibility of dual nationality, no residence permit. It’s not set up yet. The only paper we have is a South Sudanese community census card. Two months ago, after the Heglig problem, all the Southerners in the North had to register with the administration: your name and your address [he shows it to me]. All the Southerners in Khartoum became foreigners. . . . Just like you: when you come (to Sudan) you need a sponsor, you have to pay for a residence permit. Issues with Southerners are now part of foreign affairs. . . . The solution is to set up the ‘Four Freedoms’, the right to come to the North without a passport and without a residence permit. (Interview with Nuweila (in Arabic), accompanied by his friend Reagan, August 2012)

Highly educated families with connections were less panicked by and better able to resist the numerous rumours about confiscations of land that spread through the capital during the transition period and after South Sudanese independence. These families waited for a solution to

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be found. They had heard talk of the Four Freedoms Agreement, but remained somewhat fearful of being dispossessed, especially with the new status of South Sudanese populations in the North, which influenced their decision on whether or not to sell a house in Khartoum. All these families’ strategies show that uncertainty was a part of life for South Sudanese families in the North and that the in-between period extended long after South Sudan’s independence. Finally, the Southern people’s strategies in terms of property management varied depending on where they came from in South Sudan. There were families of mixed descent (through marriages between a Northerner and a Southerner) in the neighbourhood, and they tended to remain in Khartoum and keep their property. The same applied to people from the contested border zones, where the lack of stability convinced them not to return. In addition, returning to and settling in the South was not the same for people from Malakal (which is very close to the border with Sudan) or from Juba (which is closer to Uganda than to Sudan). Means of transport, the state of the roads, proximity to the North and connection with the new powers in South Sudan determined whether it was possible to go back and forth. My 2012 survey clearly showed two distinct patterns of movement, which in turn established two groups of Southerners: those who left and did not return (who were mostly from Juba or the two majority groups in the South, the Dinka and the Nuer)21 and those who left and then returned  – having left for the South, they then returned regularly to spend three or four months in Al Mussalass, as was especially the case with people from the Upper Nile (Malakal). This differentiation was intensified by the outbreak of the conflict in South Sudan in December 2013, as will be described in the next section.

Returning to Khartoum and Taking up a Place Again While the 2012 field survey naturally concentrated on departures by South Sudanese populations, the situation in 2016 was completely different, since by that time a number of South Sudanese had returned to Khartoum. This was particularly true of people from the Upper Nile State (Shilluk), who had been well represented in Al Mussalass before South Sudan’s independence. Many families had been forced back on the road to return because of the violent conflicts that had been raging in their homelands since the outbreak of the conflict in South Sudan in December 2013. These families, who were principally composed of women and children, returned to Khartoum – which was, after all, the

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closest safe place – which they were familiar with and where they might have hoped to find a network of solidarity in the same neighbourhood they had lived in before Sudan was divided. Given that they had often sold their homes, they found themselves needing to rebuild everything from scratch or sometimes renting a house they had previously owned at a price that had more than doubled within the four-year time span. The people voted for separation in the referendum and there was also the election in the South. Me, I didn’t get involved in all that. We had voted in the elections for Bashir here. But in the South I never voted. But we were obliged to go back to the South. But if we had known there would be problems, we wouldn’t have gone. We had kept our houses at the beginning when we went back [to the South] the first time. But we didn’t see that there were problems. We went back and saw that the country [South Sudan] was very beautiful. We decided to stay for our children’s rights. But then there was the war. Nobody would have gone there if we had known about all these conflicts. If you count the money from the sale of the house, there’s nothing left and we didn’t get any advantage from it. We came back here from the South [in 2013 to Khartoum] with just what we were wearing. Our old neighbours gave us clothes when we arrived. (Interview with Agnette (in Arabic), November 2016)

This extract from an interview illustrates the violence involved in being displaced again: the financial difficulties, the destitution of these people returning to Khartoum and the way in which the story of departing to or returning from the South was constantly being rewritten as events unfolded. Leaving Khartoum was no longer a viable choice in 2016 as it had been in 2012, when the people I questioned had proudly declared that they wanted to leave when their studies finished and had voted for South Sudanese independence (see the earlier interview with Suzanne). This shows how difficult it was for individuals within South Sudanese populations to declare themselves in favour of unity before the referendum took place (Bureau 2011). It was only afterwards, when the new state was suffering civil conflict, that regrets were expressed. Tongues loosened, and the ambivalence regarding the project for a new state re-emerged and eventually rewrote the separation narrative. This ambivalence had, however, already been foreshadowed by the levels of participation and the results of the referendum in the neighbourhood of Al Mussalass and the Greater Khartoum agglomeration. As Agnette reported, she only voted in the North in the 2010 elections organized by al-Bashir – that is, the NCP. Although

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South Sudan gained its independence with 98.8 per cent of the vote, participation in the referendum in the North and the Greater Khartoum agglomeration was extremely low. Within the population concerned, the number of people who voted in the North was less than 70,000, of whom fewer than 25,000 were in the capital. This unquestionably demonstrates the predictability of the final results, in which people who wished to separate felt that they could rely on the votes of people outside the North to guarantee the result and did not want to risk their lives in the North by voting in a way that might be construed as defiant towards the government of Khartoum. The fact that Al Mussalass hosted one of Omdurman’s thirty-six voting centres for the referendum is evidence of the size of the South Sudanese population in the neighbourhood. As elsewhere in the Sudanese capital, the results were less clear-cut than they were nationally: of the 711 people who voted in Al Mussalass, 380 voted for separation, compared with 315 who voted for unity, with 14 blank and 2 void voting cards (SSRC 2011). This shows the divided opinions that existed among Southerners living in the North. Regrets about the country’s separation appear regularly in the interviews with South Sudanese who have returned to Khartoum. Today, they blame ‘politics’ for this division, pointing out that before they arranged for a clause permitting the right to self-determination and the risks incurred by its possible results neither the elite politicians in the North nor those in the South had taken account of the fact that South Sudanese people had homes in Khartoum and that new generations had been born there who had never known the South. More generally, the changes within the neighbourhood were sometimes perceived as negative (‘before, people were together, but now you don’t know your neighbours; people are divided now. The neighbourhood doesn’t feel the same’), sometimes as positive (‘there’s less noise, it’s calmer . . .’) and sometimes neutrally (‘it hasn’t changed’). New populations had arrived in the neighbourhood, taking advantage of the departures of the Southerners, while others (whether from the neighbourhood or not) took advantage of the low property prices and invested. Some houses in the neighbourhood had changed ownership three or four times in the period between the departure of their Southern owners and 2018, clearly illustrating the speculation at work in the area. This last point corroborates the impression the inhabitants of the neighbourhood had of the new arrivals: ‘the Arabs are buying, they have money.’22 This transformation could also be seen in the landscape of Al Mussalass: for example, in the large number of construction sites (more solid houses were being built, and the ground was being paved, for example) and the refurbishment of some properties. Social inequalities in the neighbourhood

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had intensified, and the melting pot that had seemed to predominate before separation was called into question. Before, there were only poor people: poor Northerners and Southerners lived here. Now in Khartoum, there are Arabs that are hungry. That shouldn’t be a case of Northerner or Southerner – poverty in Sudan concerns everyone. It’s nonsense. (Interview with Sukara (in Arabic), November 2016)

For most South Sudanese families who returned to Khartoum, buying a plot of land was a challenge due to financial constraints and was also very complicated, if not impossible, in legal terms. The houses I was able to visit had no furniture and very little of anything else, indicating how extremely vulnerable these (re-)displaced families were. In addition, the country was sinking into a deep economic recession related to the separation of the South and the loss of essential oil revenues. The cost of living and prices had risen exponentially, including rent. Between 2012 and 2016, the rent for small houses (with 2 rooms) doubled, only to double again between 2016 and 2018, making them unaffordable for most (re-)displaced families. These developments served to increase social tensions within the neighbourhood, where informal real estate agents specialized in finding low-cost rentals (Figure 6.3.). Families who had not left or sold up were in a better position than others but

Figure 6.3  Real estate agent card entitled: I have no money / empty house for rent (November 2016). Photo by Alice Franck.

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were obliged to take in those who had returned, meaning that solidarity between families was put to the test. No, nobody helps anyone. If the rich don’t help the poor, how can the poor help each other? (Interview with Agnette (in Arabic), 2016)

Theoretically, Southerners were no longer allowed to work (unless they paid for a residence permit and paid significant income taxes, which was rarely possible), leading to a deterioration in their social situation and to impoverishment, which resulted in increasing levels of inequality becoming evident in the neighbourhood. Legal constraints for these populations who had become foreign (including not being able to work and difficulties accessing healthcare or attending school) were a cause of extreme resentment, particularly on the part of people who had previously worked for the Sudanese government, as in the case of Sukara, who had been an army nurse until the independence of South Sudan. From a mixed family, she was born in the North (in Shendi) and never went to the South or leave Khartoum during the transition period: Me, I want to go back to Juba; I don’t want to stay like this. I want to go to Juba to work as a nurse. I just want a ticket. I’ve had it with the foreign affairs office. They’re not nice there. They are not polite at all. They made me angry ‘you there, move it!’ I cried. They tested me for AIDS. They tested me like Chinese and Syrians. They put me in the middle of the queue. I was the only black. (Interview with Sukara (in Arabic), November 2016) Before, the Southerners counted here [in Khartoum]. But now I’m like an Ethiopian, a foreigner. It’s someone else’s country now. (Interview with Margaret (in Arabic), August 2012)

Small informal jobs such as casual labour, cleaning, washing and ironing in homes, hair braiding, selling tea, making alcohol and even prostitution became the norm and the only opportunities for supporting a family. On another level, separation profoundly transformed the organization of the neighbourhood, as Southerners could no longer take part in running the Popular Committees (Lajna sha‘abiyya) that form the lowest level of local administration. Although Southerners had been very much involved in Al Mussalass before the separation (Révilla 2020), all the members of the Committee had changed. Now there was one particular leader who, according to our informants, did not defend the interests of the South Sudanese who were still living in the neighbourhood or had

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returned to it. For example, he refused to allow Christmas celebrations to be organized on the local football pitch. The small church23 that had existed in the neighbourhood before 2011 began services again. It had been preserved thanks to the donation of a private plot by a South Sudanese resident whose family had now returned, which was not always the case elsewhere in Khartoum (Gout 2018). However, difficulties surrounded the church, showing that the South Sudanese in 2016 were, or felt, ostracized in the neighbourhood: There’s a problem now with this church. On the day of worship, people came with stones and threw them. There are several complaints that were presented here. They said they didn’t want any noise. (Interview with Agnette (in Arabic), November 2016)

Also, the king of the Shilluk returned to the neighbourhood in 2016. He had kept his property, and his presence drew many Shilluk to the area to live so they could protect him (particularly members of his family), consult him or have him join in with the celebration of rites specific to the group. However, the king had said that he was now only celebrating marriages in Al Mussalass and no longer performing certain ceremonies such as the rite of passage into adulthood. He explained that it was impossible ‘as a foreigner’ and that because of the civil war in South Sudan he was missing many elements he required for the ceremonies, including drums (interview in English 2018). The exclusion processes suffered by South Sudanese returning to Khartoum were many and diverse, including reorganization within the neighbourhood and within the city. They also highlighted the divisions among Southerners themselves and intensified ethnic concentrations in Khartoum. In Al Mussalass, the comings and goings during the period from 2005 to 2013 resulted in the demographic and social consolidation of the Shilluk community in the neighbourhood compared to other South Sudanese groups that had previously lived there, who either did not return or were now minorities. These populations, who abandoned the South and returned to Khartoum, mentioned the poor welcome they received in the South when they went to live in the new state. All the South Sudanese who were working here [in the North] had to go to the South. But when they arrived there, they found that the people who were in the fields and abroad had taken control of all the work. And then, when they see you, they say: ‘you’re a jallaba,24 what are you doing here with us?’ That discouraged a lot of people. Some

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came back here and didn’t try to work. The government [of the south] also played a role because when someone hears you speaking Arabic, they’re going to say ‘Jallaba’. They were looking for people who didn’t speak Arabic very well. The army, if they find you at night, they can beat you because you speak Arabic like a jallaba. There were a lot of insults. (Interview with Origi (in English and Arabic), October 2017) The ones who have nothing are the ones who went north [at the time of the 2nd North/South civil war]. They’re tired. They don’t know anything. They can’t tell their ass from their elbow. They don’t know where to go. And the ones who stayed [in the South], they aren’t tired. They have arms like that [makes a movement showing the size of their arms]. Fat! Ma cha allah they’re fat! (Sukara’s visitor, August 2012)

These accounts show that the South Sudanese populations who had lived in the North and who returned there still found themselves in a highly uncomfortable state of in-betweenness: they were not at home in Khartoum and not at home in the South, where in any event the conflicts prevented them from remaining. Problems, problems . . . May God give us health . . . Before the separation, we lived well. But now, we’re stuck on the fence. (Sukara’s visitor, August 2012)

Conclusion The aim of this chapter has been to review the political transition period (2005–11), which is considered to be a temporal in-between because of the uncertainties regarding the status of the South Sudanese populations living in Khartoum. It also examined the nature of the property transactions concluded over this period from the standpoint of their specific features of uncertainty. By looking at the South Sudanese presence in the Greater Khartoum area over a longer period, however, we also see the ongoing negotiation for a place in the city and in society in general. Finally, the processes of marginalization and exclusion have seen a certain continuity: from the discriminatory urban policies of the 1990s to uncertainty over the status of the South Sudanese populations during the period of peace and transition (2005–11), and now over their status as foreigners, which excludes them even more from the economic and social spheres, all the more so because of land speculation in Khartoum, including in working-class neighbourhoods.

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Since the secession, or perhaps since the death of John Garang in 2005, there has been a second phase of marginalization of South Sudanese populations that has reconfigured the poorer neighbourhoods and the city, challenging the urban mix that had previously existed in the poorer areas of the capital, which were generally presented as a homogenous space for the marginalized population. At the same time as reconfiguring these neighbourhoods, secession also demonstrated the heterogeneity of the South Sudanese community. The referendum and its results and the armed conflicts that erupted in the new state of South Sudan led to those South Sudanese who returned to the capital not feeling at home in either Khartoum or in the South. They are immobilized, stuck because of the results of the referendum, and in an intractable dilemma, in-between two worlds. Their circumstances are powerfully conveyed in the following testimony: Yes, I’m a foreigner (ajnabi) now. I went back to my country (South Sudan) but I came back here (Khartoum) because of the war. So, I’ve become a foreigner. I don’t belong here anymore. The politicians decided to have independence and to separate us from each other. . . . Because I came back here [to Khartoum], I have to put up with everything people say to me. All I need is a shelter for me and my children. So what do I do? If they say that I’m a foreigner, OK, no problem, I’m foreign. Me, I need a shelter for me and my children. . . . My children have to keep quiet too. It’s not their country, like people say. But they were born in Khartoum. They live in Khartoum like other people. . . . What I have in my heart, I keep it there. I’m a human being, I know this place and its people [Khartoum]. This place doesn’t belong to any one person. It’s a city, and a city is made of people from everywhere. It doesn’t belong to one tribe or another. . . . Khartoum also belongs to everyone. Nobody should say who can live here and who can’t. . . . Going South? No, not now! I went there twice, I can’t go now. Maybe after everyone else. First, they have to make the roads safe. The first time we went, we were still young. (Interview with Agnette (in Arabic), November 2016)

Alice Franck is Associate Professor of Geography at Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne University, UMR PRODIG. She was the coordinator of the CEDEJ-Khartoum between 2013 and 2016. Her Ph.D. research was on urban agriculture in Greater Khartoum (Sudan) and was followed by the study of urban landed dynamics and urban livestock production. Within the recent context of the Sudanese capital city’s urban

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development, land property conflict is one of the core topics of her research together with issues of socio-spatial and political reconfigurations after the independence of South Sudan, about which she co-edited a special issue of Égypte/Monde arabe (vol. 14, 2016, Sudan, ‘Five Years after the Independence of South Sudan’). Following her perspective on urban livestock production, she recently began a new field of research that questions the places, shapes and stakes of ritual animal death in the urban space through the Muslim ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’ (with J. Gardin and O. Givre), ‘Blood and the City: Animal Representations  and Urban (Dis)orders during the “Feast of the Sacrifice” in Istanbul and Khartoum’, Anthropology of the Middle East 11, special issue ‘Man and Animal Relationships in the Middle East’, edited by M. Mashkour and A. Grisoni (2016).

Notes  1. Al Mussalass means ‘the triangle’ in Arabic. It is the name of a working-class neighbourhood and refers to its shape, its official name being 55 Ferdos.  2. The choice of a door-to-door qualitative survey following a systemic approach was adopted in 2012. In total, 61 households out of the approximately 500 that make up Al Mussalass neighbourhood were interviewed. Three semi-structured interviews of the neighbourhood’s residents completed this systemic survey, in addition to interviews carried out in a preliminary survey in January 2011.  3. This interim period was established by the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) signed in 2005, which ended the civil conflict between the North and the South of the country and designated a period of six years from the date of the peace agreement to the referendum on independence for the South (January 2011), which resulted in the separation of South Sudan on 9 July 2011.   4. Semi-structured interviews carried out with people of Southern origin, in particular with the contacts made in 2012, constituted the majority of the methodology used.   5. The populations of South Sudanese origin, or who belong to South Sudanese ethnic groups, are described in Arabic by the term janubiyyn (Southerners), whether or not they were born in the South. The independence of the new state can be seen by the change in terminology, as Southerners (Southern Sudanese) become South Sudanese. This distinction has no equivalent in everyday language in Khartoum, where the term janubiyyn continues to be used, demonstrating the role of this category, as well as its limitations (Casciarri 2016).

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  6. This second phase of the conflict (1983–2005) was far more deadly and devastating for the civilian populations of South Sudan, who fled en masse and arrived in the capital in unprecedented numbers. The first civil war (1956–1972) had also caused forced displacements, but they were essentially concentrated in the south of the country. For more on the war in the South, see especially the referenced work by Johnson (2011).   7. Barbara Casciarri notes that ‘the history of slavery and civil wars that ravaged the South for more than half a century has led to the term janûbi also implying a general status of being dominated and marginalized that accompanies the underlying meaning of plural ethnicity but is distinct from the dominant groups in the country’ (Casciarri 2015).  8. It is important to understand that these estimates include Nuba populations among the displaced Southerners: ‘approximately 500,000 Dinka, 80,000 Shilluk, 80,000 Bari, 64,000 Fertit, 46,000 Nuer and 40,000 Funj, together with around 400,000 Nuba, 260,000 Furs, and 280,000 displaced people belonging to other Arab tribes’ (De Geoffroy 2009). Although the Nuba were significant victims of the conflict between the North and the South, they were not affected by the independence of South Sudan as much as other Southern Sudanese populations, which illustrates the artificial character of these categories, which are more heterogeneous than they seem.   9. The term ‘urban fabric’ is the one used by Development Minister Bannaga Sharaf Eldin Ibrahim (who was in office from 1989 to 2001) in his works; he expresses a conviction for the need to assimilate these migrant populations. All of his writings also show the classification of displaced persons according to their regional origins and their supposed degree of aptitude for assimilation into the dominant Arab-Muslim model. 10. The creation of the peace towns in 1987 is an example of this urban policy of distancing the migrant populations who had recently arrived in Khartoum (Pérouse de Montclos 2001). 11. Omar al-Bashir’s regime, which was largely supported by the Sudanese Islamist movement, proclaimed itself to be ‘Al Inqaz regime’ (the ‘regime of salvation’) on his arrival after a coup d’état. 12. The capital of South Kordofan, which is situated in the Nuba Mountains. 13. This reference to buying from citizens shows how the two legal systems (customary and official) coexist on the margins of the capital (Casciarri 2015; Casciarri and Babiker 2018). 14. To be eligible for a plot of land, a person had to be Sudanese, be responsible for a family (have a marriage certificate), be living in the neighbourhood before 1990 (a date that changed over time and varied according to the type of neighbourhood), be earning a living (socio-economic survey) and not be in possession of another place of residence within the State of Khartoum. For rehousing in the same location, other criteria and conditions were added, such as being on the list selected by the lajna sha‘abiyya (the Popular Committee – this is the lowest administrative organ established

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by the government). The whole process put Southern displaced persons at a disadvantage when it came to obtaining official papers and access to information, or paying the various ‘taxes’ that punctuated the process (De Geoffroy 2009: 341–45). 15. Returns to the South were not the only component of the official return plan, which did not even come close to achieving its initial objectives. The majority of returns to the South were ‘spontaneous’ (De Geoffroy 2009: 367). 16. ‘The fundamental law on nationality, the Sudan Nationality Act of 1957, defined Sudanese nationality according to the following criteria: a person born in Sudan whose father was born in Sudan, if they or their paternal ancestors had lived in Sudan since 1898 (the date was first amended to 1924 and then to 1956). In addition, it was possible to obtain Sudanese nationality by naturalization after 10 years of residence. This law was changed several times, albeit never substantially, including under the National Islamic government in 1994 . . . Finally, in 2005, the year in which the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, a final amendment was introduced to ensure gender equality, so nationality could be transmitted through the father as well as the mother’ (Vezzadini 2013: 123). 17. This act defines a South Sudanese as ‘a person one or both of whose parents belong to one of the “indigenous” communities that were established in the South in 1956 or before, or whose descendance can be identified with one of the ethnic communities of the South, or who was a permanent resident in the South without interruption from 1 January 1956’ (Vezzadini 2013). 18. From January 2011 and the publication of the results of the self-determination referendum, declarations by the North Sudanese authorities in the press insisted that all South Sudanese in the north would become foreigners from the date of independence (Vezzadini 2013). 19. This agreement is a replica of a similar one (of the same name) concluded with Egypt in 2004, which was restricted from being fully implemented. 20. Sudan Tribune, 25/05/2016, ‘Implementation of Agreement with S. Sudan is Indivisible’. 21. This affirmation from Al Mussalass needs to be nuanced, as can be seen in the Chapter 8 in this volume, which analyses Nuer trajectories within Khartoum. 22. Interview August 2002. These ideas came up several times in our 2012 survey. 23. Although there are cases of conversion to Islam within the South Sudanese populations living in Khartoum and a certain porosity in religious identity, these populations are mostly Christian and followers of indigenous spiritual beliefs. The presence of a church in a poor neighbourhood of a town is a clear indicator of the presence of South Sudanese communities. 24. The term jallaba indicated the traders from the North (it refers to the robes they wore) who traded in the South and the peripheral regions of Sudan during colonial times, and now, by extension, indicates the populations

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from the North; it has come to be used as a synonym for ‘Arabs’, especially in the South.

References Abusharaf Roggia, M. 2009. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ahmed Abdel-Aziz, A. 2013. ‘Confronting Marginality and Otherness: Knowledge Production and the Recasting of Identity through Therapeutic and Embodied Encounters among Internally Displaced People from Southern Sudan’, Ph.D. thesis dissertation. SOAS, University of London. Assal, M. 2006. Whose Rights Count? National and International Responses to the Rights of IDPs in the Sudan. Brighton: Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalization and poverty, Sussex University. ______. 2011. ‘Nationality and Citizenship Questions in Sudan after the Southern Sudan Referendum Vote’, Christian Michelsen Institute Report. Bannaga, S.E.I. 2001. The Displaced and Opportunities for Peace. Khartoum: Research and African Studies Centre/International University of Africa. Bureau, L. 2011. ‘Sudistes au Nord, Sudistes du Nord? Les déplacés du sud à Khartoum entre marginalisation et citadinisation’, master’s thesis dissertation. University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Casciarri, B. 2015. ‘Ethnographie des pratiques légales autour de la revendication des droits fonciers chez les groupes pastoraux de l’Etat de Khartoum’, L’Année du Maghreb 13: 39–60. ______. 2016. ‘Etre, devenir, et ne plus être janûbi: parcours de l’identité “sudiste” entre le CPA et l’après 2011 dans un quartier populaire de la ville de Khartoum (Deim)’, Égypte/Monde arabe 3(14): 65–84. Casciarri, B., and M. Babiker. 2018. Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Choplin, A. 2006. ‘Fabriquer des villes capitales entre Monde Arabe et Afrique Noire: Nouakchott (Mauritanie) et Khartoum (Soudan) étude comparée’, Ph.D. dissertation. Paris, University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. De Geoffroy, A. 2009. ‘Aux marges de la ville, les populations déplacées par la force: enjeux, acteurs et politiques. Etude comparée des cas de Bogota (Colombie) et de Khartoum (Soudan)’, doctoral thesis in Geography. Université Paris 8. Denis, E. 2005. ‘Khartoum: ville refuge et métropole rentière’, Cahier du Gremamo 18: 87–127. ______. 2007. ‘Inégalités régionales et rébellions au Soudan’, Outre-Terre 3(20): 151–68. Denis, E., and J. Dupuy. 2008. ‘La préparation et le passage du recensement du Soudan 2008’, EchoGéo. Retrieved 8 July 2020 from http://echogeo.revues. org/5963.

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De Wall, A. 1989. Famine That Kills: Darfur, Sudan, 1984–1985. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Franck, A. 2015. ‘Urban Agriculture Facing the Land Pressure in Greater Khartoum: The Case of New Real Estate Projects in Tuti and Abu Se’ïd’, in B. Casciarri et al. (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn. ______. 2016. ‘Le Grand Khartoum sans Sudistes? Recompositions post-CPA dans le quartier populaire de Mussalass (Omdurman)’, Égypte/Monde arabe 14: 85–111. ______. 2020. ‘Trois décennies de politiques de logement populaire à Khartoum: entre violence, clientélisme et consensus social’, Politique Africaine 158(2): 149–74. Gout, Ph. 2018. ‘Access to Land for Non-Muslims in Greater Khartoum: Disclosing Divergent Minority Models in International and Sudanese Laws’, in B. Casciarri and M. Babiker (eds), Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Grabska, K. 2014. Gender, Home and Identity: Nuer Repatriation to Southern Sudan. New York, Oxford: James Currey, IOM. 2009. IDP Intentions Concerning Return to their Places of Origin Sample Survey Khartoum, North, East, Central Sudan and Nuba. Khartoum: International Organization of Migration. Jacobsen, K. 2008. ‘Internal Displacement to Urban Areas  – the Tufts-IDMC Profiling Study, Case 1 Khartoum, Sudan’. Feinstein International Centre, Tufts University, in collaboration with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Genève, p. 60. Jacobsen, K., S. Lautze and A.M. Khaider Osman. 2001. ‘The Sudan: The Unique Challenges of Displacement in Khartoum’, in M. Vincent and B. Refslund Sorensen (eds), Caught Between Borders: Response Strategies of the Internally Displaced. London: Pluto Press. Johnson, D.H. 2011. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Peace or Truce. Kampala: James Currey. Kindersley, N. 2015. ‘Identifying the South Sudanese: Registration for the January 2011 Referendum and Defining a New Nationality’, in S. Calkins, E. Ille and R. Rottenburg (eds), Emerging Orders in the Sudans. Langaa Research and Publishing. Lavergne, M. 1999. ‘De la ville coloniale au projet islamiste’, in Les grandes villes d’Afrique. Paris: Ellipses, pp. 148–64. ______. 1997. ‘La violence d’Etat comme mode de régulation de la croissance urbaine: le cas de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Espace Populations Sociétés, CNRS 1: 49–64. Manby, B. 2012. The Right to a Nationality and the Secession of South Sudan: A Commentary on the Impact of the New Laws. The Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa. Medani, K.M. 2005. ‘Black Monday: The Political and Economic Dimension of Sudan’s Urban Riot’, MMN. Retrieved 6 July 2020 from https://www.

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mediamonitors.net/black-monday-the-political-and-economic-dimen​ sions-of-sudans-urban-riots/. Pérouse de Montclos, M.A. 2001. ‘Migrations forcées et urbanisation: le cas de Khartoum’, Dossiers du CEPED 63. Révilla, L. 2020. ‘Les Kayzān au quartier: milieu partisan et trajectoires de distinction dans les quartiers marginalisés du Grand Khartoum’, Politique Africaine 158(2): 33–55. Roden, D. 1974. ‘Regional Inequality and Rebellion in the Sudan’, Geographical Review 64(4): 498–516. Sharkey, H. 2008. ‘Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity and Race’, African Affairs 107(426): 21–43. Sikainga, A.A. 1996. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas Press. South Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC). 2011. ‘South Sudan Referendum: Final Results Report’. 7/2/2011. Retrieved the 7 July 2020 from https:// aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/africa/SD/sudan-final-report-observi​ng-​ the-2011-referendum/view. Vezzadini,  E. 2013.  ‘État, nationalité et citoyenneté au Sud-Soudan’,  Afrique contemporaine 2(246): 123–24.

[•  Chapter 7  •]

Constructions of Sudanese Nationhood

Singularities and Moments from the Experiences of Southern/South Sudanese AZZA AHMED ABDEL AZIZ Introduction

This chapter seeks to explore how the nature of nation building in

Sudan was malleable to the endeavors of divergent interests through time: colonial states, postcolonial states, citizens of different persuasions. This notion of constructing the Sudanese nation was fraught. Eventually, Sudan was to fracture, becoming Sudan and South Sudan. I attempt to shed light on a time frame that predates this fate and illustrate how it was presaged by an influx of Southern Sudanese1 into the capital city of a once united Sudan. Ethnographic testimonies demonstrate how the nature of nation building has impacted the fate of heterogeneous groups of everyday non-elite Southern Sudanese hailing from different social, ethnic and religious persuasions and living in Khartoum as internally displaced people under circumstances of economic precarity and at a certain distance from the polis.2 This chapter underscores the nuances between the construction of nation states and those of nationhood. I postulate that the concern with nationhood is a process that is wedded to emotions and processes of forging belonging that emerge through the unfurling of history: processes and presences that are maintained in the present, through memories of them and having a connecting narrative past be it positive or bitter.3 My focus lies on elucidating how this process is in conversation with the jargon of nation states formulating the parameters and definitions of citizenship, nationality, official residency, official statuses (refugees,

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internally displaced . . .) that regulate the lives of the aforementioned populations in specific ways to exclude or include certain people to varying degrees. I thus aim to illustrate how belonging to a certain place and a specific nation shifts according to time, place and circumstances, which are unstable and subject to how diverse social actors interpret and act upon structural parameters that govern their lives. The specificity of this reading underscores the efforts of forced migrants from Southern Sudan to contribute a sliver to the complex story of Sudanese nationhood. This parenthesis is firmly imbricated with their presence within the city of Khartoum while – despite many grievances  – they were still Sudanese citizens. The internal displacement of the Southerners presented here pertains to the root causes associated with the conflict between the central government and the SPLM/A armed opposition led by Garang  – that were the primary driver of this pattern of mobility, and are firmly entrenched in the polemics of the construction of the Sudanese nation, which should have ideally placed all its citizens on an equal footing. The reality of Sudan as a nation state defeated such efforts, as evidenced by the eventual split and the fact that the rump state of Sudan continues to be ravaged by strife over a unified vision as reflected in conflicts in Darfur (Prunier 2005; Mamdani 2009; Salih 2013), Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan (Komey 2013). The enduring reverberations of this struggle have affected the fates of a large swathe of Southern Sudanese, who were until 2011 a fundamental component and citizens of a united Sudan. Their lives were profoundly informed by two major wars that animated the political life of the country. These wars were the culmination of a ‘war of visions’ (Deng 1995) surrounding what Sudan represented and offered to its diverse people. Indeed, these conflicts crystallized the ongoing problem of Sudan’s construction. It was indeed a paradox that Southern Sudanese would have to find their way to Khartoum in order to escape the ravages of war. Khartoum encapsulates the tension and polemics surrounding the disparities between different groups of Sudanese. It is a primate city and continues to be the seat of government, dominated by Northerners. The conflict between North Sudan and South Sudan mediates aspects of how diverse Southerners  – who came to inhabit the pivotal capital city Khartoum located in the North  – would engage in formulations of being an integral part of the Sudanese nation, through the way they lived within the city and through their practised narratives of nationhood. Such modalities highlight the salience of being part of a nation in ­experiential and expressive terms.

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The content of this chapter elucidates how certain clusters of people come to occupy a marginal position in the city (poverty, ethnicity, classification, distance from power, class) (Medani 2005). However, its primary focus is to place Southern internally displaced people alongside other marginal actors to elaborate how the former perceive them, how they narrate the city at large and how they interact with their places of residence and transform them into places with distinct characteristics, which allows us access to an articulation of Sudan as it existed at a specific juncture. The starting point for such an enquiry is Khartoum, which is a contested landscape in the forced migration of Southern Sudanese. The visibility of Southern presence in Khartoum has been politically and socially salient (Pérouse de Montclos 2001; De Geoffroy 2014 and 2015). Khartoum is pivotal for tracing the polemics of Sudanese nationhood, since it is the historical locus of hegemonic Northern culture.4 Through its hegemonic nature as the location of culture and development par excellence, it was a significant contributor to the generation of the Sudanese peripheries (Abu Sin and Davies 1991; Denis 2005: 102). I posit that Khartoum stands as a synecdoche for a whole process of claiming stakes in Sudan (with the part standing for the whole in significantly exposing its contestations of nationhood and what it is to be Sudanese from diverse perspectives). Furthermore, Khartoum was a particularly challenging terrain by virtue of being located in the geographical north. Indeed, the massive influx of Southerners into the capital and into the North is paradoxical (since the war was constantly referred to as being between North and South).5 Notwithstanding, diverse groups of Southern Sudanese found themselves in a position where Khartoum was to serve as a safe haven. I therefore illustrate how Southerners came to claim it in diverse ways that would boost their legitimacy and sense of belonging as an intrinsic part of their claim to Sudan, which is mediated by their identifications as being Sudanese. These experiences and processes form a parenthesis within a wider complicated construction of the Sudanese nation. I use the concept of the in-between as an essential analytical tool to present different elements that inform Southerners’ claims to Sudan. This concept is conceived as the layers of an onion to be peeled back one by one, bringing one closer to an understanding of their manoeuvrings towards this end. This involves positing the in-between as indicative of the in-between nature of Sudan itself, the liminal position of Southerners within the landscape of Khartoum, the characterization of certain spaces within the city and how such in-between spaces serve to anchor different categories

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of Southerners inhabiting a single space. Their fate is determined by the flux of time so that any account of their lives in Khartoum is never definitive, but rather constitutes a series of ethnographic presents and is therefore always located at the cusp of different temporalities and states. The first part of this chapter articulates how the problem of the nation is rendered visible within the landscape of Khartoum thorough the mass displacement of Southern Sudanese from the mid-80s and which continues to have reverberations till the present. Hence I introduce the different forms of citizenship and classifications that impinge on lives within Khartoum. The second part of this chapter develops the multiple manifestations of the in-between in the lives of the protagonists of this text. I illustrate how these constellations serve as a hook between the first part that presents the position of Southerners within a nation fraught with tension. This section highlights how diverse actors who claim or are attributed some connection with Southern Sudan while simultaneously finding themselves labelled as internally displaced within Khartoum6 manage a specific aspect of their displacement experience. This includes their problems in engaging in the construction of the Sudanese nation and how they see themselves within it, how they carve out a place for themselves within it, how they exhibit ambivalence towards it and how they identify themselves in relation to other Sudanese groups who are equally marginalized with the latter being populations predominantly hailing from Western Sudan and those originally hailing from West Africa who have settled in Sudan and who are Sudanese yet remain pejoratively lumped together under the generic term ‘Fellata’7 (Duffield 1988). I examine how these processes are deeply intertwined with the grievances of multiple Southerners about the nature of the nation and how it militates towards excluding them. The last part of this chapter elaborates my conceptual framework – how constructions of nationhood come about – to demonstrate how it resonates with the aforementioned problematics. This implies examining local imaginings of nationhood and its conceptualizations (what is it that makes one feel Sudanese and confers a sense of belonging). I demonstrate how this wide-ranging conceptualization narrows down to create a space for the ‘production of locality’ through ‘complex and deliberate practices of performance, representation and action (Appadurai 1996: 180) – not limited to recounting the history of a neighbourhood or to describing it – through ‘language games’ that create specific social realities that attenuate the workings of all too real alternatives that ostracize and distance specific groups and cultural repertoires within the city.

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I approach these aforementioned elements through an elaboration of the conceptual tool of in-betweenness, showing how it evolves from merely being an expression of marginalization to become a productive space in the articulation of an alternative vision of Sudanese nationhood.

The Provocation of Khartoum: Southerners as a Precarious Category and the Paradoxes of Marked Visibility Khartoum has been the subject of a massive population growth due to the internal displacement of Southern Sudanese fleeing the second civil war (1983–2005) (Lavergne 1999; De Geoffroy 2009; Bureau 2011) and Westerners escaping the drought and famine in the 1980s (Hamid 1996). The way Southerners would come to inhabit Khartoum constitutes part of a wider debate about a visible influx of Southerners into the capital city of Sudan. It highlights the unprecedented manifestation of a heterogeneous Southern Sudanese population within its landscape starting from the late 1980s, and its traces that can still be witnessed. This period would mark the arrival of over 1 million Southern Sudanese (De Geoffroy 2009: 517). Their heightened presence was noteworthy given that according to the historical timeline, for a substantial amount of time, the Southern presence was not significant. This was due to restrictions on the movement of Southerners resulting from the Closed District policy established between 1930 and 1946 by the British Colonial Power to keep the North and South separate and distinct cultural zones (Abd-Al-Rahim 1971). Hence the presence of different groups of Southerners in the North was limited (Rehfisch 1962). Some noteworthy, if limited, examples of this presence include the Nuer, who engaged in seasonal work (in Khartoum) specific to their group (Kameir 1988), and educated elites engaged in government civil service (Sudan Government, Survey Report of Employment of Southerners, 1964: 4–5; Deng 1971: xxxvii).8 The demographic changes wrought by the massive arrival of Southerners to Khartoum framed them as subjects of concern (Bannaga 2002). This was predominantly entrenched through the tendency to simplify their diverse social identities by labelling them ‘internally displaced’ or ‘nazihin’ (a negative term implying a fleeing, ungrounded, superfluous person) (Assal 2006).9 The propensity to lump diverse social actors under the rubric of internally displaced or nazihin which has its uses within the literature (Hamid 1996: 130–31; Bannaga 2002)10  – nevertheless oversimplifies the life worlds of social agents through facile categorization (Turton 2003, Zetter 1991, 1998) which militates to identify

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them uniquely on the basis of a status informed by the circumstances of war that had driven them to settle in Khartoum making them internally displaced.11 The slippage between Southerners as citizens and Southerners as IDPs would mark them as certain undesirable kinds of citizens and would contribute to identifying a heterogeneous group (ethnicities, genders, generations, professions . . .) having different experiences, challenges and aspirations as a single entity – without exposing the relationships of individuals within groups and between diverse groups within the wider city.

The In-Between as a Conceptual Tool: Making Liminality Relevant The in-between mediates the circumstances that Southerners are subjected to in Khartoum and their actions in etching their place in the landscape of Sudan. This invokes relationships with the space that they would occupy, which would become intricately tied to the processes of nation-building articulated, lived and addressed through the perspectives of heterogeneous groups of Southern Sudanese living as internally displaced ‘citizens’ and residing in a peripheral zone, Mayo (which I classify as distinctive and liminal), in the landscape of Khartoum. I argue that this contributes to an understanding of how they frame Khartoum at large but also their specific locality within the discussion of Sudanese nationhood. Much like the allusion to the in-betweenness of Sudan (Mazrui 1971) as part of the challenge in formulating its framework of nationhood, the in-betweenness of Southerners was another major building block of this dare. Indeed, their very liminality justifies the need for the protagonists of this chapter to convey their voices about nationhood. In light of the previous discussion in this chapter, it is safe to state that while Southerners were citizens of Khartoum they were not the right kind of citizens, for through their classification as victims they were persistently framed as a category of superfluous migrants destined to leave once their crisis was over. They would seem to correspond to Turner’s concept of liminality, since they ‘are at the very least “betwixt and between” all the recognised points in space-time of structural classification’ (Turner 1967: 97). Liminality is a temporary condition elaborated by Turner (1967: 93–111) as a transitional period between different states in ‘rites de passage’.12 According to Turner (1967: 94) ‘during the intervening liminal period the state of the . . . subject . . . is ambiguous; he passes through

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a realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or the coming state’. In the context being discussed by him, the concept would stand for the space of exclusion prior to integration. The rite de passage here concerns ‘entry into a new achieved status’ (Turner 1967: 95).13 However, I assert that in Khartoum the Southern internally displaced person was not guided by the highly structured society and thus their period of liminality was not characterizsed by a learning process that would culminate in the occupation of a predetermined social role that had been suspended. Therefore the positive attributes of liminality as a process characterized by momentary respite from the rules of social hierarchies followed by ultimate reassimilation were not applicable and not afforded to IDPs. Accordingly, I suggest that for a long time they remained unheard and unguided by the hosting society. Regardless of these obstacles, life in Khartoum, despite the state of liminality described above, would activate multiple Southern voices clamouring to find modalities – as part of their everyday – that would make them viable social subjects therein and by extension valued citizens. I therefore underscore the salient concept of in-betweenness to set the parameters for how the Southern Sudanese were in-between within the wider parameters of the Sudanese nation and how they negotiated this liminality. It therefore becomes relevant to recast their liminality, which would, to borrow Masquelier’s insight, exhibit the fragility of the centre (2001: 20) represented by the hegemonic structure of Khartoum and serve as the springboard that would instigate a process of vying for an alternative way of being Sudanese that would engage a quest to maintain cultural integrity while remaining Sudanese on the terms that they would set. The second component that highlights the salience of the concept of in-betweenness for this project is temporality. The ethnographic material within this chapter harks back to a time when the separation was not yet a reality and where the narratives about the viability of Sudan as a nation were hinged on ambivalence, since they were informed by grievances related to unequal citizenship and ‘ethnic vulnerability’. These issues were informed by the failure of Sudan to fulfil its promises to its diverse citizens. In light of such grievances and challenges, and in the midst of the pandemonium of a life in displacement, large swathes of Southern Sudanese remained on the margins and excluded. The temporal aspect constituted an important element in how Southerners articulated their lives in Khartoum at a determined period with its specificities and how this moment fits into a wider pattern of their varied trajectory of displacement and movement. This trajectory

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was influenced by different circumstances that modified the projects that individuals would have and their nodes of articulation. In light of an articulation of the in-between as a tool of analysis linked to temporality, it is essential to pinpoint that the bulk of the ethnographic insights presented in this chapter derive from extensive fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2005. These perspectives are significant because the Machakos peace protocol – which set the grounds for the possibility of self-determination and hence the marked possibility of separation14 – had by this time been initiated (September 2002), and yet I found that in most narratives the claim to Sudanese nationhood persisted during this time.15 The variations in the life courses of different protagonists would feed into the story of Khartoum and add interesting if slightly opaque layers (since they would not enter the mainstream) to it, since any definitive account of Khartoum is impossible (this tendency has sidelined and muted existing voices and sociabilities of many).16 I therefore nuance generalizations about the construction of nationhood by Southern IDPs through the use of ‘situated knowledge’ (Haraway 1988), which gives a partial account of how diverse individuals create and formulate one vision among many. The fact that I present an ethnographic vignette of the constructions of nationhood – within a specific part of the city – as a whole story does not negate the fact that this segment is part of a wider sketch of the ongoing Sudanese story and is therefore to be conceived as part of a patchwork canvas. This metaphor justifies recourse to the concept of the in-between. I assert that the concept of the in-between equally contributes to resolving the accusation towards anthropological readings as being too presentist (Werbner 1998: 2; Cole 1998): considering social phenomena as static and wedded to the immediate here and now/hic et nunc instead of ongoing processes that are revisited. Although the content of this chapter alludes to a time frame (2004–2011) and the specifics of experiences within it, I suggest that the material presented needs to be considered within a temporal flow that endures and that it is a noteworthy parenthesis within an ever unfolding narrative flow. Lastly, the concept of in-betweenness equally underscores the difficulty of people’s voices being heard because of their liminal position within the Khartoumian landscape: the remoteness of their physical locations and the distancing of their cultural signifiers. Although Southerners narrated their aspirations, their reverberations were constrained by the pertinent observation by Habermas (cited in Jackson 2006: 12) that ‘the life worlds and voices of marginalized classes . . . tend to be privatized by being denied public recognition’ (Habermas, cited in

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Jackson 2006: 12). This suggests that they remained in limbo until they were heard. It is therefore methodologically important to underscore and attenuate this less productive component of in-betweenness by interrogating my own function/place as an interlocutor being in the right place at the right time to hear these stories but also questioning and trying to uncover why certain things are said to certain people. Through my questions and outsider position, I gained access to narratives about constructing nationhood that were not widely heard in the landscape of Khartoum. Furthermore, I participated in creating a transitional space through narrative that might not have existed in the everyday life in Mayo. This created a shared space where these stories were expressed and provided insights into the workings of what was considered a place of disorder and crime. Simone (1994: 120) describes it in 1992 as: ‘an invisible community . . . The place is populated by a little bit of everybody, too poor and too tough to make it elsewhere’. Over time, this place would continue to be vilified in the popular imagination of other inhabitants of Khartoum  – despite them having very little knowledge of it in real terms – as a notorious place of vice and falling outside the control of the state. This image was to persist and was as recently as 2018 described by an affluent inhabitant of Khartoum as ‘a no man’s land’.

The Unstable Terrain of Liminality Starting from 2004, multiple informants would repeat phrases that indicated that their presence, as undifferentiated Southerners (Janubiyyn) in Khartoum, was unwelcome, and therefore it was a terrain that was in need of careful navigation. For instance, an influential Equatorian Southern healer in Mayo (who arrived in Khartoum in 1995 and departed in 2009) all the while worked fervently towards consolidating her position in Khartoum society by perfecting her command of cultural repertoires of healing that encompassed a large segment of the sociocultural diversity contained within Sudan. She did this in order to appeal to a wide client base and establish her merit as a professional healer. She acknowledged her lack of formal education to me but was aware of how this was counterbalanced by her inherited skill: ‘I am lucky that God bestowed me with the gift to heal for without this knowledge I would have just been a silly woman’ (read: naïve and powerless). Through her practice, she exhibited great ambition since she supplemented this natural bounty within the multi-cultural/multi-­ethnic context of Khartoum. Her actions testify to how healing is a craft

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that can be inherited but which requires the successful healer to push beyond their hereditary lore through learning unfamiliar skills from other healers from different backgrounds. Engagement with a wide array of healing activities from diverse provenance illustrated how this healer was equipping herself to transcend ethnic boundaries and her categorization as an internally displaced dispossessed woman by navigating multiple social identities seamlessly and becoming part of a multi-­cultural Khartoum. However, despite these efforts even she would sometimes be assailed by lassitude that would on occasion provoke her to declare that life in Khartoum as a displaced Southerner was intolerable and that ‘they’ (my emphasis) were unwelcome in their own country: ‘In Khartoum we are like guests; look at the way we live – we are like refugees’. Yet, on another occasion she would castigate a group of young men in her house who were all complaining about the vicissitudes of Khartoum and yearning for a return to the South. She was incensed enough to condemn this as naïve, stating: ‘You can go back to the South if you like. I am not going back. I have not endured all this suffering in order to leave the modern city and go back to a village.’ Eventually it transpired that she would make concessions to the Islamic ethos of Khartoum, since during the course of my fieldwork I gradually observed the infiltration of Islamic dawaa activity within the healing space. This healer had during the course of the year I had been present gained the favour of an influential Dinka Islamic proselytiser. The courtyard within her house was transformed into an arena where people would contract Islamic marriages in exchange for financial aid by the state. Ironically, two months later the very same courtyard hosted one of the most elaborate zar17 ceremonies for two patients over a four day period. Paradoxically, the additional and socially more prestigious role as a proselytiser- that in principle negated most of this healer’s epistemological basis of healing- was essentially built on the social capital that she wielded as a healer since this was the basis upon which she attracted Southern IDPs – who knew her through her reputation as a successful and sympathetic healer – to her new calling. Sadly, as she was receiving pledges of becoming more integrated into life in Khartoum – she had been promised a more valuable plot of land outside Mayo in Jerief18 (a promise that did not materialize by the time she left Mayo in 2009) – she was having to relinquish a large part of the healing activities (vilified by the government and hence potentially under threat) that constituted an intrinsic aspect of her persona. All these efforts would not suffice since she eventually left to join the SPLA. Her abrupt and eventual departure

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after years of attempting to carve out a place in Khartoum was interesting, since it demonstrates how processes of appropriating it were in flux. Another female informant from Bahr El Ghazal region expressed the difficult circumstances she was enduring in Khartoum by highlighting the importance of land ownership in Khartoum and how failing to own land was a marker of exclusion. She claimed that this was not important in the South: It is better to be an agriculturalist . . . land ownership is a concept that we have learnt in Khartoum; in the South, people just cultivate – it is much easier. Here they [the authorities] will not allow you to use the land, and how can we transport the water for agriculture? Education over there is paid for, but here we have no help, and fathers are constantly absent.

Her words hold a double significance, they explain what conditions need to be fulfilled for one to become a Khartoum dweller while simultaneously highlighting a modicum of agency for Southerners in expressing that they do not all desire to attain this goal, and it appears to be a concessional choice made under duress, since return to the South is not a viable option given that it lacks the necessary infrastructure that would facilitate a return. Angelina continues: ‘Our children might be traumatized by an insecure return. This is their future and education . . . it is not only about food and drink; it is about visions and ambitions for the future.’ In this instance, the South is idealized as a pristine zone removed from the greedy, grinding materialism of Khartoum and its penchant for landownership.19 This narrative clearly places Angelina in a higher moral position and affords her more symbolic capital than that acquired by others who clamour for and gain material success. Such ambivalent attitudes towards life in Khartoum arose time and time again. One of the means through which people tempered them was through resisting their categorization as internally displaced, by creating frames of liminality for others such as Sudanese of West African descent, who were on several occasions subjected to accusations of practising magic and cursing people by virtue of being identified as strangers. A Southern woman at the camp in Mayo expressed her discontent with a category of healers of West African descent known as fugara (faki sing.) to me – they are generally viewed on a societal level with a certain amount of trepidation – since they are known in Sudan for their metaphysical abilities to either inflict affliction or to alleviate it according to their whims and the requests of their clients (Al-Safi 1970). Essentially,

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they did not escape her wrath: ‘Fugara are liars. If they had money and could give fortune would they not fix their own situation? They are quacks who come all the way from Nigeria to cheat the Sudanese.’ These biographic narratives introduce us to two liminal protagonists: the Simmelian ‘stranger’ (trans. Wolff: 1950: 402–8) and the ‘scapegoat’ (Girard 1986), evoked within social theory. The first two narratives evoke the ‘stranger’ by alluding to the significance of land as an anchoring device. The possession of land seemed to confer a sense of belonging and legitimacy for many Southerners and therefore it was a subject of debate with many articulating it as a reassuring goal. However, given that access to land was fraught with difficulty in Khartoum it appeared that this challenge would constantly confirm that Southerners would remain strangers in Khartoum. This difficulty functions in a figurative sense and reinforces Simmel’s concept of the stranger, as an index to the attributes ensuring that Southerners remain a shadowy presence in Khartoum. I refer to Simmel’s insight that ‘the stranger is by nature no “owner of soil” – soil not only in the physical but also in the figurative sense of a life-substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space, at least in an ideal point in the social environment’ (Simmel 1950: 1 quoted in Wolff). This characteristic maintains the mobility of the stranger, and in the case of Southern IDPs, this mobility is devoid of any liberatory connotations, since it maintains the notion that they will one day have to move out of Khartoum. The possibility of mobility adversely designates them as returnees; a term that does not involve them in deciding their fate and seems to operate under the same logic as the label of internally displaced. This reminds us that they were subjected to leaving their homeland through no choice of their own. It appears that these categorizations have no bearing on the process of how they strive to create and live the notion of home. These observations bring us to the necessity of recasting conceptualizations of the ‘stranger’ described by Simmel as ‘the person who comes today and stays tomorrow’ and not as the ‘wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow’ . . . a ‘potential wanderer’ who ‘has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going’. This is the person who lives within a social group but not from the beginning and therefore brings qualities to it from the outside. This kind of stranger maintains relationships of internality and externality to the group. This benign stranger who conveys notions of being carefree and liberated is anathema to many and signals the starkness of failing to achieve rootedness and the ­undesirability of remaining a stranger on these romanticized terms.

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In contrast, the third narrative conjures up the figure of the scapegoat, elaborated by Jackson (2013: 54–56) following René Girard as the archetypal person who becomes the protagonist of a ‘persecution text’ that people author in times of crisis adopt to allocate blame and find justifications for their own suffering. In this context the scapegoat would be perceived as capable of mischief. As Jackson explains they are perceived as ‘strangers within, outsiders masquerading as insiders, bent on mischief or worse’ (ibid.: 56). In short, they are made morally responsible for the misfortunes that have befallen a place. In this specific context, this misfortune was tied to the grievances of Southerners about being unfulfilled citizens. It seemed that in order to boost their legitimacy they needed to vilify other citizens by evoking their distant belongings to other territories outside Sudan. In this way, they participated in a wider propensity to malign these populations while simultaneously working towards creating a category of strangers beyond themselves, which can be read as reflecting concerns about their own place as authentic citizens. Notwithstanding, this did not restrict interactions with them, either as neighbours or as providers of remedies. The narrative regarding suspect healers and their rejection by Southerners was not cut and dry, since they garnered many Southern clients, especially for the medical plants that they provided in the local markets. The dilemma around accepting or rejecting the therapeutics offered by this renowned and easily accessible group was exemplary of Southern IDPs. They wanted to create another category of others beyond themselves through what I call the construction and pronouncement of ‘necessary lies’ in the vein of De Certeau, whereby he states that in the course of narration ‘one must grasp a sense other than what is said’, and the discourse of narration ‘produces effects not objects’ (1984 : 79). In these circumstances economy of the truth by IDPs surrounding their outright rejection of the services of these healers is to be understood as directed towards transcending their own marginalization through transferring it to others. These analyses widen our scope of how the liminal is an unstable terrain and how it is a space that is navigated through the prism of frames of reference imposed by those who have largely managed to entrench themselves within the mainstream cultural signifiers glorified by Khartoum. For all intents and purposes, liminality does not imply complete exclusion, as evidenced by the example of Fellata healers presented above. For despite widespread reservations about their moral positions, Fellata healers were privy to the secrets of many Sudanese clients from all walks of life across different spaces of the city including those that could be considered as central since they openly displayed

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their wares therein and were accepted by mainstream society by virtue of the knowledge they possessed. The liminal engages different scales of alterity and presents us with different profiles of the liminal (presented above) and it hence calls into being the social presence of the liminal person – who like the scapegoat is to be feared, and the other liminal person the Simmelian stranger who can be considered more benign but ineffective – in accounting for the everyday positionalities of Southerners in Khartoum and how these profiles impinge on their experiences of it. Another more acute level of alterity, as a radical, unbridgeable incapacitating difference, was manifest in the everyday lives of Southern IDPs from diverse backgrounds, whereby they seemed to conflate their status of being internally displaced with being proximate to the status of refugees, who according to them lacked legitimacy in the territory of Sudan (Khartoum here serving as a synecdoche for the whole of Sudan) and whose precarious living conditions would therefore be expected, natural and not worthy of eliciting condemnation. As IDP they equally would be expected to be poor, yet paradoxically, many would benefit materially from this categorization. It afforded the allocation of ‘food for work’; positions within the popular committees (lijan (lajna sing.) shaʿbiyya) and local and international NGOs; honorary titles as local leaders sultans (Abusharaf 2009; Abdel Aziz 2018) and leadership roles within proselytizing organizations (Bellion-Jourdan 1997) for a plethora of individuals hailing from a highly diverse category while excluding others from positions of power within their local communities. Such arbitrary allocations of advantage would prompt animated discussions, with some people sardonically stating that places like Mayo were essentially condemned to destitution because no Arabs inhabited them and hence no amount of power given to its inhabitants would be sufficient to turn the tables. Conversely, others would frame such locations as places of liberty far removed from the gaze of the Islamist state (1989–2019) and its tendencies to suppress other cultures of Sudan that were threatening because they were free as expressed in the words of a male Equatorian Southerner ‘they think of us a free spoiled people’. Two male Equatorian informants would vehemently speak on behalf of the Southerners living alongside them in the peripheral area of Mayo stating that people who worked in the centre of town could not wait to finish work so that they could get back to the freedom they enjoyed in their place of habitation. The first individual had the following view: ‘Trips to Khartoum are like a form of migration, they are like going to Cairo. You go for a purpose. Here we are all the same and we live in the same manner.’ The second individual corroborated this attitude: ‘Going to the centre of Khartoum

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is as arduous as going on pilgrimage. People from the South are so happy at the end of their working day and want to get back to their community; you should see them running to catch the micro-buses.’ Such a stance, however, was not shared by all, with others often expressing their desire to inhabit zones of the city, which they saw as more indicative of upward social mobility. Such varying attitudes would signal that the label of internally displaced and where it positioned certain groups was a site of ambivalence and a salient marker of a refuted exclusion of Southerners in the city and by extension the nation. This classification was animated by charged reverberations and placed them in the midst of other equally displaced populations from Western Sudan. These designations towards different groups were to produce different cultural expressions and manifestations of social life within Khartoum. These were all related to the structural forms of power within Khartoum and the distribution of diverse groups within its extensive terrain. It was noteworthy that readings of Southerners being out of place in Khartoum were always based on facile polarizations between being Christian and being Muslim or less likely to share the culture of the North than their Western Sudanese counterparts, who were Muslim. Hence their lives in Khartoum, on the terms of their own cultural signifiers, were persistently framed as temporary and fragile. This representational tendency even persists in literature accounting for the dilemmas faced by Southerners in Khartoum. For instance, Rahem (2005) describes lives informed by anomie. The author uses the term, in the Durkheimian sense, to present the situation of displaced populations stating that anomie exists when there exists a hiatus between social values and norms and the reality of social praxis. It is this gap that ultimately leads to a loss of identity and feeling of alienation. Alternative readings present Southerners as grappling with the challenges of acculturation (as a rapprochement to the frameworks of the dominant culture that modifies an initial culture (Bureau 2011: 61)). This latter argument is somewhat reductive since it posits culture as a text that is not subject to change. Furthermore, such predicates serve to camouflage the fact that marginal spheres can and do send out aspects of their subcultures thereby making the social relationships of distance that may appear immutable flexible, although one must not trivialize the balance of power between the cultural forms in question (Bhaba 1996: 58). I observed this pressure in the efforts within Khartoum to silence therapeutic forms that tapped into metaphysical understandings that were at odds with dominant structures of power represented by biomedicine, church

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teachings and the Islamic state. This implied a trinity of hegemonic powers that a large range of Southern social subjects had to contend with. The first was biomedicine which held great scientific and social legitimacy (Gruenbaum 1982, 1998) in the landscape of Khartoum, and from this perspective there was a struggle between it and other healing traditions for control over what was real in terms of defining ill-health. The second was represented by specific modalities of Islamic healing which were gaining more visibility and becoming increasingly professionalized through the permission accorded to construct centres of faith from the late 90s (markaz iman) (see Last 1986). In relation to this, alternatives were suppressed, and most remarkable among these were zar possession rituals, outlawed by the Islamist government in power since 1989 through the machinations of its ‘Civilizational Project’ and its appendix, the Public Order Act, a penal code declared in 1991 and elaborated as El-Nizam El-‘am for Khartoum State in 1996. Furthermore, rituals associated with connecting with ancestors were sidelined by educated Southern elites and the church.20 The Sudanese state was not unduly concerned with abolishing these latter practices because they were distant from public perception and did not threaten the cultural hegemony imposed on Khartoum, since they were relegated to socially peripheral zones of the city (Abdel Aziz 2013). On the contrary, they were exoticized and trivialized and allowed as a concession and patronisingly framed as adat wa tagalid (customs) even until the time of writing (October 2018). Nonetheless, marginal spaces of ‘savoir’ (modalities of knowledge production) and the life worlds they generated across Khartoum also actualized some social encounters between the dominating culture of Khartoum and other alternatives that existed within its diverse spaces.21 At times this did not sit well with Southerners who deemed that Northerners would come to their spaces to opportunistically take advantage of their gusto for life (cultural acceptance of consuming alcohol) and to momentarily escape the shackles of their own domineering culture without making the necessary effort to actively combat them or that they remain too weak to do so. Despite difficult negotiations, the tropes marking Southern cultures as invisible did not correspond to all social realities, and attempts to ‘reverse peripherality’ (Middleton 2002) were enacted. Some Southerners espoused Islam on their own terms, and they would state that Northerners had to understand that Islam was not reserved for Arabs and people engulfed in an Arab culture. Others expressed that within Southern communities religion was a personal matter and that

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people within the same household could happily coexist while espousing different religions (Abdalla 2014). Some individuals continued to adhere to cultural beliefs – predominantly healing practices dealing with spirits and ancestors and the consumption of alcohol  – that were under attack by the Islamist regime. These were practised with caution due to what I coin as the ‘Islamizing landscape’ that was shrouding Khartoum since 1989 (Salomon 2016). Among different Southern groups there was widespread versatility in forming social lives through the prism of sociocultural signifiers that were in a process of negotiation and that did not remain static ( Abdel Aziz 2013) and were therefore were at odds with the ethos of the Islamizing discourse that was concerned with controlling and regulating Sudanese society on its terms (Marchal 2015).

Voices Emanating from In-Between Spaces in the City There has been a tendency in the literature to deploy the spatial idiom of centrality and peripherality in the city of Khartoum as a trope to advocate ‘for the right to the city’22 (Lefebvre 1974), which is reductively equated with certain zones of it. In this way, the centre of political power standing for the centrality of certain populations came to be conflated with its locus of power and privilege that was historically entrenched and concentrated in a spatial dimension in Khartoum (Denis 2005).23 The trope of centrality and peripherality accounts for the locations of Southern IDPs within Greater Khartoum as a form of relegation that connotes their marginalization in the city (Lavergne1997, 1999; Denis 2005; Motasim 2008; Choplin 2009) and by extension the country as a whole. I seek to destabilize this certainty by presenting some observations of the actions and narratives of multiple Southern forced migrants that would gradually make Khartoum a contested space that was open to negotiations and diverse workings wrought by newer inhabitants regardless of their spatial positioning within the city. Through the concept of in-betweenness presented in the previous section, we have already seen that its multiple formulations lead to a space of ‘radical openness’ (bell hooks 2000) where as a conceptual framework it has allowed access to ponderings surrounding the complex and multifaceted dimensions of Sudan that influence the lives of Southerners in Khartoum so that they were finally dominant in expressing liminality/ambiguity/ambivalence towards Sudan and grappling with identities or moving between them: Arab African hybrid, Muslim, Christian, following practices based on ­indigenous understandings . . .

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In this section I throw light on the in-between spaces of the city: those that are conceived as sites of limbo, hosting superfluous citizens, maligned, eliciting wonderment, transgressive, free from the shackles of Northern religiosity. I focus on that place called Mayo.This place is characterized by the fact that its inhabitants stand on the threshold of being marginal and central, since the area is not as greatly removed from central Khartoum (lying 20 km south of it) as other peripheral zones of the city. For this reason, its inhabitants were more readily exposed to the dominant cultural signifiers of Khartoum. From this vantage point, Mayo was distinct from other peripheral zones of the city such as the three other camps: Wad al-Bashir, Es Salam (Omdurman) and Jebel Awlia or the diverse squatter areas and shanty towns around Khartoum. Yet this does not suggest any assimilative proximity with the centre; it instead implies a distinct negotiation of the values of the latter whereby the inhabitants of Mayo would engage with wider Khartoum only in order to set the terms of their own aspirations within it (Abdel Aziz 2013). I therefore reiterate the concept of Mayo as an in-between space to offer further insights into the process of how one comes to create the nation and how one becomes Sudanese as they emerged from the field in this specific location. I argue that this objective is imbricated with the ‘production of locality’ as witnessed from testimonies emanating from this specific zone of relegation. This demonstrates how Southerners created modalities and acted upon space in order to tame the violence that life in Khartoum wreaks upon them by framing them as outsiders. The way Mayo is produced as a locality elucidates what makes it distinct and yet all the while how it can simultaneously become the reflection of a potentiality that could materialize across the breadth of the cityscape to encompass other localities (see other contributions in this volume). Following Appadurai (1996: 182), I argue that since there is a link ‘between locality as a property of social life and neighbourhoods as social forms’ it becomes pertinent to illustrate how ‘language games’ (Wittgenstein 1958) become manifest through the testimonies of diverse Southerners in Mayo which through, these actions by segments of its inhabitants, gains in specificity becoming distinct from other peripheral neighbourhoods. As a place it allows for the emergence of a singular form of agencythat while constrained- is nonetheless connected to efforts pertaining to the mastery of a particular space situated in a particular context at a particular moment. Ultimately, this impinges on wider spaces to illustrate the array of ways in which people are invested in Sudan. The forms

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of stories and narratives that informants devise about their position within the nation and their definitions of it create a ‘language game’ which changes function according to how the words are used (how they signify different experiences according to the circumstance at hand). Therefore the function of storytelling translates as an agentive act, which as explained by Good (1994: 81), produces ‘a way of life’, hence these language games are not mere reflections on a preconstituted world (based on a blue print) but ‘key practices in its shaping’. In this manner, they correspond to a sound methodological objective, as advocated by Massicard (2002), to transcend identity discourses in favour of studying precise social configurations. Therefore, one can speak of revisiting the terms of the formation of the nation state and its polemics through a presentation of the ‘language games’ of marginal protagonists, who exhibit the potential to provide other formulations of it that served to foil the metanarrative that was working to exclude them. This metanarrative presented the potential disruption to what was seen as a pristine, civilized, educated city; that could be overrun by the chaos of new arrivals not hailing from an urban background. It was feared that Khartoum was being ruralized (tarayuf al medina) (Ahmad 2000). The narrative also preyed on legitimate Public Health fears and policy challenges, with IDPs being defined in biomedical terms as vectors for disease and as a serious threat to Public Health (Bannaga 2001: 40–45 and 76).24 Transcending these metanarratives that positioned IDPs as disruptive to ideal Khartoumian civility creates a space for the ‘production of locality’, as theorized by Appadurai (1996: 178): Primarily relational and contextual rather than . . . scalar or spatial . . . a complex phenomenological quality constituted by a series of links between the sense of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity, and the relativity of contexts. This phenomenological quality, which expresses itself in certain kinds of agency, sociality and reproducibility, is the main predicate of locality as a category (or subject).

The production of locality is connected to manipulations of space and time that ‘are themselves socialized and localized through complex and deliberate practices of performance, representation and action’ (1996: 180). From this perspective, I present the singularity of Mayo as it is lived and how it stands in the midst of other peripheral areas within Khartoum, and how the particular narratives about nation creation that emerge within it constitute an element within a larger framework of the peripherality of multiple groups that were made manifest through time on the landscape of Khartoum.

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Mastering the Territory of Khartoum as an Index to Being Sudanese I offer four narratives, gathered in Mayo in 2004, that in diverse ways circumvent their maligned status as internally displaced and serve to anchor their narrators to the place that they now inhabit and convey their efforts to establish themselves as worthy citizens. Southern IDPs were increasingly countering their status as displaced, and the nature of this migration and its definition was being actively addressed and re-evaluated. Through the presence of Southern IDPs in Khartoum, one could bear witness to a process of transformation – implying that a shift from nostalgia for another place and an existence before displacement  – was taking place. The presence of Southerners came to be characterized by the search for legitimacy and permanence in a new place.25 This quest was informed by interactions that had a powerful impact on transforming Khartoum. These four individuals did not know each other, and the only trait they shared was that they were Southern IDPs. Each individual hailed from a different region in Southern Sudan. One key observation was that rather than a nostalgic yearning for the days in Southern Sudan the expression of a desire to return to the south26 was only proportionate to the suffering of IDPs in Khartoum and their disillusionment with its promises, which I surmised from two of the four individuals presented here regarding their presence in the location of Mayo. The first, Jumaa, assumed the role of being an authority on the area. I isolate part of his narrative: The people from Juba, especially the Kakua, love bikes, since they use them to go to Uganda and Kenya for the exchange of coffee. They came to Khartoum – since as the capital city it acts as a major trade centre – in order to trade in bikes. Ultimately, some remained and settled. The Fujulu came to buy sewing machines and the Dinka and the Nuer came to buy fishing nets. These groups initially made up a 5 per cent of the migratory pattern.

The second was an analysis of the current situation of internal displacement offered by a young Dinka lady and leader of a local CBO (Community Based Organization) in Mayo. According to her, recently people from the Nuba Mountains had left Mandela camp, but they had quickly been replaced by newcomers. This movement between different regions in the South and Khartoum has been made easier by the fact that people have family within the city

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and they know where they are coming. In the past year, the situation has been stable so that people no longer need to flee into Khartoum. Their passage into the city is more benign and less desperate, and it is more informed by a search for prospects and amongst the young, a search for education and modernity as offered by a capital city.

Given that the phenomenon of internal displacement subverts notions of spontaneous positive migratory patterns; definitions of migration undergo a transformation and it becomes both a political and social phenomenon. It becomes a manifestation of social unrest on the national scale and paves the way for speaking of Internally Displaced People as a problem or in crisis. Hence, these narratives were aimed at transcending the diminished status of internal displacement in different ways. The first interlocutor focuses on presenting Southerners in Khartoum before they became displaced, therefore his narrative alludes to earlier patterns of movement in Sudan, and he deliberately neglects to comment on their most recent mass movement. The second chooses to focus on a phase of movement that appears to stem from the aspirations and ambitions of young Southerners and as one bearing the hopes and quest for a good future rather than a forced migration. From these particularizing, individualized and localizing narratives, the picture broadens to expose salient ways of being Sudanese and how IDPs stood in relation to them. This is evident through a reiteration that territorial affiliations were still an essential feature of how the dwellers of Khartoum narrated or formulated a notion of identity. The city never managed to entirely attenuate the impact of these territorial adherences falling outside Khartoum on the diverse ways of being Sudanese. This is evidenced in the fact that valorization of rootedness to a territory in Sudan is widely evoked in literary works representing both North and South. As an example, it is worth citing Salih’s magisterial novel (2003 [1969]), which addresses the effects of modernization and contact with the West on the Sudanese psyche. The main protagonist is highly educated in the Western tradition. Upon returning to Sudan, after terminating his higher studies, he finds solace to the alienation (wrought by modernization and the discordance between North and South on the global scale) that his journey provokes. On arriving at his native village in Northern Sudan, he gazes upon a palm tree planted in the middle of the courtyard and reflects: ‘I experienced a sense of reassurance. I felt not like a storm-swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, with a purpose’ (2003 [1969]: 2). In comparable terms, Deng (1985: 148–50) represents a facet of the South in showing how, in song, the Dinka resisted moving to urban

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centres and leaving their territories – to which certain positive valuesthat could not stand in the face of the city and its materialism- were wedded. He cites a saying of the Dinka: ‘“Dignity, remain: indignity, let us go”; for they realize that the conditions of labor in town plunge one into a status of servility that is tolerable only because it is experienced far away from normal society and in surroundings where it does not really matter, because one is unknown’ (ibid.: 150). The next two narratives situate Southerners within this broader ­picture elucidated above. These statements are a commentary about the legitimacy of Southern identity in Khartoum that destabilizes the category of IDP. The first is offered by Emmanuel, the chief Community Health Promoter at the MSF (Médecins sans Frontières) clinic. His succinct contribution revolved around two narratives that he recounted on separate occasions and which embody interesting insights about the nature of Southern IDP identity in Khartoum. His first comment was about his particular ethnic group, the Shilluk: As for us, the Shilluk, we did not come here as displaced people; we moved from the centre of our land (Fashoda, Akowa, Renk) and we assimilated with other groups along the way. We eventually reached Omdurman only to be driven away by the Mahdi’s revolution of 1885.

Emmanuel fuses the presence of Shilluk in the vicinity of Khartoum (Edwards 1922: 160, Walkley 1935: 227)27 with the fact that they were driven back from Aba Island on the White Nile by the Turko-Egyptian colonization (Lesch 1998: 18)28 to create his own version locating the presence of the Shilluk at the centre of Sudan’s Islamic heart. His comment also focuses on their presence during a more recent period in the history of Khartoum (the Mahdiya). He uses the territory and place on his terms and by stating the historical claim of the Shilluk to Khartoum he excludes the place of Northerners within it. According to Emmanuel, this expulsion limited the number of Shilluk as well as their influence and their status in the city. The Shilluk could have been more numerous in the city and hence would not have suffered the fate of the war displacement. Such interpretations manifest claims to space whereby actual physical locations around the city (here Omdurman, the indigenous capital) come to represent possibilities of advancement in life; which in this instance have been wrongfully aborted. Hence Emmanuel’s statement is clearly not concerned with integration or any ‘rite de passage’ that the IDP has to go through in order to find a place in Khartoum. He engages in a radical recasting of Khartoum as the a­ uthentic place of Southerners.

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Emmanuel’s second comment clearly indicated this intent. One day in the clinic, he piped up excitedly wanting to share some information about how backward Northerners were; a fact that had been confirmed to him the previous day by coincidence. In conversation, a man had informed him that Northern women were confined to their homes for four months and ten days upon the death of their husbands. Emmanuel reported these facts with utter disbelief and disgust. He was outraged that Southerners were criticized as treating their women as objects to be bought for cattle and inherited after the death of their husbands (ghost marriages). It seemed that finally he had gained the proof that confirmed what he had sensed all along. Now after eighteen years of living in Khartoum he could state that Northerners had no grounds to criticize Southerners, since their attitudes were also backward if not more so. The most telling aspect of this shared information was that it indicated that Emmanuel did not know about how Northerners lived on any deep level, even after everyday encounters spanning eighteen years. His second comment only cemented the very important claims of his first one that indicated that he was comfortable in Khartoum through his identity as a Southerner first and as a Shilluk second. Emmanuel’s attitude was shared by a Dinka informant: As Nilotics, we are not Southern Sudanese; we are actually Northern Sudanese. We inhabited this land and we were settled on the Blue Nile at the present location of the ancient Christian kingdom of Soba. With the Arab invasion of Sudan, we migrated to Southern Sudan.

This assertion highlights the importance of territory within a Wittgensteinian language game, as introduced above and equally deployed by Machin (2007) in her formulation of how the concept of the nation is given to subjects through language. Accordingly, Wittgenstein shows ‘that we do not communicate through an abstract predetermined linguistic code but through “language games” that involve both words and actions’ (Machin 2007: 13). Machin quotes Wittgenstein as stating ‘the term language game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form’ (quoted from Philosophical Investigations). Thus the language game is a form of interaction with the other and the world, and as Machin states, ‘our everyday life contains innumerable language-games and they are continually changing as the material reality in which we live changes’ (ibid.: 13). This theorization is particularly relevant in ascertaining the concerns of the Southerners that appear here. Given that the concept of the nation

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is underdeveloped, as the civil strife in Sudan testifies, in this context this language game nuances the place of ethnicity so that it is not incontestably the sole determinant of valid identity and the construction of legitimacy within a troubled nation state such as Sudan. Instead, ethnicity is replaced with valorisation of the concept of ‘territorial allegiance’, which is much needed when social agents are displaced and uprooted. Territorial anchors were therefore important to my informants despite the fact that the actual provenance of Nilotics is widely contested and their origins have been traced back to East Africa and Ethiopia (Collins 1990: 9). They imply that the authentic dwellers of a particular territory must have a claim to it. In this context, my Dinka informant demonstrated how ethnicity is, in this case, secondary to territorial affiliation in establishing the legitimacy of social actors within different parts of the nation. He exhibits this by offering an analogy: ‘Part of our group went as far as Senegal to become the Wolof.’ This suggests that the movement to a different territory re-created the identity of this part of the group by making them Wolof and thus foreigners. These comments fit into a wider attitude relative to an appropriation of Khartoum which indicates the importance of territorial affiliation as a value and a marker of authentic, legitimate and thus good identity in Sudan (endnote 18) and indicates the weight and value of bringing these territorial affiliations to Khartoum. However, the sentiments of these internally displaced individuals go further towards a reformulation of the dominant meanings given to territorial affiliation. Their narratives make it equally pertinent to invoke territorial anchorage. In this way, pride in one’s heritage is no longer confined to clanic, ethnic or ancestral practices (see Masquelier 2001: 33) or as Nicolas defines ‘through a fan of activities, customs, rituals, objects, attributes and even psychological traits which are transmitted through blood’ (Nicolas). In this context, a singular reversal and reordering of the symbols typically ascribed to heritage is realized so that it becomes consolidated through the appropriation of place itself. Thus Khartoum is embraced as a legitimate safe home, yet its historical symbols that represent the dominant culture are rejected through the allusion to older and more engrained ones that exist in the historical imagination of contemporary Southern IDPs. I crucially highlight that these voices that seek to appropriate Khartoum come from Mayo and therefore contribute to our understanding of it as a locality – explicated above through recourse to Appadurai (1996) – which is a producer of meanings that extend beyond its physical boundaries. Indeed, it is safe to say that these narratives conceived as language games which shape social realities serve to shape Mayo. While

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as a space it retains its particularity, it equally serves as a mediating space that connects multiple narratives as well as other spaces through becoming a creative site of production that ties differences between them in the vein of Doreen Massey (Social Science Bites 2013), who sees ‘space as a cut through the myriad stories in which we are all living at any one moment. Space and time become intimately connected’. Through this connectivity, an intersubjectivity is created that allows multiple social interlocutors entry to the worlds of multiple forms of penmanship – that that were at their inception individuated and private – potentially leaving a resounding echo.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on a particular aspect of the forced migration of Southern Sudanese, namely participation in being part of the Sudanese nation upon their arrival to Khartoum in bulk. This controversial contest is situated through the prism of the experiences of a diverse group of Southerners who have come to inhabit it and who have contributed to its diversification and have both shaken up its unquestioned history and contributed to it. This evolution has not been smooth and feeds into wider problematics of the construction of Sudan as a nation. It elaborates how Khartoum stands at the centre of this wider problematic and accounts for the processes that elucidate its dynamics and singular position in the quest of Southern IDPs to gain legitimacy and to transcend structural positions of marginalization within the city that are extensions of the peripherality that starkly characterizes their regions of origin. The content of this chapter has focused on sketching an image of the battle over creating a nation state viable for all – one that is accepting of different scripts (polyvocality) and prone to finding shared frames of reference that facilitate ‘imagining the nation’ (Anderson 1991). Ultimately, this quest was doomed, and the frames of narrative shifted according to changed circumstances that were supported through the eventual rupture of Sudan. The separation of South Sudan in 2011 serves to highlight that the political players of Sudan have not succeeded in establishing a viable conceptualization of nationhood that would keep the geographical entity intact. Indeed, this separation/independence (depending on perspective) illustrated that before 2011 Sudan was merely a single country that ultimately failed to remain so due to the problems pertaining to finding a formula of nationhood that would potentially bridge the great

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diversity (language, culture, ethnicity, religion) that characterizes the country. Notwithstanding, the material in this chapter remains relevant as part of a wider process characterized by the uncertainty and flux of an intermediary moment animated by human experiences within an ongoing narrative about the links of South Sudanese with Sudan. This liminal moment was practically subject to shifting circumstances related to the loss of citizenship (Vezzadini 2014). In 2015, with the marked return of Southerners to Khartoum, after the outbreak of the civil war in the South in December 2013, I was to note their renewed investment in Khartoum and their refusal to accept that they were foreigners having no stakes in it, for as many would observe ‘we are in the final analysis first and foremost Sudanese’. This statement was to gain salience given the fact that they were not Sudanese de jure, according to their official nationality. This harks to existential dimensions of being Sudanese, and it significantly calls into question the making of the nation state and how it was not always coterminous with sociocultural narratives of nationhood and the forging of a sense of belonging. This fact reinforces that belonging and claiming belonging are not linear temporal processes but rather subject to fluctuation and specific circumstances. As recently as 2016, a non-negligible number of Southerners who remained in Khartoum would state that they resented being treated like ‘Ethiopians and Eritreans because we are first and foremost Sudanese’. Such remarks underscore the complexity of negotiations of Sudanese identity and Sudanese nationhood through time for Southern and then South Sudanese. This factor highlights the distinction between being part of a nation and being the citizen of a nation state that animates the ­processes of in-betweenness that individuals have to manage. In the final analysis, such professions of belonging open up yet another facet of in-betweenness, for in many instances the fact that South Sudanese had lost their Sudanese citizenship did not sever their ties to Sudan. The paradox of being one people in two countries illustrates that both Sudan and South Sudan still have to practise and tell, through living it, a story about these two countries that is firmly entrenched in the in-between; the ink that etches it has not yet dried, even with the creation of two nation states. Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, with a special focus on Medical Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on cultural understandings of health and well-being, which largely features an exploration

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of the interface between such understandings and biomedical configurations of health. She has in-depth experience working on these issues among individuals and groups whose lives have been subject to experiences of movement/migration in different forms. She equally focuses on how the sociopolitical impinges on constructions of identity and how these diverse elements give life to sociocultural manifestations.

Notes   1. Since Sudan was still a single political entity at this ethnographic interlude, I refer to populations hailing from the south as ‘Southern Sudanese’ rather than ‘South Sudanese’ with the latter valid after July 2011 at the time of the split.   2. In this instance, I do not mean to convey that Southern IDPs constitute an undifferentiated mass lacking distinct cultural/social modes of life; however, I speak of internal displacement as a state and circumstance. Therefore, in this piece, I do not focus on social distinctions unless they are introduced within ethnographic testimonies.   3. Such memory can equally move beyond narrative production to be sustained by ritual performance and bodily memory (Connerton 1989).  4. As a primate city, significantly more important than the second city in the country, Greater Khartoum dominates most aspects of life in Sudan: politically administratively, economically, in terms of services (Mazari 1963; El Bushra 1971; Abu Sin and Davies 1991; Davies 1999; Denis 2005), and in terms of cultural production (Sikainga 1996 chapter 6; Wani 2006). For arguments on the contribution of the older inhabitants of Omdurman in creating the exclusionary Sudanese urban identity par excellence, see El-Hassan (2015). For the hybrid influences that created a musical production that would eventually become emblematic of the dominant culture of Khartoum, see Sikainga (2011).   5. During the first civil war between North and South (1955–1972), internal displacement was confined within the south. Of a million displaced, 220,000 moved to neighbouring countries (Akol 1987) and only 16,000 individuals moved to the North (Mills 1985: 311). These forced migrations did not robustly impact Greater Khartoum, and 10,000 people have settled there since 1955 (Sauloup 2010: 72). During the 70s 80 per cent of the migrants to Khartoum were mainly from central/northern Sudan (see Oberai 1977 cited in Pérouse de Montclos 2001: 14).   6. Other sociological categories of Southerners, who are not the protagonists of this chapter, equally exist within Khartoum. For examples, see Casciarri (2016) and Sikainga (2001). For the position of Southerners recruited in the army by the British and who later settled in cities of the North as marginalized groups, see (Sikainga 2011: 248).

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  7. Undifferentiated Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri, Songhai (Zabarma) who despite their long history of settlement in Sudan still remain constantly defined as strangers and are stigmatized and accused of dealing with the occult. According to Constantinides, Fellata religious healers are considered the most dangerous and powerful (1972: 66). This negative view of the Fulani is corroborated by (Al Safi 1970: 22). He writes, ‘in the Sudan an average Moslem is believed to possess a slightly harmful eye but it is extremely potent in the one-eyed, cross eyed, Nigerians (my italics), unbelievers and repulsive looking old males and females.’   8. Migration from south to north has always been inferior to that of north to south (predominantly during Turko-Egyptian rule). The urbanization of Khartoum started to increase steadily from 1910 due to the concentration of services and location of the condominium authorities there. A pattern of south–north migration existed but could not compare to Southerner settlement in Khartoum due to displacement. According to the 1955 census, a year before Independence, 35 per cent of Khartoum province was non-Arab, and only 6 per cent hailed from Southern Sudan (Davies 1999: 40 and 44). The literature on south–north migration is relatively scarce due to their negligible numbers. Examples are Rehfisch (1962), documenting the presence of Southerners from Bahr-El-Ghazal (Yulu, Kara, Binga) in the late 1920s and ’30s. He also notes the presence of Nuer circular labour. Rising numbers of Southerners as labour migrants was anticipated by El Tayeb (1973: 15). Nuer migration into Khartoum for circular wage labour on building sites was firmly established by the 1950s (Kameir 1988: 88).   9. Assal (2006: 5) affirms ‘naziheen is a generic derogatory concept that does not lend itself capable of looking at those who are categorized as dignified citizens whose rights must be guarded. Thus, the focus on needs was not without ideological underpinnings or unproblematic. One problem was that the understanding of needs was top-bottom’. 10. Hamid (1996) exposes how the classification was used by the government in efforts to manage the phenomenon (providing work and housing) (ibid.: 131), while Bannaga (2002: 39–41) frames them as a problem to be tackled in the city (the government’s failure to control this urban explosion, how the displaced pose a threat to public health). 11. These trends have been critiqued in recent literature on the fate of internally displaced persons in Khartoum (Assal 2006, 2008, 2011; Abu Sharaf 2009, Ahmed Abdel Aziz 2013; De Geoffroy 2009, 2015). 12. Turner (1967) alludes to liminal periods in ritual contexts and draws on Arnold van Gennep (1960) to classify them as ‘rites de passage’: ‘rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position and age’ and which are informed by ‘separation, margin (or limen), and aggregation’ (Turner 1967: 94). 13. For Turner (1967: 93), ‘such rites indicate and constitute transitions between states’, which become ‘relatively fixed or stable’ (ibid.: 93): legal,

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profession, calling, rank . . . He highlights transition as a ‘process, a becoming, and in the case of rites de passage even a transformation’ (ibid.: 94). 14. Indeed, this was consolidated by the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005. 15. Notwithstanding, my analysis extends to the present, since further fieldwork has been conducted since 2013, after the birth of South Sudan, and I equally sought to explore how this separation impinges on the formulations of nationhood by citizens of South Sudan living in Khartoum. 16. Indeed, the monolithic version of Khartoum as infused solely with AraboIslamic signifiers since 1983 (in large part due to the introduction of sharia law) has been tempered as a manifestation of particular historical and politico-ideological orientations by alternative readings of Khartoum. See Walkley (1935, 1936), Constantinides (1979), Cloudsley (1984), Dubois (1991), Ahmad (2000), Wani (2006), El-Hassan (2015), Brown (2017). 17. The zar refers to a spirit (a distinct part of the jinn known as the red wind / rih ahmar) capable of possessing human beings (zayran pl.), making them ill. It is only upon performance of a placating ceremony by the same name that the patient accommodates these spirits so that they do not disturb them. 18. This reference to the aspirational nature of land ownership for Southerners was prevalent even after separation. As Badiey (2014: 6) demonstrates, state building in South Sudan was anchored to understandings and relationships to land that were ‘powerful tools of state building . . . they are . . . an avenue by which local groups set the boundaries that define access to economic and political resources, and thus structure the nature of citizenship’. 19. This pertains to perceived land spaces versus real landscapes (GervaisLambony 1994) and contrasts to the tangible value given to land in South Sudan as part of state building. 20. For a similar association of modernity with a rejection of practices pertaining to well-being based on cattle sacrifice to ancestors, see Hutchinson: ‘Owing to a dramatic surge in Christian conversion among Nuer after the first civil war, belief in the efficacy of cattle sacrifice was on the wane’ (1996: 26–27). 21. This does not impose participation; however, it does potentially facilitate knowledge and access to a breadth of cultural signifiers. It brings ­working-­class and lower middle-class Northerners in closer proximity to alternative cultural signifiers by virtue of spatial closeness. On the other hand, just the mere awareness of such alternatives by the middle classes and centres of power inscribes them onto the broader Sudanese landscape. Such workings resonate with Anderson’s thesis that nations are socially constructed and that members of a community need not come face to face in order to identify as part of the same nation and that this is a primary characteristic of the ‘imagined community’ (1991). This ethnographic encounter engages a recasting of the latter as limited to a political entity, since in this context I extend formulations of the nation to encompass the social sphere.

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22. This phrase refers to the demand for a transformed and renewed access to urban life that would ultimately reverse marginalization within the cityscape. 23. Part of this was related to the concentration of wealth in property in the context of an unstable Sudanese economy ravaged by high inflation (Denis 2005: 94). 24. For more on the creation of scapegoats through idioms of contagion, see Douglas (1991). 25. During fieldwork conducted in 2011, Bureau (2011: 47) would observe the opposite. She writes: ‘Forced migration relative to what it inscribes on the perception of the hosting space seems to engage evolving in a limited spacetime; furthermore it is one that is not appropriated’ (Author’s translation). These contrasting ethnographic findings reinforce my general argument surrounding the in-between nature of narratives as language games and the actions they engender as never static. 26. Conversely, throughout my time in the field I did not hear a single narrative expressing a desire of return by the drought displaced from Western Sudan. 27. Both authors quote Antoine Brun-Rollet (Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan, 1855: 103). According to this Savoyard traveller, Khartoum came into being after the fall of Sennar to the Turko-Egyptians. Writing in 1855, he interestingly stated that the Shilluk had entered it eighty three years previously, massacring the inhabitants and reducing it to nothing. According to his account, when the Turks went there in 1821 they found only three huts and a large cemetery, whereas at the time he was writing Khartoum hosted 40–50 thousand people. 28. According to Lesch (1998: 18), the Shilluk form a ‘centralised system’, claiming to have founded the Funj kingdom in the sixteenth century and to have controlled territory as north as Aba Island on the White Nile until mid-nineteenth century, when they were pushed back by Turko-Egyptians. The link between Aba Island (150 miles south of Khartoum) and the capital is symbolic, since it was the heartland of the Mahdiyya, a significant Islamist movement in the history of Sudan whose leader declared himself the expected guide of the Muslim Global community. It refers to an inherent Islamic identity in Sudan that could be read as excluding Southern non-Muslims.

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Abd-Al-Rahim, M. 1971. ‘Arabism, Africanism and Self-Identification in Sudan’, in Y. Fadl Hasan (ed.), Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, pp. 228–39. Abusharaf, R.M. 2009. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Abu Sin, M.E., and M.R.J. Davies. 1991. The Future of Sudan’s Capital Region: A  Study in Development and Change. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Abdel Aziz, Ahmed Azza. 2013. ‘Confronting Marginality and Otherness: Knowledge Production and the Recasting of Identity through Therapeutic and Embodied Encounters among Internally Displaced People from Southern Sudan’, Ph.D. dissertation. SOAS, University of London. ______. 2018. ‘Customary Courts: Between Accommodating and Countering the Hegemony of the Laws of the State: The Case of Mayo’, in B. Casciarri and M.A. Babiker M.A. (eds), Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan. Brill: Leiden. Ahmad, A.M. 2000. ‘Khartoum Blues: The “Deplaning” and Decline of a Capital City’, Habitat International 24: 309–25. Akol, J.O. 1987. ‘Southern Sudanese Refugees: Their Repatriation and Resettlement after the Addis Ababa Agreement’, in J. Rogge (ed.), Refugees, a Third World Dilemma. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Al-Safi, A. 1970. Native Medicine in the Sudan: Sources, Concepts and Methods. Khartoum: University of Khartoum. Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed. London: Verso. Appadurai, A. 1996. ‘The Production of Locality’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 178–99. Assal, M.A.M. 2006. Whose Rights Count? National and International Responses to the Rights of IDPs in the Sudan. Brighton: Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalization and Poverty, Sussex University. ______. 2008. ‘Rights and Decisions to Return: Internally Displaced Persons in Post-war Sudan’, in K. Grabska and L. Mehta (eds), Whose Needs Are Rights: A Rights-Based Approach to Forced Migration. London: Palgrave, pp. 239–58. ______. 2011. ‘From the Country to the Town’, in J. Ryle et al. (ed.), The Sudan Handbook. Suffolk: James Currey, pp. 63–69. Badiey, N. 2014. The State of Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Land, Urban Development and State-Building in Juba Southern Sudan. James Currey. Bannaga, S.E.-D. 2001. Al nazihoon wa furas al salam: bi al tarkiz ala tajribat wilayat al Khartoum [The Displaced and Chances of Peace: A Focus on the Experience of Khartoum State], No. 39. Africa International University: Research and African Studies Centre. ______. 2002. The Displaced and Peace Opportunities in Sudan (With Special Reference to the Khartoum Experience). Zurich: Ministry of Engineering

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Affairs, in collaboration with Habitat Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. bell hooks. 2000. ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’, in J.  Rendell, B. Penner and I. Borden (eds), Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 203–9. Bellion-Jourdan, J. 1997. ‘L’humanitaire et l’islamisme soudanais: les organisations Da’wa Islamiya et Islamic African relief agency’, Politique Africaine 66: 61–73. Bhaba, H. 1996. ‘Culture’s In-Between’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity. New York: Sage Publications. Bleuchot, H., C. Delmet and D. Hopwood (eds). 1991. ‘Introduction’, Sudan: History, Identity, Ideology. Reading: Ithaca Press, pp. vii–xvi. Brown, M.G. 2017. Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bureau, L. 2011. ‘Sudistes au Nord, Sudistes du Nord? Les déplaces du Sud à Khartoum (Soudan) entre marginalisation et citadinisation’, master’s thesis. France: University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. Casciarri, B. 2016. ‘Être, devenir et ne plus être janûbi: parcours de l’identité “sudiste” entre le CPA et l’après 2011 dans un quartier populaire de la ville de Khartoum (Deim)’, Égypte/Monde arabe 14, Le Soudan, cinq ans après l’indépendance du Soudan du Sud, pp. 65–84. Choplin, A. 2009. ‘Espaces de rencontres ou territoires de conflits: quels lieux de sociabilites à Khartoum et Nouakchott ?’, in L. Fourchard, O.  Georg, M.  Gomez-Perez (eds), Lieux de sociabilité urbaine en Afrique. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 549–70. Cloudsley, A. 1984. Women of Omdurman: Life, Love and the Cult of Virginity. London: Ethnographica. Cole, J. 1998. ‘The Uses of Defeat: Memory and Political Morality in East Madagascar’, in R. Werbner (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power. London: Zed Books. Collins, R.O. 1990. ‘Eastern Africa’, in Eastern African History, African History in Documents, Vol. II of African History: Text and Readings. Princeton, NJ: M. Wiener Publishers, pp. 2–47. Connerton, P. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Constantinides, P. 1972. ‘Sickness and the Spirits: A Study of the Zar Spirit Possession Cult in the Northern Sudan’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of London. ______. 1979. ‘Women’s Spirit Possession and Urban Adaptation in the Muslim Northern Sudan’, in A.P. Caplan and J. Bujra (eds), Women United, Women Divided. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 185–205. Davies, H.R.J. 1999. ‘Migration in the Sudan during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1898–1955)’, The Arab World Geographer 2(1): 41–55. De Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans., S. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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De Geoffroy, A. 2009. ‘Aux marges de la ville, les populations déplacées par la force: enjeux, acteurs et politiques. Etude comparée des cas de Bogota (Colombie) et de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Ph.D. dissertation. Paris: University of Paris 8. ______. 2014. ‘Khartoum (Soudan): Le sort des déplacés et la transformation des camps après l’indépendance du Soudan du Sud’, in M. Agier (ed.), Un Monde de Camps. Paris: Editions la Découverte, pp. 255–67. ______. 2015. ‘What Place for the Displaced in Khartoum: Between State Regulation and Individual Strategies’, in B. Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in the Republic of Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 201–25. Deng, Francis, M. 1971. Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge for Law among the Dinka of the Sudan. New Haven: Yale University Press.    Deng, F. 1973. Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration in the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. ______. 1985. ‘Development in Context’, in M.W Daly (ed.), Modernization in the Sudan: Essays in Honor of Richard Hill. New York: Lilian Barber Press. ______. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington: The Brookings Institute. Denis, E. 2005. ‘Khartoum: ville refuge et métropole rentière’, Cahier du Gremamo, La ville arabe en mouvement, 18: 87–127. Douglas, M. 1991. ‘Witchcraft and Leprosy: Two Strategies of Exclusion’, Man, New Series, 26(4): 723–36. Dubois, C. 1991. ‘Morphologies de Khartoum: conflits d’identité (1820-début de XXème siècle)’, in H. Bleuchot, C. Delmet and D. Hopwood (eds.), Soudan: histoire, identités, idéologie. Oxford: Ithaca Press, pp. 13–33. Duffield, M. 1988. ‘The Fallata: Ideology and the National Economy in Sudan’, in N.O Neill and J.O’ Brien (eds), Economy and Class in Sudan. Aldershot: Avebury, pp. 122–36. Edwards, F.A. 1922. ‘The Foundation of Khartoum’, Sudan Notes and Records 5: 157–62. El Bushra, S. 1971. ‘The Evolution of the Three Towns’, African Urban Notes 6(2): 8–23. El-Hassan, I.S. 2015. ‘Old Omdurman and National Integration: The Sociohistorical Roots of Exclusion’, in M. Assal and M. Abdul-Jalil (eds), Past, Presents and Future, Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan. Bergen: CMI, pp. 81–95. El Tayeb, G.E. 1973. ‘Urban Slums Reports: The Case of Khartoum, Sudan,’ available from http://sigus.scripts.mit.edu/x/archived/challengecourse/ pdfs/pdfscities/khartoum.pdf. Gervais-Lambony, P. 1994. De Lomé à Harare: le fait citadin. Paris, Nairobi: Karthala-IFRA. Girard, A. 1964. Le Choix du conjoint: Une enquête psycho-sociologique en France. Paris: P.U.F.

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Girard, R. 1986. The Scapegoat, trans. Y. Freccero. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Good, B.J. 1994. ‘How Medicine Constructs its Objects’, in Medicine Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective, Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 65–87. Gruenbaum, E. 1982. ‘Health Services, Health, and Development in Sudan: The Impact of the Gezira Irrigated Scheme’, Ph.D. dissertation. University of Connecticut. ______. 1998. ‘Resistance and Embrace: Sudanese Rural Women and Systems of Power’, in M. Lock and P.A. Kaufert (eds), Pragmatic Women and Body Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamid, G. 1996. Population Displacement in the Sudan: Patterns, Responses, Coping Strategies. New York: Centre for Migration Studies. Haraway, D. 1988. ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’. Feminist Studies XIV(3): 575–99. Hutchinson, S.E. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War and the State. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jackson, M. 2006. The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity. Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press. ______. 2013. The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration and the Question of Well-Being. Oakland: University of California Press. Kameir, E.W.M. 1988. The Political Economy of Labour Migration in the Sudan: A Comparative Case Study of Migrant Workers in an Urban Situation. Hamburg: Arbeiten aus dem Institut für Afrika-Kunde. Komey, G.K. 2013. ‘Back to War in Sudan: Flawed Peace Agreement, Failed Political Will’, in G.M. Sørbø and A.G.M. Ahmed (eds), Sudan Divided: Continuing Conflict in a Contested State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan pp. 203–22. Last, M. 1986. ‘Introduction’, in M. Last and G.L. Chavunduka (eds.), The Professionalisation of African Medicine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lavergne, M. 1997. ‘La violence d’Etat comme mode de régulation de la croissance urbaine: le cas de Khartoum (Soudan)’, Espaces, Populations et sociétés 1: 49–64. ______. 1999. ‘De la cuvette du Haut-Nil aux faubourgs de Khartoum: les déplacés du Sud-Soudan entre traumatisme et recomposition identitaires’, in V. Lassailly-Jacob, J.-Y. Marchal and A. Quesnel, Déplacés et réfugiés, la mobilité sous la contrainte. Paris: Editions de l’IRD, pp. 109–36. Lefebvre, H. 1974. Le droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Lesch, A.M. 1998. The Sudan: Contested National Identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Machin, A. 2007. ‘Language-Games of the Nation’, The CSD Bulletin, Centre for the Study of Democracy, Double Issue 14(1 and 2): 12–14. Mamdani, M. 2009. Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror. London: Verso.

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Marchal, R. 2015. ‘Epilogue: A New Sudan?’, in B Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 320–31. Masquelier, A. 2001. Prayer Has Spoiled Everything: Possession, Power, and Identity in an Islamic Town of Niger. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Massicard, E. 2002. ‘Etre pris dans le mouvement: Savoir et Engagement sur le terrain’, Partie 1, Cultures et Conflits 47(3): 117–43. Mazari, Salah. 1963. ‘Greater Khartoum’, in Morroe Berger (ed.), The New Metropolis in the Arab World. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. Mazrui, A.A. 1971. ‘The Multiple Marginality of the Sudan’, in Y.F. Hassan (ed.), Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: University of Khartoum Press. Medani, K.M. 2005. ‘Black Monday: The Political and Economic Dimensions of Sudan’s Urban Riots’, MMM. Retrieved 12 July 2020 from https://www. mediamonitors.net/black-monday-the-political-and-economic-dimens​ ions-of-sudans-urban-riots/. Middleton, K. 2002. ‘Ancestral Incests and Postcolonial Subjectivities in the Kerembola (Madagascar)’, in R. Werbner (ed.), Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa. London: Zed Books, pp. 191–224. Mills, L.R. 1985. ‘The Growth of Juba in Southern Sudan’, J.I. Clarke, M. Khogali and L.A. Kosinski (eds), Population and Development Projects in Africa. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 310–23. Motasim, H. 2008. ‘Deeply Divided Societies: Charting Strategies of Resistance’, RESPECT: Sudanese Journal for Human Rights Culture and Issues of Cultural Diversity 8, available at http://www.sudan-forall.org/sections/ ihtiram/pages/ihtiram_issue8/pdf_files/Hanaa-Motasim-M-Taha.pdf. Nicolas, G. 1975. Dynamique sociale et appréhension du monde au sein d’une société hausa. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie. Oberai, A.S. 1977. ‘Migration, Unemployment and the Urban Labour Market: A Case Study of the Sudan’, International Labour Review 115(2): 211–23. O’Brien, J. 1986. ‘Towards a Reconstitution of Ethnicity: Capitalist Expansion and Cultural Dynamics in Sudan’, American Anthropologist 88(4): 898–908. Pérouse de Montclos, Marc-Antoine. 2001. ‘Migrations forcées et urbanisation: Le cas de Khartoum’, Les dossiers du CEPED, n°63, Paris. Prunier, G. 2005. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. London: C. Hurst and Co. Rahem, K. 2005. ‘Maladie, Anomie et Monothéisme à Khartoum: le cas de Mayo Farm’, La Lettre de l’OUCC 6/7 spring: 50–61. Rehfisch, F. 1962. ‘A Study of Some Southern Migrants in Omdurman’, SNR xliii: 50–104. Republic of Sudan. 1955. Southern Sudan Disturbances: August 1955, Report of the Commission of Enquiry. Khartoum: McCorquodale and Co., Sudan. Salih, M.A.M. 2013. ‘Conflict and Nation Building: Lessons for Darfur from South Sudan’, in G.M Sørbø and A.G.M. Ahmed (eds), Sudan Divided: Continuing Conflict in a Contested State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Part III

[•] In-Betweenness as a Belonging Dimension

[•  Chapter 8  •]

Translocal Citizenship of the Margins

Nuer Negotiations of Belonging in Khartoum KATARZYNA (KASIA) GRABSKA

Kasia: How do you feel here in Khartoum now, after the separation with the North? Is there a difference between your status now and before the separation? Nyamai:1 There is no difference. It’s all the same. We are still Janubiyyn [in Arabic: Southerners]. Maybe one thing is that we are nazihin [Arabic: displaced] now here, we are no longer ran Sudan [in Nuer: people of, citizens of Sudan]. Now, we have our own country, we have South Sudan. There we are citizens. We have rights. Here it is the same as before, but people tell us that we are no longer Sudani [Arabic: Sudanese]. We are between this and that (in-between) somehow. —Interview in Nuer, Jan 2016, Khartoum

S

Introduction

outh Sudanese Nuer2 engagements with Khartoum have changed over time. In this chapter, I examine a particular period of South Sudanese displacement and their experiences of dispossession and in-­ betweenness in Khartoum, the period following the creation of the independent nation of South Sudan. Before the separation of South Sudan in 2011, Southerners enjoyed de jure citizenship as nationals of the Republic of Sudan. Nuer people from Western Upper Nile in particular have had a long-standing historical

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relationship with Khartoum as slaves, traders, labour migrants, students or conflict-displaced persons (Kameir 1980; Sikainga 1996; Hutchinson 1996; Grabska 2014). Throughout the decades of changing historical, political, economic and social climates, the Nuer population in Khartoum have been negotiating their multiplicity of belonging, identities and everyday livelihoods and navigating the protracted uncertainty of their lives. The situation changed dramatically in 2011 with the creation of a new state, the Republic of South Sudan. As a result of the de jure and de facto separation of the South, as well as an intensification of political squabbling between Khartoum and Juba, the South Sudanese became foreigners in Sudan (see chapters 5, 6, 7 and 9 of this volume; Assal 2011, 2014; Sikainga 2011; Hovil 2013; Vezzadini 2014; Babiker 2015). Following the establishment of the new state and a peace agreement between the two countries, South Sudanese in Khartoum (and other places of exile) mobilized en masse to repatriate to the South (De Geoffroy 2009; Assal 2011, 2014). Their efforts were both spontaneous and supported or facilitated by the governments of the two countries and international organizations. While many decided to move (back) to South Sudan, some stayed behind due to their political, economic or social situations. The outbreak of the most recent conflict in December 2013, which was instigated by an attack by Salva Kiir’s presidential guards on the guards of Vice President Riek Machar, resulted in a devastating conflict among South Sudanese communities, with the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people (OCHA 2015). In July 2017, official statistics referred to some 1.5 million South Sudanese displaced across the country’s borders to the neighbouring countries, and over 305,000 in Sudan (UNHCR 2017). The actual number of South Sudanese in Sudan is much higher, however, as many do not register their presence in the country. Many Nuer from Western Upper Nile, in particular from oilrich Unity State, fled towards Sudan as the most accessible option; however, their experience of displacement in Khartoum has been different from previous ones, due to their changed political and legal status. There has been a considerable focus on issues around citizenship and access to citizenship rights as a marker of inclusion or exclusion in recent years. Forced migration (be it within borders, across borders or when borders move) changes people’s relationship with the state, their status relative to the state, and consequently their access to citizenship rights. At the same time as their displacement status changed, the Nuer population in Khartoum experienced a fundamental shift in their sense of being citizens of one nation state and becoming citizens of another. Interestingly, the word ‘in-between’ does not exist in the Nuer language.

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Rather, for the Nuer, people occupy a highly specific geographical or identity position and move from one to another. In practice, on the other hand, in the narratives of the Nuer respondents, there were many references to being between two or three places, or between several identities, indicating a move towards a more fluid positionality. In this chapter, I ask how being in between a life of war and displacement, years – and sometimes decades – spent being displaced, belonging and not belonging to various geopolitical institutions, supposedly returning ‘home’ and being displaced once again affect people’s lives and their sense of belonging to a nation state. Being ‘in-between’ refers here not only to being ‘out of place’ from one’s own environment but also to being in-between various sociopolitical settings during the various phases of displacement and emplacement. The concept of in-between is used here to denote borders (between states, nations and people, and between the ‘humanitarian’ and the ‘local’ worlds), spaces, places and mixed identities. It refers to the process of movement between geographical spaces and locations, including by following the lives of people who are in different geographical locations but linked with one another, and to the translocal and transnational political, social and livelihood strategies they enact. In-betweenness also has a temporal dimension in the way identities and belonging have shifted over time (and space) for the Nuer and other South Sudanese before and after the separation of the South. This same concept also encompasses the emotional and cultural components representing lived changes in people’s trajectories. This multidimensional aspect of being in-between in terms of time and space also helps describe and analyse the multidimensional divides that mark the experiences of displaced Nuer and other South Sudanese populations in Khartoum, a conceptualization rooted in spatial and temporal anthropological debates, beyond sociocultural definitions of liminality as a liminal phase (see Van Gennep, Vizedon and Caffee 1961; Turner 1967, 1969). Homi Bhabha’s (1994) work on cultural hybridity has illustrated the more complex, theoretical engagements with liminality and cultural diversity. I do not engage with cultural hybridity in this chapter but rather try to make sense of in-betweenness as a lived experience of shifting over time and space for the Nuer people in Khartoum. This experience is deeply rooted in the historical past and the experience of slavery in Sudan, which plays a fundamental role in discussions around national identity (Deng 2004). I consider how Nuer women and men negotiate and navigate their unstable political conditions of in-betweenness in Khartoum by enacting a transnational political agency of engagement, protest, resistance and co-optation, both in the North and the South. I specifically analyse

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the practice of translocal political engagements that are directed towards the South but located within Nuer communities in Khartoum. In particular, I explore how the changing political environment and displacement clash with citizenship rights, and how displaced Nuer make sense of their in-betweenness and multilocal belonging through the practice of everyday navigation and bricolage. How do displaced people understand citizenship, and how do they navigate their access to rights, belonging and identities depending on the liminal conditions in which they find themselves? First, I discuss the methods and my own positionality. I then sketch out some of the theoretical concepts of citizenship and in-betweenness. This is followed by a description of the particular experiences of Nuer in Khartoum. I examine the activities of the Nuer Dok3 Association and Nuer local court practices. I disentangle the careful, complex everyday navigation of political, social and cultural in-betweenness of Nuer respondents across time and space. I problematize how individuals and groups in precarious conditions reinterpret ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1999) or ‘third space citizenship’ (Lee 2010) by reinterpreting their multilocal belonging and practices of everyday life while faced with waiting, insecurity and protracted and radical uncertainty (Horst and Grabska 2015). Through their translocal strategies, they create a sense of belonging, and thus a sense of citizenship.

Methods, Research, Positionality This chapter is based on a longitudinal ethnographic research among the Nuer population of Western Upper Nile (since 2002) (see Grabska 2011, 2014). In particular, it is informed by my most recent fieldwork in Khartoum (2014–16) and family histories, life stories, in-depth interviews and participant observation. Through long-term ethnographic engagements at several sites of displacement and emplacement, combined with living in each place for longer periods of time and archival research (Cairo, the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, Ler in South Sudan, and Khartoum in Sudan), I am able to construct a historical ethnography of displacement and emplacement (see Grabska 2014). The richness of the data is also due to the fact that I was able to follow the same people over a long period of time, in different physical locations, at different stages of their life course and at different historical moments. The last phase of fieldwork was carried out during my stay in Khartoum between January 2014 and June 2016. Doing fieldwork in a city like Khartoum is challenging in several ways. The experiences of the research

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participants reflected the nature of life in the city. Stephen, who is in his mid-thirties and grew up in refugee camps in Ethiopia, and returned to the South only to flee to Khartoum in 2015, explained in English: When I first got here, I realized that it reminded me of Addis Ababa. I lived in Addis Ababa when I studied there. It was hard to live and survive there. In the camps, it is easier because all the services are there. But in Khartoum, it is hard to maintain a family. It is difficult to find work; one has to pay for rent – we do not have any property here. Everything is about money. Also the distances are big; people are scattered. In my area, in Khartoum, there are only two Dok families. I feel lonely there, so I try to connect to different Nuer Dok and I go to visit them. For example, the families that we came here with (we were 40 families who left from Adok and took the boats together, and then went on foot to Dilich, and then by tractor – because the road was so bad, and then from Kosti by truck) – we were all scattered when we arrived in Jebel Awlia [the outskirts of Khartoum]. The government does not allow South Sudanese to be arriving in groups. They prefer families, but not big groups: so now we even lost contact with them. (January 2016)

Khartoum is a large, spread-out city with diverse migrant and refugee populations, including displaced groups from various areas of Sudan. It takes time to learn how to navigate the geographical and social landscape of the capital. Nuer people live across the city in various locations, from shanty areas in the displaced camps (which are officially referred to as open areas) to poorer neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city and more affluent districts in middle-class residential areas. With relatives spread across the city and limited access to paid work, most people are constantly on the move from one area to another in search of money or work, to attend church services, community gatherings, funerals or schools, or to visit relatives. To follow the lives of the research participants, I had to be constantly on the move. With my Nuer research assistant (Peter), a relative of the family I had lived with in Ler during my doctoral fieldwork in Southern Sudan (2006–7), I spent long hours on public transport travelling back and forth across the hot, dusty city. My visits to squatter areas and shantytowns and to people living in shelters in the industrial areas or in the centre of the town exposed the oppressive inequalities of the social and economic fabric of Khartoum’s inhabitants. The scattered nature of the Nuer Western Upper Nile community and the Nuer Dok group I was following made the fieldwork time-­consuming and expensive. It was a fundamentally different life

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from the one that, like many of the respondents, I had known in the UN-administered and NGO-catered refugee camps in Kenya or the market village of Ler in South Sudan. To understand the community life of the Nuer, I had to put together the different pieces of the puzzle that were scattered throughout the city. With Dok Nuer displaced across different places, the cieng (the community) was no longer territorial: it was dispersed across the city, across the country and across borders. My fieldwork was therefore about movement, about taking buses, about a journey and about connecting the sites. My research in Khartoum reflected my own state of in-betweenness. I have been working with Nuer communities since 2002 and have got to know many people, whom I met again in Khartoum. This meant that I was an insider in their lives in their new phase of displacement, and yet I was also an outsider – someone who lived a fairly comfortable life in Khartoum, with access to privileged areas and services. My personal situation and how I carried out my fieldwork this time were different from my immersed research in Kakuma or South Sudan, where I had shared housing and my daily life and meals with people whose lives I was trying to understand (2006–8). The presence of Peter, my research assistant, added another layer of in-betweenness in which I was more of a viewer and spectator and an object of observation and analysis for others rather than a participant in people’s daily lives.

Theoretical Engagements: In-Betweenness and Citizenship of the Margins The concept of citizenship has been facing major challenges, both theoretical and practical, in the context of increased human mobility, and the idea of a state has become more rigid and exclusive. Cities and belonging have also been a presence in development discourses. For example, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a landmark document that clearly reflects across its goals and targets how cities will be crucial to achieving its aims (UN 2015). More specifically, it has a dedicated target – Goal 11 – to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.’ Debates on citizenship or active citizenship are not only of relevance for people who reside in privileged cities and states; they are even more so for those who face marginalization and exclusion from both their host locations and their own states. This chapter builds on previous engagements with citizenship policies and contestations of belonging in displacement. Other studies have examined how Southern Sudanese have negotiated their liminal spaces

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in Khartoum through constructing either community citizenship (see Bakhit 2014) or urban citizenship (see Ingeborg 2014). The ideas of community and urban citizenship were developed from studies among urban poor and marginalized communities in the Global South (see Bayat 2004) and the legacy of the colonial period in Africa in the construction of citizenship (Mamdani 1996). Building on these studies in order to analyse my ethnographic material, I refer to some of the engagements with the concept of citizenship in the literature on migrants and refugees. One of the pioneering notions that has been used with reference to the multilocal, political and economic engagements of diaspora is ‘flexible citizenship’, a term coined by Ainhawa Ong. As she argues: ‘flexible citizenship’ refers to the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation, travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions. In their quest to accumulate capital and social prestige in the global arena, subjects emphasize, and are regulated by, practices favouring flexibility, mobility, and repositions in relation to markets, governments, and cultural regimes. These logics and practices are produced within particular structures of meaning about family, gender, nationality, class mobility, and social power. (Ong 1999: 6)

While theoretically interesting and relevant for those who can enjoy citizenships rights in a number of states, the concept of flexible citizenship is less relevant to a study of populations and individuals who have suffered disenfringement from their own states and are not in a position to access citizenship rights and privileges in their places of displacement. I have extended my analysis to the concept of abject citizenship, the ‘third space citizenship’ proposed by Charles T. Lee. Referring to the works of Agamben (1998 [1995]) on ‘bare life’, Lee suggests an alternative conception that conceives of citizenship not only as juridical institutions or political acts, but as a hegemonic cultural script that sustains liberal governance in reproducing a ‘normal’ and ‘proper’ mode of social life that interpellates how subjects should behave as citizens. This liberal cultural script of citizenship, articulated through different subscripts, such as membership, politics, economics, and life, governs and regulates numerous material-cultural spheres of social life in liberal and postcolonial states and regions and reproduces a stagnant ideological ‘life cycle’ of citizenship for human subjects. However, unable to complete a closure to contestation, this dominant script has also pluralized the sites and layers of dissident acts,

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practices, and discourses that reappropriate the script in ways that are simultaneously oppositional, subcultural, negotiated, and interstitial. I call this broad range of acts, practices, and discourses the ‘third space of citizenship’, in signalling an alternative terrain of acting and living as citizen-subjects through the interstices of existing frames that are irreducible to the binary scheme of political life versus bare life. The third space represents a realm of lived practices by the abject that are neither transparently democratic nor directly counterhegemonic, and yet they interrupt the stagnant liberal way of life and reinscribe the cultural script of citizenship itself. (2010: 58)

His conceptualization of third space citizenship opens up the possibility of analysing how some of the most dispossessed people navigate their access to rights and create a sense of citizenship in terms of belonging and of having a right to have rights (Arendt 1971). The alternative translocal citizenship engagements that emerge through the practices of the Nuer communities in Khartoum also address their shaky status as non-citizens in Sudan who are also not completely foreign due to their previous historical connections. The idea of in-betweenness and the creation of a belonging on the margins become part of identity production as an ongoing translocal process. Here, I am inspired by Stuart Hall, who put forward the idea of ‘the ethnicity of the margins’, an identity position predicated on difference and diversity, ‘and the consequences which this carries for the process of unsettling, recombination, hybridization and “cut and mix” – in short, the process of cultural diaspora-ization’ (1996: 447). The articulation of identity is an ongoing process that Hall terms ‘identification’: cultural discourses define the parameters within which these identifications take shape. Recognizing identity as socially, culturally and historically contingent, and thus always in flux and contested, is therefore a de-essentializing move that opens up the idea of change within the discursive possibilities of a specific moment. For Hall, cultural production is a key part of this process of re-forming ethnic identity: commenting on the work of young black British filmmakers and musicians, he writes that the new cultural politics expressed in these art forms marks a real shift in the point of contestation. ‘What is involved is the splitting of the notion of ethnicity between, on the one hand, the dominant notion which connects it to nation and “race”, and on the other what I think is the beginning of a positive conception of the ethnicity of the margins, of the periphery’ (Hall 1996: 447). Instead of an ‘ethnicity of the margins’, I refer to ‘citizenship of the margins’ as a lived experience of the displaced Nuer in Khartoum.

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Destination and Station: Khartoum I met Nyamai in April 2016 at a Nuer Dok community fundraising event at the Presbyterian Centre in central Khartoum. She was introduced to me by the Nuer pastors who run the centre. At that time, Nyamai was the chairwoman of the Dok Nuer Women’s Association. She first came to Khartoum in 2001 to seek fertility treatment. Many of the women among the research participants had come to Khartoum for similar reasons. As she had to follow the treatment, she never returned to the South permanently. Her husband, who was a trader, had two wives and travelled between Khartoum and Ler. Nyamai spoke good Arabic and was maintaining her household by distilling alcohol. She had to support her mother, her two children and her sister-in-law and her children, as well as other relatives who occasionally passed through Khartoum. She complained that her expenses had increased recently, since her oldest son had had an accident and broken his leg while at an SPLM-IO rebel training camp run by the Sudanese army on the outskirts of Khartoum. He was unable to join the rebel fighters in the South, and she was ­responsible for paying his medical bills from her meagre earnings. Nyamai’s story shows us that Khartoum has been host to Nuer populations for decades and has played a different role for various Nuer communities and individuals. For some, the city was the only place of refuge from war and displacement during the prolonged civil wars in Sudan (1956–1972 and 1983–2005) and later in the most recent civil war in South Sudan (since 2013). For others, it was seen as a destination that offered access to education, health services and work (Hutchinson 1996; Grabska 2014). Kameir (1980), for example, describes the importance of Nuer workers for the Khartoum construction industry. Khartoum was also a key place for political alliances and support for different rebel groups in the 1990s, as well as for Riek Machar and his supporters during the current conflict. The relative proximity of Khartoum to existing vibrant trading and transport links between the Western Upper Nile region and the capital makes it fairly accessible. There has been a long-standing historical continuity of relations between Khartoum and the populations of Western Upper Nile in this regard that can be compared with the experiences of Angolan refugees integrated into the border villages of Zambia, whom Bakewell describes as having ‘one foot in Zambia and the other in Angola’, their weight shifting from foot to foot all the time (2000: 366). There is therefore no clearly defined point in time when they complete their migration. Bakewell refers to it as ‘a process with no clear beginning nor end, rather than an event’ (2000:

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366). Thus it should come as no surprise that many Nuer decided to keep one foot in Khartoum while repatriating to the South. Following the conflict and the consequent famine that swept through Western Upper Nile after 2013, many returned to Khartoum. Even those who were arriving in Khartoum for the first time had previous connections to the city through their various family and kin networks, and so their experiences in Khartoum can be seen as a continuum of displacement and emplacement (Grabska 2014). Their current status and experience in Khartoum is marked by the changed political and legal environment due to the separation of Sudan. This break-up was a violent experience for the people of the two nations. The dynamic changes that followed affected the lives of people from the North and the South, as well as those considered to be Janubiyyn in the North and those considered to be Shajin Shimaliyyn (Shamaliyyin meaning ‘Northerners’ in Arabic) in the South. With the political developments in the two nations and the introduction of new citizenship laws – see Chapter 7 of this volume; see also Republic of South Sudan (2011a, 2011b, 2011c)  – Southerners became foreigners in the North, while Northerners lost their citizenship privileges in the South (Bureau 2011; Hovil 2014; Babiker 2015). The political changes had a profound impact on social, political and economic reconfigurations as well as identity claims in the two nations. Despite the large population movements that followed, with those considered to be Southern Sudanese moving to South Sudan and those considered to be ‘Northerners’ going to Sudan, and in the wake of the current civil conflict in South Sudan (which has been ongoing since 2013), increasing numbers of South Sudanese have either remained in or been displaced to the North. These changes in population composition, together with the new political and economic arrangements between Sudan and South Sudan, had a direct impact on the multidimensional transformations that took place in the Sudans in general and in Khartoum in particular (Casciarri, Assal and Ireton 2015). The Nuer population in Khartoum is characterized by three factors: shaky legal status, mobility and relative marginality.

Shaky Status Before 2011, South Sudanese who had been displaced to Khartoum due to the war were generally treated as citizens – albeit second-class – and referred to as internally displaced (nazihin). Because they were officially citizens, they were able to access jobs – including in the formal sector and health and education – on the same terms as Northern Sudanese. They were given limited assistance (due to the Khartoum government’s

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control) by NGOs and international organizations. Since 2011, South Sudanese have been foreigners in Sudan. Although those displaced by the conflict in South Sudan should officially have access to refugee status, the government of Khartoum has changed its stance regarding the status of the South Sudanese. While at times they are referred to as ‘brothers’, their status is also sometimes revoked depending on the political mood between the North and the South, and they are treated like any other foreigners. Despite the fact that the Four Freedoms Agreement signed in 2012 between the North and the South4 guarantees equal access to education, work, movement and residence, South Sudanese in Khartoum are often subjected to arbitrary treatment as foreigners. As a result, for example, they have to pay foreign student fees at universities and private schools. International organizations are also not allowed to refer to South Sudanese in Sudan as refugees, and they are referred to as ‘displaced’. Access by these organizations to the South Sudanese population is extremely limited in Khartoum, while the situation is slightly better in the camps on the border with South Sudan. South Sudanese are well aware of the politics of their status and the way the Khartoum government wants to prevent them from accessing international aid. When I inquired about this lack of status as refugees in Sudan, a teacher at a South Sudanese community school told me in English: We cannot be called laji’iyn [refugees] here because of the politics, because of the government; as a refugee you have rights, you can be protected, and will get some services; the government of the North does not want to use the term because this would mean that we would have access to international assistance. The government only gives us an ID card  – as Southerners. The meaning of the ID card is to have access to services, but in fact it is just a way of controlling the ­Southerners. The card does not give you any right. (Khartoum, South Sudanese school, March 2016)

A woman who has been in Khartoum for over sixteen years commented in Nuer: Don’t call me refugee, or foreigner. I am Sudanese, I was Sudanese before. This used to be one country. We are still from here. It is because of politics that we are not one. But we are not refugees from the government side; the government does not want us to be refugees, they call us brothers, but they do not give us services; no rights; they treat us worse than a dog. (Interview in English, Khartoum, South Sudanese school, March 2016)

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Another teacher added, They do not call us ajnabi [Arabic for foreigners], although they treat us in law as foreigners; but also it depends on your local contacts; if you have local friends with Jallaba5, with Arabs, they treat you fine. (Interview in English, Khartoum, South Sudanese school, March 2016)

Mobility Some of the Nuer population are also highly mobile, travelling between the South, Khartoum and other places of refuge (Ethiopia, Uganda or Kenya). Most have family members in several locations, including across borders. This mobility is deeply rooted in the historical socio-economic livelihoods of agro-pastoralist groups (see Hutchins 1996; Grabska 2014), as well as being a way of minimizing marginalization and expanding survival options and coping strategies. At the Nuer, court sessions or community gatherings I attended there were usually Dok Nuer visitors from the South, as well as from other places. Some had houses in several locations, with families in Khartoum, UNMIS camps in Bentiu, Nairobi or refugee camps in Kakuma. By moving between these locations and being active in each of them, they were building their social and personal capital and maintaining translocal in-between belonging through mobility, as some Nuer have for decades.

Marginality Most of the Nuer women and men complained about their marginal position in Khartoum. They talked about their perceived and felt discrimination by the Northerners (Jallaba, or Arabs), the difficult economic conditions and lack of work and the high living expenses due to having to pay rent and for food, education and water. After a visit to Rhoda, a 50-year-old who had been in Khartoum since the 1980s, and lives in a rakuba (a shack) without access to water or electricity constructed on a property owned by a Northerner, Peter, my research assistant, commented that life in Khartoum is very difficult. I thought he was referring to the living conditions of Rhoda, who was a relative, but he was in fact referring to his own situation. His family was renting a spacious apartment on the outskirts of the city. He explained: People live in apartments, there is no free space. They have to rent. In the South [al-Janub], we have our freedom. We have our property. We can move freely. You see, where Rhoda is living is good. The

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owner gave them some land, they built two huts from their own materials, and they have space there. They do not have to pay for rent. But others are in difficult conditions. (Khartoum, January 2016, interview in English)

I had witnessed the living conditions in Ler, and I saw similarities between the living conditions there and in Khartoum. In the South, there were few brick-built houses, and there was usually no access to electricity, water or sanitation. In Khartoum, there was for most at least access to electricity and water, and the women did not have to grind sorghum, which they could buy from a bakery. Life in Khartoum depended on money, however, and people felt stressed due to a lack of job opportunities. Before 2011, some South Sudanese owned properties in Khartoum, which they sold when they decided to move to the South (Chapter 6 in this book). While they were always marginalized in the city as Janubiyyn, they also realized that their position was more privileged than that of the Dinka, due to the historical and political links of the elites, and more privileged than that of Ethiopian or Eritrean migrants and refugees. Hierarchies of marginalization of ‘otherness’ and ‘foreignness’ emerged as a result of this. As Yoal Biel pointed out: We are not like Ethiopians, or Eritreans. They are refugees. Ethiopians are completely foreigners, because they need visas and passports to come to Sudan. Eritreans they have an open border with Sudan; they can come here without documents, so they are less foreigners. But we are also not foreigners, because we are Southerners for them; this used to be our land also – it was also our capital [Khartoum]. So we see this place as offering more possibilities than other places. Even though they say to us you have already separated. We are still kel [one], we still have contact. But it is different now, than before: access to rights, to education, treatment in hospitals, also we sit low: we cannot argue now, we cannot take cases to police, because no more Janubiyyn in the official jobs, no access to official jobs.

At the same time, he also recognized that this is a different place and that Southerners are in an in-between position. We are Nuer, we are all Southerners. There are no problems between Dinka and Nuer here because we are in this country, not in our country. We are not citizens here. We are under the law of a different country. So we do not want to cause trouble. So no conflicts, but in

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the South we would not even talk to each other. (Interview in Nuer, Khartoum, December 2015)

Being a Citizen Means Being Human In order to untangle how the Nuer communities in Khartoum navigated their in-between position as non-citizens and Janubiyyn, we need to understand the sociopolitical organization of nei ti naath (Nuer people). Historically, as Evans-Pritchard (1940) has described, Nuer communities were organized around clans and lineages, a lineage being a smaller segment of a clan. The degree to which people relate to one another is based on their kin relationship. The narrower the gap in structural distance, the more likely it is that relatives will share a village. Members of a lineage who live in an area associated with it see themselves as a residential group, and the concept of lineage therefore functions through the political system. Historically, each clan has a headman. Several headmen are appointed as government sub-chiefs and serve under an executive chief. Nuer society is thus segmentary. The size of a group can vary according to political circumstances. For example, many clans can reside together if there is a need for collective defence and then break apart when the need no longer exists. The Nuer are divided into a number of subgroups with no common organization or central administration. These can be described politically as tribal sections. Each group has headmen, sub-chiefs, executive chiefs and paramount chiefs  – positions that became politicized after the establishment of Sudan as a nation. Historically, the Nuer political and administrative structure relied on community elders who enforced norms and regulations through respect and fear. After the creation of the South Sudan State, new state institutions took over administrative roles, with governors, commissioners and judges appointed directly by the State.

Shifting Concepts of Raan – Citizen To understand the relationship between the Nuer people and the state, I refer to the meaning of ‘citizen’ as used in the Nuer language. During my fieldwork in Ler in 2007, a woman returning from displacement in Khartoum explained to me in Nuer: It is very difficult for me to settle here. First I need to get land and then a house. Once I am sitting with all my things in my duël [house], I can

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say that I am settled in my home/community/village [nyuuri piny ke ciengda]. When I have my property, people will recognize me: ‘This is the home of Nyabol’ [eno cieng Nyabol]. For now, I am still a jäal [visitor] staying with my sister, and not many people know me here. I feel like a stranger and they call me khartoumi [Khartoum residents . . .]. Once I have my own land and house, I will stop being a returnee. I will be raan Ler [a citizen of Ler].

In the Nuer language, raan means ‘being human, being a person’. The woman’s explanation illustrates the fact that in order to acquire the status of raan – a citizen of Ler – one needs to have access to resources to be able to claim rights (cuong) in the community and perform the associated duties. In Khartoum, the discourse on citizenship shifted from a local one linked to a particular territory and specific place to a national one. Almost all the respondents talked about being South Sudanese first, then being Nuer, Dinka or Shilluk, and then being from a specific location in the South. ‘We are ran Janub  – citizens of the South – but here in Khartoum they call us nazihin (displaced).’ The state has become the main marker of belonging.

Dok Nuer Spaces in Khartoum: Creating Community Although at first it was a daunting task to find Nuer people within the wider landscape of a Khartoum dotted with hundreds of thousands of displaced and migrant populations, once I started my research, I discovered numerous Nuer enclaves across the capital. Throughout the vast, heterogeneous hierarchical city, the Nuer were creating a community within non-liminal and yet liminal spaces. They emerged in churches, schools and neighbourhoods, in informal places where chiefs gathered under a tree to solve community cases, and as young Nuer men selling cigarettes and phone cards in groups across the town, men socializing to smoke shishas and play dominoes and women working in breweries. Nuer enclaves were highly gendered, with men mostly gathering in the Souk al-Arabi (central market) and the offices of the opposition (SPLM-IO) and women sharing church and women’s community and work spaces. These spaces were both public and private and were used for socializing as well as for carrying out economic activities. The most visible community organizations included schools for displaced South Sudanese children run by volunteer teachers from the South, local Nuer courts operating in the camps around Khartoum and within the city, various Nuer community associations and their

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fundraising activities and the official offices of the SPLM-IO rebel movement and churches. Dok Nuer social activities took place in formal and informal spaces, including community gatherings at funerals, marriages and religious and political events. These forms of institutional and informal socializing were key for creating a sense of community and a support network. They also supported a link with the South and acted as a bridge between people in Khartoum, the camps on the border with South Sudan and in the war zones in the South. I will now look at two particular examples of community institutions.

Nuer Courts According to my informants, before the repatriation of Southerners between 2005 and 2011, several Nuer courts operated in the displaced camps (open areas) around the city as well as within Khartoum itself, similar to other South Sudanese courts operating across the city (see Aziz 2018). As most people, especially elders, left for the South after the separation of the two countries, the courts were dissolved. With the new influx of displaced Nuer to Khartoum, one of the Nuer courts was reactivated in 2015. At the time of my research, there was only one Nuer court operating in the city, in addition to several chiefs who gathered independently under trees across the city to solve community cases. In the past, the chiefs had played an important role in the community’s political and social affairs and in safeguarding customary law. During my fieldwork in the refugee camp in Kenya in 2006, there were several South Sudanese courts in operation inside the camps. Most were organized around ethnic lineage and heard community cases. With the emergence of government structures and government-appointed administrative officials and judges, their role changed somewhat. In Khartoum, I observed three different individual sessions with chiefs and a session of a Nuer court in the area of the Souk Markazi. The court was composed of seven chiefs from different Nuer communities and convened in different areas of the city, depending on where they were able to find a space to perform their services. The chiefs are formally appointed by elders within the communities in the South but are usually nominated by elders in Khartoum. The Nuer court has permission from both the government of Sudan and the SPLM-IO office to operate in Khartoum. I was shown two official documents specifying the type of cases the court is allowed to hear (they relate mainly to community matters, do not fall under Sudanese law and include community disputes, marriage, divorce, cattle theft, elopements by girls and physical violence). The chiefs have to be approved by the SPLM-IO office in

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Khartoum, which places them under the authority of the rebel administration. Hearings are held in a similar way to hearings in the South. The SPLM-IO office also issues ID cards for the Nuer population and others who are sympathizers with the rebels, thereby creating another level of ‘citizenship’ and belonging for Southerners. Most of the cases had to do with the resolution of marriage disputes and the impregnation and elopement of girls. Nuer marriages require bride-wealth negotiation and an exchange of cattle. Marriages were rare in Khartoum due to a lack of relatives and kin and cattle, and so instead many were arranged on credit, like the marriages arranged in Kakuma (see Grabska 2011). This meant that some form of exchange of cattle had to occur in the place of origin in the South, but due to the ongoing war, exchanges were sometimes postponed until security returned and people were able to retrieve their lost property and cattle. The cases were therefore translocal, with negotiations taking place in Khartoum and the South (often by mobile telephone) and with exchanges (of money, cattle and girls) being arranged in multiple locations. At times, other relatives living in Juba, Kenya or the US, for example, would be contacted by the members of the court to resolve the matter. When I asked the chiefs about the role of the court, they confirmed that it served as a means of maintaining Nuer community: ‘We are Sudanese, but we are not Jallaba (Arabs). We have our own laws, and they must be respected. We are here as chiefs to make sure our community stays together and adheres to its norms and rules’ (Interview in Nuer, Khartoum, June 2016). For the chiefs, sitting as a court was also a citizenship duty, as they explained: ‘We are here to serve our community; it is for the Nuer here and for the Nuer there (in the South).’ Their translocal administrative authority was also confirmed by the chiefs and community elders who had remained in the South, as well as those in exile in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. The individual and collective role performed by the chiefs as community elders and members of the court was also intended to be a way of maintaining the generational and gendered leadership structures of the dispersed Nuer communities.

The Dok Nuer Community Association Another example of both community and individual efforts to build a sense of belonging here (in Khartoum) and there (in the South) was the activities of the Dok Nuer Community Association and its chairwoman Angelina Nyamai. As I have mentioned, I first met Angelina Nyamai during an event organized by the Dok Nuer Association to raise funds

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for wounded rebel soldiers in the South and to finance those who were stranded on their journey to Khartoum. She was dressed in her best clothes, wearing a wig, carrying an elegant handbag and wearing good shoes. We agreed to meet at her home, and she told me she lived in the centre of Khartoum. I had imagined that she must live in an apartment in quite an upmarket area, but when we tried to find her home one day in May 2016, we were slightly perplexed. It turned out that Angelina lives in a shack on a construction site between hotel and administrative buildings in downtown Khartoum. Her shelter had been destroyed again recently when the local police raided it in search of the alcohol that Angelina was distilling and selling there. Hidden behind the elegant buildings, Angelina’s rakuba occupied a position between a legal and illegal settlement, invisible in a highly visible place. As we entered the shack, there was a strong smell of urine, garbage and aragi, the local brew. Her house was just next to the well-built home of Sudanese neighbours. Men, mostly Northerners, came to buy alcohol from Angelina during our meeting. As she said, ‘There is a big supply of men . . . Northern, but also Dinka and Nuer, all, and even women come to buy.’ She told us that the police used to come by at 4PM every day to destroy their houses. Sometimes they took them to jail, and on other occasions they gave them a fine. The owners had asked them to pay 300 SDG for the use of the plot. The difference between the impeccable, elegant Angelina at official meetings and her miserable, dirty, dangerous and insecure living situation was a shock to me. By taking care of herself and her public appearance, she keeps her dignity while trying to manage her marginal in-betweenness. Angelina explained her reasons for becoming the chair of the Women’s Dok Nuer Association. I have been here in Khartoum for a long time. I know the place, and I see how many problems our community has here in Khartoum. Also, by helping the people here, I can help those in the South. I am South Sudanese, and I need to do this for my country, even though as Nuer we are now fighting against the government. I know women’s issues here, and I know how to help them. This is my role as a citizen of South Sudan but also as Nuer, as Dok. (Interview in Nuer, May 2016, Khartoum)

Nyamai’s explanation points to the translocal obligations she needs to fulfil as a citizen towards her fellow Nuer, both here in Khartoum and in the South. In this way, Nyamai is also ensuring her own political

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position and place in the South, despite her long absence from the country. By both resisting and subverting her position of marginality in Khartoum, she acts to strengthen her position within the Nuer community in Khartoum and the South. Her actions emerge as a contestation of space-specific citizenship practice, her marginal position as a non-­ citizen and Southerner in Khartoum and her marginal position as a Dok Nuer who is perceived as a rebel sympathizer, and they reveal a translocal situation of abject citizenship. These two ethnographic examples, together with other community and individual actions among the Nuer in Khartoum, show that the marginal position of the Nuer population within the city resulted in a productive process whereby men and women engaged in the practice of active ‘third space citizenship’ on a daily basis (Lee 2010). They performed their responsibilities towards their fellow Nuer citizens by earning money, assisting those wounded in the battlefield, gathering resources to support war and peace efforts in the South and supporting the community of the displaced in Khartoum by volunteering in schools and in medical clinics. They had to adjust to the parameters and requirements of a megacity of Khartoum, and thus transplanted their experience of life from a village or small urban setting to a large city. By contesting their living on the margins of the city, they managed to create a sense of community in a place that is dispersed, where connections are different, where there is no proximity and where physical distance plays an important role.

Navigating Translocal Citizenship of the Margins In this chapter, I have discussed how dispersed and displaced Nuer communities and individuals experience and navigate their in-between status in the city. The ethnography discussed here suggests that Nuer women and men negotiate and navigate their unstable in-between political conditions of non-citizenship in Khartoum and as rebel sympathizers in the South by enacting a transnational political agency of engagement, protest, resistance and co-optation in the North and South alike. Through localized political action, they maintain a community and (re)define it by preserving social, economic and political links with the South in general, and with the Nuerland in particular. I argue that the practices I have described redefine the concept of ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1999) by emphasizing the resistance, struggle and contestation of narrow legalistic forms of citizenship by some of the most marginalized populations. Becoming and being a citizen (raan), a human, is acquired

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and then conducted by navigating marginality in one place and maintaining identity and belonging across places (translocally). The case of the South Sudanese Nuer also shows how notions of citizenship from the community and territory are being reconfigured in the new political context of non-citizenship and demonstrate the need to reaffirm citizenship duties translocally. The practice of translocal political engagement is directed towards the South while being located within the Nuer communities in Khartoum. This illuminates in-betweenness as it is enacted on Nuer terms: as being part and apart (Minh-ha 1989), as not cutting off completely but coexisting, even though all the thinking and talking are directed towards the future. As I mentioned above, the word in-between does not exist in the Nuer language; one cannot occupy a position of protracted uncertainty (Horst and Grabska 2015). And yet at the same time, the prolonged displacement the Nuer and other South Sudanese have been subjected to points to a state of in-betweenness as a norm rather than an isolated event. Within these restricted possibilities and limited opportunities, they enact a more fluid version of flexible citizenship, a type of abject ­citizenship – third space citizenship – which is practised simultaneously in and across spaces. These political actions are also evidence of the making of a political entity of the Nuer or alternative factions to those of the South Sudanese government (for example, the documents and ID cards issued by the SPLM-IO office). The careful and complex everyday navigation of political, social and cultural in-betweenness (Hall 1996) of the Nuer population across time and space demonstrates how individuals and groups in precarious conditions reinterpret ‘flexible’ (Ong 1999) or ‘third space’ citizenship (Lee 2010). By negotiating their marginal multilocal belonging and practice of everyday life while faced with waiting, insecurity and protracted and radical uncertainty (Horst and Grabska 2015), they create what I call translocal citizenship of the margins. As a result, a patchwork of practices emerges that shows the tactical agency of some of the most dispossessed people. In this way, the weight of political-legalistic interpretations of citizenship shifts to underscore values upon which relations between the state and citizens should be shaped: namely justice, recognition, self-determination and solidarity. The Nuer communities’ practice of ‘being a raan’ (citizen) extends Naila Kabeer’s (2005) view of citizenship from the perspective of the poor classes of a local population to show the translocal opportunities for the marginalized and dispossessed to claim their rights to belonging.

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Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway and a visiting professor at the Ethnology Institute, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on gender, generation, youth, displacement, refuges, return, identities, art and access to rights for refugees in urban settings. She has researched on displacement and forced migration issues in Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland and Vietnam. Kasia works with visual media, art-based research, feminist methodologies and participatory methodologies. Since 2002, she has been carrying out a longitudinal study of gender relation transformations among Nuer from South Sudan in Egypt, Kenya, Jordan, South Sudan and in Sudan, Khartoum. She collaborates often with artists in her research. In 2016, in collaboration with a team of researchers and filmmakers, she produced a film based on her collaborative research project ‘Time to Look at Girls: Migrants in Ethiopia and Bangladesh’. The long version of the film, 2 Girls, has been awarded ten first prizes at international film festivals. She is also the writer, producer and co-director of the film Barbara Harrell-Bond: A Life Not Ordinary (2018). Kasia is the author of Gender, Identity and Home: Nuer Repatriation to South Sudan (James Currey, 2014), which received the Armory Talbot Prize in 2015; co-editor of Forced Migration: Why Rights Matter? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and a co-writer of Adolescent Girls’ Migration in the Global South: Transitions into Adulthood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Notes 1. All the names have been changed for anonymity to protect the respondents. 2. Nuer, after the Dinka, are the second largest ethnic group in South Sudan. I use the term Southern Sudanese to denote those groups from the South of Sudan before the emergence of independent South Sudan in 2011. South Sudanese is a term used to denote those coming from or identified as being affiliated with South Sudan. It should be noted that the Arabic translation, Janubiyyn, is the same for the two politically different terms. This is also significant, as it offers an interesting insight into identity politics and practices in the two Sudans. 3. The acephalous (or ‘stateless’) Nuer organization was based on kinship and residency affiliations affirmed through mutual obligations ‘to combine in warfare against outsiders and acknowledge the rights of their members to compensation for injury’ (Evans-Pritchard 1940). They were divided into eleven major loosely territorially bound groupings: Bul, Leek (Leeg), Western Jikany (Jikäny ciëh), Nyuong (Nyuoh), Dok, Jagei (Jagei), Gaawär, Thiäng (Thiäh), Lak (Laak), Lou and Eastern Jikany Nuer (Jikäny door). The Dok

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Nuer, who lived in the Ler county of the Western Upper Nile region in Unity State, experienced some of the fiercest inter-community fighting in the late 1990s and early 2000, as well as in the most recent conflict. 4. This Agreement was first proposed on 13 March 2012 and was signed in October 2012. It provides principles and mechanisms for the treatment by each state of the nationals of the other state. The key principle is the Four Freedoms: residence, movement, economic activity and the right to acquire and dispose of property, which each state must ensure for the nationals of the other state. The Agreement establishes a Joint High Level Committee to oversee the range of issues relating to nationals of the other state. The parties agreed to develop the four freedoms in order to facilitate their full implementation within the two States. So far, the agreement has not been fully implemented in the two countries. 5. Historically, the term Jallaba comes from a reference to Northern traders, but it came to be used as a synonym for ‘Arabs’, especially in the South.

References Agamben, G. 1998 [1995]. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Stanford University Press. Arendt, H. 1971. On Revolution. New York: Viking. Assal, M.A.M. 2011. ‘Nationality and Citizenship Questions in Sudan after the Southern Sudan Referendum Vote’, Sudan Report, no. 1. Bergen: Christian Michelsen Institute. ______. 2014. ‘Struggles of Citizenship in Sudan’, in E.F. Isin and P. Nyers (eds), Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 196–200. Aziz, A.A. 2018. ‘Customary Courts: Between Accommodating and Countering the Hegemony of the Laws of the State: The Case of Mayo’, in B. Casciarri and M.A Babiker (eds), Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan. Brill: Leiden. Babiker, M. 2015. ‘Sudan’s New Migration and Refugee Laws: Trends and Gaps in Combating Human Trafficking and Creating Stateless Persons’, Conference Paper for Migration and Exile in the Horn of Africa: State of Knowledge and Current Debates, CEDEJ, Khartoum, 16–18 November. Bakewell, O. 2000. ‘Repatriation and Self-Settled Refugees in Zambia: Bringing Solutions to the Wrong Problems,’ Journal of Refugee Studies 13(4): 356–73. Bakhit, M. 2014. ‘Negotiations of Power and Responsibilities in Khartoum Shantytowns’, in E. Grawert (ed.), Forging Two Nations: Insights on Sudan and South Sudan. Addis Ababa: OSSREA, pp. 127–42. Bayat, A. 2004. ‘Globalization and the Politics of the Informals in the Global South’, in A. Roy and N. Al Sayyad (eds), Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives in the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. Maryland: Lexington Books, pp. 79–102.

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Beswick, S. 2004. Sudan’s Blood Memory: The Legacy of War, Ethnicity, and Slavery in Early South Sudan. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Bhabha, H.K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bureau, L. 2011. ‘Sudistes au Nord, Sudistes du Nord? Les déplaces du Sud à Khartoum (Soudan) entre marginalisation et citadinisation’, master’s thesis. France: University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. Casciarri, B., M.A.M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds). 2015. Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989–2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. De Geoffroy, A. 2005. ‘From Internal to International Displacement in Sudan’, Presentation at ‘Migration and Refugee in the Middle East and North Eastern Africa’ workshop, 23–25 October. American University in Cairo. ______. 2009. ‘Aux marges de la ville, les populations déplacées par la force: enjeux, acteurs et politiques. Etude comparée des cas de Bogota (Colombie) et de Khartoum (Soudan)’, doctoral thesis in Geography. Université Paris 8. Deng, F. 2004. ‘Green is the Color of the Masters: The Legacy of Slavery and the Crisis of National Identity in Modern Sudan’, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, 23 October. New Haven, CT: Yale University. Available at http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/cbss/Deng. pdf. El-Hassan, S.I. 2009. ‘The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and Cultural Diversity in the Sudan’, RESPECT, Sudanese Journal for Human Rights, Culture, and Issues of Cultural Diversity, 11th Issue, November. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Framework Agreement on the Status of Nationals of the Other State and Related Matters between The Republic of the Sudan and The Republic of South Sudan. 2012. Addis Ababa, 27 September. Retrieved 17 July 2017 from http://www.refworld.org/docid/4f60ba492.html. Grabska, K. 2014. Gender, Home and Identity: Nuer Repatriation to Southern Sudan. New York and Oxford: James Currey. Grabska, K. 2011. ‘Constructing “Modern Gendered Civilised” Women and Men: Gender Mainstreaming in Refugee Camps’, Gender and Development, 19(1): 81–93. Hall, S. 1996. ‘Introduction: Who Needs “Identity”?’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage. Horst, C., and K. Grabska. 2015. ‘Flight and Exile: Uncertainty in the Context of Conflict-Induced Displacement’, Social Analysis 59(1): 1–18. Hovil, L. 2013. ‘“The Disappearance of Sudan? Life in Khartoum for Citizens without Rights”: Citizenship and Displacement in the Great Lakes Region’, Working Paper Series 9. IRRI. May 2013. Available at: http://reliefweb.int/ sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Marginalised%20in%20Khartoum%20 FINAL0.pdf. Hutchinson, S.E. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War and the State. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Ibrahim, F.N. 1991. ‘The Southern Sudanese Migration to Khartoum and the Resultant Conflicts’, GeoJournal 25(1): 13–18. Ingeborg, D. 2014. ‘Negotiating Urban Citizenship  – A Comparison between Mexico City and Khartoum’, doctoral thesis. Utrecht University. Johnson, D.H. 1988. ‘Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century’, in L. Archer (ed.), Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 142–55. Jok, J.M. 2012. ‘Diversity, Unity, and Nation Building in South Sudan’. United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 287, Oct 2011. Washington: USIP. Kabeer, N. (ed.). 2005. Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions. London: Zed Books. Kameir, El. 1980. ‘Nuer Migrants in the Building Industry in Khartoum: A Case of the Concentration and Circulation of Labour’, in V. Pons (ed.), Urbanisation and Urban Life in the Sudan. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Hull, pp. 449–85. Lavergne, M. 1999. ‘De la cuvette du Haut-Nil aux faubourgs de Khartoum: les déplacés du Sud-Soudan entre traumatisme et recomposition identitaires’, in M. Lassailly (eds), Déplacés et réfugiés, la mobilité sous la contrainte. Paris: Editions de l’IRD, pp. 109–36. Lee, Ch. T. 2010. ‘Bare Life, Interstices, and the Third Space of Citizenship’, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly (Spring/Summer) 38(1 & 2): 57–81. Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Manby, B. 2012. The Right to a Nationality and the Secession of South Sudan: A Commentary on the Impact of the New Laws. London: Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa. Minh-ha, T. 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. OCHA. 2015. Statistics of Displacement Trends among South Sudanese. Available at: https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/SouthSudan/2014%20 South%20Sudan/HRP%20summaryFINALrev%2002122014.pdf. Ong, A. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Republic of South Sudan. 2011a. Nationality Regulations 2011 (South Sudan), 29 December. Available at: http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4ffab4582.pdf. ______. 2011b. Laws of South Sudan, Nationality Act 2011. Available at http:// www.refworld.org/docid/4e94318f2.html. ______. 2011c. The Sudanese Nationality Act 1994 and Sudanese Nationality Act (Amendment). Available at: http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/502cc1b92. pdf. Sikainga, A.A. 1996. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labour in Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas Press. ______. 2011. ‘Citizenship and Identity in Post-secession Northern Sudan’, Association of Concerned African Scholars. Bulletin no. 86, November 2011.

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Turner, V.W. 1967. ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage’, in V.W. Turner (ed.), The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 93–111. ______. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.   UN Agenda. 2015. ‘Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, UN. Retrieved 21 July 2017 from https://sustainabledevel​ opment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld/publication. UNHCR 2017. ‘Situation of South Sudanese Refugees’. Report. UNHCR, Geneva. Van Gennep, A., M. Vizedon and G. Caffee. 1961. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Vezzadini, E. 2014. ‘Créer des étrangers: lois de la citoyenneté de 2011 aux Soudans et désirs d’État pour une nationalité ethnique’, Politique Africaine 135:177–95.

[•  Chapter 9  •]

‘Community’ Citizenship as a Liminal Space for Southern Sudanese Communities in Khartoum MOHAMED A.G. BAKHIT Political and Social Background

In August 2017, the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR) announced that the number of South Sudanese refugees who had crossed South Sudan’s border to Uganda had exceeded the landmark figure of one million. Another one million are in other neighbouring countries, including Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. One-half of this number are estimated to be in Sudan, some of whom are refugees from the second civil war (1983–2005) who have stayed on in Sudan since the secession of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011, while many of the rest fled to Sudan and Khartoum and returned when the second civil war ended in 2005. This is the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world, with the UNHCR estimating that more than 1,800 South Sudanese refugees have fled to Uganda every day for the past two years. Nearly 85 per cent of the refugees there are women and children under eighteen years old.1 This flight was sparked in December 2013 by clashes in Juba between the forces of President Salva Kiir Mayardit and the former Vice President Riek Machar Teny. After an intensive regional and international intervention, a brief peace was brokered by a 2015 power-sharing deal, but its implementation was largely unsuccessful. Fresh violence between Kiir’s and Machar’s factions broke out again in Juba in July 2016 and spread across the country, especially in the Equatoria region in the south and

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Upper Nile in the north. The United Nations has warned of the risk of genocide, as the parties to the conflict have mobilized and targeted communities on ethnic lines. Many other smaller armed groups have emerged, further complicating the conflict (De Vries and Schomerus 2017). For the majority of South Sudanese people, the new nation’s insecurity and economic collapse since 2013 have necessitated a return to the long-standing practice of forced migration, mostly to neighbouring countries. Many South Sudanese cities, including the capital Juba, are increasingly depopulated, with approximately 2.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 212,000 people in Protection of Civilians (POC) camps across the country run by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and more than two million displaced persons outside the country since December 2013. Violent actions by warring parties, including arbitrary detention, forced displacement, disappearances and widely reported and ethicized criminal violence are commonplace, added to the impact of the economic collapse across South Sudan (Rolandsen and Kindersley 2017: 22). Despite South Sudan being at the centre of Africa’s largest refugee crisis – the third in the world, behind Syria and Afghanistan  – only 33 per cent of its 2016 funding appeal for $649 ­million (£521 million) was met (Gaffey 2017). This is the second or third time the majority of South Sudanese have been forced to flee to these regions: out of an estimated population of around 10 million, many of the approximately 2 million returnees from the last civil war who moved back to South Sudan between 2005 and 2011 are now returning to community or family land or family members and economic activities they knew well in the past with a certain optimism. Uganda and Sudan have adopted profoundly different approaches to this crisis. Uganda has maintained an open border for the influx of South Sudanese refugees, and President Museveni’s government also provides refugees with land to cultivate and on which to build shelter (Leonardi and Santschi 2016), a much praised approach. Refugees also have freedom of movement within Uganda, although formal permission is required of refugee camp residents if they wish to travel to other large cities.2 Uganda’s formal refugee policy approach is ‘local settlement’, which allows refugees to settle among their hosts. The Self-Reliance Strategy (SRS) means that each refugee family is given food rations as well as a one-time package of non-food items. The household is also given a small plot of land for subsistence agriculture. After a certain period of time, they are expected to have reached a state of self-sufficiency and are ‘phased off’ food and other humanitarian assistance (Hovel 2007).

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In Sudan, however, South Sudanese refugees were, and still are, looked upon as a security threat. This is a very much expected, if difficult, trajectory.3 South Sudanese refugees have an ambiguous status in Sudan (Manby 2012: 2): Sudan is their former country, in which successive regimes in Khartoum maintained economically predatory and politically exclusionary policies towards the South, contributing to two successive civil wars, and as a result, the majority of South Sudanese refugees have retained a negative attitude towards the Northern part of the country. The first civil war, which was fought from 1955 to 1972, ended with the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement. The second, which lasted from 1983 to 2005, concluded with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which paved the way for the referendum on secession in 2010 and the independence of South Sudan in 2011. As soon as the CPA had been signed and the implementation processes were under way, South Sudanese started to move back from Sudan, slowly at first, and then in huge numbers.4 The January 2011 referendum to determine the future of South Sudan precipitated a final mass movement back there in the months leading up to the country’s independence. For most people living in South Sudan on the border with Sudan who had previous experience of living in Sudan, the decision to move back there when the war reached their areas was a difficult one, as many informants explained.5 A small number of South Sudanese had decided to stay in Sudan in 2011 and kept their homes in Khartoum’s shantytowns, but the majority had sold all their assets in Khartoum and other urban and rural areas in Sudan and used the money to finance their return journeys or to buy furniture and building materials to help them settle into their new lives in South Sudan (see Franck in this volume). In less than two years, however, they were forced to flee back to Sudan. In Sudan, the government refused to use the legal terms refugees (Arabic: laji’iyn), IDPs (Arabic: nazihin), asylum seekers, stateless, or ‘other people of concern’ to refer to these new arrivals. Instead, President Omar al-Bashir’s government officially called them ‘arrivals’ (Arabic: wafidin), largely in order to deny them any legal rights or protections (El-Hassan 2016: 7). This means that South Sudanese refugees in Sudan are not entitled to enjoy the benefits that are usually granted to ordinary refugees and as required by international conventions. They have to put up with host communities who have their own resources and interests. Under the new circumstances, ‘arrivals’ cannot deal with their host communities as equals or on a legal refugee basis. In practical policy terms, the Sudanese government has no strategy for dealing with this situation, but after long and arduous negotiations, the UNHCR has reached an

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understanding with it to mitigate the hardships to which ‘arrivals’ are subjected, and to have them treated as ‘other people of concern’ (a term that is also not well-defined in UNHCR conventions).

Background Research I was engaged in a research project entitled ‘Identity, Nationality and Citizenship for South Sudanese Communities in Khartoum’,6 the aim of which was to examine the processes of identity, nationality and citizenship changes for a group of South Sudanese people resident in Khartoum since the independence of South Sudan in 2011. The emphasis of the study was on the everyday experiences and practices of South Sudanese communities in Khartoum in light of the recent political crisis that has devastated the newly established country of South Sudan since December 2013. The study assesses the impact of the political situation and current conflict on the perceptions and expressions of South Sudanese national identity, Southern Sudanese settlement preferences, relations between neighbouring nationals and the decision of Southern people in Khartoum to stay or return (for instance, in light of the Cooperation Agreement of 27 September 2012 between Sudan and South Sudan).7 The study uses the concept of ‘community citizenship’ as an alternative to the conventional concept of legal citizenship, which usually dominates the literature (Bützer 2011). ‘Community citizenship’ refers to all kinds of protections and services individuals might acquire by being a recognized member of a local community. This type of citizenship is not necessarily related to a person’s legal citizenship, in the sense that if individuals acquire ‘community citizenship’ status, it might entitle them to satisfy all their rights and needs without requiring legal citizenship. The research findings suggest that many members of the South Sudanese community in Khartoum are able to acquire community citizenship by dint of having lived in Khartoum (mainly in peripheral shantytowns) for many decades before the secession of South Sudan (Bakhit 2016). The study also concludes that the most important way of avoiding the dilemma of legal statelessness for the Southern Sudanese population in Khartoum is for the authorities of both Sudan and South Sudan to ensure that no individual loses his or her Sudanese nationality without acquiring South Sudanese nationality under the current nationality laws of South Sudan.

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Ethnicity, Nationalism and Citizenship The academic study of ethnicity in Africa has been of primary concern to social scientists since the 1930s. Since the 1960s, the main impetus has been new theories and concepts such as ethnicity versus tribalism and the invention of the ‘ethnic boundaries’ concept, which was conceptualized by Fredrik Barth and led to the replacement of the idea of ‘cultural difference’ (Barth 1969), accompanied by the introduction of the situational/circumstantialist approach. Ethnic identity studies tended to investigate the patterns and dynamics of interaction that link groups (Sanders 2002), particularly the locations of cross-group interactions, in terms of social space rather than as physical places. In his chapter entitled ‘Tribesmen, Townsmen and the Struggle over a Proper Lifestyle in Northern Kordofan’ (Beck 1998: 258), Kurt Beck illustrated the process of assimilation and hegemony of the ‘high culture’ claimed by Nile Valley ethnic groups in Northern Sudan toward the nomadic people of Kordofan region. In his work, lifestyle was used as an empirical and conceptual tool to delineate cultural and identity transformation in Sudan at a national level: in other words, to describe how the dominant Northern ethnic groups are able to enforce their specific version of Sudanese identity on nomadic communities. In his study of the Lafofa people (Manger 1994), Leif Manger used many related concepts, such as Arabization, Islamization, commercialization and modernization, to analyse the process of change in Lafofa and the Nuba Mountains in general. Another contribution was made by Francis M. Deng (Deng 1995), who stressed that the identities that are currently in conflict in the Sudans are the result of an historical legacy characterized by an institutionalized form of slavery that classified groups into a superior race of masters and an inferior race of enslaved people. Sudan was apparently influenced by Barth’s theory, as can be seen in the study by Abdul-Jalil (Abdul-Jalil 1985), who adopted the situational approach in his study of ethnic identification among the Dor community in Northern Darfur. He argued that there are four main criteria that can be used as indicators for identifying ethnic groups: territorial, occupational, linguistic and genealogical. Assal adopted a different approach (Assal 2006), emphasizing the resource-based conflicts taking place at a local community level, which were later transformed into ethnic identity conflicts through binary oppositions such as Arabs versus Africans, Christians versus Muslims and North versus South. Makris studied the spirit possession cult known as ‘tumbura’ that had spread in the shantytowns of North Khartoum (Makris 1996). He stressed that these ‘zar’

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cult ceremonies revealed the contested position between the cult’s devotees (the majority of whom were descendants of nineteenth-century African slaves) and Arab Muslim Northerners. The main feature of these Sudanese (Sudan and South Sudan) studies is their focus on the issue of ethnic identity and its relationship to armed conflict and social and political instability. Very little attention has been paid to the relationship between identity, nationalism and citizenship, however, apparently because practical issues of South Sudanese national citizenship have emerged only recently, in the few years preceding the referendum on secession. The broader debate on national identity and nationalism is not new in academic circles, however, and numerous theoretical contributions have tackled issues of nation, nationalism and citizenship, including by Anthony Smith (1991), Eric Hobsbawm (1990), Mahmood Mamdani (1996), Toyin Falola (2004) and Ernest Gellner (2006), all of which placed nationalism and citizenship within a broad perspective, examining the role of history, culture, identity and ethnicity in the formation of national identity and the concept of nationalism (Assal 2011a: 2).

South Sudanese Conceptions of Citizenship in Sudan This chapter uses, and tests, the concept of ‘community citizenship’ as its primary theoretical framework. This concept was initially developed to explain the situation and predicament of South Sudanese refugees in Khartoum (Bakhit 2016), building on what migration studies have begun to describe variously according to Turner’s article (Turner 2016: 680) as liminal (Chacon 2014), interstitial (Villazor 2016), marginalized (Martins 2016), limbo (Marko 2015), fragile (Oosterom 2011) and ­denizen (Turner 2016) citizenship. Further investigation is required in order to assess whether this concept is capable of capturing different experiences of communities and geographical areas outside the specific politics and economics of the Khartoum area. As Oosterom states clearly: ‘While the question of citizenship has been discussed for refugee populations (Nyers 2006), far less is known about how internal displacement affects people’s understandings of their citizenship, and how this influences their practice of citizenship’ (Oosterom 2016: 364). More importantly, it is vital to test this powerful concept in comparable refugee communities in order to examine its theoretical and practical utility and its scholarly and policy implications. As such, this chapter looks towards the local language of citizenship on the legal and

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social fringes, further examining African theories of belonging, interconnection and social security in semi-legal policies and economics on the borders of multiple authorities, as argued for by Beneduce (2015) and Nyamnjoh (2015). There is a general consensus among most political theorists that citizenship is both a status acquired through being a member of a collectivity (usually called the state) and a system of rights and obligations that builds upon ideas of equality, justice and solidarity (Keller 2014:19). The former produces the legal and institutional aspects of this membership and is less problematic, while the latter is perpetually complex and contested due to the fact that there are different views of the nature of these rights and obligations and the extent to which they might achieve equality and justice. The theoretical advances mentioned above tackle both aspects of this conceptualization and stand to build an Afrocentric understanding of citizenship theory and practice. There are three schools of thought in classical Western literature about the concept of citizenship (Miller 2002: 3). They are: LiberalIndividualism, Civic-Republican and Social Rights of Citizenship. For the first, the focus is always on the autonomy of the individual citizen. A member of a state has the duty to respect the rights of others, without having any obligations towards society other than those established on a contractual basis. The second school of thought derives from the time of the French Revolution, when the notion of fraternity and the shared experience of participation in a united political community gained popularity; hence, reliance on common values through patriotism and loyalty and an association through shared experiences of local community are crucial for civil citizenship. The final school of thought was developed by Marshall (Grest 2000: 4), who identified the three elements of citizenship as civil, political and social rights. The central point is that all citizens are equal, and the term social rights embraces a whole range, from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share the social heritage and live the life of a civilized being according to the prevailing standards in the society. Many scholars and political observers of the citizenship experience in Africa have returned to Mamdani’s arguments around the colonial inheritance to explain the apparent failure to build equal reciprocal relations between state and society. Mamdani blames this failure on the inheritance of colonial systems, in which states allowed a privileged urban minority to have citizenship rights, relegating the rural majority to passive, collective, tribalized or disenfranchised subjecthood. Despite

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the criticisms levelled against it, this argument remains a powerful one: Marko argues that after its independence in 2011, South Sudan ‘returned to the colonial understanding of subjects of easily definable and governable ethnic groups ruled by the citizens from the urban centres of power’. Across Africa, many countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda still maintain an explicitly racial or ethnic basis for citizenship. However, in most other African countries today, as in most other modern states’ legal systems, the jus sanguinis blood tie principle has lost its ethnic basis: citizenship is largely granted to those who are born to a parent who is a citizen, including one who has acquired citizenship by naturalization and may not be of the same ethnicity as the dominant group (Abdulbari 2011: 160–61), or those who are born from mixed ethnicities. Furthermore, even the Sudanese Constitutions of 1998 and 2005 follow this more moderate application: ‘Up until the secession of South Sudan in 2011, citizenship followed the logic of “jus sanguinis”, without directly excluding ethnic groups from the imagined political body of Sudan’ (Marko 2015). Past incidences of the arbitrary stripping of nationality by state powers have made the international community aware of the seriousness of the problem and have encouraged a renewed attempt to address statelessness: one example of this can be found in the recent Eritrea-Ethiopia experience, where thousands of people were expelled from Ethiopia to Eritrea and vice versa (Abdulbari 2011: 172). I have argued elsewhere (Bakhit 2016) that there is a need to differentiate between two types of citizenship for the Southern Sudanese people in Khartoum (that is, legal citizenship and ‘community’ citizenship). The differentiation between legal citizenship and community citizenship can be theoretically traced to the influential work of Mahmoud Mamdani (1996). He argues that colonialism in Africa created two categories of people – citizens and subjects – or, as it is sometimes termed, citizens and natives. While the natives were bound to their rural ‘ethnic groups’ and spoke the language of tradition and custom, citizens were usually those who lived in urban areas and ruled by rights, duties and privileges. Mamdani asserts that these particular historical and political formulations came to define the way citizenship was perceived in postcolonial Africa. African central states are governed by civil law and formal institutions, the domain of the national elites, while the local state or native authorities enforce customary laws. The former is the realm of the rights and duties associated with legal citizenship, while the latter is the realm of culture and custom. Therefore, Mamdani argues,

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the natives are engaged by the state as subjects and as such are not entitled to the rights or benefits of citizenship. If one applies this approach to the current situation, it seems that there has been little change since colonial times with regard to the relationship between the African state and its citizens, as Mamdani stressed. From here, I would argue that this dual type of citizenship (that is, legal citizenship and ‘community’ citizenship) has allowed considerable numbers of people to be excluded from legal citizenship but to survive and sustain their social and economic lives through community citizenship. This ‘community’ status gives South Sudanese people resident in Khartoum fewer rights than they had when they were citizens of Sudan, but it has still enabled them to live and survive with at least the minimum standards of Khartoum shantytowns. South Sudanese refugees are benefiting from the lengthy experience and the social networks they were able to build in Khartoum while they lived in the city (for example, language, geography, networks and livelihoods). They have access to rented accommodation in their former shantytowns, although it is now more expensive, and so people usually opt to rent half a house or a single room, or even share with relatives. People living in their former shantytowns also have certain services, including a basic education for their children, and may from time to time receive some form of assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and some medical treatment from an NGO called Al-Manar (in the Al-Baraka shantytown). This ‘community citizenship’ is essentially a new type of status that does not belong to the formal sets of legal definitions such as citizen, refugee or internally displaced person (IDP); rather, it operates as a substitute for a lack of legal citizenship.

The Impact of Histories of Negative Nationalism on South Sudanese Belonging Following Benedict Andersen’s definition of a nation as an ‘imagined political community’ and his emphasis on the fact that ‘nationality, nation-ness and nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular kind’ (Andersen 1983: 49), it is possible to understand processes of identity change by following their history. I argue, based on my empirical research in Khartoum, that the image of the South Sudan State in the minds of South Sudanese people in Khartoum prior to the referendum on South Sudan’s secession in 2011 was shaped by powerful political rhetoric (negative nationalism) that depicted South Sudan as an ideal

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state (paradise), a space where everything was and would be the opposite of what had been experienced during the long history of living under the exclusionary, and often violent, Sudanese State in Khartoum. For example, Saymon described to me how he imagined life in South Sudan would be: In my small village in Upper Nile State near Wau town, we don’t need anything from outside except sugar and salt. Everything is available in abundance; we produce all our needs of food and drinks, and it’s better than here  – we don’t need money at all. I visited my village a few months ago; people live in peace and happiness  – they don’t worry about anything. I was working here [in Al-Baraka] for more than twenty years as a head of the local committee, and I am a prominent member of the National Congress Party [the ruling Islamist party in Sudan] in Al-Baraka, but after the referendum results they [the NCP] kicked me out without even saying thank you for your services. For that, soon I will leave this place; I will sell my two houses and go back to my small village in Upper Nile. I am an old man now, and I want to spend the rest of my life in my ancestral homeland. 8

When the Southern Sudanese moved back to South Sudan (after 2011), this romantic image was shattered by the experience of further discrimination and violent actions from the South Sudan government. Thus, when these same people returned to Khartoum as refugees after the civil war that broke out in 2013, what they had thought of as an exploitative state (Sudan) became a new idealized state, while the South Sudan government became the new exploiter. This is exactly what happened to Saymon Ushan. After he returned to South Sudan, the conflict suddenly erupted and reached his village, so he quickly fled with his wife and family. They travelled toward Abu-Gebiha (on the border between South Sudan and Sudan) on foot for several weeks, drinking from channels. He fell sick and went to hospital there. He called one of his former colleagues on the local committee in Al-Baraka, who sent money to him and began to let everyone who knew him know. He received a considerable amount of assistance, which enabled him to return to Khartoum and rent a small old house in Al-Baraka. He was still very ill, and the doctors told his son he was suffering from cancer. As time went on, his family received less and less assistance, and in the end, until his death in 2016, he only had his son to help him. Throughout my interviews and conversations with South Sudanese refugees in Khartoum, a constant comparison is made between the two experiences of living under these regimes. There is an apparent

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appreciation for the Khartoum government for allowing people to return, and many refugees (especially from the Upper Nile Region in South Sudan) expressed their regret at voting for the separation in 2011. This drastic change in how South Sudanese people view the two essentially equally brutal states is the result of a traumatic response to what happened in South Sudan (memories of horrific experiences, losing family members and so on). At the same time, the structure of the South Sudanese community in Khartoum after their return to Khartoum has been shaped by a crisis of representation. This has come about because the former leaders of the South Sudanese communities in Khartoum were often educated politicians, mostly from the ranks of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which became the de facto single party in independent South Sudan, and largely from the Dinka ethnic group (Kindersley 2015). This specific group has been associated with a common image of the creation of the current government in South Sudan, and as a result, there is a widespread lack of trust in the educated elites who championed the cause of independence. Despite this, there remains the basic need to have representatives of the South Sudanese in Khartoum to take on organizational and administrative roles. Today, local community leaders are drawn mainly on the basis of ethnic belonging, and sometimes on a neighbourhood basis, without the majority support of South Sudanese leaders (symbolizing South Sudanese nationality), in stark contrast to pre-2011 Khartoum South Sudanese communities.

Liminal Space of Belonging for South Sudanese in Khartoum: The Example of the Al-Baraka Shantytown The concept of liminality was first developed in anthropological literature by Arnold van Gennep in the early twentieth century and was later taken up by Victor Turner (Thomassen 2009). In the beginning, it was largely used to denote ‘a threshold’, or the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that usually appears during the central stage of processes, when participants no longer enjoy their old status but have not yet begun the transition to the new status they will hold when the process is complete. During this liminal stage, participants ‘stand at the threshold’ (Simpson and Weiner 1989) between their previous way of structuring their identity, time or community and a new status, which is supposed to be completed at the end of the processes. Nowadays, use of the term has expanded significantly, and it is used in many scholarly works by

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disciplines other than anthropology to describe political and cultural changes at a broad community level. It is therefore possible to describe the South Sudanese communities in Khartoum as being in a ‘liminal space’ created by their ambiguous position of being citizens and refugees, locals and foreigners and residents and outsiders, and belonging or being strangers. A clear example of liminality can be found among the South Sudanese in the Al-Baraka shantytown, which is located in the north-eastern periphery of Khartoum. The people of Al-Baraka have migrated or been displaced from various parts of South and West Sudan and had very little prior contact with Khartoum. They include many small ethnic groups that had very limited previous awareness of each other and communities that are hostile to each other in their home areas. In a joint survey conducted by a number of INGOs in 2003 covering all the major shantytowns in Khartoum, it was found that ‘the major ethnic groups are Dinka and Nuba (representing 25.4% and 20.6% of households respectively). Arab ethnic groups (including Misiri) make up 14% of the IDP households and Fur 13.1%. Other significant groups include Shilluk  – 4.1%, Bari – 4%, Firtit – 3.2%, Nuer – 2.3% and Funj – 2%’ (CARE and IOM 2003: 14). These figures indicate the diverse ethnic backgrounds of shantytown residents, and it was a huge challenge for these disparate ethnic groups to live together in a new urban environment. For this reason, there were many ethnic clashes between local residents in the early stages of settlement. Saymon noted: At first it was not like this. Before the planning there were many tribal conflicts, especially in Karton Kassala [now known as Al-Baraka]. Every day you found [a] tribe clash[ing] with [another] tribe, and for this reason we established [a] leaders’ council from 36 tribes with one leader from each, and then the conflict stopped. Before the planning, they established one council, [which] stopped the fighting.9

This hostile situation created an internal social hierarchy within which each ethnic group claimed superiority over the others, using the considerable presence of ethnic organizations in the area to gain power and privileges. With time, however, many institutions, such as schools, local committees, sport clubs and worship gatherings, which cut across ethnic groups, began to have a more inclusive effect on local people’s ­perceptions of belonging. Another uniting factor was the realization that all residents had certain fundamental differences from the dominant culture in Khartoum. Finally, since their arrival, the residents had shared the difficulties and

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challenges of shantytown life, creating a common history: they all suffered from the settlement’s lack of legality, water, electricity, transportation links and good jobs, as they were stereotyped by other residents of the city as poor and IDPs. One way of overcoming these internal divides was for the residents to expand their definitions of themselves and incorporate new ethnic groups under the umbrella of larger ethnic groups from their area of origin. This meant that ethnicity in the shantytowns came to have different meanings and implications from the way ethnicity was understood in their rural home areas. For the South Sudanese, this description simply refers to a geographical rather than an ethnic entity, one in which all the ethnic groups living in this regional space are considered to be part of one ‘pan-ethnic’ group. One of the results of this powerful designation was the formation of South Sudan as an independent country in July 2011. South Sudan is therefore very diverse, with many historical rivalries among its main ethnic groups (for example, Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk, among many others). As an example of this, Deng (Deng 1995) claims that perpetuating the name of a Dinka person requires a collective effort on the part of his family to call on the cooperation of clan and tribal members, and hence places the emphasis on unity and harmony as essential ethnic values. Since this emphasis is designed to minimize dissent within the lineage, a sense of pride in the Dinka lineage and in oneself as a descendant of that lineage becomes compulsory. Deng further notes that the Dinka are a very proud people, both individually and collectively, and that this sense of pride is an outcome of the honour and self-respect that are required in order to maintain an excellent reputation (Deng 1995). Therefore, when South Sudanese people’s interactions with the outside world increased  – in many ways, including through migration to Sudan – they were encouraged to see themselves as all ‘Southern Sudanese’ people. It is therefore possible to argue that the formation of the Southern Sudan identity and belonging is a result of interactions with other ethnic groups, accompanied by their implied low status in the eyes of other residents of Khartoum and the Sudanese State, a degrading situation that predominantly occurs in urban settings. This liminal ‘South Sudanese’ identity continued until the secession of South Sudan from Sudan (2011), and was, in fact, the main factor behind the demand for independence. However, even though many South Sudanese have remigrated to Khartoum, the South Sudanese still occupy this same space of liminality and are constantly on the threshold of being part of the historical Al-Baraka shantytown development, while still being regarded by the urban authorities as refugee-like. For the South Sudanese themselves,

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their conceptions also include many expressions of ambiguous belonging between South Sudan and Al-Baraka.

Conclusion Issues of legal and personal belonging, nationality and community citizenship for South Sudanese people in exile during a third civil war are all critical for determining the survival and continuity of these communities, especially as regards those South Sudanese who take refuge in Sudan. This chapter takes up this challenge, investigating the comparative and deeply contrasting experiences – and thus, it is theorized, contrasting ideas of citizenship rights, belonging and documentation practices – of South Sudanese refugees in Sudan. The chapter has used the concept of ‘community citizenship’ as an alternative to the conventional concept of legal citizenship, which usually dominates the literature. ‘Community citizenship’ refers to all kinds of protections and services individuals might acquire by being a recognized member of a local community. This type of citizenship does not necessarily have any relationship to a person’s legal citizenship, in the sense that if individuals acquire ‘community citizenship’ status they may be enabled to satisfy all their rights and needs without requiring legal citizenship. In my view, many members of the South Sudanese community in Khartoum are able to acquire community citizenship through having lived in Khartoum (mainly in peripheral shantytowns) for many decades before the secession of South Sudan. The chapter also argues that the image of South Sudan prior to the referendum was shaped by powerful political rhetoric (nationalism) that depicted South Sudan as a paradise, a space where everything was the opposite to what had been experienced in Sudan. When the Southern Sudanese moved back to the Republic of South Sudan, this image was shattered by their experience of far greater discrimination and violence. When these same people returned to Sudan, what had been imagined as the evil state (Sudan) became the new paradise, while South Sudan became the new evil state. These descriptions are the outcome of very recent brutal experiences of violence and loss of family members in the current conflict in South Sudan. The chapter concludes that South Sudanese are caught in an in-­ between or liminal space of belonging they occupy in Khartoum. For South Sudanese refugees, therefore, living in Khartoum has become a highly ambiguous experience, a space full of contradictions. Before the independence of South Sudan, they were full citizens of the shantytowns,

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owned their own homes and contributed to the historical development of their areas. After South Sudan’s independence, however, they found themselves in a highly liminal position between being refugees and citizens, and between belonging and being strangers – a status that can only be described as ‘community citizenship’. Mohamed A.G. Bakhit holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of Bayreuth, Germany. Since May 2016, he has been an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Khartoum, Sudan and the head of this department since 2017. His main research interests are identity change, urbanization, minority groups and citizenship. Recently, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Volkswagen Foundation-funded research project ‘Knowledge for Tomorrow  – Cooperative Research Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa’, coordinated by the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF), University of Frankfurt, Germany. He was part of the postdoctoral project entitled ‘Identity, Nationality and Citizenship for Southern Sudanese Communities in Khartoum’, which ran from 2015 to 2019. He has been awarded the Individual Research Grant of African Peacebuilding Network (APN) 2019–2020 to conduct a research project entitled ‘South Sudanese Refugees in Sudan Border: Community Citizenship and Refugee Systems’, funded by The Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York, US.

Notes 1. See the article by Catherine Robinson (2017). 2. My research assistant on my short field trip to Kampala in May 2016 had to obtain permission to leave the Arua refugee camp in order to travel to Kampala to work with me. 3. The Sudan and South Sudan governments have a highly fluctuating political relationship. When the latter seceded from the former, both raised many controversial issues, including border demarcation, oil revenue sharing, hosting rebel groups and the status of former citizens. As a result of the December 2019 uprising in Sudan and the removal of al-Bashir’s dictatorship, however, the relationship between the South Sudanese government and the transitional government in Sudan seems very cordial and trusting, at least for the time being. 4. Some statistics have estimated that more than four million people of South Sudanese origin were IDPs in the current Sudan. See, for example, Nilsson (2000: 9).

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5. In 2016 to 2017, I spent six months doing fieldwork in the Al-Baraka shantytowns in Khartoum while three research assistants covered other areas of Khartoum (Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North). 6. The project was funded under the Africa Initiative of the Volkswagen Foundation: ‘Knowledge for Tomorrow  – Cooperative Research Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Junior Fellowship Group in the Social Sciences. The Fellowship began in August 2015, and was completed in September 2018. 7. As part of this agreement, Sudan and South Sudan ratified a Framework Agreement, which among other things includes the Four Freedoms Agreement, which is intended to grant nationals of each state the freedoms of residence, movement and economic activity and the right to acquire and dispose of property in the territory of the other state. 8. Interview with Saymon Ushan Ding, the head of the popular committee of Quarter 4, member of the legislative assembly of East Nile locality. He was also a tribal leader of the Shilluk in the area and was the most senior official in Q4, 3. Al-Baraka, Khartoum, 17 October 2011. 9. Interview with Saymon Ushan Ding.

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Beck, K. 1998. ‘Tribesmen, Townsmen and the Struggle over Proper Lifestyle in Northern Kordofan’, in E. Stiansen and M. Kevane (eds), Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa. Leiden: Brill, pp. 254–79. Beneduce, R. 2015. ‘The Moral Economy of Lying: Subjectcraft, Narrative Capital, and Uncertainty in the Politics of Asylum’, Medical Anthropology 34(6): 551–71. Bützer, C. 2011. ‘The Second-Class Citizens of Sudan: A Study of Southern Sudanese in Khartoum’, Ph.D. dissertation. Berlin: Free University. CARE and IOM. 2003. ‘Sudan IDP Demographic, Socio-economic Profiles for Return and Reintegration Planning Activities: Khartoum IDP Households’. Survey conducted by CARE and International Office of Migration. De Geoffroy, A. 2005. ‘From Internal to International Displacement in Sudan’, presentation at ‘Migration and Refugee in the Middle East and North Eastern Africa’ workshop, 23–25 October. American University in Cairo. Deng, F. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington: The Brookings Institute. De Vries, L., and M. Schomerus. 2017. ‘Fettered Self-determination: South Sudan’s Narrowed Path to Secession’, Civil Wars 19(1): 26–45. DOI: 10.1080/13698249.2017.1342442. De Waal, A. 2005. ‘Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African Identities, Violence and External Engagement’, African Affairs 104(415): 181–205. Dunne, M., and T. Bonazzi. 1995. Citizenship and Rights in Multicultural Societies. Keele: Keele University Press. El-Hassan, I.S. 2016. ‘South Sudan “Arrivals” in the White Nile State (Sudan): Not Citizens, Not IDPs, Not Refugees: What Are They?’, Sudan Working Paper no. 7. Online at: www.cmi.no. Eriksen, T.H. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press. Falola, Toyin. 2004. Nationalism and African Intellectuals. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Gaffey, C. 2017. ‘South Sudan’s Forgotten Refugees Keep Fleeing as Violence Continues’, News Week, 14 January. Retrieved 26 November 2020 from: https://www.newsweek.com/south-sudans-refugees-most-africa-ke ​ e p​ -fleeing-violence-continues-556250. Gellner, Ernest. 2006. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gouws, A. (ed.). 2005. (Un)thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa. Aldershot: Ashgate. Grest, J. 2000. Urban Citizenship: Governance, Regulation, Development and Participation: Some Thoughts from the Warwick Junction Project. Durban: University of Natal, History Department. Heraclides, A. 1991. The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics. London: Frank Cass & Co. Hobsbawm, E.J. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Hovel, Lucy. 2007. ‘Self-settled Refugees in Uganda: An Alternative Approach to Displacement?’, Journal of Refugee Studies 20(4): 599–620. Idris, A.H. 2005. Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ______. 2013. Identity, Citizenship, and Violence in Two Sudans: Reimagining a Common Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Keller, E.J. 2014. Identity, Citizenship, and Political Conflict in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kindersley, N. 2015. ‘Identifying the South Sudanese: Registration for the January 2011 Referendum and Defining a New Nationality’, in S. Calkins, E. Ille and R. Rottenburg (eds), Emerging Orders in the Sudans. Langaa Research and Publishing. Leonardi, C., and M. Santschi. 2016. Dividing Communities in South Sudan and Northern Uganda. London: The Rift Valley Institute. Makris, G.P. 1996. ‘Slavery, Possession and History: The Construction of the Self among Slave Descendants in the Sudan’, Journal of the International African Institute 66(2): 159–82. Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Manby, B. 2012. The Right to a Nationality and the Secession of South Sudan: A Commentary on the Impact of the New Laws. Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA). Online at: www.afrimap.org. Manger, L. 1994. From the Mountains to the Plain: The Integration of the Lafofa Nuba into Sudanese Society. Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. Marko, F.D. 2015. ‘Negotiations and Morality: The Ethnicisation of Citizenship in Post-secession South Sudan’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 9(4): 676. Mazrui, A.A. 1971. ‘The Multiple Marginality of the Sudan’, in Y.F. Hassan (ed.), Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: University of Khartoum Press. Miller, D. 2002. Citizenship and National Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nilsson, Desiree. 2000. Internally Displaced, Refugees and Returnees from and in the Sudan: A Review. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Nyamnjoh, F. 2015. ‘Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 52(3): 253–70. Oommen, T.K. 1997. Citizenship, Nationalism and Ethnicity: Reconciling Competing Identities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Oosterom, M.A. 2016. ‘Internal Displacement, the Camp and the Construction of Citizenship: Perspectives from Northern Uganda’, Journal of Refugee Studies 29(3): 363–97. Osman, O.M. 2014. ‘‫ م‬2005 ‫تنفيذ حكم االعدام في المدانين بقتل شهداء الشرطة في احداث سوبا‬ [Death Penalty Carried Out on Those Convicted of Killing Policemen in the Events in Soba in 2005]’, SudaneseOnline, 10 January 2014. Available at sudaneseonline.com/board/260/msg/1263469960.html. Robinson, C. 2017. ‘South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda Now Exceed 1 Million’, UNHCR, 17 August. Available at: www.unhcr.or.

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Roche, M. 1992. Rethinking Citizenship: Welfare, Ideology and Change in Modern Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rolandsen, Ø.H., and N. Kindersley. 2017. ‘South Sudan: A Political Economy Analysis’. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Run, P. 2012. ‘Sudan and South Sudan Still Suffering the Consequences of Divorce’. E-International Relations. Sanders, Jimy M. 2002. ‘Ethnic Boundaries and Identity in Plural Societies’, Annual Rev. Sociology 28: 327–57. Scherr, K.M. 2012. ‘Legal Implications of Sudan’s Separation: The Question of Citizenship’, Heinrich Böll Stiftung: Publication Series on Democracy 28:100–3. Sharkey, H.J. 2008. ‘Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity and Race’, African Affairs 107(426): 21–43. Sikainga, A.A. 2011. ‘Citizenship and Identity in Post-secession Northern Sudan’, Association of Concerned African Scholars, Bulletin no. 86, November. Simpson, A.J., and E.S.C. Weiner. 1989. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spinner, J. 1994. The Boundaries of Citizenship: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in the Liberal State. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, Anthony. 1991. ‘The Nation: Invented, Imagined, Reconstructed?’ Millennium 20(3): 353–68. Strauss, A., and J. Corbin. 1990. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. New York: Sage. Thomassen, B. 2009. ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality, International Political Anthropology’, International Political Anthropology 2:1, 5-27. Torres, R. et al. 1999. Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader. Malden: Blackwell. Turner, Bryan S. 2016. ‘We Are All Denizens Now: On the Erosion of Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies 20(6–7): 679–92.

[•  Chapter 10  •]

Marriage Strategies and Kinship Representations

A Space for Sociocultural In-Betweenness within the ‘Political Economy’ of Identities BARBARA CASCIARRI Kinship and Marriage from the Classical Anthropological Approach to Renewed Insights on Identities

Kinship and marriage have been a crucial focus of anthropologi-

cal inquiry and theorization since the discipline was founded in the nineteenth century. While the handbooks that served as guides to ethnographic inquiry developed tools for data collection on what was considered to be a mandatory domain to be studied ‘in the field’ (regardless of any specific research focus), theoretical schools spent years engaging in sometimes bitter debates on the interpretation of these social phenomena.1 The deconstructionist postmodern turn reached this ‘sacred cow’ of classical anthropology in the 1970s, even going as far as to doubt the existence of an empirical and analytical domain that might be pertinently defined as ‘kinship and marriage’ (Needham 1971; Schneider 1984). More recently, however, these tropes have reappeared as a legitimate focus for modern anthropological approaches (see L’Homme 2000), although they have to some extent lost their power as markers of a ‘crucial transversal issue’ and a shared conviction surrounding their previously unrefuted positions as underlying Grand Theories. Far from using this chapter to plead for a revival of historical theories on kinship and marriage that have demonstrated their shortcomings, there are two reasons that have inspired me to attempt a comparative analysis of fieldwork material collected over twenty years spent among various Sudanese groups. The first is practical and stems from the fact

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that a good part of my discussions with local actors emphasized their kinship and marriage practices and representations as relevant issues, despite differences between the rural and urban groups among whom I have done my fieldwork, and regardless of the variations in my research topics. The second is more theoretical: it argues that kinship and marriage continue to show potential as an entry point for shedding light on analytical notions that are more usually applied to other domains of social life. I argue that kinship and marriage are a space of sociocultural liminality that supports the in-betweenness paradigm I advocate here. While this notion has its genesis in the debate among geographers seeking to deconstruct the urban/rural dichotomy (Legall and Rougé 2014), its conceptualization can be extended from the predominantly physical and spatial sense to a broader one that includes different, wider sociocultural spaces. Within this extended meaning, I will look at marriage practices and strategies, which usually involve discourses on descent and kinship as sources of belonging, as a particular ‘in-between space’. To different degrees and in various forms, the practical and discursive social dynamics linked to marriage practices and negotiations always evoke and set in motion local definitions of ‘sameness’ or ‘otherness’ and contribute towards marking their borders. Despite common tendencies that present these groups (and their symbolic kinship supports) as stable, clear-cut entities, an empirically based analysis reveals more complex and more flexible configurations. Marriage strategies thus emerge as a privileged liminal space within which a constant redefinition of ‘us’ and ‘the others’ is ordered and given meaning in specific contexts. Dealing with marriage practices (and kinship domain) from an in-between perspective is particularly challenging in the contemporary Sudanese context. At a basic level, an analysis of marriage practices is an entry point for understanding wider dynamics of change. As two anthropologists working on Sudan have pertinently stated, we can look at ‘. . . changing patterns in the institutions of marriage as barometers of wider social change’ (Lobban 1979: 99), and we can say that ‘. . . the very complexity of marriage, with its many levels of social meanings, makes it an appropriate subject’ by which the researcher may ‘discern with considerable clarity the impact of the changes’, though stressing that ‘. . . the institution of marriage, however, is much more than a passive mirror of a changing social order; it is itself an active agent in the reproduction and transformation of that order and of the relations that comprise it’ (Duffield 1981: 132). Following these suggestions, a diachronic2 ­analysis of marriage practices, when seen as a cluster of exchanges, ­rituals and ideologies3, allows us to observe sociocultural transformations in tandem

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with recent evolutions in Sudan and the alleged 2011 breaking point that signalled the independence of South Sudan. At a second level, marriage patterns may be conceived beyond their merely cultural aspect as a site where hierarchical ordering (of individual, families and groups) and power relations are symbolically asserted and materially performed through arrangements implied by marital alliances. In Sudan, where historical conflicts have increasingly led to a politicization of ethnicity and identities  – which strengthened their hierarchical value after the separation of South Sudan – marriage practices can be also investigated as an arena of political encounters, both at the microscale of local groups and at the macroscale of state discourse and regulations. The fieldwork data in the second part of this chapter, which follows the general approach adopted in the first, will elaborate on this twofold perspective of marriage patterns as a dynamic object for analysing wider social changes and as a prism through which the ‘political economy of identities’ in contemporary Sudan can be examined.

The Case of Sudan as Part of the Debate on ‘Arab Marriage’ and ‘Arab-Muslim Kinship Structures’ Before presenting my fieldwork data that suggest that kinship and marriage can be read through the paradigm of in-betweenness, I will consider some of the elements of the rich debate on Arab-Muslim social structures and alliance patterns. Since the earliest works of Orientalists and anthropologists on Middle Eastern and Arab-Muslim North African societies, two aspects have been underlined as being essential features of this allegedly homogenous ‘cultural area’ (Bonte and Conte 1991): the agnatic descent option and its ability to structure segmentary lineages, clans and tribes through chains of patrilineal kinship, and the endogamous marriage pattern, which favours alliances among the children of brothers. Sudanese Arab and Muslim groups have often been read by anthropologists from the latter analytical approach; however, both the particular nature of societies in Sudan and the history, configuration and evolution of the scientific debate on the endogamous and patrilineal ‘Arab tribe’ suggest that a brief reassessment of the two aforementioned assumptions is of relevance for the purposes of our particular focus.4

Anthropologists and the Issue of ‘Endogamy’ and ‘Arab Marriage’ Dealing with marriage issues in Sudan has fairly unequivocally led anthropologists to raise the issue of ‘endogamous’ trends of alliance and

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what was previously erroneously labelled as the ‘Arab marriage’ (that is, with a father’s brother’s daughter). Moreover, since the time of the earliest studies on Middle Eastern groups initiated by Orientalists in the nineteenth century and developed by anthropologists during the twentieth century, researchers have established a strong nexus between Arab Muslim ‘tribal structures’ based on principles of nasab (patrilineal descent and genealogies) and ‘asabiyya (agnatic patrilineal group solidarity), which would later be classified as ‘segmentary systems’5 and the particular tendency within these groups to marry within close agnatic groups (Bonte and Conte 1991). Despite the need to reassess the inclusion of Sudan and Sudanese groups under the label of ‘Arab and Muslim’ (an issue that I will go into below), it should be noted that since anthropology has developed studies on Northern Sudanese groups6 with a dominant focus on pastoralists (El-Hassan 2002), researchers have predominantly underscored two main ideas: the fact that these groups are included within the paradigm of the Arab Muslim agnatic tribe and their strong propensity for agnatic endogamy. Christian Delmet (1994) offers a review of the issue in his analysis of marriage patterns among ‘Arab and Arabized’ Sudanese groups. He demonstrates that, aside from the diversity of the samples, modern anthropological works among various groups in what he calls ‘Arab Sudan’  – Baggara Humr (Cunnison 1966), Kababish (Asad 1970) and Rufa‘a (Ahmed 1974) – have stressed the presence of preferential marriages with an FBD (a father’s brother’s daughter) or other first cousins within the framework of segmented patrilineal lineages and tribes. He confirms this trend from the results of his own field research among the Hamaj of the Blue Nile and the Ja‘aliyyn Taragma of Shendi, and also notes its presence among non-Arab groups like the Berti (Holy 1974). However, since most anthropologists have taken agnatic endogamy as a given within Sudanese groups, their analyses have often neglected crucial associated issues surrounding Arabization and/or Islamization. This low level neglect leads me to mention the renewed theoretical interest in these forms of marriage patterns in the 1990s. In France, it was prominently led by scholars like Pierre Bonte (1994), according to whom, in the first place, the misleading label ‘Arab marriage’ should be replaced by the notion of ‘close marriage’ (mariage proche), which allows for a comparison between Arab and non-Arab historical and contemporary societies whose practices and values support the tendency to search for a maximum degree of closeness between mates, not only in kinship but also in political and cultural ordering. In these contexts, the requirement of ‘isogamy’ for women (a marriage between mates of equal status) is linked to a concept of honour as a crucial part of a group’s

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symbolic capital. Second, an exclusive focus on FBD marriages (which is partially induced by the actors’ agnatic ideology) should be mirrored by a careful examination of simultaneous, more distant and non-agnatic alliances that make it possible to look at marriage patterns as complex systems and to reduce the weight attributed to ‘endogamy’ by revealing a plurality of exchange strategies.7 This more recent rethinking of agnatic endogamy and FBD marriage should be kept in mind as we analyse ­marriage practices in contemporary Sudan.

The Persistent Ambiguity of ‘Arabness’ and Its Political Value in Sudan Because the case studies in the central part of my chapter show the presence of Arabness and Islam issues in discourses and practices concerning marriage, I need to outline the main framework of this complex situation as a background8 to my analysis before I proceed any further. A second relevant issue of concern – besides criticism of ‘Arab agnatic endogamy’ – is the tendency to accept the widespread narrative on the historical processes that accompanied the Arabization and Islamization of Sudan – which has been acknowledged by colonial (MacMichael 1922; Trimingham 1949) and postcolonial (Fadl Hasan 1967) historians – and to designate them unquestioningly as sociocultural signifiers in modern scholarly discourse. In this case, one might be struck by ‘. . . the extent to which the processes of Arabization and Islamization have been taken for granted in the history of that country’ and by the political Sudanese elites’ assumption of the ‘natural feature’ of this wave of sociocultural change (Manger 1994: 11), alongside scholarly discussions about ethnicity, identity and nationalism concepts ‘. . . in ways that have confused rather than clarified [such] issues’ (Manger 2012: 328). Anthropological works in the ethnicity domain have proved the flexibility of ethnic borders through the cases of Fur ‘becoming’ Baggara (Arabs) on the basis of economic strategies in Darfur (Haaland 1969), or evoked the softening of the dividing lines between Nuba and Arabs thanks to the construction of an identity as colonial working class in the South Kordofan cotton industry (Saavedra 1998). In the linguistic practices sphere, although Arabization does not automatically lead to people claiming Arab identity, their often parallel Islamization leads them to adopt the material culture and secular practices of Sudanese Muslim Arabs, legitimizing their doing ‘. . . as Arabs do’ (Baumann 1987: 130). The same ambiguity also exists at a political level. Even though in the past Sudanese and scholars have previously taken the idea of flexible borders between ‘Africanism’ and ‘Arabism’ into consideration on

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the road towards building a national identity (Abd al-Rahim 1971) or the legitimate claim of an ‘Afro-Arab’ identity (with religion playing a secondary role) (Mazrui 1971), after decades of civil wars and the renewed emphasis placed by the Islamist elites on Sudan’s clear-cut identity as an Arab Muslim nation after the split with South Sudan in 2011 (Woodward 2013), this flexibility (which was hindered after the Ingaz came to power) is no longer on the agenda. In fact, the tricky issue of Arabization and Islamization has such a long history of political manipulation that it is impossible to ignore. The British colonial administration strove to dichotomize Sudanese people as Northern/Arab/Muslim vs Southerners/African/pagan or Christian (thereby implicitly assimilating being Arab with being Muslim). Native Administration fostered the reshaping of clear-cut administrative units in line with ethno-tribal homogeneous entities (Grandin 1982; Abu Shouk 1998). The polarization and dichotomization of Sudanese groups was not clarified any further after independence. Despite various debates by the governments in power after 1956 on the issues of secularism, ethnicity and national identity policies, the nexus between identification as Muslim and Arab has remained a divisive and ambiguous background issue. The politicization of these categories, which are often treated as almost natural parameters for delimiting social units, has been a major feature of the regime that came to power after the 1989 coup d’état, through the expediency of reviving Native Administration (Delmet 2005; Casciarri 2009) or the manipulation of conflicting parties in the civil wars (North/South, Nuba Mountains, Darfur), to which must be added the misguided interventions by the ‘international community’, Western powers and humanitarian aid actors (De Waal 2005).

Three Ethnographical Cases: On the Degree of Marrying ‘Outside’ or ‘Inside’ My three fieldworks involved two rural pastoral groups, the Ahamda and the Hawazma (which are divided as far as their ecological and historical contexts are concerned into semi-desert Eastern Butana and the savannah belt in South Kordofan), and Deim, a long-established urban quarter of the capital. While I am well aware of the differing backgrounds of the three cases, the legitimacy of my comparison lies uniquely with this chapter’s specific focus on marriage strategies as an in-between space. Apart from the differences in the socio-economic and cultural particularities of these groups, some variations in the data production methods also require some preliminary justification. First, the temporality and

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duration (and hence the longitudinality and thickness) of the fieldwork were not the same for all three case studies. Second, marriage and kinship issues were not always the express subject of my investigation in equal measures during the different fieldwork interventions. Finally, and as a consequence of this, the samples on which I ground my arguments vary from a quantitative point of view9 and also from a qualitative standpoint to some degree: for example, elements of ‘choice of spouse’ and relations between spouses are present in all cases, but marriage ceremonies and transactions are not recorded equally. While restating the potential of a cross-insight into marriage patterns in these three cases regardless of their differences, I also want to provide the reader with some general information on them so that the analysis that follows can be better appreciated. My first fieldwork was carried out among the Ahamda, a pastoral group from central and eastern Sudan (Butana area) that has recently settled in the desert area of rural Khartoum State (Casciarri 2014, 2015). My fieldwork among the Ahamda represents my most extensive and in-depth work in Sudan: I started conducting research among them for my Ph.D. thesis (1989–1997), followed by a ‘restudy’ several years later (2006–16). While kinship structures and alliances were a crucial topic of my initial research among the Ahamda, my focus in the second study shifted to land and water issues, although I also continued to collect secondary data on the evolution of their marriage practices. My second fieldwork was conducted among the Awlad Nuba, a branch of the Hawazma Baggara cattle herders of Southern Kordofan. This was my shortest period of fieldwork (four visits between 2007 and 2009), and it was abruptly halted by the resurgence of the civil war in the Nuba Mountains after 2011. Nonetheless, I collected a fairly significant and coherent sample of marriages among Hawazma from different lineages and with various degrees of mobility and livelihood patterns. Finally, my third fieldwork is based on what was a continuous longitudinal inquiry (2008–18) carried out in a popular central district of Khartoum, Deim, or Dyum Ash-Shargiyya (Casciarri 2016), where I lived for three years (2007–9). My research here started with the aim of drawing up a social history of the quarter relating to its recent transformations following a gentrification trend. While only the final phase of my data collection (2014–16) was explicitly centred around marriage practices, relevant material on kinship and marriage was also available in the life stories I had collected previously. I must make one final observation on my experience of data production relating to marriage issues in Sudan. Since the time of my first research among the Ahamda, I have seen that marriage-related topics

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have an amazing power to facilitate ethnographic dialogue: the fieldwork actors were normally and ‘naturally’ well-disposed to respond to the topic and sometimes even went as far as to raise the subject themselves without waiting for the anthropologist’s questions. People of different ages, gender and status felt almost equally at ease and well-qualified to talk about it compared with more selective or sensitive issues. Finally, the discussion about ‘their marriages’ led easily to an inversion of the position between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’, since a natural development of my questions was the emergence of similar questions relating to marriages within my own family, which were an ideal starting point from which to open a debate on otherness and sameness during the fieldwork itself. This clarification of an apparent methodological ­dimension – which might make it possible to argue that the discursive dimension of marriage patterns produce an in-between space for an encounter between an ethnographer and the people to be studied  – seems to me to be appropriate before I go into any detail on my analysis of marriage practices among the Ahamda, the Hawazma and the inhabitants of Deim. Even though this excursion into fieldwork cases (with two rural cases out of three, and an urban case, Deim, which is not representative of the capital as a whole) may seem out of place in a volume that focuses mainly on Khartoum, I believe that this rural–urban comparison is of interest, and I want to underline the relevance of marriage practices to the debate on the in-between paradigm that lies at the core of the collective project of this volume.

The Ahamda Pastoralists and a Commitment to ‘Arabic Marriage’ Although they belong to a larger nomad group scattered across different regions of Sudan from the White Nile to the Shendi region, the Ahamda of central-western Butana, where I carried out my longest fieldwork between 1989 and 1995, considered themselves at this specific point in time to be an autonomous tribal group (gabila) whose lineages’ agnatic segmentation from a common eponymous ancestor (Hammed) formed the framework of their material and symbolic configuration at different levels: historical territorial appropriation, exploitation of ecological resources, economic activities, political leadership and solidarity and ethno-tribal identity. This initial image of a homogeneous agnatic Arab Muslim nomadic tribe whose folk model almost perfectly matched the segmentary models of social anthropology became progressively more complex – and even contradictory – with the development of my fieldwork in the following six years. The final results of my thesis enabled me to underline the

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importance of a strong, shared ‘agnatic ideology’ capable of eliminating the relevance of maternal and extra-tribal links in the historical recomposition of the territorial, political and identity coherence of the group as a patrilineal tribe (Casciarri 1997). ‘Arab’ kinship and marriage patterns were thus a powerful tool for enabling a local pastoral group whose history was marked by moving contextual dynamics to attain wider social cohesion and legitimation. Within this framework, data on marriage strategies  – a significant part of my fieldwork data, with a huge sample10 – showed high rates of marriage with the closest kin: among first cousins (48.7% of the sample), I found a preference for alliances with FBD (father’s brother’s daughter, bitt ‘amm), which were explicitly defined as the preferred option and practised at a rate of 51.4 per cent, followed by MBD (mother’s brother’s daughter, bitt khal) at 26.6 per cent, FZD (father’s sister’s daughter, bitt ‘amma) at 11.5 per cent and MZD (mother’s sister’s daughter, bitt khala) at 10.5 per cent. I should also note that as a result of repeated FBD marriages, other first or even second degree cousins are often also agnatic kin at more distant degrees – the option of marrying within a patrilineal lineage going back up to five or six generations (fari‘) was at 53.6 per cent, while marriage within the gabila (‘tribe’, which is allegedly also an agnatic group thanks to its single founding ancestor) reached 90 per cent. By merging a global diachronic analysis of marriages (including distant generation marriages that revealed a greater variety of partner choices than the more strictly agnatically oriented recent ones) with broader data on the historical recomposition of the Ahamda as a tribe, it was possible to suggest that the preference for FBD (or more distant agnatic kin) was part of a complex strategy for strengthening both the political and territorial status of the group as an Arab Muslim tribe.11 Moreover, the focus on distant marriages, which are predominantly entered into through polygynous unions and by men with higher political or religious status, although they might be rarer than close ones, offered some interesting insights. These marriages outside the gabila and the ideal agnatic union could be read either as a political arena for negotiations with neighbouring (and potentially conflicting) tribes or as spaces of an economic agreement for stabilizing territorial access with other pastoral groups, as well as sedentary Nile villages. Despite the non-quantitative relevance of these cases for proving the acceptance of liminal spaces of negotiation of ‘otherness’ and ‘sameness’, the Ahamda themselves provided me with a recurring dual folk classification in their dominant discourse that seemed to overlap the researcher’s categories of ‘endogamy’ and ‘exogamy’ by defining marriages as either minnena, ‘within ourselves’ (the borders of ‘us’ being those of the gabila) or as min barra, ‘from outside’

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(the external space being social rather than spatial, synonymous with other gabila-s), thus expressing a clear ideology of a propensity for keeping diversity between marriage partners to a minimum. The fieldwork data from my restudy (2006–14) demonstrate a number of interesting recent variations. At first sight, I noted several general trends: first, marriage at a later age, particularly in the case of women, as this phenomenon had already been visible for men in the 1990s due to the increase in the cost of a marriage; a level of standardization in marriage ceremonies, which were increasingly beginning to resemble those of sedentary and urban groups (an increase in mahar bride-price and the disappearance of non-monetary bride-wealth, a shift from temporary post-marital residence with the bride’s family to immediate residence with the bridegroom’s family and a shortening of the ritual celebrations); an increase in the independence of young men from their fathers and paternal kin when it came to choosing a spouse; and the addition of education and wage-labour as new selection parameters. Considering the timespan between my first (1989–1995) and second fieldwork (2006– 14), and in the light of the huge multidimensional transformations that had affected the Ahamda (Casciarri 2015), these changes are not surprising, especially if we consider marriage practices as a meaningful ‘barometer of wider social change’ (Lobban 1979). Significantly, some of the cases I recorded during my second fieldwork are worthy of note due to the differences from previous values and options that had been shared by the group. One example is the first marriage of M.A. (all the personal names have been anonymized), who comes from a family in which FBD and close agnatic marriages were, and continue to be, dominant. Although he said his marriage was an autonomous personal choice, the woman he married (with the consent of his kin) after meeting her in Khartoum when he was a truck driver contradicts the general values on more than one level: his wife is divorced, she belongs to a tribe (the Baggara of South Kordofan) that is not considered to be close to the Ahamda, she is more highly educated and she is fifteen years older than him. While this atypical marriage is an isolated (albeit not unique) case, other recent marriages defined as a collective strategy seem equally to contrast with previous norms of women’s isogamy as expressed by tribal and lineage agnatic endogamy. This is the case with multiple marriages of Ahamda girls with tribesmen from agricultural villages of the Nile (especially Jeily) or with men from the Halab, a group that was highly stigmatized and cited as a true icon of an unthinkable marital alliance12 but who through their recent economic good fortune have managed to gain some degree of consideration from the Ahamda as potential ‘in-laws’.

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While the current situation reveals the presence of renewed practices and discourses in Ahamda marriage strategies, it is nonetheless important to note that this does not mean that the previous patterns  have disappeared: unions with FBD and other close agnatic kin continue to be pursued by the younger generations, and marriage has maintained its value as a collective affair relative to the agnatic group, whose agreement is still needed and which bargains not only economic and political interests but also honour as crucial symbolic capital through marriage. Two significant examples are worth mentioning. As a result of the custom of levirate marriage,13 A.M. took his deceased brother’s wife as his second wife in 1995 (the first being his FBD). Although his two daughters by his first wife are now married to distant Ahamda kin, for the marriage of his second wife’s daughter in 2015, he and his brothers preferred to arrange a union with her FBS. Both the men and women of the family explained that this choice was due to the particularly sensitive situation of the young orphan girl (whose mother’s husband is also her FB, ‘amm, a crucial figure in marriage negotiations): in their view, keeping her within the strictest agnatic group would be the best guarantee of a honourable, stable union, which might be threatened by a more distant mate in the absence of her father. The second example is A.N. Born when his father’s group was still nomadic in the 1950s, he was also married to close Ahamda kin. In the 1980s, A.N. left his family, settling in the outskirts of Khartoum while still maintaining close links with them. He was at the centre of a scandal in 2010 because he agreed to marry his daughter to a Dinka whom she knew from the multi-ethnic neighbourhood they lived in. A.N.’s ­brothers considered this choice to be unacceptable and demanded that he prohibit this marriage of ‘one of their daughters’. After a very tense conflict, A.N. – who tried to obtain his brothers’ agreement by telling them that the non-Arab husband was a Muslim anyway – refused to agree to their demand and allowed his daughter to marry. This led to a definitive split from the family and repudiation of the guilty brother: the men of his family believed that he was infringing social norms that were seen as compulsory, both by accepting a marriage contrary to shared honour criteria (thus bringing shame upon the whole group) and by ignoring the advice of the collective group of close agnatic kin. On the eve of the 2011 Referendum, they also stressed the forthcoming problems the potential separation of South Sudan would bring because of this ‘mixed marriage’. These few, but important, cases of recent marriages allow us to see that although the liminal space open to negotiation of the ethno-tribal diversity of partners is larger than it was before (having expanded to include groups other than the privileged pastoral Arab tribes of past

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patterns), some unsurpassable boundaries persist, and the strength of ‘agnatic privilege’ is still meaningful among the Ahamda.

The Post-conflict Awlad Nuba (Hawazma) and the Use of Marriage as a Tool for Peace My second fieldwork took place between 2007 and 2009 among the Awlad Nuba,14 a branch (gabila or khashum beit) of the Southern Kordofan Hawazma Baggara. The term ‘Baggara’ is a controversial label that lacks any ethnic or genealogical coherence, but it nonetheless retains significance as an identity marker for the Awlad Nuba. By claiming to be Baggara, they stress both the specificity of a production system based on nomadic cattle (bagar) herding, which distinguishes them from Abbala camel herders, and their origin (asl) as an Arab Muslim group, which sets them apart from non-Muslim and non-Arab Sudanese cattle herders. Despite a remote common ancestry with certain other Baggara tribes, their broader level of identification relates to the Hawazma, who share both a common transhumance territory stretching from Southern to Northern Kordofan and a political history since colonial rule, by virtue of having had a single paramount chief, nazir, a position that has been divided among several amir by the recent reactivation of Native Administration. Nonetheless, they refer to the Awlad Nuba as their gabila in their daily multilevel exchanges. At the time of my fieldwork, the Awlad Nuba spent most of the year in the southern part of their territory, around Kadugli, their dry season homestead (dar), and in the rainy season they started to move north, setting up their camps around El-Obeid, the main marketplace for cattle and milk. While nomadic cattle herding remained their main economic activity, their production had integrated non-pastoral activities: agriculture (rain-fed cultivation of cereals, horticulture and cash-crop production), wage labour and out-migration. Owing to significant disruptions in past decades (the encroachment of large-scale commercial agriculture, the ecological crisis of 1984–85 and a civil war since 1986), at the time of my fieldwork during the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Awlad Nuba households showed varied configurations along a continuum in which varying degrees of mobility, pastoral production and other economic activities appeared (Casciarri and Manfredi 2009). Marriage among Awlad Nuba is a central element of social reproduction and economic arrangements, and power and prestige are at stake as well as strong cultural connotations: at first sight, their marriage practices appear to show a high level of conformity with other Sudanese groups, and they were conceived in close association with a claimed

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framework of being an Arab Muslim agnatic tribe. Based on a sample of 150 marriages (124 of which were first marriages), the group showed a preference for bitt ‘amm as an ideal spouse – that is, primarily true FBD, which was 19.4 per cent of the sample (23% if we only look at first marriages). These unions include 59 per cent of marriages with a first cousin (followed in order by marriages with MBD, FZD and MZD), which represent 32.6 per cent of all marriages. A form of progressive endogamy indicates marriages with paternal cousin (real and c­ lassificatory) – defined as bitt ‘amm – within the khashum beit (a five to six generation descent group) (51.3%). ‘Tribal endogamy’ within the Awlad Nuba as a gabila is the option chosen in 92.7 per cent of marriages. Outside the Hawazma, no particular preference is given to marrying women from other Baggara tribes, which are accepted (though considered to be unrelated by kinship) alongside other Arab and Muslim Sudanese tribes. The situation is different for marriages with non-Arab or non-Muslim Sudanese tribes, which remain out of favour due to the lower status historically attributed to such groups, even where they convert to Islam. The norm of women’s isogamy therefore remains generally respected. Although it seems that the status of women in Baggara society was higher than in other Arab Muslim societies in the past (Michael 1987),15 the role of agnatic kin (father, father’s brothers and their sons) is still fundamental to marriage: their advice on the choice of a partner is constraining for young unmarried men, as first degree paternal parallel cousins (FBCh) have a right of pre-emption over their unmarried FBDs, and the close agnatic group will usually opt for FBD, which is considered to be the best way of protecting women’s honour, prestige and the political status of the tribe as a whole. Close agnatic kin also control negotiations of the bride-price (which is defined as mal rather than mahar).16 Some variations are accepted, depending on the economic wealth of the bridegroom’s family, but they are in line with an average rate of marriages within the gabila that confirms the political value of marriage as an indicator of the solidarity of the agnatic group, within which ­differences in wealth should not be highlighted. If we look beyond this initial picture of an agnatic endogamous Arab Muslim tribe, which is similar to most Arab Muslim groups, even beyond the Sudanese context, there is another dimension of Awlad Nuba marriage patterns to be discovered, but to do so, we must leave aside the statistical data from the sample temporarily and focus on trends relating to a more global, long-term history. The group that is today described as Hawazma arrived in the South Kordofan region, which was inhabited by various non-Arab indigenous people (Nuba),17 in around the eighteenth century and became established there at the beginning of the nineteenth

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century (MacMichael 1922; Stevenson 1984). Despite their ideological emphasis on common agnatic ancestry, their heterogeneity and mixing with ‘autochthonous’ people (mainly Nuba) as a cluster of nomad tribes of various origins is witnessed and documented: local narratives evidence the fact that far from being an ethnonym or a classical tribal name from a common eponymous ancestor, the term Hawazma stems from the Arabic root HZM (to gather, link, merge) applied to heterogeneous groups that ‘became brothers’ in contextual situations. The same phenomenon is noted by local actors in the case of the first level division of the group, the Halafa, who, although they are now considered to be an agnatic gabila, are actually a cluster of unrelated groups whose common identity was institutionalized through local ‘brotherhood’ pacts known as tahalluf.18 This historical flexibility of agnatic kinship and its construction processes besides actual genealogical links (implying practices of intermarriage) is particularly demonstrated by tribal names such as Awlad Nuba, literally ‘the sons of Nuba’, who are part of the Rawawga branch of the Hawazma. Although according to the model of segmentary societies the group uses a kinship idiom to express essential social relations of proximity or distance and claim patrilineal descent as a dominant criterion at an ideological level, the history of the group shows that matrilineal and affinity relations are also important for ‘creating’ kinship, as are friendships or neighbourhoods. The Awlad Nuba commitment to ‘Arab’ or close marriage found during my fieldwork must therefore be viewed within a wider context. It then becomes possible to argue that after an initial period at the time of the arrival of the Baggara in South Kordofan, when the slave trade marked a hierarchy between Arab and Nuba, this ethnic polarization was strengthened by British colonial policies – despite trends to develop a local interethnic class identity as a labour force in the cotton industry (Saavedra 1998)  – and later by the Khartoum government military’s intervention and propaganda during the civil war from 1986 to 2005. This powerful reshaping of identities in the sense of a stark opposition between Nuba and Arabs did not succeed in completely removing the discourses, memories and values of a historical intermingling (through marriages as well as local institutions for ‘creating kinship’) of Awlad Nuba and Nuba groups, which reappear in the narratives on Baggara agnatic group relations and constitution during the fieldwork carried out in the post-conflict period (2004–10). Two examples are worth recounting in this regard. The first is the case of a Nuba man whose marriage to a woman from the Awlad Nuba was considered to be a ‘normal’ event: the bride’s group, with no comment that might be interpreted as an exception both for the endogamous

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agnatic pattern and the injunction of women’s isogamy, explained that ‘he became Baggara’ by adopting a pastoral nomad livelihood through marriage. This would lead to his being viewed as a brother, and hence the couple’s children and descendants would be part of the agnatic kin. Although this is an isolated case, it casts light on the use of interethnic marriage – which is far from an ideologically dominant preference for agnatic kin – as a device for recalling the flexibility of kinship and marriage practices and how they serve as a ‘tool for peace’ between potential conflicting groups. This evokes the cases of Fur ‘becoming Baggara’ through economic pastoral strategies that have been studied in Darfur by Haaland (1969). The second example concerns the organization in February 2009 of an interethnic mu‘tamar (congress)19 promoted by rural nomadic Awlad Nuba with their Nuba neighbours, the Moro. Both groups wished to use this event to find a solution to a number of residual conflicts following the end of the war (thefts, murders and revenge) and to relaunch the tahalluf pacts and intermarriages that had been interrupted by the war. When analysed alongside marriage data, which enhance the relevance of tribal agnatic ‘endogamy’, these elements consolidate the idea of historical and contextual marriage practices as tools for peace and wider alliances between different ethno-tribal groups in a transitional area such as South Kordofan (Ahmed 2013).

Urban Dayama and the Break with Endogamous Marriage in Order to ‘Become Sudanese’ The third case study, which focused on the inhabitants of a multi-ethnic popular neighbourhood in Khartoum (Deim), is distinct from the tribal configuration of the previous ones. Deim20 is the outcome of British urban planning in the final phase of colonization. Studies on the formation of the Sudanese working-class under colonial rule (Sikainga 1996) stress the presence of slums in the area, which was populated during the Turkiyya (1821–84) and the Mahdiyya (1885–98) by people from various regions of the country (and other African countries) and which was later to become the capital. This precolonial genesis may explain the presence of former slaves (especially soldiers) who were emancipated during colonization and found themselves removed from their original territories and sociocultural groups so that they could supply waged manpower for the new colonial division of labour. As the capital became more urbanized, ‘Old Deims’, as the areas were known in official documents, continued to attract precarious populations of various origins until the British decided to demolish them and displace their inhabitants to a new peripheral

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quarter in order to clean up central areas of Khartoum for a growing colonial middle class and to solve problems of social order. Between 1949 and 1952, the inhabitants of the ‘Old Deims’ were resettled in the planned ‘New Deims’ (now known as Deim) on the pretext that this would improve the living conditions of the native poor, an excuse that camouflaged an underlying objective to control the ‘dangerous classes’ more effectively by relegating them to the outskirts of the city space that was reserved for members of the elite (Curless 2015). The merging dynamics of concentration and stigmatization that were typical of ‘regimes of urban marginality’ (Wacquant 1999) had a profound effect on the shaping of the quarter and its identity. Within the capitalist division of labour brought about by colonization, the people of Deim constituted the first mass of a modern native working class, with two outstanding features: progressive access to education and the services and facilities of an ‘urban way of life’, and expanding politicization, as the quarter became a stronghold of the Sudanese Communist Party. With its post-independence urbanization, Deim continued to incorporate both ‘newcomers’ who were part of rural exoduses from several regions of Sudan and foreigners from various African countries (mainly Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees). Despite significant transformations in recent decades due to gentrification processes and neoliberal policies in the capital, the popular and multi-ethnic connotation of the quarter is still alive: the people of Deim, or ‘Dayama’, claim an identity as workers (‘ummal) living in a working class area (sha‘abi), a label that is widely acknowledged by other Khartoumians and outsiders alike (Casciarri 2016). It would be misleading to apply the same analytical path used for the Ahamda and Awlad Nuba cases to the case of Deim, inasmuch as marriage ‘among kin’ is not only extremely rare but is also explicitly stigmatized by social actors of different ages and genders and from different ethnic or tribal groups. From a sample of 155 marriages, the most outstanding and general feature of marriage patterns among Dayama21 reveals that thirty ethnic and tribal groups are involved, more often than not unrelated by kinship. In some cases, the spouses were members of different religions (Muslim and Christian), and some of the unions were with non-Sudanese (African, European and North American). Although this is significant, especially in the Sudanese context, where ‘close marriages’ and a preference for marrying kin are found among both rural and urban groups (Lobban 1979), some comments are necessary to account for this apparent inclination towards ‘multi-level exogamy’. First, it would be reductive and misleading to read it as a mere constraint of the alleged ‘slave origin’ of the district: while former slaves

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were undoubtedly a component of the Old Deims associated with their precolonial origins, the generalization of this factor in discourse on the quarter is largely the result of stigmatization initiated by the colonial political elites (Vezzadini 2015) and pursued by the postcolonial Arab Muslim elites. Second, despite the preference for marriages ‘between Dayama’, a category that underlines the shared features of the inhabitants of Deim (popular roots, openness, solidarity and political awareness), the multiplicity of partners’ origins is not simply the result of a form of ‘residential endogamy’ within a multi-ethnic quarter. Third, the openness to marriages with foreigners has very little to do with the ‘international’ mixed marriages that can be found in middle- and upperclass areas of the capital such as Amarat (see Miller in this volume). In actual fact, the most interesting results of our analysis of marriage practices and discourses among the Dayama have a twofold dynamic: first, there is a significant link between the choice of a partner and processes of class formation and urbanization since colonial times, and second there is the explicit shared claim that transcending borders of kinship and ethno-tribal similarity through marriage is the best strategy for forging a non-exclusive, non-conflictual national identification as ‘Sudanese’. This dual common dynamic, with its transversal element behind the variety of particular individual and family stories, can be illustrated by a few examples. The first concerns the family of the descendants of Abdallah Abu Rish, who was born in Darfur at the end of the nineteenth century and settled first in Khartoum’s Old Deims area and later in New Deims. Being of Fur origin, he married a Beni Halba (Baggara) woman from his original homestead, which confirms early practices of intermarriage between Arab pastoralists and non-Arab farmers in the Western region (Haaland 1969). He was recruited into the British Army by force while he was passing through Khartoum on his way to hajj pilgrimage and subsequently remained in the capital. In the space of this ‘native lodging’, where people of various origins gathered during the initial phase of colonization, his only daughter married a Fur who is known to have been a neighbour in the city slums but who had no close kinship relationship. Their only daughter, A.B.I. (who was born in 1925), married a man who was defined as neither Fur nor Arab but as a neighbour from Darfur whom she met in a popular quarter of Atbara city, where her father had been sent as part of a colonial workforce to build infrastructure. A.B.I.’s daughter, who was born in 1960 when they were once again living in Deim, married a man from the Jamu‘iyya Arab group of Omdurman. Their children are not yet married, but their parents say they will prob­ably choose their marriage partners themselves, either among people who grew up

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with them in Deim or peers they met while they were students. Their testimony reveals that there is a modernist discourse that stigmatizes marriage between kin as a backward form of coercion of women and a danger due to the risk of genetic anomalies. By condemning it as a feature of ‘underdeveloped’ rural people, therefore, these people lay claim to an early ‘urbanity’ and present the development of their family marriage practices as emblematic of it. This evolution of family ‘marriage history’ can be read alongside the military history and capitalist development of colonial Sudan, where urbanization dynamics have matched group mobility and class formation. Hence, marriage patterns at a family level shed light on the shifting local strategies for overcoming the dichotomy between Arab and non-Arab that are so prominent in the dominant discourse of contemporary Sudan: if we look at the chronological history of marriages, we see that the Arab/non-Arab opposition was invalidated and made irrelevant both in the early phase (the rural context of Darfur, where Fur and Baggara groups still practised intermarriages22) and in the later stage (the working-class urban context in independent Sudan shaped by class relations). In addition, marriages between Fur from the intermediate generations (the colonial period) are explained by respondents as being due to the concentration of ethnic groups in the Old Deims and by stressing the absence of close kinship relations between spouses from the same ethnic group, who are rather presented as coming from the same working-class neighbourhood. A second example shows similar practices of ‘open marriage’, with an underlying discourse that stresses the value of marrying ‘outside’ and moving beyond the common divide between Arabs and non-Arabs. In the family of I.B., who is also a former inhabitant of the Old Deims who resettled in the New Deims, we found the same mixture of ethno-tribal groups with no links to status parameters in marriages in former generations; a marriage between a Shilluk man and an Arab woman from the Jezira region (who got to know each other through professional ties during the 1950s and 1960s); and a plurality of origins in their children’s marriages, including one with a Canadian native (i.e. Indian) woman linked to out-migration. As in the previous example, the members of this family emphasized their express desire to avoid kin marriage both to confirm the flimsiness of the alleged ‘Arabness’ of Sudanese groups and to claim that intermarriage is a prerequisite for rooting the feeling of ‘being Sudanese’, which has been a major aim of nation-building efforts since independence. However, while the continuity and plurality of marriages ‘outside’ ethnic and tribal groups are the most evident markers of Dayama, it is still relevant to review a minority of ‘close marriages’, as in the previous

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case studies. Firstly, it is worth noting that ‘close marriages’ are found both among Arab and non-Arab groups. Secondly, the actors’ discourse about them is more meaningful than their statistical occurrence: thus, for B.’s family of Ja‘aliyyn farmers from the Northern Nile Valley who arrived in Deim as small merchants during colonial times, openness to outside marriages was balanced by the persistence of a number of close agnatic kin marriages (including with FBD). It seemed as if the group wished to maintain the image of an urban popular class melting pot without renouncing the dominant values of close marriage, which constitute the honour and symbolic capital of one of the three main elite groups of Arab-Muslim Sudan (Ja‘aliyyn, Danagla and Shaigiyya). In another case, in the family of A., who are long-standing Dayama of Southern origin, urban working-class open marriages are dotted with a few close marriages between Kreish, their original ethno-tribal group. This marriage pattern makes sense as a way of reinforcing solidarity links with an extended family that had been ripped apart by the long civil war and later by the recent events surrounding South Sudan’s separation.

Beyond Biological Ideologies towards Flexible Identities and Generative Marriage Strategies By choosing to jointly analyse data from three different fieldwork contexts (pastoral Ahamda and Hawazma, and urban Dayama) I have attempted to replace the intellectual comfort of ‘coherent samples’ by the cross-­ insight of using the prism of marriage patterns as an in-between space in which it becomes possible to observe arenas of sociopolitical and symbolic change. In this sense, any final comparison and interpretation should focus less on the quantitative aspects and frequency of types of alliances than on the qualitative aspects of their practices and narratives as they emerge from the contextual manifestations of both ‘close’ and ‘distant’ unions among ethno-tribally homogeneous and multi-ethnic groups. An analytical path of this kind also sustains a certain reflexivity about the potentially dominant conceptual bias of anthropological inquiries limited to alleged homogeneous units of analysis – one I also shared in the previous research I carried out as a ‘specialist’ in pastoral tribal Arab groups. Within this framework, I will look at some aspects of the three cases in order to identify the key transversal reading behind the apparent diversity of the particular marriage patterns. In the first case, the most interesting value of Ahamda marriages outside the gabila does not simply lie in the function of marriage as a political alliance aimed at avoiding or

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moderating conflicts with external groups (which was underlined quite early in classical anthropology23). These intertribal marriages, especially among the older generations, are often between Ahamda women and non-Ahamda men, which suggests that the foundation of today’s patrilineal lineages and tribes may stem from maternal genealogical ties, in contrast to the agnatic ideology. In the second case, equally rare and atypical Hawazma marriages between Awlad Nuba women and Nuba men who have ‘converted’ to pastoralism are openly accepted as a benchmark for creating future corporate (kin) groups, regardless of the fact that these alliances characteristically move beyond both the ethnic divide (Arabs vs non-Arabs) and the alleged agnatic privilege. In both cases, the search for ‘otherness’ in marriage strategies appears to be a tool for establishing future paths towards a potential ‘sameness’24 whose desirability and fulfilment may be further shaped – either accepted or rejected – by contextual situations. Moreover, the strategy of mixing ‘close’ and ‘distant’ marriages in networks of alliances – which is seen as a complex diachronic setting that has a meaning beyond the simple statistical frequency of individual marital unions – may be read alongside the actors’ narratives as supporting this trend. In the third case, the Dayama’s striking preference for interethnic and intertribal marriages (and ignoring or rejecting kinship ties) may be read according to the same logic. Certainly, a major difference with groups claiming Arab Muslim identity like the Ahamda and the Hawazma is that they ‘suppress ideologically female links [and marriages] in ascending generations’ (Boddy 2009: 115) and continue to give preference to agnatic close marriage practices with coherent narratives of patrilineal endogamy, while the Dayama explicitly propose the need for a search for diversity by marrying outside one’s original group, a trend that is framed as a means of creating wider solidarities divorced from common ethno-tribal ties. Nonetheless, a unique logic can be found on two levels: first, a tendency to reject the universality of biological links and the univocity of the representations and performances of kinship systems, and second, an awareness that evolving dynamics and actors – in a context in which territorial, economic, political, sociocultural and ideological factors are variously interacting in the present, as they did historically  – may bring about different real configurations of marriage patterns and social groups that express their realities. Following the notion of ‘generative genealogy’, which contests the essentialist vision of agnatic tribes in the Middle East (Lancaster 1981), one might propose a concept of ‘generative marriage’. In contrast to the perceived wisdom of structuralist or functionalist alliance theories, this allows us to leave aside underlying

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ideas of the conceptual priority given to social or kinship group structures when explaining marriage practices, and to shift our focus to marriage practices and discourses as an open in-between space where possible present and future group configurations and their ideologies can be reshaped in a dynamic and fluid way. A focus on the (individual and collective) cognitive and material treatment people assign to alliances that implicitly or explicitly point up the porosity of the borders between ‘sameness’ and ‘otherness’ notwithstanding the rate of their occurrence (a variation that may logically depend on socio-economic, historical and cultural contexts of production) is a meaningful marker of the possibility of transcending the essentialist conception of groups and their criteria of belonging, thus unfolding the political value permeated by ideologies of ‘naturalization’. From this perspective, one might talk of a ‘paradox of alliance’; in fact, marriage patterns often stand as the major indicator of the material and symbolic frontiers established between ‘us’ and ‘others’ and of the naturalization of ethno-tribal homogeneity perpetuated by filiation – which is seen simultaneously as a source and an outcome of marriage. Nonetheless, empirical marriage practices expose the potential role of alliances as a flexible tool for breaking down the rigidity of these borders by opening up spaces for new parenthoods and hybrid non-­ essentialist configurations in the future. Marriage as a process, observed over a wider temporally meaningful timespan and beyond the exclusive focus on single unions and their statistical occurrence, may thus represent an ideal liminal, or ‘in-between’, space of negotiation and constant redefinition of wider power relations and solidarity or conflicting social dynamics. The data on our three groups, although quantitatively different – and, in the Dayama case, divergent from other urban contexts25 – suggest a cohesive line for interpretation. Because they are contextually a tool for asserting ancestry and homogeneous ethnic identity; territorial legitimacy and common sharing; peaceful coexistence and conflict prevention; working-class identity or statutory hierarchies; and nation-building in multiethnic states, they can be ordered on a sort of scale in the continuum of denaturalization dictated by the occasional opening of this in-between status. Characterizing marriage practices as liminal makes them a creative arena for social reconfiguration and the heart of a potential resource for individuals and groups to shape and reshape their borders as the historical, local and ideological context may require. The influence of dominant ideologies on ethnicity and nationalism that, as described through the specific focus of this chapter, fluctuate based on the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods (and subsequently the period after

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the separation of South Sudan) adds a political value to the perspective of enquiring into marriage patterns, from where it becomes possible to look at states’ political economies of identity processes. The contribution of anthropology to the relevance of the in-between paradigm can thus be found in this process of creative reshaping that is enabled by the liminality of marriage, even under the most apparently endogamous of ideologies. Anthropology has already offered a number of suggestions of interest to the debate on ‘in-betweenness’ through seminal studies on liminality in the ritual context (Turner 1969), shifting boundaries of ethnicity (Barth 1969), hybridity beyond the fake dichotomy between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ (Ingold 2000) and states’ logics of ‘legibility and simplification’ fostering unrealistic monolithic categorizations of people’s lives (Scott 1998). One might extend these disciplinary contributions by suggesting the arena of marriage practices as another in-between space in which sociocultural processes can be analysed in a dynamic, constructive way. More particularly, this might support a definitive epistemological emancipation from classical theories on ‘kinship and marriage’ while also introducing a new perspective on reflexivity and data production, and more generally, open up a new interdisciplinary area of debate on the ‘in-between paradigm’. In this regard, urban and rural and past and present Sudan offers an ideal terrain, thanks to an abundance of diverse societies to which history, population mobility, class formation, war and conflicts have given a high level of variety and multiple diversity, which provides a challenge in grasping and elucidating elements of the ‘in-­ between value’ of the micro-policies of marriages. Barbara Casciarri holds a Ph.D. in Ethnology and Social Anthropology from the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris (France). Her fieldwork has focused on economic and political anthropology issues among pastoral Arab-speaking groups of Sudan (1989–2016) and among Berber-speaking pastoralists and Arab-speaking farmers in South-Eastern Morocco (2000–6). She was the coordinator of the CEDEJ (Centre d’Etudes et Documentation Economique et Juridique) in Khartoum between 2006 and 2009. Since 2004, she has been Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University Paris 8 (France). She co-edited two special issues of Nomadic Peoples (‘Pastoralists under Pressure in Present-Day Sudan’, 2009, and ‘Water and Pastoralists’ , 2013), a special issue of Journal des anthropologues, ‘Anthropologie et eau(x)’ (2013) and two collective volumes on Sudan, Multidimensional Change in Sudan 1989–2011: Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities (Berghahn Books, 2015, with M.A. Assal and

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F. Ireton) and Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan (Brill, 2018, with M.A. Babiker).

Notes   1. In this regard, see the diatribe between the British-led functionalist ‘descent theory’ and the French-led structuralist ‘alliance theory’ as an outstanding example (Dumont 1971).   2. As the second part of the chapter will show, the marriage data collected during my fieldwork, which focuses on at least three generations, involves a temporal span stretching from the late colonial period to the present day.   3. I refer here to the multidimensional approach, which takes the view that ‘marriage can be seen as composed of three interconnected levels or systems, that is, exchange, the associated ritual, and the ideology which both mediates and combines these systems’ (Duffield 1981: 32).   4. Here, I explain that although only two of the three case studies presented in this chapter refer to Sudanese groups that are conventionally viewed as ‘Arab’, issues of Arabness and the complex of political, status and identity configurations are also relevant for the dynamics of non-Arab groups.   5. This label, which implies the idea of egalitarian acephalous societies that are politically autonomous from the state, was applied to Arab Muslim societies following the sociological model proposed by Evans-Pritchard for the Nuer (1940), which, after an initial phase when it was applied to African groups (Middleton and Tait 1958), also reached Arab and/or Muslim groups in the Maghreb and Middle East (Peters 1960; Marx 1967; Gellner 1969).   6. This relates to post-independence trends, while colonial anthropology was primarily focused on Southern Sudanese groups, revealing an ideological option linked to both the political aims of Native Administration and conceptual paradigms that excluded the study of Northern Arab groups (Grandin 1982).   7. Bonte (2000) criticizes Lévy-Strauss, who defined FBD marriage as a ‘scandal’ insofar as it contradicts the idea of the universality of exchange and the incest taboo, the pillars of his alliance theory. He also highlights a relatively ignored article to prove that one consequence of repeated FBD marriages within lineages is the configuration of groups as being of more cognatic than agnatic unilineal descent (Murphy and Kasdan 1959).  8. As I have noted elsewhere (Casciarri 2018: 9), ‘. . . despite several crucial works, to which we owe the unveiling of the political (instrumental) weight of Sudanese ethnic categorization into inflexible patterns (Grandin 1982), the overlapping of demographic, ecological and economic factors in reshaping ethnicity (Prunier 1991, O’Brien 1986, Assal 2006), and the complex mix of Sudanese, Islamic and tribal identities (Baumann 1987, De Waal 2005), scholars still somewhat run the risk of being caught in essentialist traps, as witnessed by the persisting ambiguities and short-cuts in the use

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of notions such as “Arabization” or “Islamization” (Delmet 1991, FluehrLobban 1987), “Sudanization” or “Arab Muslim way of life” (Doornbos 1988), which reveal underlying assumptions of the reified e­xistence of autochthonous, original and authentic cultures.’   9. As far as methodology is concerned, even though my samples are relatively significant – 635 marriages for the Ahamda (485 in the first research and 150 for the restudy); 150 marriages for the Hawazma; and 155 marriages for Deim – I will not focus on their statistical treatment, inasmuch as the option to stress the qualitative in-depth approach seems more interesting here for the purposes of dealing with the notion of in-betweenness as a theoretical framework. 10. My data on Ahamda marriages looked at 485 marriages (408 of which were first marriages) as far as five to six generation back, for a total of three lineages (fari‘): lineage with a religious function (Sheikhab), lineage with a traditional political leadership function (‘Atayab) and ‘ordinary’ lineage (Nasraddinab). Complete genealogies of lineages from the founding ancestor to current members allowed me to reconstruct the exact genealogical chains between partners. According to authors who report research data on marriage among Arab groups, this is a rare sample in terms of its dimension and coherence (Bonte 1994). 11. Doing ‘as Arabs do’ – although scholars erroneously label FBD and agnatic endogamy as ‘Arab marriage’ – might have been a tool of these strategies, knowing first that Arab Muslim groups in Northern Sudan had historically had a dominant status, and second, that Arab identity is often contested for Sudanese groups by Middle East Arabs. This was confirmed by a recurrent narrative that sought to justify the African complexion of Sudanese Arab groups like the Ahamda by ascribing it to an ancient legacy of the Nuba habobat (female ancestors) whom their Arab jidud (male ancestors) were forced to marry on their arrival from the Arabian Peninsula. 12. Here again, the asymmetry due to the principle of women’s isogamy is relevant: although the genealogies revealed a few rare marriages of Ahamda lineage ancestors with Halab women, it was said that the Ahamda could never agree to ‘marry their daughters’ to men from this disdained group. 13. In anthropology, ‘levirate’ means a marriage of a man to his brother’s widow: this form of marriage is frequent in patrilineal societies and is generally more widespread than its opposite, ‘sororate’, which is the marriage of a man to his deceased wife’s sister. 14. My fieldwork on education among pastoral Hawazma was conducted jointly with Stefano Manfredi, a linguist working on Baggara Arabic for his Ph.D. research (Manfredi 2010). At the same time, I carried out an investigation into political and kinship structures and water access. 15. This could be a consequence of various factors: the marginalization of women as producers due to pastoral economy crises (Mohamed Salih 1990), a reversion to segregation during wartime, when men reaffirmed

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their prior role as armed defenders of the group, and more broadly a push towards Islamization by the government after 1989. 16. Offers and sacrifices of cows are a constant in marriage transactions, and yet Awlad Nuba insist on the difference between them and non-Arab cattle herders who ‘pay’ bride-prices with livestock. In any event, it is interesting to note that for them, the term mal, which replaces the more common mahar, is synonymous with ‘money’ and ‘livestock’. 17. On the ethnic diversity and historical heterogeneity of the groups labelled as ‘Nuba’, see Casciarri (2009) and Manfredi (2015). 18. This consists of a ritual to establish a brotherhood link (and further agnatic kinship) between individuals or groups who take an oath on the Holy Book, which recalls the practices for manipulating biological kinship known in early Islam as hilf (Conte 2003). 19. Despite the same appellation, it is interesting to note the marked contrast with another mu‘tamar that was organized in Kadugli in 2006 by the Rawawga (Hawazma section) to strengthen the Arab Muslim identity of the group. 20. The Arabic term deim was used in colonial Sudan to define poor, socially and spatially marginal native quarters, and it still exists today in the name of districts in Khartoum and elsewhere. This neighbourhood was officially designated as ‘Dyum Ash-Shargiyya’ (Eastern Deims) by the British. Today it is also known by antonomasia as ‘Deim’, and its inhabitants are called ‘Dayama’. 21. Given the absence of kinship-based groups as a relevant element of social organization in this urban environment, unlike in the previous cases studies, our sample is based on the marriages of ten extended families. Although the diachronic depth is here more limited (three generations in all cases, and up to five generations in a few) compared with the two previous samples, the information is more extensive as far as the maternal side is concerned. 22. There are several examples in the sample of similar early marriages between Arab and non-Arab rural tribal groups. It is interesting to note here that the widespread requirement of women’ isogamy is ignored, inasmuch as Arab women marry non-Arab men, and vice versa. 23. One of the deans of evolutionist anthropology and kinship studies summarized this when he wrote that exogamy stemmed from the alternative of ‘marrying out and being killed-out’ (Tylor 1889: 267). E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1940) later defined Nuer exogamy as ‘elastics’ created between agnatic clans in order to minimise inner conflict. 24. In this regard, it is interesting to quote the conclusive remarks of one anthropologist’s analysis of Nile Valley Arab groups: ‘Kinship in northern Sudan is about potential futures as well as possible pasts. Patrilineality provides a line of bearing by which an ever encroaching past transforms the discretionary cognatic present into an ideal “Arab” pedigree. The messiness of the present is “recast” as patrilineality by suppressing ideologically ephemeral female links in ascending generations. . . . In contrast to alliance

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theory wisdom, it may be better to think of kinship as inclusive rather than preclusive among those who conceive of themselves as endogamous. This too may be counter-intuitive . . . I suggest, however, that, because of their cognatic ambiguity, endogamous systems may be more responsive to changing circumstances than exogamous ones’ (Boddy 2009: 115). 25. In fact, the case of Amarat, an urban quarter adjacent to Deim but with a very different history and social composition, which P. Miller analyses in this volume, shows almost opposite trends of ‘endogamy’ that need to be read in terms of class, ethnicity and religious homogeneity.

References Abd al-Rahim, M. 1971. ‘Arabism, Africanism and Self-identification in Sudan’, in Y. Fadl Hasan (ed.), Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, pp. 228–39. Abu Shouk, A.I. 1998. ‘From Tribes to Nazirates’, in E. Stiansen and M.  Kevane (eds), Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa. Leiden: Brill, pp. 120–44. Ahmed, A.M. 1974. Sheikhs and Followers: Political Struggle in the Rufa’a al-Hoi Nazirate in the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. ______. 2013. ‘Changing Dynamics in the Borderlands: Emergence of a Third  Sudan?’, in G.M. Sorbo and A.M. Ahmed (eds), Sudan Divided: Continuing Conflict in a Contested State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 121–39. Asad, T. 1970. The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe. London: Hurst & Co. Assal, M.A.M. 2006. ‘Sudan: Identity and Conflict over Natural Resources’, Development 49(3): 101–5. Barth, F. (ed.). 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetforlaget. Baumann, G. 1987. National Integration and Local Integrity: The Miri of the Nuba Mountains in the Sudan. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Boddy, J. 2009. ‘Endogamy and Alliance in Northern Sudan’, in G. Schlee and E.E. Watson (eds), Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa, vol. 3. New York: Berghahn, pp. 103–15. Bonte, P. 1994. ‘Manière de dire ou manière de faire: peut-on parler d’un mariage “arabe”?’, in P. Bonte (ed.), Épouser au plus proche: inceste, prohibitions et stratégies matrimoniales autour de la Méditerranée. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, pp. 371–98. ______. 2000. ‘L’échange est-il un universel?’, L’Homme 154–55: 39–66. Bonte, P., and E. Conte. 1991. ‘La tribu arabe: Approches anthropologiques et orientalistes’, in P. Bonte et al. (eds), Al-Ansâb, la quête des origins: Anthropologie historique de la société tribale arabe. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, pp. 13–48.

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Casciarri, B. 1997. ‘Les pasteurs Ahamda du Soudan central: Usages de la parenté arabe dans l’histoire d’une recomposition territoriale, politique et identitaire’, Ph.D. thesis in Anthropology. Paris: EHESS. ______. 2009. ‘Hommes, troupeaux et capitaux: Le phénomène tribal au Soudan à l’heure de la globalisation’, Etudes rurales 184: 47–64. ______. 2014. ‘A Central Marginality: The “Invisibilisation” of Urban Pastoralists in Khartoum State’, in S. Calkins, J. Gerzel and R. Rottenburg (eds), Land, Commodification and Conflict in Sudan. London: James Currey, pp. 227–45. ______. 2015 ‘Water Local Management among Sudanese Pastoralists: End of the Commons or ‘Silent Resistance’ to Commoditisation?’, in B. Casciarri, M. Assal and F. Ireton (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989– 2011). Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 140–60. ______. 2016. ‘Etre, devenir et ne plus être janûbi: sur quelques parcours de l’identité “sudiste” entre le CPA et l’après 2011 dans un quartier populaire de Khartoum (Deim)’, Egypte/Monde arabe 14: 65–84. ______. 2018. ‘Introduction: The Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan’, in B. Casciarri and M.A. Babiker (eds), Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan: Lands, Courts and the Plurality of Practices. Leiden: Brill. Casciarri, B., and S. Manfredi. 2009. ‘Dynamics of Adaptation to Conflict, Political and Economic Change among the Hawazma (Baggara) of Southern Sudan: An Insight through the Process of Education’, unpublished paper presented at the 16th IUAES Congress, Kunming. Conte, E. 2003. ‘Agnatic Illusions: The Element of Choice in Arab Kinship’, in F. Abdul-Jabar and H. Dawod (eds), Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East. London: Saqi Books, pp. 15–49. Cunnison, I. 1966. The Baggara Arabs: Power and Lineage in a Sudanese Nomad Tribe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curless, G. 2015. ‘“Better Life Conditions are of Vital Importance for the Ordinary Man: Slum-Clearance in Post-war Khartoum’, Urban History 43(4): 557–576. Delmet, C. 1991. ‘Société dominante et cultures locales: Violence et intégration au Dar Funj’, in H. Bleuchot, C. Delmet, and D. Hopwood (eds), Sudan: History, Identity, Ideology. Oxford: Ithaca Press, pp. 121–42. ______. 1994. ‘Exogamie et réciprocité dans les systèmes matrimoniaux soudanais’, in P. Bonte (ed.), Épouser au plus proche: inceste, prohibitions et stratégies matrimoniales autour de la Méditerranée. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, pp. 399–417. ______. 2005. ‘The Native Administration System in Eastern Sudan: From its  Liquidation to its Revival’, in C. Miller (ed.), Land, Ethnicity and Political Legitimacy in Eastern Sudan. Cairo/Khartoum: CEDEJ/DSRC, pp. 145–72. De Waal, A. 2005. ‘Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African Identities, Violence and External Engagement’, African Affairs 104(415): 181–205.

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Doornbos, P. 1988. ‘On Becoming Sudanese’, in T. Barnett and A. Abdelkarim (eds), Sudan: State, Capital and Transformation. London: Croom Helm, pp. 99–120. Duffield, M. 1981. Maiurno: Capitalism and Rural Life in the Sudan. London: Ithaca Press. Dumont, L. 1971. Introduction à deux théories d’anthropologie sociale: groupes de filiation et alliance de mariage. Paris-La Haye: Mouton. El-Hassan, I.S. 2002. ‘Studies on Pastoral Nomadism in Sudan’, in A.M. Ahmed (ed.), Anthropology in Sudan: Reflections by a Sudanese Anthropologist. Amsterdam: International Books, pp. 161–75. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer. London: Oxford University Press. Fadl Hasan, Y. 1967. The Arabs and the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Fluher-Lobban, C. 1987. Islamic Law and Society in the Sudan. London: Frank Cass. Gellner, E. 1969. Saints of the Atlas. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Grandin, N. 1982. Le Soudan nilotique et l’administration britannique (1898– 1956). Leiden: Brill. Haaland, G. 1969. ‘Economic Determinants in Ethnic Processes’, in F. Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetforlaget, pp. 58–73. Holy, L. 1974. Neighbors and Kinsmen: A Study of the Berti People of Darfur. New York: St. Martin Press. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Lancaster, W. 1981. The Rwala Bedouin Today. Cambridge University Press. Legall, J., and L. Rougé (eds). 2014. ‘Les espaces de l’entre-deux’, Carnets de géographes 7, available at: https://journals.openedition.org/cdg/368. L’Homme. 2000. ‘Questions de parenté’, 154–55. Lobban, R.A. 1979. ‘Class, Endogamy and Urbanisation in the Three Towns of Sudan’, African Studies Review 22(3): 99–114. MacMichael, H.A. 1922. A History of the Arabs in the Sudan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manfredi, S. 2010. ‘Kordofanian Baggara Arabic’, Ph.D. thesis in African Studies. University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. ______. 2015. ‘One Tribe, One Language: Ethnolinguistic Identity and Language Revitalisation among the Laggori in the Nuba Mountains’, in B. Casciarri et al. (eds), Multidimensional Change in Sudan 1989–2011. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 281–301. Manger, L.O. 1994. From the Mountains to the Plains: The Integration of the Lalofa Nuba into Sudanese Society. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. ______.  2012. ‘Anthropological Reflections on the Break-up of Sudan’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44(2): 327–29. Marx, E. 1967. Bedouin of the Negev. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mazrui, A.A. 1971. ‘The Multiple Marginality of Sudan’, in Y. Fadl Hasan (ed.), Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, pp. 240–55.

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Middleton, J., and D. Tait (eds). 1958. Tribes without Rulers: Studies in African Segmentary Systems. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Michael, B. 1987. ‘Cows, Bulls and Gender Roles: Pastoral Strategies for Survival and Continuity in Western Sudan’, Ph.D. thesis. University of Kansas. Mohamed Salih, M. 1990. ‘Agro-pastoralists Response to Agricultural Policies: The Predicament of the Baggara, Western Sudan’, in M. Bovin and L. Manger (eds), Adaptive Strategies in African Arid Lands. Uppsala: SIAS, pp. 59–75. Murphy, R., and L. Kasdan. 1959. ‘The Structure of Parallel Cousin Marriage’, American Anthropologist 61: 17–29. Needham, R. 1971. Rethinking Kinship and Marriage. London: Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth. O’Brien, J. 1986. ‘Towards a Reconstitution of Ethnicity: Capitalist Expansion and Cultural Dynamics in Sudan’, American Anthropologist 88(4): 898–908. Peters, E. 1960. ‘The Proliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin of Cyrenaica’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute 90(1): 29–53. Prunier, G. 1991. ‘Ecologie, structures ethniques et conflits politiques au Dar Fur’, in H. Bleuchot et al. (eds), Sudan: History, Ideology, Identity. London: Ithaca Press, pp. 85–103. Saavedra, M. 1998. ‘Ethnicity, Resources and the Central State: Politics in the Nuba Mountains, 1950s to the 1990s’, in E. Stiansen and M. Kevane (eds), Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa. Leiden: Brill, pp. 223–53. Schneider, D.M. 1984. A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Scott, J. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sikainga, A.A. 1996. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas Press. Stevenson, R.C. 1984. The Nuba People of Kordofan Province: An Ethnographic Survey. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Trimingham, J.S. 1949. Islam in the Sudan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turner, V. 1969. ‘Liminality and Communitas’, in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, pp. 94–130. Tylor, E.B. 1889. ‘On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 18: 245–72. Vezzadini, E. 2015. ‘Setting the Scene of the Crime: The Colonial Archive, History, and Racialisation of the 1924 Revolution in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 49(1): 67–93. Wacquant, L. 1999. ‘Urban Marginality in the Coming Millennium’, Urban Studies 36(10): 1639–47. Woodward, P. 2013. ‘Sudan after the South Secession: Issues of Identity’, in G.M. Sorbo and A.M. Ahmed (eds), Sudan Divided: Continuing Conflict in a Contested State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 89–102.

[•  Chapter 11  •]

Shifting Notions of Endogamy and Exogamy

Religion, Social Class and Race in Marriage Practices in the Upper-Middle Class Neighbourhood of Amarat PETER MILLER Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the notion of in-between-

ness, which was originally a concept coined by geographers (Le Gall and Rougé 2014) into the social-cultural relations of identity, using it as an analytical tool for understanding social realities. More specifically, it will focus on groups’ definitions of ‘us’ and ‘others’ as expressed through the vector of marriage strategies and practices, which I have determined to be a privileged space for identifying social-cultural in-betweenness, with certain actors being rejected by these social groups – and therefore defined as ‘them’ or the ‘other’ – whilst others are defined as ‘us’, and are therefore accepted into them. The chapter is based on ethnographical fieldwork carried out between October 2015 and January 2016 in the upper-middle-class neighbourhood of Amarat in Khartoum, as part of a Master’s programme in anthropology at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis.1 This research looks at five long-term2 resident families of Amarat using a genealogical method to allow us to retrace the temporal transformations of marriage practices and strategies over several generations settled in a specific neighbourhood of Greater Khartoum. The period addressed by this study thus encompasses many social, political and demographical changes, including Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, Sudan’s independence, Khartoum’s vast urbanization (fuelled by considerable rural–urban migration) and, more recently, the independence

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of South Sudan. Ethnographic methods such as interviews and observations were employed with the aim of creating a sample size small enough to enable in-depth research into, and understanding of, the families involved yet one that covers as much variation as possible among the studied group (ethnic origin, religion, profession etc.), following the principals of Werner and Russell (1994) and what they define as ‘ethnographical sampling’. Although I have sought to create a varied sample in terms of religious, ethnic and professional identity, one shared criterion was used in selecting all the families: they had to have been residents of Amarat for at least twenty years. In this chapter I seek to understand how marriage strategies and practices, and therefore identity definitions of ‘us’ and ‘others’ (and their subsequent in-between spaces of belonging), have changed for this particular social group, who all share a strong social class identity through their shared residence in Amarat. I analyse their discourses, genealogies and alliances in order to understand what are the principal factors that have caused transformations in their marriage practices and strategies, thereby enabling me to concomitantly identify the principal factors they mobilize in their identity definitions of ‘us’ and ‘others’. In other words, my focus is on the processes of inclusion and exclusion inherent in their marriage strategies and practices, which I consider to be the practical site of configuring notions of belonging and in-betweenness. First, I will situate the study, introducing the neighbourhood of Amarat and its history and social composition. Second, I will introduce each of the case studies (the five families), looking in detail at their marriage practices and strategies and their identity discourses in order to identify the changes that have occurred during the period covered by the study. Third, I will make a comparison between my case studies and those conducted by Barbara Casciarri in the neighbouring quarter of Deim (see Chapter 10 in this volume). I will conclude by comparing the five case studies in order to analyse the principal factors that have determined the transformations of their marriage practices and strategies, as well as their identity definitions and therefore the in-between space of belonging.

The ‘First Class’ Neighbourhood of Amarat Amarat is a planned neighbourhood built in the 1960s on what was then the southern border of the colonial city (Sikainga 1996) but is now a central neighbourhood due to the rapid and sprawling expansion of the city (Grabska and Miller 2016). It is located to the west of

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Khartoum International Airport and bordered by two of the city’s highways, Africa Street to the west and Mohamed Najib Street to the east. It forms a nearly perfect rectangle, stretching over less than 2.5 kilometres from north to south, and around 900 metres from east to west (Sauloup 2010) (see map of Khartoum in the frontmatter of this book). Amarat is categorized as a ‘first-class’ neighbourhood,3 the most prestigious classification defined by British planners in the colonial period, which is still in use and was designed to accommodate a developing new Sudanese upper-middle class composed mainly of civil servants and traders. Construction followed specific rules dictating size and the building materials used, and it symbolized a modern way of life in newly independent Sudan (Grabska and Miller 2016), with luxurious villas surrounded by gardens linked by paved roads and serviced by three commercial streets. The way the plots were distributed in Amarat has had a major influence on its social identity. Originally, they were sold at auctions that were first open only to educated professionals: politicians, generals, doctors, judges, professors, civil servants, etc. The auctions were then opened up to the public, but the amount of money needed to buy a plot in Amarat and then build a house that conformed to the aforementioned rules meant that only those who had substantial capital were able to buy one. This second group was mostly composed of successful traders. The original inhabitants of Amarat all had elite status and for the most part enjoyed a high level of educational capital (being university educated) and professional and symbolic capital (because they held high positions in the state apparatus or the private domain) and a relatively high level of economic capital, even in the case of civil servants. They were drawn from different ethnic groups who mainly had their origins in the northern and central parts of Sudan adjacent to the Nile and who had risen in status and power during the colonial and postcolonial periods (Ryle and Willis 2011). The majority of these groups once lived in rural areas, but their earlier migration to Khartoum has contributed towards giving them the feeling that they are better established and more legitimate city dwellers, adding to their self-perceived valorized social identity in a city in which one’s date of arrival is also constitutive of social superiority (Denis 2005).4 Despite the continuing presence of the original residents of Amarat today, their importance has declined, due first to the gradual commercialization of the quarter, with more and more residential buildings being turned into offices, company headquarters and commercial businesses (Grabska and Miller 2016), and second to a significant emigration of original residents to countries in the Gulf and the West for a variety of economic and political reasons.

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The decision to focus my research in Amarat therefore also represented a choice to concentrate on a group who claim a privileged social class identity, asking if the marriage strategies practised by this group are specific to their social class group and if their elevated social status makes identity definitions more rigid or more fluid.5 Before presenting the case studies, however, I would like to underline that while the families concerned have all undertaken similar processes during the period under review, such as migration to Khartoum from a rural area and pursuing higher education, in some cases their marriage strategies and practices have undergone significant changes while in others they have remained relatively stable. I will present each case study, focusing on their transformations and continuities in marriage strategies along with their identity definitions as mobilized through the vector of their ­marriage strategies.

The Case Studies: The Five Amarat Families The Halfawiyyn Family: Being Nubian, Not Sudanese During my research, I had the opportunity to meet three members of this family. The first was Azza (BD),6 a student at the University of Khartoum who had grown up in Kuwait and was living in Khartoum with her paternal uncle while she was studying. Her paternal uncle, Farid, became my principal informant and will be referred to as ego7 in this family. Farid, who is in his fifties and is the eldest of his siblings, works as an administrator at the Nubian Club of Khartoum8 and is viewed by his niece as conservative and traditional. I also met Farid’s son, a pharmacist in his early twenties who was soon to move to the USA. Ethnic identity appeared to be very important to this family, particularly to Farid. Originally from Wadi Halfa, a city located in the northernmost region of Sudan on the Egyptian border (see map of Sudan in the frontmatter of this book), he identifies himself and his family firstly as Halfawiyyn and secondly as Nubian, two identify references that he opposes to other identity references such as ‘Sudanese’ or ‘Arab’. It is clear from Farid’s identity discourse that he refuses to be identified either as Sudanese (despite the fact that the Halfawiyyn come from inside Sudan) or as Arab, preferring to mobilize his Nubian identity in opposition. As we shall see, his identity conceptions play a powerful role in his family’s marriage strategies. The family has a prominent religious, commercial and administrative history. Farid’s paternal grandfather (FF) was a sheikh (a native tribal leader) and an important farmer in Wadi Halfa. His father traded

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dates and rice between Egypt and Sudan, and of his brothers (FB), one owned a large industrial farm in Gedarif, while two others worked in administrative roles in the government. Farid’s nuclear family (F, M, Sb) moved from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum in 1958 and bought their plot in Amarat in 1961, as his father’s trading business had allowed him to earn enough economic capital to afford it. Three of Farid’s siblings also live in Khartoum, while two live in Kuwait and one in the USA. All except Farid are university graduates, and all their children have either graduated or are currently studying at university. The family can therefore be identified as having had a high social status for a long period, with high levels of professional, educational, economical and symbolic capital. I will now concentrate on the generational changes in marriage strategies that have occurred within this family. Generation -1,9 who were all born in Wadi Halfa, can be defined by endogamous10 intermarriage. Their marriages were arranged by other members of the family, as Farid explained to me: ‘Nobody disobeyed orders. From childhood, our grandmothers determined which boy would marry which girl, to make sure that no one got married to someone outside of the family’ (A.I. no. 1).11 Furthermore, most of the marriages in this generation (four out of six) were between first cousins, the closest degree of consanguinity within which marriages are permitted according to Islamic norms and in Sudanese society (Delmet 1989). One of these marriages was between parallel patrilateral cousins (FBD), and the other three were between crossed patrilateral cousins12 (FZD). Although Christian Delmet (1989) noted a statistical preference for marriages between parallel patrilateral cousins (FBD) in his analysis of social structures in central Sudan, in Farid’s family we see a statistical preference for marriages between crossed patrilateral cousins (FZD). Delmet (1989) explains that despite this statistical preference, residential proximity prevails over consanguinity proximity, meaning that marriage to any of the other three types of first cousins (FZD, MBD, MZD) who live in the same village will be preferred to one to a parallel patrilateral cousin (FBD) who lives in a village further away. This theory can be used to explain the over-representation of marriages between crossed patrilateral cousins (FZD and MBD) among this generation of Farid’s family. In this generation, therefore, we see how identity definitions that structure marriage strategies are based around consanguinity, with the family arranging marriages among themselves to ensure that all members of the family marry other members of their kin. Generation 0, Farid’s generation, is more diverse in its marriage strategies. His is also the generation that mostly grew up in an urban setting, Khartoum, and had access to higher education. While some marriages

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are still amongst kin members, or members of the same Halfawiyyn ethnic group, others fall outside these categories. Of these exogamous13 marriages, however, some have been accepted while one has been ­ rejected by the family; this is an example that will enable us to see the in-­betweenness in identity definitions and the identity factors that fuel such a rejection. Farid considers that he married late: ‘I was living in Khartoum and only knew Sudanese women, but I absolutely wanted to marry a woman from my village’ (A.I. no. 1). Again, he uses the term ‘Sudanese’ to mark opposition against his own identity, which stems from his Halfawiyyn ethnic identity and his village. He married his maternal uncle’s sister-inlaw (MBWZ), relative by affinity but not by consanguinity.14 Although this was a marriage between two members of the family who do not share consanguinity, the fact that it took place from within the family shows that Farid followed the endogamous marriage strategies of the previous generation but that the degree of proximity from which the two spouses were chosen began to expand to include kin members by affinity. As far as the two other marriages of Farid’s siblings to members of their kinship group are concerned, his sister married a parallel patrilateral first cousin (FBS), and another of his brothers also married a member relative by affinity, his FZWHD. His three other siblings broke with the trend of the previous generation, however, and married exogamously in terms of consanguinity and ethnicity. Farid mobilizes the fact that they studied at university to explain their exogamous choice, in contrast to his own endogamous marriage, as he did not pursue higher education. Farid speaks spontaneously and happily about two of these exogamous marriages, the first involving his brother, who married ‘a woman from the well-known Altazi family from Bahri’15 (A.I. no. 1), and the second his sister, who married a Ja‘aliyyn professor at the University of Khartoum, who is ‘well-known because of his knowledge and morals’ (A.I. no. 6). In these two cases, Farid admits that there were some objections to these exogamous marriages within his family but that in the end everyone accepted them, mobilizing the categories of education and the symbolic importance of coming from a ‘wellknown’ family to explain why the marriages were accepted even if they were to people outside the kin and ethnic group. However, the remaining exogamous marriage is a cause of conflict in his family. When we first met, Farid spoke very briefly about a brother who married ‘a woman from Sudan’ (A.I. no. 1) without giving any more information about the union, in contrast to the details he offered about the other marriages in his family. Furthermore, he used the term ‘Sudanese’

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(Sudani16), which he employed consistently throughout my interviews as an opposing identity reference, distinguishing himself, his family and his ethnic group from the Sudanese. We might ask ourselves why Farid did not use the term ‘Sudani’ when he spoke about the other exogamous marriages of his siblings, when he preferred to refer to tribal identification (Ja‘aliyyn) and symbolic status (‘a well-known family’). His use of the adjective Sudani to describe his brother’s wife might mean that he is alluding to several different elements: that this woman is of slave descent, that she comes from a lower social class or that she is from an ethnic group that he judges to be inferior due to their regional, racial or historical identity. When we met for a second time, I tried to encourage Farid to talk more about this marriage, but he did not want to reply to my questions. We therefore decided to ask his niece Azza if she knew any more about it. According to Azza, the wife in question comes from Deim, a neighbouring working-class neighbourhood that was originally inhabited by freed slaves and migrant labourers17 (Sikainga 1996; Casciarri 2016), and her father is from Darfur, suggesting an ethnic identity that is stigmatized and marginalized by Northern and Central ethnic groups (El-Tom 2006). Farid’s brother had asked for their father’s blessing to marry his wife, but when he learned her identity he refused, and Farid’s brother decided to marry the woman against his father’s will, which caused arguments in the family that still continue to this day. This brother and his wife have been rejected by the family, who have refused to share their father’s inheritance with them. This case seems to be emblematic of the in-betweenness that exists in identity definitions and marriage strategies, marking a boundary that must not be crossed if a family is to accept a spouse. The majority of generation +1  – that of Farid’s children, nephews and nieces – are yet to marry. I will therefore focus my analysis on the marriage of Farid’s daughter and the prospects of his son and his niece, Azza. As we talked about his daughter’s marriage, I quickly understood that Farid played an important role in the choice of her spouse and that he continues to assert the importance of endogamous marriage: More than five men from outside the family, Sudanese men, asked me if they could marry my daughter. And they were all rich and had a good reputation. But I decided that my daughter would never marry outside the family circle, first because she is my only daughter, and second because I want to maintain these conditions; I am the eldest and I want to keep up the old traditions, but my siblings do not have the same problem. So I refused all these men and waited for one of our own to come and ask for her hand in marriage. (A.I. no. 1)

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Once again, ‘Sudanese’ is used to define alterity, and Farid talks of ‘one of our own’ as a means of defining an acceptable spouse for his daughter. When I asked him to elaborate on this definition further, I learned that Farid had even refused other Nubians, as they were either not Halfawiyyn or did not speak rutana, a term commonly used in Sudan to denote any local language other than Arabic, and that here indicates a traditional Nubian language. We therefore see that in the case of his daughter, Farid practised a strictly endogamous strategy within his ethnic group, which he bolstered with the addition of a linguistic factor. He thereby renders the endogamous strategy stricter: it is no longer enough to be Halfawiyyn, but one must also speak rutana, alluding to a stronger cultural belonging with the Halfawiyyn ethnic group, rather than through consanguinity alone. Although Farid maintains his desire for endogamy, which he associates with being the eldest sibling, he also hints at the fact that this practice is becoming less important for his other siblings.18 When we compare Farid’s daughter and son, we see a clear gender disparity in relation to their marriage strategies. While Farid would also like his son to marry a Halfawiyyn woman, he told me that ‘the son has a choice; you cannot exercise the same control over him’ (A.I. no. 1), whereas he controlled the choice of spouse for his daughter completely. His son seems to share his father’s ideas, telling me that he would prefer to marry a Halfawiyyn woman but with more flexibility, as he also tells me that he could marry a woman of another ethnic group with Northern Sudanese origins, citing three other Nubian ethnic groups (Mahas, Danagla and Sukkot), along with the Ja‘aliyyn: these are among the groups that are perceived as forming the core culture of upper-class Sudanese (Babiker 1984; Deng 1995). We see important diachronic changes within this Halfawiyyn family, mostly related to continuing further education and rural–urban migration, which enabled more exogamous marriage from generation 0. However – and especially for our principal informant Farid – a strong sense of ethnic identity prevails, even though the strategies of his siblings may have diversified. The question of in-betweenness seems very clear to Farid, with a clear-cut distinction between Halfawiyyn and others, which is also articulated around the notion of ‘Sudani’, seemingly the upmost expression of alterity in his view. However, as we see from the example of his daughter, he adds even more conditions to his definition of Halfawiyyn, such as speaking rutana. Yet his endogamous marriage strategies are not shared by all of those in his family, who mobilize other criteria when choosing their spouse, such as symbolic status and educational capital. When these criteria are satisfied, it seems that exogamous

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marriage is accepted, whereas when it is not, it is refused and ­stigmatized by the family.

The Teacher’s Family: Education Above All Else Through my connections in Amarat, I encountered Habib (S), a master’s student in his twenties who offered to introduce me to his family, notably his mother Fatima (ego), an English teacher at a prestigious private school, and his grandmother Safia (M). Most of my interviews were with these two women. Although the whole family claims a Nubian identity, belonging to the Sukkot ethnic group, it is strongest for Safia, who is from generation -1, while the later generations claim an identity that is more closely linked to social class and their urban habitat, using both Khartoum and Amarat as identity references. The feeling of distance from a Nubian identity for generations 0 and +1 is linked to the fact that no members of either of these generations have ever lived in their ancestral lands. Fatima’s father was a professor of linguistics, a job that meant the family travelled a great deal, living in different countries such as Morocco and the UK and different cities throughout Sudan. As Fatima explained: I am outside the Nubian culture – I don’t speak the language – and the Arab culture too, I don’t belong to the Arabic-speaking community; we’re in between. My parents are Nubians, and I have the impression that I missed out on a lot. In a way, I belong to what they call the third culture kids – I lost my culture and I have taken a bit of another. So I don’t really belong, and that’s why I’m from Khartoum. (A.I. no. 3)

She continues by reducing her identification even further to the neighbourhood of Amarat and her social class and profession: ‘We are the middle class. My grandfather was a teacher, my mother’s mother was a teacher, my father was a teacher, and I’m a teacher, so we’re this typical kind of Amarat family’ (A.I. no. 3). Her identity conception therefore seems to relate more to her family’s history of being educators19 and to their socially classed place in Amarat. Indeed, as we saw in the original social composition of homeowners in Amarat, their profile as educated people  – working as teachers  – is consistent with the identity construction of the neighbourhood. As we shall see, an identity formulated around social class and being educated shapes their marital strategies and practices, particularly in generations 0 and +1. Safia (M) claims that her father (MF) was one of the first teachers in their home region (which is on the Nile, between Dongola and Wadi

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Halfa), which suggests that her family benefited from a higher social status at the time. Her marriage was arranged by her family when she was young (between 11 and 13) to a much older man (he was nearly 30) who had a diploma from Gordon College20 and was also from the same village and had affinity relations with her family. The fact that her husband already had a university diploma and was the son of a trader (while agriculture was still the dominant occupation in the region at the time), and that her father was also a teacher, suggests that this was an arranged marriage between two people with high social status in their village. With one exception, Safia’s ten siblings all married people from the same village, and therefore from the same ethnic group, with varying kin relations. Kinship and spatial proximity therefore defined the marriage strategies among this generation. The one member of this generation not to marry within the kin, village or ethnic group was Safia’s youngest sister (MZ), who was also the only woman amongst her siblings to pursue higher education. She married a man from Gedarif whom she met while studying, and Safia directly attributes this to the fact that she left the village for higher education, thus enabling her to meet people from outside their kin, ethnic and village group. Two phenomena can be noted among generation 0: an increase in the age of women at the time of marriage and the growing importance of higher education. Fatima’s eldest sister’s (Z) marriage followed the practice of the previous generation, as she had an endogamous arranged marriage to her parallel matrilateral cousin (FZS) while she was still young. They became engaged when she was fourteen but did not marry until she was nineteen, after she had finished her secondary education. After she was married, she continued her higher education studies. Fatima’s second sister (Z), who is also older than her, married in a more exogamous fashion at the age of twenty-four after she had finished her university education. Her husband is from a different ethnic group and region (Danagla), and they met in the bank where she worked. However, her husband is the son of a colleague and friend of Fatima’s father, so despite their ethnic differences, we can assume that they had a similar social, professional and symbolic status. Fatima herself was married when she was twenty-eight to a man from the same geographical region and ethnic group as her, who I discovered was also a distant relative of their family, Fatima’s paternal grandmother (FM) being a cousin21 of her husband’s maternal grandmother (HMM). Fatima’s two brothers (B’s) married a colleague from work and a colleague from university with different ethnic origins from themselves, and Fatima explains that for men, the rules regarding the choice of a spouse are less strict than they are for women.

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In this generation between the first and third sister, we can note that women’s age at marriage has increased by almost ten years, a phenomenon that is common to many societies and is also linked to an increase in the number of women attending university (Girard 1964). I must also underline that all Fatima’s siblings and their spouses had at least an undergraduate degree. As we will see in the following generation, having a university education seems to be the most essential factor when it comes to defining the identity of this family, and it structures their marriage strategies. Among generation +1 of Fatima’s family, ethnic identification no longer seems important if certain social criteria such as social class, educational capital and economic capital are satisfied, something we might define as a shared social identity. Habib (S), who, like all his three siblings, is not yet married, claims that he does not think he could marry a woman from his grandparents’ region as he feels that their culture and customs would be too different. He would prefer to marry someone who also grew up in Khartoum, which can be interpreted as evidence of his detachment from his ethnic identity, which has been replaced by an urban and geographical identity. When I asked Fatima if her children were free to choose their spouses, she replied ‘of course, as long as they are rich!’ (A.I. no. 3). This suggests that economic capital has become the most important identity factor in their marriage strategies. However, the reality is more complex than this discourse might suggest, as Fatima also mobilizes the all-important factor of education: ‘They [their potential future spouses] have to be university graduates because all my children are university graduates, so whoever comes has to be a university graduate’ (A.I. no. 7). This is supported by a rejected marriage inside the family. One of Fatima’s nieces (ZD) was proposed to by a man who claimed to be a university graduate. When the family checked the identity of the man in question, Fatima’s father found out that he had not completed his university studies, and his proposal was refused. Education therefore seems to be the most important factor in defining identity boundaries in this family, but it should not be disassociated from other social factors, as being well-­educated also suggests belonging to a higher stratum of society and having more economic capital. Throughout the three generations of this family, education has played an important role in defining whom it is acceptable to marry and whom it is not, while as we move down through the generations, consanguinity and ethnic identity have become less and less important, to the extent that they are not present as factors that define the choice of a spouse in generation +1. Rural–urban migration and increased education levels

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seem to make this family identify more with Khartoum and Amarat, which they associate with their social class identity, than with their ethnic Nubian identity: we therefore see that their definitions of belonging have changed throughout the three generations concerned.

The Ja‘aliyyn Family: Strategizing Status through Ethnically Exogamous Marriage Abdullah (ego), a man of nearly ninety years old who used to work in the Ministry of Finance, was recommended to me by a friend, as he has lived in Amarat since its creation. I therefore met him and his son Hassan (S), a real estate agent, regularly during my fieldwork. Abdullah claims prestigious origins, saying that he comes from ‘one of the biggest families in Sudan’, with a strong attachment to an Arab identity through his ethnic group, Ja‘aliyyn: ‘Our tribe is Ja‘aliyyn.22 This is an Arab tribe, a traditional Arab tribe. One of the best, the greatest Arab tribes in Sudan, the Ja‘aliyyn, because they spread Islam’ (A.I. no. 5). His family also seems to have a high social status because his paternal grandfather (FF) moved from Ad-Damir to Sennar, which was the capital of the Funj Sultanate at the time. The paternal grandfather in question elevated his social status through his marriage strategies, offering his sister (FFZ) to one of the ‘rulers’ of Sennar, which led the Sultan to grant Abdullah’s grandfather (FF) the status of ‘omda23 and to give him agricultural land. Through the marriage strategies and practices of this family, we will see what effect becoming an ‘omda, and therefore working in close connection with the colonial powers, has had on its members. Abdullah’s paternal grandfather (FF), the ‘omda, married four women, the largest number allowed in Islam, which suggests an important economic and social status. While in the two previous families the older generations were characterized by ethnic and kin endogamy, Abdullah’s paternal grandfather was different, as he practised a form of exogamy with a specific purpose: the accumulation of status and power.24 I asked Abdullah about the origin of these four wives. His paternal grandmother (FM), the fourth wife, was from Maghreb, while the other three were from ethnic groups other than the Ja‘aliyyn, which Abdullah describes as ‘different tribes, but tribes that were there as rulers’ (A.I. no. 10), suggesting that his grandfather allied himself with other powerful families. Abdullah also explains how ‘omda status provided his paternal grandfather with a great deal of social capital, which allowed him to establish links with other powerful figures and families and therefore organize marriages for his children with other families with high levels of social,

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economic, symbolic and professional capital. This can be seen in generation -1, as Abdullah explains to me that the sons of his paternal grandfather (FB) ‘mostly obtained their wives from large tribes, from rulers and so on, in order to be strong’ (A.I. no. 10). We see that the same marriage strategies persist in generation 0, with little attention being paid to spouses’ ethnic origins and an emphasis on the symbolic and social status of the family in question. When Abdullah talks about the spouses of his siblings, being ‘from a big family’ (A.I. no. 5) or ‘a family very well-known politically’ (A.I. no. 10) are what he presents as the reasons why they married. As for his own marriage, his wife’s mother (WM) is of Egyptian origin, while his wife’s father (WF) was Syrian and worked with the Anglo-Egyptian colonial power, which is how he met Abdullah’s father, who had inherited the role of ‘omda from his father. In this example, we clearly see how working in the colonial apparatus enabled those who held an elite status to create alliances between others who also had a high social status. Once again, the marriage strategies and practices of this family continued into the next generation. To give some examples, Abdullah’s eldest daughter (D) ‘married a very rich man from Omdurman, but originally from Dongola’ (A.I. no. 5), while another of his daughters married a man ‘from a known family, as his father was the first judge in Sudan, so a very well-known family!’ (A.I. no. 5). Once again, elements of status (economic, professional, symbolic and social) prevail over elements of ethnic or regional identity. We can therefore define this family’s marriage strategies as ethnically exogamous but socially endogamous, as they only target other families who share a prestigious social status. This is a clear example of how ethnically exogamous marriage can be used as a means of creating alliances between powerful and prestigious families. However, even though ethnic identity is never explicitly present in the marriage strategies of this family, which display a high level of ethnic exogamy, when we look into the origins of the spouses further, we see that they all come either from other Arab countries (Maghreb, Syria and Egypt) or from Arab or Arabized Nubian Sudanese groups. Furthermore, Abdullah strongly claims an Arab-Muslim identity, which in his mind is the identity of Northern Sudan, as opposed to South Sudan, which he defines as ‘100% African’ (A.I. no. 10). While the marriage practices and strategies of his family seem ethnically exogamous, we can argue that they are only carried out among other groups that also claim an Arab identity. I have not yet mentioned the religious component in the case studies of the three Muslim families, but I should underline that even though religion was not a topic that dominated our conversations on

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their marriage strategies, all three families agreed that marriage to a non-Muslim is prohibited. Religion therefore appears to be one uniting and central condition that defines identity boundaries for these families and also shapes their marriage strategies. As we will now see from my analysis of the two Christian families,25 they also share the condition of religion, but it is more explicit in their case because of their minority status in Sudan.

The Syrian Catholics of Sudan Family: Community Endogamy in a Shrinking Group I met Rafi (ego), a middle-aged businessman, through his neighbours in Amarat. His family, who are originally from Syria, have been in Sudan, where they work as traders, for over 100 years, since generation -2, having left Syria because of religious persecution during the Ottoman Empire. They have been in Amarat since 1995, after living in the neighbouring quarter of Khartoum 2. Rafi’s identity reposes on several elements, blending ethno-national identity (Syrian) with religious identity (Roman Catholic) and stressing a long heritage in Sudan: he refers to his group as Syrian Catholics who have been in Sudan for several generations. The emphasis he places on their early arrival in Sudan seems to be designed to contrast his group with more recent Syrian arrivals who are refugees from the civil war that broke out in 2011. Despite holding ‘a Sudanese passport, a Sudanese certificate and a Sudanese driver’s licence and owning a Sudanese company’ (A.I. no. 8), Rafi feels that ‘the Sudanese don’t consider me to be Sudanese in daily life’ (A.I. no. 8). When I ask him why this is, he mobilizes two identity references – the colour of his skin and his religion. The fact that ‘indigenous’ Sudanese do not consider Rafi to be Sudanese and that as a result he stresses his Syrian origins heavily while also highlighting his family’s long-term presence in Sudan seems to me to be a clear example of the in-betweenness that can be found in questions of belonging. Rafi’s family’s marriage strategies and practices are very homogenous throughout the generations, with some slight recent changes due to the declining presence in Sudan of the group with which he identifies, which practises a high level of community endogamy. I will first explore the three cases of kin endogamy in Rafi’s family before looking at cases of community endogamy. There are two cases of marriage to first cousins in the generations of Rafi’s family covered by my study. The first is between Rafi’s father (F), who married his parallel patrilateral cousin (FBD), and the second is between Rafi and his wife, who is his crossed matrilateral cousin (MBD).

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The last endogamous kin marriage involves his maternal uncle (MB), who married his second paternal cousin (FBSD). However, as there are only three endogamous kin marriages in Rafi’s family, they do not constitute the norm, and community endogamy is more prevalent. When discussing community endogamy – that is, marriages between members of Rafi’s community (Syrian Catholics who have lived in Sudan for a long time) – the importance of exclusive community institutions such as churches and clubs becomes clear. In generation -1, all the nonkin marriages in his family were between people who met each other at the Syrian Roman Catholic church or the Syrian Club. The exclusivity of these institutions, particularly the Syrian Club, becomes apparent when I ask if the newly arrived Syrians also frequent the Syrian Club: ‘The club is for Syrian Christians who were born here, not there, not the new ones!’ (A.I. no. 2). Apart from their religion (most of the newly arrived Syrian refugees I encountered in Khartoum were Muslims26), the fact that they have been in Sudan for a long time resurfaces in Rafi’s group’s identity definition, while their Syrian nationality concomitantly plays a large role in their identity definition: this is an example of the complexity and changing boundaries of identity claims and their in-between spaces of belonging. Rafi’s group and family have had to adapt their marriage practices and strategies slightly in recent times, however, due to their decreasing numbers in Sudan. Rafi estimates that forty years ago his group in Sudan numbered around five thousand people, whereas today he believes that there are only one hundred of them, most having migrated to the UK, the USA, Canada or Australia for economic, political and religious reasons. He feels that since the separation of South Sudan in 2011, Christian communities have been hidden even further behind the discourse that Sudan is now ‘100% Muslim’ (A.I. no. 2). Of his own family, only five still live in Sudan. While endogamous community marriages continue for those who have emigrated – for example, Rafi’s niece (BD), who lives in California, married a man who ‘is also from the community, the Sudan community’ (A.I. no. 2) – those who have remained in Sudan have had to open themselves up to other marriage possibilities. However, one criterion that has not altered is that marriage to a Muslim ‘is unacceptable for the community’ (A.I. no. 2). They therefore only marry into other Catholic groups, but in the case of these marriages, another condition that has not been mentioned previously when talking about endogamous community marriages is mobilized: the social status and class of the possible spouse. For example, Rafi tells us: ‘We can marry Coptics, and they can marry us, if they have a good job, are well-­educated and so on’ (A.I. no. 8). Rafi adopts the same position when he talks about

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marriage into other Christian groups in Sudan,27 such as Greek or Armenian Christians, whose numbers are also dwindling. Nonetheless, there has only been one case of a marriage into another Christian group in Rafi’s family. It is therefore interesting to note that despite the current demographic difficulties, endogamous community marriages are the norm for his social group. It seems that other social factors such as profession, education and social status are not of great importance in endogamous community marriages, but they do come into play in the case of marriages into other Christian groups. We can see a clear link between Rafi’s identity discourses and the marriage practices and strategies of his group, with the clear majority marrying inside their social group of Syrian Catholics who have been in Sudan for many years. However, even if it is in a minority of instances, marriage is possible outside this group, provided that one criterion is respected: the potential spouse must also be Catholic. If this is the case, then other criteria such as profession, education and social class are also mobilized to enable the union.

The Coptic Family: Community Religious Endogamy to Avoid Becoming Muslim and Sudanese Mina (ego) is a businessman who was born, raised and works in Amarat. I also met his wife Hannah, who works for a private international school. They are both Sudanese Copts of Egyptian origin,28 their grandparents having moved to Sudan to work in the state apparatus of the AngloEgyptian Condominium, a profession that enabled them to progress economically and socially. Mina’s father (F) and his paternal uncles (FB), who are engineers and businessmen, each bought a plot in Amarat when they were first being sold in 1961. First and foremost, Mina and Hannah define themselves as Orthodox Christians – as Copts – an identity definition that, as we will see, shapes their marriage practices and strategies. Secondly, through their discourses and observable possessions29 and the links their jobs give them to an international expatriate community,30 we can argue that Mina and Hannah identify themselves within a globalized elite community through which they separate themselves from what they define as a Sudanese identity. They express this identity by contrasting their aesthetic preferences with what they see as Sudanese preferences; for example, while Hannah shows me photos of her house, she tells me: ‘I would say it’s not Sudanese style, like you won’t find beds in the living room’ (A.I. no. 9). As she shows me pictures of their two children, she continues: ‘So as you see, they’re not very Sudanese in the way they dress, in their style.’

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In a final clear example, Hannah tells me: ‘I feel that I don’t really belong here, like you’ve seen the Sudanese culture, they look different, most of the people look different, they do different things, they have different ways . . . I feel more international than anything’ (A.I. no. 9). Hannah’s sense of belonging seems, to cite F. Barth (1969), to be based on ‘overt signals or signs – the diacritical features that people look for and exhibit to show identity, often such features as dress, language, house-form or general style of life’ (Barth 1969: 14). Given her and her children’s different style of dress and house decoration and generally different behaviour, she does not see herself or her family as identifying with the Sudanese. Finally with regard to their identity conceptions, Mina and Hannah strongly ascribe to a social class identity that they extend to all inhabitants of ‘first-class’ neighbourhoods in Khartoum: ‘We have this “international” thing about ourselves . . . like many people from the first-class areas like Amarat, Riyad, Manshiyya’ (A.I. no. 9). It therefore seems that higher class social identity is also linked to an ‘international’ identity and that their way of life resembles that of other globalized higher-class cultures. With the emphasis that Mina and Hannah place on the international aspect of their identity, we might expect this aspect to be reproduced in their marriage strategies and practices. However, as we will now see, religious endogamy within the Coptic community is the norm for this family. Mina and Hannah’s family’s marriage strategies and practices are homogenous throughout the generations, with one exception that I will analyse later. Mina describes his community – the Coptic community – as ‘a non-mixed nation. They don’t mix – they marry among each other’ (A.I. no. 4). Endogamy within the Coptic community is therefore a social norm. When Mina claims that the first choice of spouse in any Coptic family would always be another Copt, his wife agrees, but she feels that she needs to modify his discourse. An extract from their conversation will enable us to understand the importance of religious endogamy – in a broader sense, relating to Christianity – for this group: Hannah: ‘The first thing is that the person must be Christian, regardless, this is number one.’ Mina: ‘That goes without saying!’ Hannah: ‘Because if not, it would be like war. It goes without saying, that’s how bad it is. So, then it goes to Coptic and then non-Coptic, and then the family are more likely to agree, but if that person is a non-Christian, that would be like a huge scandal in the family.’ (A.I. no. 9)

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We therefore see that while another Copt is the preferred choice, marriage to other Christians is a possibility, but marriage outside the Christian faith is very much disapproved of. Religion is thus the primary category that shapes their marriage strategies and practices. Every member of Mina and Hannah’s family except one has married another Copt, with no consanguineous marriages in the generations involved in the study. As was the case with the Syrian Catholic family, community institutions seem to play an essential role in the social and cultural reproduction of the Coptic community, with the various Coptic churches and social clubs being the place where most of their community meet their spouses. The one exception to Coptic endogamy concerns the parents of Hannah, her father (WF) a Copt, having married a Bulgarian woman (WM) whom he met while he was studying in Bulgaria. Although this marriage ‘was not the norm’ and ‘not everyone was happy with the decision’ of Hannah’s father to marry a foreign woman, the marriage was possible as they were both Orthodox Christians, which Hannah admits ‘helped a lot’ (A.I. no. 9). Mina adds that marriage between a Copt and another Orthodox Christian is more acceptable than a marriage to a Catholic or Protestant, as they share more traditions and rites. On the subject of their children, who are in their early twenties and currently studying in Canada, Mina admits that he would prefer them to marry another Copt, but says that they have a free choice. This has its limits, however: ‘any other culture I’m ready to accept as long as it’s a Christian culture’ (A.I. no. 9). Hannah adds, ‘I’m more open minded, but a Muslim no’ (A.I. no. 9). Despite presenting themselves as open to exogamy for their children, the primary criterion of religion surfaces yet again, and it seems as if, more than any other variable, this family’s identity and its marriage practices and strategies are centred on their religious affiliation. Despite the emphasis on social class, symbolic capital and the international character of their identity, this family’s marriage strategies and practices are firmly focused on religious endogamy. The ultimate definition of ‘us’ and ‘other’ is therefore religious affiliation: Christianity at a wider scale, followed by Orthodox and finally Coptic as we move to narrower levels. However, Mina, Hannah and Rafi from the previous family (our three Christian interlocutors) never mention the demographically largest Christian group in Sudan, the South Sudanese. The complete absence of South Sudanese from their discourses on marriage suggests that (despite their own group’s diminishing size) marriage to a South Sudanese is not considered to be a possibility at all. Although I tried to discuss this issue, my interlocutors did not seem

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willing to address it, preferring to ignore the question or change the subject. With their links to the history of Sudan’s internal slave trade – whereby those who were considered to be sud (black pl.) and who were not Muslim were seen as legitimate potential slaves – and subsequent ideologies of Arab cultural and racial supremacy, the South Sudanese (among other groups) have long been a socially stigmatized population in Sudan (Sharkey 2008). Furthermore, colonial and postcolonial administration policies have sought to create and maintain a distance between the elite core Arab identity of Northern Sudan and the marginalized African identity of Southern Sudan (Deng 1995). I therefore posit that for our Christian families, as far as marriages to South Sudanese are concerned, a perceived difference in social status stemming from historical and hierarchical race relations and accentuated by ideologies of Arab supremacy is more important when it comes to creating an impassable barrier to marriage, than a shared religion is towards enabling marriage between these two groups. We can thereby understand another level of in-­betweenness, one that functions within the Christianity category, in which other factors such as race and historical status come into play, creating further boundaries inside this demographically dwindling and religiously marginal category.

Comparing Amarat and Deim: Competing Notions of Sudanese-ness and Arabness The juxtaposition of the spatially contiguous but socially heterogeneous, quarters of Amarat and Deim offer a rich space for a comparison of marital strategies and practices, enabling us to better understand the in-betweenness present in competing notions of belonging. Casciarri (Chapter 10) has aptly shown how for residents of Deim marriage not only takes place amongst diverse ethnic groups and across different religions but is also used as a strategy for creating a non-­exclusive and non-conflictual identity centred on the notion of being ‘Sudanese’. This contrasts strikingly with the cases I encountered in Amarat. Both the Halfawiyyn and the Coptic families employ the adjective ‘Sudanese’ negatively to denote alterity, as a marker of those whom they should not marry. For them, becoming Sudanese is something that marriage strategies must actively work to avoid. Furthermore, an integral part of the process of ‘being Sudanese’ in Deim is the questioning of the pervasive Arab/non-Arab dichotomy. When comparing it to Deim, we can notice a stark contrast in Amarat, where the dichotomy of Arab/non-Arab is upheld while also fluctuating. For both of the Nubian families (Halfawiyyn and teachers), marriage

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strategies have opened up over the generations to include other Arab and Arabized groups but are still used to exclude Africans, who appear as the ultimate non-Arab category in this dichotomy. While we might posit that due to their ethnic exogamy the marriage strategies and practices encountered in the Ja‘aliyyn family most closely resemble those encountered in Deim, one important distinction needs to be made: all the kin-exogamous marriages were with other Arab or Arabized groups who form the elite in the Sudanese social stratification. As regards the Catholic families – whose identification as Arab is more problematic due to the erroneous and conflated association between Arabs and Muslims but is claimed by Rafi (the Syrian Catholic family) with the words ‘yes, I am Arab, Christian Arab’31 (A.I. no. 8) – the dichotomy is still upheld through the apparent impossibility of marrying Southern-Sudanese Christians. Historically composed of ethnic groups who have found themselves among the most privileged in Sudanese society, particularly in Khartoum, it seems that in contrast to the aspirations of nation-­ building that are present in the notion of being Sudanese in Deim, these residents of Amarat work to uphold the Arab/non-Arab dichotomy. We can argue that they contribute to the persistence of this dichotomy as they both historically and currently stand to profit from this enduring dichotomy and the racial hierarchization of society it entails. At the beginning of this chapter, I posed the question of whether social status makes identity definitions more rigid or fluid. As a result of the comparison of marriage strategies in the working-class quarter of Deim and the upper-middle-class quarter of Amarat, we can conclude that social status makes marriage strategies more rigid, thereby restricting the social in-between space of belonging. While kin endogamy is stigmatized in Deim, and is on the decline in Amarat, other forms of endogamy  – religious, and also ethnic and class-based  – make up the principal marriage strategies employed in this quarter. Whereas marriages in Deim present a case in which alliances can be used as a tool for opening boundaries and widening the in-between spaces of belonging, in Amarat alliances appears to be a tool that reinforces identity ­boundaries, thereby restricting the in-between spaces of belonging.

Conclusion From my analyses of the data on the five selected families, we can conclude that a diversity of marriage practices and strategies exists in Amarat and that while marriage strategies have undergone major changes in some families others have remained relatively stable. Furthermore, by

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analysing marriage strategies in an urban setting in Khartoum, and by doing so among an ethnically diverse but socially homogenous population, my research sheds light on a relatively understudied domain of socio-anthropological inquiry in Sudan: how marriage practices are utilized by an upper-class section of society to create boundaries and consolidate identities. The first two families reveal similar temporal transformations in their marriage strategies, with the older generations’ definition of a suitable marriage partner centred on kinship, ethnicity and spatial proximity. These strategies have since diversified, with social class and its various forms of capital becoming the dominant factors in identity definitions and shared affiliations. We can therefore note a shift from kin and ethnic proximity to social proximity, with the definition of ‘us’ changing to someone who is socially similar. Urbanization and increases in education are mainly used to explain these transformations. In the third family, who practised ethnic exogamy throughout the whole period studied, we see the importance that is attached to symbolic status when defining marriage strategies and practices. Symbolic and social status seem to be the key factors in identity definition for this family, and they also express a strong Arab identity, with Arab groups forming their d ­ efinition of ‘us’ as opposed to an African identity. The two Christian families’ marriage strategies seem to have undergone the smallest change: they practised religious endogamy throughout the whole period of the study, reflecting their status as minority groups, with endogamy being a privileged strategy for enabling their identity to endure. In their case, identity definitions and group affiliations are first manifested around their religious identity, coupled with an ethno-­ national identity (Syrian and Coptic). These two factors together make up their core identity (‘us’), but their marriage strategies can be extended to include other groups in their definition of ‘us’ as long as they share a religious identity as Christians. However, this shared religious identity is complicated by a racial category that reflects wider social processes of inclusion and exclusion in Sudanese society, as South Sudanese and by extension other African Christians are excluded from marriage to other Christians, who are perceived as privileged Arabs. Here, at the intersection of religious and racial categories, a complex in-between space exists in ideas of belonging. For these families, the ultimate ‘other’ refers to all Muslims: in other words, to most of Sudanese society. In the case of the two Christian families, we might ask ourselves to what degree the experience of being part of a minority group has made their feeling of religious affiliation stronger, leading to religion becoming the one variable before all others

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that shapes their choice of spouse. We might also ask ourselves to what extent recent social and political phenomena such as the secession of South Sudan in 2011 and successive Islamization policies have further dichotomized religious identities in Sudan. When we compare all the families in the sample, however, we can see that religion is a common determining factor in marriage practices and strategies and in identity definitions. Although the discourse around religion was more explicit among the Christian families than it was among the Muslim families, it was nevertheless a vital criterion for all of them. We can therefore say that throughout the whole period covered by the study, when defining who is part of one’s group and who is not, religion appears to be an all-encompassing structural constraint in identity and marriage alike.32 Additionally, my findings suggest that after religion, an Arab/non-Arab dichotomy (which has now been expanded to include Arabized Nubian groups) is also fundamental for determining marriage practices and strategies amongst residents of Amarat. As regards the wider debate on what has been labelled Arab marriage, as analysed by scholars such as Pierre Bonte (1994), in which groups who describe themselves as Arab have a strong preference for agnatic endogamy (which manifests itself principally through a marked tendency towards marriage with the FBD), this study provides some interesting insights. My research shows that the idea of agnatic33 preference does exist in marriage strategies but that it does not constitute a rule a priori. Rather, agnatic marriage forms one part of marriage strategies that exists simultaneously within a wider cognatic system in which marriage partners can be drawn from a variety of kin (or non-kin) relations. My research also supports the argument proposed by Bonte (ibid.), who questioned the notions of endogamy and exogamy by arguing that Arab marriage (and therefore close marriage) should be understood not only in terms of kinship but also politically and culturally. The data supports Bonte’s (ibid.) argument by showing that those who are seen as being close, among a diverse and shifting register of categories, are preferred for marriage. The ultimate degree of proximity can be different depending on the status of a group or family: it may include religion, class and social prestige, education or ethnicity, among others. Closeness is fundamental to all informants; however, as we have seen, what is used to measure closeness changes. In addition, my research contrasts markedly with that carried out by Casciarri (Chapter 10) in the neighbouring working-class district of Deim. Unlike Amarat, where religious endogamy is the shared determining factor of marriage strategies and practices, inter-religion marriages do occur in Deim. Moreover, while the residents of Deim explicitly underline the need to diversify through marriage, and therefore exogamy,

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the inhabitants of Amarat practice differing and diverse forms of endogamy to varying degrees. These forms of endogamy reinforce pre-existing and shifting identity boundaries, thereby upholding the pervasive Arab/ non-Arab dichotomy and the racialized stratification of society, which is the very thing Casciarri’s residents of Deim aim to negate through their own marriage strategies. To conclude, the social in-between space of belonging that I discovered through marriage practices and strategies has provided information on social relations between different groups. We can also perceive the fluidity of identity referents through this research, which in itself forms an in-between space. The way groups interact is not static: there are processes of inclusion and exclusion that depend on many other social factors. I believe that my analysis of this in-between space of belonging and its porous boundaries, between those who are considered ‘us’ and those who are considered as ‘others’, makes a fruitful contribution towards understanding the complex configuration of Sudanese society, its multiple identities and the vast changes it has undergone in the past century. Peter Miller is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Anthropology and at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (2017–21). He completed his masters in Anthropology at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis in 2017 with his research on marital practices in Khartoum, Sudan, under the supervision of Dr Barbara Casciarri. His Ph.D. research is part of the NWO VIDI funded project ‘Sexuality and the Making of the Middle Class: A Comparative Study of Desire and Status in Three African Countries’, led by Dr Rachel Spronk, and centres on the study of non-marriage and social status in Dakar, Senegal.

Notes   1. The idea for the research that led to the creation of this chapter is the result of a close collaboration between the author of the previous chapter, Barbara Casciarri – my master’s supervisor at the Université Paris VIII Vincennes Saint-Denis  – and myself. Both of our contributions stem from a shared desire to employ ethnographical and genealogical methods to address the question of how marriage practices can be used as vectors of social in-­ betweenness in two spatially contingent, but socially different, neighborhoods of Khartoum.

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 2. The original aim was to only include families who are residents of Amarat since the quarter’s creation in the 1960s, but this proved difficult once in the field due to a considerable level of emigration of original Amarat families to Gulf and Western countries. The sample was therefore expanded to include families who have lived in Amarat for twenty years or more.  3. Residential land classification in Khartoum began in 1906 with three classes – first, second and third – that envisaged regrouping populations by income. In 1924, ‘Native Lodging Areas’ were introduced to accommodate ex-slaves and temporary urban workers in areas such as Deim, which borders Amarat to the east (Sikainga 1996). In 1947, the Town Lands Scheme was introduced, reinforcing the division of housing into these three classes and adding criteria of plot size, building materials and lease term. The first class encompasses the wealthiest population group, which can afford the largest plots and most expensive modern construction materials, with plot sizes diminishing and building materials becoming more basic as the classification lowers. There are currently five classes in the classification system (Elhoweris 2006; Sauloup 2010; Grabska and Miller 2016).   4. This perception was often expressed to me through long-term residents’ criticism of newer arrivals in Amarat for their rural mentalities and for not understanding the social mores of city living.   5. The choice of Amarat was also dictated by the shared desire with Barbara Casciarri to compare marriage practices in the two neighbourhoods of Deim and Amarat. Although the two neighbourhoods are spatially contiguous, with Deim located on the western border of Amarat, they have a markedly different historical and social composition.   6. Throughout this chapter, the following conventionally used anthropological abbreviations for kinship terms will be employed:

F = Father  M = Mother  B = Brother  Z = Sister  S = Son  D = Daughter  H = Husband  W = Wife  Sb = Siblings  Ch = Children.

These terms denote the relationship of the person to the designated ‘ego’ of their family.  7. For each family, a principal interlocutor is identified by the term ‘ego’. Kinship relations are then read through their relationship with the designated ego.   8. The Nubian Club, formerly known as the Wadi Halfa Sons Club (not to be confused with its predecessor, which was also called the Nubian Club (1936–63)) was founded in Khartoum in 1963 in response to the threat of the inundation of Nubian ancestral lands following the construction of the Aswan Dam (Hale 1973). The club originally played more of a sociopolitical role around the relocation of Nubian populations affected by the dam’s construction, but today it is used by the Nubian population of Khartoum for many functions, mostly (although not limited to) recreational events (such as weddings or parties) and educational conferences.

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  9. Generation -1 indicates the generation of the parents of the ego, generation 0 the generation of the ego, generation +1 the generation of children of the ego, and so forth. 10. Endogamy refers to the practice of marrying within one’s community (family, ethnic group, religious group etc.). 11. ‘A.I.’ stands for ‘Author’s interview’ and is followed by the chronological order in which the interviews were undertaken. 12. A parallel cousin denotes a cousin from a parent’s same-sex sibling. A cross cousin denotes a cousin from a parent’s opposite-sex sibling. 13. Exogamy refers to the practice of marrying outside one’s community (family, ethnic group, religious group etc.). 14. Affinity designates a kinship relation that exists through marriage, whereas consanguinity designates a kinship relation that exists through descent. 15. Bahri, otherwise known as Khartoum North, is one of the ‘three towns’ that together with Khartoum and Omdurman form the urban conglomeration of Greater Khartoum. Bahri is located to the north of the Blue Nile and to the east of the Nile proper. 16. The word Sudani originates from medieval Arab geographers and comes from Bilad al-Sudan, meaning ‘the land of blacks’, which signifies the part of Africa south of the 20th parallel north. These lands, ‘the land of blacks’, were the territories used for slave raids. Consequently, the adjective ‘Sudani’ – although quite ambiguous, as it can also refer to a national identity – has stigmatized connotations in Sudanese society today, as it can be used to mean that someone is of slave descent (Ahmed 2007; Ryle and Willis 2011; Casciarri 2016; Cislo, Rozanski and Zabek 2017). 17. For a more detailed description of the historical and social composition of Deim, see Casciarri, Chapter 10. 18. I also suggest that his role in the Nubian Club adds to his desire to safeguard old traditions, and therefore endogamous marriage, which we have seen was the social norm for the generation -1. 19. If we consider that in 1940 only 2 per cent of children received a primary education in Sudan (Seri-Hersch 2012), the family’s long background of being educated and working as teachers is relatively remarkable. Furthermore, the fact that Safia’s maternal grandmother was educated and a teacher is even more remarkable considering that in 1920 there were only five primary schools for girls in the whole of Northern Sudan (Seri-Hersch 2012). These facts crystallize how the family’s identity has been shaped through education. 20. Gordon College, which is now called the University of Khartoum, was the first higher education institute created in Sudan and was opened in 1902 by the British colonizers. The courses it provided aimed to train Sudanese students in areas that were essential to the administrative and economic development of the country (Grandin 1982). 21. Unfortunately, it was not possible to ascertain the exact kin relation between Fatima’s paternal grandmother and her husband’s maternal grandmother.

Shifting Notions  307

This could be due to the fact that originally Fatima claimed that there were no kin relations between her husband and herself. It was then her mother, Safia, who indicated that they do share a distant kin relation, a revelation that seemed to displease Fatima, who throughout her discourse sought to distance herself from strict endogamous practices. 22. The Ja’aliyyn trace their genealogy back to Ibrahim Jaal, who is said to be a descendent of Abbas, the paternal uncle of the Prophet. They therefore claim a purely Abbassid identity, which is a noble and highly valorized identity in Sudan (Casciarri 2001). 23. An ‘omda is a figure in a traditional local and/or tribal authority who typically had power over a group of villages or a region. During the period of Indirect Rule (1899–1922) and the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899– 1955), they worked closely with the colonizing power, one of their tasks being to collect taxes from the various sheikhs in the territory they controlled (Grandin 1982). 24. For a more detailed discussion on the political use of exogamous marriage among the Ahāmda, see Casciarri (Chapter 10). 25. For these analyses, I will no longer present the cases generationally as it does not appear to be a pertinent method of analysis, because the cases present many fewer generational changes. 26. As the work of Alice Koumurian (2017) shows, it was estimated in 2017 that 200,000 Syrians had migrated to Sudan since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Of the fifty Syrian migrants she interviewed, 96 per cent were Muslim. This contrasts with the longer-established Syrian population of Sudan, most of whom migrated during the Ottoman Empire and are principally Christian. 27. The absence of the demographically largest Christian group in Sudan – the South Sudanese – in Rafi’s discourse will be addressed later. 28. Copts are orthodox Christians originating in Egypt, where they are estimated to make up around 10 per cent of the national population. During the nineteenth century, many Copts emigrated to Sudan, and their population there today is estimated to be around 400,000. 29. They speak of taking several international holidays each year; they have the most modern smartphones; wear expensive watches and jewellery . . . (fieldwork observations, 2016). 30. Mina is the owner of a luxurious high-rise and rents hotel-apartments, principally to foreign businessmen and the staff of NGOs and International Organizations. As mentioned previously, Hannah works at a private international school. 31. Rafi continues by suggesting that a distinction should be made between ‘Christian Arabs’ and ‘Muslim Arabs’ with regard to immigration and visa applications, due to the fact that he was refused a UK visa due to what he perceives as being considered to be Sudanese (and therefore with connections to terrorism); he contends that Christians with a Sudanese passport should be a separate category.

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32. It is important to bear in mind that Islam and Christianity do not enjoy the same status in Sudan, with Islam being the politically, demographically and socially dominant religion. Islam’s dominance was further accentuated in 2011, when the majority Christian South Sudan claimed independence. 33. Agnatic refers to kinship relations traced through the male line.

References Ahmed, A.G.M. 2007. ‘Sudanese Trade in Black Ivory: Opening Old Wounds’, Occasional Paper, no. 31. Center for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Cape Town, SA. Babiker Mahmoud, F. 1984. The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? London: Zed. Barth, F. (ed.). 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Bonte, P. (ed.). 1994. Épouser au plus proche: inceste, prohibitions et stratégies matrimoniales autour de la Méditerranée. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Casciarri, B. 2001. ‘“La gabila est devenue plus grande”: Permanences et évolutions du “modèle tribal” chez les pasteurs Ahāmda du Soudan arabe’, in P. Bonte, E. Conte and P. Dresch (eds), Émirs et presidents: Figures de la parenté et du politique dans le monde arabe. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, pp. 273–99. ______. 2016. ‘Être, devenir et ne plus être janûbi: parcours de l’identité “sudiste” entre le CPA et l’après 2011 dans un quartier populaire de la ville de Khartoum (Deim)’, Égypte/Monde arabe, third series 14: 65–84. Cislo, W., J. Rozanski and M. Zabek (eds). 2017. Collectanea Sudanica, Vol. 1. Bernadinum, Centre Baba-Simon à Figuil, Institute of the Dialogue of Culture and Religion, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University, Warsaw. Delmet, C. 1989. ‘Sociétés rurales et structures sociales au Soudan central’, in M. Lavergne (ed.), Le Soudan contemporain: De l’invasion turco-égyptienne à la rébellion africaine (1821–1989). Karthala/CERMOC, coll. ‘Hommes et Sociétés’. Paris/Beyrouth, pp. 57–82. Deng, F. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington: The Brookings Institute. Denis, E. 2005. ‘De quelques dimensions de Khartoum et de l’urbanisation du Soudan’, Khartoum, CEDEJ Lettre de l’OUCC – Spring 2005. Elhoweris, M. 2006. ‘The Impact of Residential Land Classification on Neighbourhood Design: The Case of a Third Class Residential Areas Ishash Falata, Khartoum City, Sudan’. Department of Architecture, University of Khartoum. Available at: http://www.lth.se/fileadmin/hdm/alumni/papers/ sdd2006/sdd2006-19.pdf. El-Tom, O.A. 2006. ‘Darfur People: Too Black for the Arab-Islamic Project of Sudan’, Irish Journal of Anthropology 9(1): 12–18.

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Girard, A. 1964. Le Choix du conjoint: Une enquête psycho-sociologique en France. Paris: P.U.F. Grabska, K., and P. Miller. 2016. ‘The South Sudan House in Amarat: South Sudanese Enclaves in Khartoum’, Égypte/Monde arabe [Online], Troisième série, Le Soudan après l’indépendance du Soudan du Sud. Retrieved 3 November 2018 from https://journals.openedition.org/ema/3574. Grandin, N. 1982. Le Soudan nilotique et l’administration britannique (1898– 1956). Leiden: Brill. Hale, S. 1973. ‘Nubians in the Urban Milieu: Greater Khartoum’, Sudan Notes and Records 54: 57–65. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42677926. Koumurian, A. 2017. ‘Le Soudan, un pays de destination? Le cas des Syriens arrivés après 2011 à Khartoum’, Observatoire Afrique de l’Est, Note Actualité 3, July 2017. Available at: https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/sites/ sciencespo.fr.ceri/files/oae_01082017.pdf. Le Gall J., and L. Rougé. 2014. ‘Oser les entre-deux!’, Carnets de géographes 7. Ryle J., and J. Willis. 2011. ‘Introduction: Many Sudans’, in J. Ryle et al., ‘The Sudan Handbook’, The Rift Valley Institute. Sauloup, G. 2010. ‘Bâtir et vivre la ville : Les ouvriers des chantiers de construction à Khartoum’, master’s thesis. University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Seri-Hersch, I. 2012. ‘Histoire scolaire, impérialisme (s) et décolonisation (s): le cas du Soudan anglo-égyptien (1945–1958)’, Ph.D thesis, University of Aix-Marseille. Sharkey, H.J. 2008. ‘Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity and Race’, African Affairs 107(426): 21–43. Sikainga, A.A. 1996. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas Press. Werner, O., and H.B. Russell. 1994. ‘Ethnographic Sampling’, Cultural Anthropology Method Journal 6(2): 7–9.

Epilogue

Negotiations of Multiple Identities and the Polemics of Living In-Betweenness In Conversation with Stella Gaitano

AZZA AHMED ABDEL AZIZ AND KATARZYNA (KASIA) GRABSKA

Meeting Stella: Two (in-between) Anthropologists and a Writer

In May 2016, we (Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Kasia Grabska)

attended a literary evening organized by the French Cultural Institute in Khartoum, Sudan. The panel discussion involved several Sudanese women writers and critics, who offered their perspectives on the history and evolution of women’s writing in Sudan. One of the speakers was Stella Gaitano. She impressed us with her personal story, her approach to writing and the distinctive focus in her short stories on ideas of in-­ betweenness (see Gaitano, this volume). At the end of the evening, we asked to meet her and interview her for the research project1 that both of us were involved in as researchers at the time. We wanted to engage directly with some lived experiences and narratives of in-betweenness in Khartoum through a conversation with a writer who lives her in-­ betweenness on a daily basis. To situate our conversation, we start with personal introductions.

The Anthropologists Azza is a social and medical anthropologist. She was born to Sudanese parents who were educated during the British colonial era in Sudan and moved to the UK for their postgraduate studies. Their links to the UK

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are anchored by the fact that their first child was born there. Although they eventually returned to work in Sudan, they maintained a home in the UK. Azza continued living between Sudan and England. She went to boarding school in England for her secondary school education and eventually attended universities in France and England. Azza’s research interests focus on cultural understandings of health and well-being and biomedical discourses about health. Her work pivots on how different individuals and groups access health and understand well-being on a continuum ranging from therapeutics based on cultural beliefs, sensory experience and bodily memory to those based on scientific epistemologies. She has in-depth experience working on these issues among people whose lives have been subject to different forms of movement or migration. In London, she has worked closely with migrants in situations of cultural and psycho-social dislocation and with refugees who have been subjected to torture. She lives between London and Khartoum and sees herself as belonging to both and many more spaces. Kasia is a social anthropologist originating from Warsaw, Poland. She has spent over half her life living in different places around the world (the UK, Italy, Belgium, the US, Vietnam, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan, Ghana, Egypt and Switzerland) while studying, working and researching on issues relating to gender, generations, power, war and displacement. Since 2002, she has been working with Sudanese refugees from the south in Egypt, Kenya, returnees to South Sudan and displaced populations living in Khartoum. Her in-betweenness is anchored in her personal life and choices and her feeling of not belonging to one single geographical location, but rather being in between those spaces and categories. As a polyglot and as someone who is deeply engaged in local lives wherever she resides, she relates to the role of language as a mediator and as a tool for grasping the contextual and local meanings of experience, understanding and practice. Her research has explored social transformations in the context of conflict-induced movement and (im)mobility. She is committed to feminist methodologies and research processes in which knowledge emerges as co-constructed with attention to spaces of in-betweenness.

The Writer Stella is a well-known short story writer on the Sudanese Arabic literary scene. She was trained as a pharmacist at Khartoum University and worked as a journalist in Khartoum and Juba while publishing her first collections of short stories. Stella is a mother of two boys, married

312  Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

to a man of Northern Sudanese background. She is the author of two published works, Wilting Flowers and The Return.2 Stella was born in Khartoum, which lies at the heart of the turmoil and tortured identity politics that have contributed to the demise of Sudan as it existed as a nation state encompassing South Sudan; however, her personal biography is influenced by her South Sudanese ancestry through her parents, who hail from South-East Sudan. Stella embodies both Northern and Southern Sudanese sociocultural signifiers. Through her complex personal biography, her use of Arabic as a language of creative expression and her personal choices, she lives the state of flux that has assailed the broader Sudanese sociocultural landscape since the division of the country into two parts in July 2011 on a daily basis. This meeting of two cultural components that live within Stella creates a very poignant framework for issues relating to identity and belonging. Salient among these is the fact that Stella writes and expresses important elements of her being in Arabic. Yet her attachment to that language is also a double-edged sword that is in need of negotiation. For it is an idiom of a certain remoteness from her mother tongue Latuka and equally represents a relative distance from her mother and grandmother, who inspire many of the themes she addresses in her short stories in Wilting Flowers: nostalgia, the past, imagining the south and life on the urban peripheries of Khartoum. This space between these very important women in her life is poignantly expressed in the dedication in the second edition of Wilting Flowers, in which she expresses her awareness that her mastery of the powerful written word in Arabic was not available to her illiterate mother and grandmother, even though they are the producers of oral history from whom she has inherited the craft of storytelling. In this context, her choice of words is significant when she states that these matriarchs are not ‘colonized’ by letters. While she is sad that they will not read her work, it is possible to infer that they are free of the burdens of this written word, one in Arabic and one that perpetuates Stella’s c­ onstant need to negotiate two worlds in which she is embedded. Stella’s initial stories and writing weave a tapestry of South Sudan in the North that significantly precedes her first visit there after the separation. In this way, she creates a space for the South that transcends geographical territories and creates a novel space of multiple encounters between North and South through fiction. In her second literary creation, The Return, which was written in South Sudan while Sudan was dividing, she addresses the issue of the

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‘real South’ without the North and how Southerners have to look in the mirror and face themselves and their internal turmoil without having the North as the enemy. Stella bridges the gap between Sudan and South Sudan when she poignantly evokes how an understanding of the ‘Big Nation’ (Sudan as it was) has reinforced her commitment to contributing to her new nation of South Sudan. In our interview, she later mentions: ‘When I was accused of not supporting separation, I told them that big Sudan taught me to love. It taught me nationalism and from that my love for South Sudan derives’ (12 June 2017). Paradoxically, her love for Sudan mediates her relationship of ambivalence in tandem with her attachment to her new nation, which she had only known through narratives from her relatives and other displaced Southerners living in Khartoum before the separation. From this perspective, Stella is, together with negotiating her own in-betweenness, a mediator within a larger process of ‘in-betweenness’ that encompasses the two Sudans.

The Interview On the 12 June 2016, we met with Stella in El Hosh restaurant in Omdurman. It was during Ramadan (the Islamic month of fasting), and the restaurant was empty in the early afternoon. The restaurant is located on the Nile River. The Nile as it appeared before us seemed to be a point of mediation between the White Nile – which runs through South Sudan and Sudan – and the Blue Nile, which runs through Sudan. As one single Nile, it becomes a transcending river that continues to geographically and symbolically connect the North and the South and still plays a major role in shaping the identities and livelihoods of the two countries and consolidating their historical bond. We wanted to explore the concept of in-betweenness as a space allowing for the various manifestations of negotiating identity and notions of belonging. With her cultural background, her birth in Khartoum, her marriage to a Northern Sudanese man, her choice to move back to South Sudan and contribute to its development despite many people’s reservations about her loyalties and her return to Khartoum, Stella represents the crux of in-betweenness of identity and belonging. Our conversation was guided by the premises of the research programme we were both participating in but also by the wider interests of the individual research projects we have been working on since the beginning of the 2000s. Our aim was to keep the narrative flow of the interview in the form of a dialogue, with questions, answers, comments and explanations emanating from all three of us. As a conversation, the interview was not set out

314  Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

in a chronological or geographical (spatial) order, and often we would often go back and forth in time and place. The narratives and concepts evolved spontaneously, and often unexpectedly, but the interview as it transpired was a coherent discussion about the diverse aspects of Stella’s lived experiences and meanings of in-betweenness. The conversation was carried out mainly in English, with Stella at times explaining in Arabic concepts and experiences that could be expressed more appropriately in her preferred language. On several occasions during the interview, as anthropologists, we interpreted and asked questions, and Stella reinterpreted and corrected our initial interpretation in turn. Such interactions underscore how the interview created the space for a dialogic process that illustrated that the problematic of identity and belonging was in some instances conceptualized concretely and less so in others. This characteristic was informed by the nature of the concept of in-betweenness, so that the process was always in the making, and never finalized. While our intention has to keep the written shape of the interview as close as possible to its initial format, what follows below is the interview in a mediated form that follows the logic of our conversation and is therefore not chronological. To allow for a more metaphorical and analytical reading of the interview, we grouped the questions and answers into themes that were analysed and decided collaboratively between the anthropologists. The themes are therefore part of a productive process that was facilitated by the concept of in-betweenness.

In Conversation with Stella Prelude Stella: . . . People will think strange things . . . Kasia: My husband is half-Egyptian . . . It’s funny, these perceptions people have, even for my sons. I remember one day in Poland, one of my sons’ cousins, who was thirteen, was talking to a friend of his on Skype. My son was with them. The friend asks the cousin: ‘Who’s with you?’ He says: ‘Oh this is my cousin. His name is Samir’. So the friend, who is Polish, asks: ‘Oh, is he Muslim?’ [Stella laughs] Kasia: You could hear the fear in his voice . . . [Laughter]

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Kasia: My nephew was so confused because he didn’t really know. He looks at Samir and he says: ‘No, no he’s like us . . .’ What does it mean? He’s like us!   But you must get a lot of this stuff. Stella: A lot of stuff, and I even use it if I don’t want people to talk to me or if they are annoying me. I married Arab man and like that. Kasia: They look at you surprised . . . Stella: Yes, surprised. . . . We had a conference in Juba and during the break some guys came and said: ‘You are beautiful lady. Are you married? We want to marry you and we will pay a lot of cows.’ They do not talk about the ideas I talked about; they were just looking at my body and talking about marriage and they are really, really annoying me. We are eating; I just want them to go.   They say: ‘Are you really married? We want to marry you’. I said: ‘Yes, I am really married and have two sons.’ ‘Where from?’ ‘North Sudan.’ ‘Serious?’ I said yes. They just took off. Kasia: And they left you in peace? Stella: And left, so I am pleased, free [she laughs]. Azza: So they did not like it? Stella: They don’t like it. Azza: Really! Kasia: How about the people here? The Southerners here? Stella: I think actually it is different. Some accept and some are yani fi nas mutarifin jidan. They are . . . Azza: . . . extremists. Stella: They don’t even want to think about such things. Azza: Do you think all South Sudanese have this attitude? Stella: No, no, no, no, no. Because even in South Sudan there are lots of families shared with North Sudan. But I think the experience is different [small quick laugh] because I like to go through things. Maybe talk about things and know the feelings of people about these things. Kasia: So you provoke them sometimes?

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Stella: Sometimes I provoke them because we don’t really want to be silent about these things. I don’t want somebody to accuse someone because he is different or has his own choices and privacy. Kasia: You already started telling us the story . . . The project we are doing – it is part of a research about in-betweenness . . . we both have worked with Southern communities . . . And we noticed that although people don’t have a word for in-betweenness, they live it and experience it daily. In Nuer, for example, they don’t have the word. In Nuer, you are either this or that. It is really interesting. I started using it because I saw people were really negotiating identities. But then they themselves said: ‘No, no we don’t have issue of in-betweenness, we might be in-between but for us in our language we don’t use that as a category.’ Stella: Even in South Sudan, even if I am married from another tribe, like I am Shilluk and marry from Nuer I am no longer Shilluk. I belong to Nuer. So they just destroy this in-betweenness . . . you can’t say . . .You belong to your husband’s side, your children belong to their father. Azza: So the same as in the North tayeb [in that case], you are always affiliated ethnically to your father, but the mother stays identified according to her own original ethnic group.

Back to the Anthropologists . . . The above two sections serve as a prelude to the theme of in-betweenness that Stella embodies and engages with. Our mediation as anthropologists was tangible when it was suggested that Stella provokes people in South Sudan by deliberately bringing up the sensitive subject of marriages between Southerners and Northerners through her own practice. Another instance that problematizes in-betweenness and sets the stage for dialogue was the introduction of the premise that in-betweenness does not exist for many groups in Sudan and South Sudan alike since it challenges their respective comfortable social orders. However, this propensity to catalogue and categorize does not obscure the messy nature of social life and the blurred boundaries between the various spheres of everyday lives. These sections introduce the in-between as a space of contestation, demonstrated by Stella’s choice to challenge through the medium of her ‘outside’ marriage, opening up wider avenues for negotiating a broader status of being betwixt and between in both Sudans. Through her

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marriage outside her imagined group, Stella produces a non-normative narrative that is exemplified by her refusal to objectify her body and the offer of a payment of cattle. Bride-wealth is widely practised and is not intrinsically a problem among Southern Sudanese populations; it is still the rule and proscribes the gender relations that must be adopted. Stella destabilizes this gender norm by deliberately evoking the possibility of an alternative for a South Sudanese woman through marriage outside the accepted parameters. Stella’s aspirations also move beyond a life course determined by her marriage potential to encompass demands that her ideas should be addressed. She contributes to a state of flux through her creative writing process. By attending the conference and physically embodying the potential for a discussion on alternatives to rigid distinctions, she pits different cultural identities against each other in ideological and discursive terms.

Stella’s Story of In-Betweenness in Her Own Words Stella: My name is Stella Gaitano. I am . . . I was Sudanese . . . woman, and recently I have to choose if I am Sudanese or South Sudanese. And the official documents say I have to legally belong to South Sudan, but inside my heart I feel that I belong to all this one million kilometre earth. And this Sudan contributed to born this Stella. And I think I can be all of Sudanese culture. I have deep roots in South Sudan: my father and mother are from South Sudan. I was born here, in the North, in Khartoum. All my experience and education levels I have got here. And it is really affecting me. So when I rise up I realize what I can ­contribute – me as Stella – to this Sudan issue: the issues of identity, the issue of religion, the issue of tribes, and how all this is different to people. But for us, it is [sic] reasons for war. And from my idea, it does have to be the issue or reason for war. For me it is some kind of . . . rich . . . rich culture. We belong to different . . . There is this, a lot of diversity, and this makes us rich people. Kasia: So you were actually born here in Khartoum? But your parents came here; they were born in the South? Stella: My parents were born in the South, and they came during the war here. Kasia: So when did they arrive? Where did they come from in the South?

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Stella: My father came first in the end of the 60s, and then he went back and brought my mother here and so they stayed. Kasia: From where in the South? Which part of the South? Stella: They are from Eastern Equatoria, Torit. Kasia: And your mum has been here since the 1970s? Stella: Since the 70s, and some, they go and come, and after that they stayed, after the war started there. Kasia: They stayed here? Stella: They stayed here, and most of us were born here, two in the South. We are seven: six girls and one boy. Azza: What is the order of the boy? Stella: The boy is older than me by three years, and he is in America, United States now. The first sister, she is in Egypt also now, and the rest – we are just divided between Khartoum and Juba. Some are here and some are there. Kasia: So you are the third born. Stella: I am the third born, in the middle [she laughs].

On Being Different: Stella’s Personal Experiences of Difference Azza: Why do you think you are so exceptional? Why does this existential connection [with the North] not exist for others? Stella: I think most Southerners here in Khartoum they do not go deeper into relationships with people. They just separate themselves. Even if they are in university, they are staying in groups; they do not want to make relationships with other groups. This is even for people who are born here. Kasia: How was it different for you? Why are you different? Stella: I think this is related to my personality. I like to know people. I don’t like to judge people before I know them. When I am anywhere, I just go deeper, I want to know people. I want to build up relationships. Even others they can have ideas about us, they do not know us. Kasia: And your siblings; do they have the same attitudes as you?

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Stella: Yes they have the same attitudes. My mother and father are simple people, but they raised us in a way that we don’t have to separate ourselves from others. We have always lived in the places that have all Sudanese in the same area, so we are open to each other . . . My parents were open. We were raised in different areas in Haj Yousif. In Bahri Al Mazad. We are all born in Bahri Al Mazad and then left to Haj Yousif. Kasia: You went to Sudanese schools or you went to schools for South Sudanese only? Because I know they were separated sometimes. Stella: Yeah, in the beginning we were in Comboni with a lot of South Sudanese, but when we travelled from Mazad to Haj Yousif we just changed the school to the local school, and we have been with all children. My father was a labourer in a steel and iron factory. Kasia: And your mum? Did she have a job . . . Oh, she had a big job raising all of you! And did all of you go to university? Or just you? Stella: Just me for long time . . . but now I help my little sister, who is also about to graduate. Kasia: Oh, so you are special! Why just you? Stella: I do not know. I went to University of Khartoum. My father and mother are simple. I think they cannot afford for all of us to go to school. My bigger sister and brother, they just gave up. When they got their higher school certificate, they gave up. When I came to that step, I was smart in the school. I was clever, and I had a lot of things that I wanted to do and wanted to change. I did not want to stay at home. I fought to go to the university. Then I got the Sudanese certificate in high percentage. My parents were shocked; they said: ‘You will not go to university.’ They said I can stay home like my sister and brother. But when I got this, I said to myself, this is another step you have accomplished and have to move on. But my parents were talking about the fact that they did not have money, we cannot afford it. Then I said to them that I would work to collect money to go to university. Between high school and university, I worked in a publishing company; I collected money and I was accepted in the pharmacy faculty of University of Khartoum. My family they were all shocked. We were all crying. My mother said: ‘You will change our family.’ I changed my whole community. Azza: When you came with this Northerner, what did they do? Stella: Yeah, another change. They knew that I was different, and I just do different things. But I never bring trouble to my family. They knew

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that I always take the right decision. When I came with him, they realized that he respects me; they said, ok this is your choice . . . Azza: Was it problematic, though, for his family, for him to marry somebody from South Sudan; were they a bit racist or was it okay? Stella: No, no. The racism always comes from the other people, not the closer ones. In his family they said: ‘You chose her, we like her, she is good, and she is kind, and she does not have any problem, no problem.’ But the other people, the extended family, they were saying: ‘Why?’ They were saying to him: ‘You are marrying from the South? Why? People want to clean their skin, and you are going to make it dark’ [laughter]. . . . Even they are darker than me . . . the imagination . . . Azza: Interesting for us as anthropologists – as you said, the key word, the imagination, and how people imagine their identities. Stella: Yeah, it is all about imagination. Because my colour and his colour – we are the same [laughs]. We have the same colour, just he is Arab and I am from the South. They see me as darker. Azza: Where is he from? Stella: min Atbara. Azza: What ethnic group? Stella: Wallahi Shaygi azin min nas Berber kida [Shaygiya ethnic group, I think, from those people of Berber] kida [like] lakin [but] they are raised up in Omdurman. Even his mother was born here in Omdurman.3 Azza: So they are an Omdurmani family? Stella: Yes, they are an Omdurman family.

Barriers to ‘the Other’: Living In-Between and Social Isolation Azza: . . . Okay here in Khartoum when you were within the community, your interactions socially? Where you interacting with different kinds of people who would interact with each other? Or did you feel like you needed to make a choice? Like when you were dealing with Southern young people . . . your own age. Did you have to keep it apart from your other social relationships? Like your Northern friends were separate and your Southern friends were separate or was it all mixed? Stella: They were all mixed. The people I mixed with were all openminded people. When some Southerners would say things about the

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Northerners, I just try to change them: ‘What do you know about North Sudanese? That they are people who went to the South and killed people and had war with us? Or do you want to know about the humanity of people and how you can tell them about your own experience with war?’ ‘How can they know and feel with your pain and your problems if you don’t go deep to people and talk about your issues?’ Even to understand how they are thinking about you. You can’t change if you just stay in the corner. You have to be with people; you have to fight from inside. Azza: Stella, why do you think that young Southern Sudanese born here in Khartoum would not have these contacts? They went to school; I am sure that they mixed with Northern Sudanese or different people. Why are they still so isolated? Stella: I think it is related to the family. I talked about this several times; we are extended families in Sudan whether from North or South. And when you are raised up in a negative family and they just plant bad ideas and images about somebody else, you will just grow up to see people how people told you about them. So for me, I destroyed this; I want to know people with my own experience – if they are bad, I will just leave them. If they are good – I will continue with them. I do not want to judge people according to the ideas of our fathers. Yes, we know the political issues, we know the war, we know there is a lot of discrimination and a lot of things happened to us, but I think if we want to change them, we have to think different and act different . . . I think one of my ideas about the problems that face Sudanese – it’s we don’t know each other well. So I started just to know each other, and I just started to make others know about me and how I feel what I am thinking . . . I did this through my writing, through my daily life, through everything . . . even when I am in the bus I just open a conversation with my neighbour . . . to learn about them.

Separation of the Sudans, Politics and National Belonging Azza: And why when the separation happened . . . how did they say, did somebody say you have to give up your nationality? Was there a procedure? Or how did it happen? Stella: Yeah about the nationality  – it is just like a decision. It is a political decision that after 2 September 2000 – no, 9 July 2011 – any South Sudanese will not be a Sudanese any more. So they dropped our nationality.

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Azza: So no exceptions? Stella: No exceptions. Azza: At all? Stella: At all no exceptions, even when I am going and start to fight for my right that I am born here, that I am Sudanese more than anyone maybe, and added to that I am married from North and have children here. So they said to me: ‘No, there is no dual nationality we can give to you. We can give to children but the mother no.’ The children they have, they can have Sudanese even it is in the constitution or in the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement], there is a clause they negotiate about this. But just they decide not to give the parents nationality. So they can give children. They are now Sudanese, and they have also South Sudan nationality – they have both. Azza: And your husband? Is he allowed to have South Sudanese nationality? Stella: We are going there, yeah, and stay about 1 year and three months there. There I am starting yani talaat li awladi jinsiya min hinak [I got a nationality for my boys from there]. Even there it is a lot of issues about the nationality for my kids. And maybe it is . . . but recently they create a small office to deal with issues like us – that one married from North or girl married. They create, like, office, and they give the right to the husband if he is from North. If they are married more than five years and have children, they have a right to get South Sudanese nationality. Kasia: So your husband has two nationalities? Stella: If he wants he can just get it. Kasia: Does he want it? Stella: Yeah he does not have any problem about it. I do not negotiate about these things with him . . . it is just his choice up to him. Azza: You make no distinction between being Sudanese. You think separation is just politics? Stella: Separation is just politics, yeah. We cannot separate our blood, we cannot separate our relationships; you cannot separate all these things, you cannot separate it. Azza: Do you think things are better now or worse now, in your opinion, for South Sudanese? Do you still think there is euphoria about the separation?

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Stella: No, because I think differently, because I was against this separation. I always talked about what we have as Sudanese if we are political or intelligent; we have to find a medium solution to our issues as Sudanese. But separation is not the solution for us. Even people from South Sudan were also against me, and when I go there, they would shout to me ‘you need to stay with Arab’ . . . But I always said I was Sudanese. Azza: Who would say this to you? Stella: People in public, journalists . . . politicians. . . . When things started to collapse in Sudan and South Sudan and they started to make that agreement, al hurriyat al arba‘ [the Four Freedoms Agreement], and I wrote this is the right thing, politics has to catch up with it. People need that. There were people in the South who were against this agreement [Four Freedoms] and even here . . . Northerners were against. They said: ‘They chose to go, let them go and we don’t want any relationship with them and’ . . . and there they don’t want because they said now if we open this border and we give them they can come and take our things. But for me, my article was different; I talked about the deep relationship between us as Sudanese before secession, about the families. South Sudan is a closed country; we do not have borders to sea. . . . We are South Sudanese. We need the North, and the North needs us, and we can all help each other to grow and go forward. Many people in the South accused me that from the beginning I was against independence and working with Arabs: ‘You need to stay there because your husband’ . . .

Stella: As a Label of Distrust and a Symbol of Polarities Stella: I started writing at 22, at university . . . we have boards, we write our opinion there. As you know, we have a lot of Kaizan [Muslim Brothers] and Ansar Suna [Wahabi Islamic movement] there. They started making a campaign about how we can support the Palestinians . . . It was like when the Mustafa Mahmoud [in Egypt, in Cairo] event was happening . . . near that time. After that they were talking about ‘Palestinians, they are our ­brothers’ . . . They’re just talking about these things. So I wrote and said ‘As Sudanese we don’t stand up in our pain and we don’t support our ­brothers inside the country. How are we supporting brothers far away?’ . . . I brought up the issue of Darfur – ‘People are being killed there’ – and I brought up the issue of Mustafa Mahmoud in Egypt. I said ‘A lot

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of Sudanese are killed there and nobody condemns this or makes any memories for those people and they are Sudanese’. I am not against supporting Palestinians or any human that is suffering in this world, but it’s my opinion that if we don’t stand with our brothers inside Sudan anything else will be something like we are just talking about unreal things. Wow! They didn’t like that! ‘You are the kafra [infidel] . . . They are our brothers because they are Muslims; you don’t want us to stand with our brothers . . . and now you want to talk about the humanity of what your people are doing when John Garang died in Khartoum . . . your brothers, your brothers killed us and raped our girls and burned everything.’   I was in the halls of residence, and my friend came running and said ‘Stella, don’t come to the university . . . Ansar Al Suna wants to kill you.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because of your article.’ I said, ‘No, I will go, and everything that happens, let it happen in front of people’ . . . I was not married at that time. So I went to the university, from the door papers were posted ‘Stella is . . .’ They were talking about the religion, about North and South; about the South: ‘They are killing people, and they are looting us and . . . you don’t know.’ I let them talk for about one week . . . People were silent. People said: ‘Ignore them, they don’t understand you. We are with you.’ I said, ‘If you support me write it there!’ Because I think it wasn’t because of the article and the ideas; I think it is because it is labelled with Stella Gaitano, and Stella Gaitano means a lot of things. She is from another region, from South, and she may be against Islam. So I think if I label it with Shaima Mohammed nobody will talk. Azza: Naming! Stella: I think it’s about the name: ‘So if you are with me you have to write it down there’ . . . You’re saying this and this, but I think you are against Islam, also because in this aya [verse] God said and the rasoul [Prophet] said . . . It is not the issue of my ideas. I think it’s an issue because I’m Stella Gaitano.

Shifting Multilocal Belonging: Transitions and Ambivalence about Returning Azza: Why did you decide to go back to the South? Why didn’t you just stay in Sudan as a foreigner? Stella: I decided to go there – first it is my duty to go there. I think I can make a difference there. I can do things that I believe in, to help people, to help my country to grow up. In South Sudan, we have a high percentage of illiteracy and high percentage of poverty. If I am not going there as

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an educated girl or educated woman this would be a shame. So I have to contribute with others to build up my country and to accept the reality. Azza: Ah! Was your husband OK about this? Stella: Yeah. The first year I went there with my kids and stayed there and started working. And he stayed here; he hadn’t decided yet whether to go with me or not, and we didn’t negotiate about that. He said, ‘Because you are so famous in Sudan and you are doing a lot to raise up our [your] country like Sudan all the eyes will look to you what you will do.’ He saw I was fighting to stay or go for one year. Even I was so depressed, and I had two persons fighting inside me. Do I have to stay or go, and if I go will people accept me? Accept my children? A lot of questions arose. I didn’t know how to do. Just he helped me to decide. He said, ‘I know you, you want to do something, you want to help because here in Sudan you don’t have any right to write again in the newspapers’ . . . Because I am not Sudanese . . . I was no longer allowed to write about political issues because that was my focus . . . As Sudanese [before the change in laws and before the independence of South Sudan] I was writing in newspapers and negotiating every single thing, every single idea. I was against this government. On the last day before the independence of South Sudan, we started making the last issue. At 5 o’ clock they came to the newspaper [Ajras Al Hurriya] with guns and stopped us from publishing. They said ‘You are not allowed to publish anything any more because you are not Sudanese.’ They closed the paper and chased people out. Although there were equally Northern Sudanese working in the newspaper.   We wrote very positive things. In one of my last articles, which is hasn’t been published, I talked about the fact that a lot of people said if we separate maybe we cannot stay Sudanese. But I wanted to say we can stay if we create a positive neighbourhood because in our roots we are still all Sudanese. Some are in the North and some are in the South, but we want to create a positive neighbourhood, to stand together, to build together . . . as South Sudanese we want the North Sudanese to help South Sudan to stand up. But the article wasn’t published. Kasia: What did you do with the article? You should publish it. Don’t you want to publish it? Stella: I don’t want to publish it, because I think it depends on that time; now things have changed . . . Kasia: That experience you had in Juba, when you actually went to Juba, uh, and you stayed there . . . three years. Did you feel that was the place that you belonged to, where you come from? Is that your place?

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Stella: Yeah, from the beginning I felt like I’m a stranger in my home. I wrote about this issue: ‘How can a person be a stranger in his home’? Azza: Yes, but how is it your home? Is it your home because people told you it was your home, or because you dreamed of it as your home? Why is it your home? For example, for me, my family originates from the Shimaliyya [Northern State], but for me it is not my home. I never even thought of it as my home. I don’t have to. People here impose things on you, but I do not feel this way. My home is Khartoum. Stella: Yes, that’s exactly it. Because people are strangers, their attitudes are different, and I am an open person; I want to go into relationships deeper, like I’ve done here [in Khartoum]. But you find people stop you! You can’t make friends easily; every word you say they can accuse you because they say you are talking like Arab. Your ideas are different. Even if you are doing kind things for them, they say ‘People are not doing things like this here. Don’t tell us you are kind.’ So sometimes I feel like I’m totally alone. People don’t trust me, and I can’t trust them . . . It’s difficult to build relationships because of mutual loss of trust between people. Azza: Stella, do you think this is just against you or do you think it’s something in the city that people do not trust each other? Stella: This is something common that people don’t trust each other. It’s also because of the situation; just after the war, nobody trusts anybody else. There is a problem of acceptance; no one accepts the other as they are. There was a lot of [fighting] between people who stayed in Juba and didn’t go anywhere, and people who came from Kakuma or Uganda and Kenya, and people who came from Khartoum. Everyone wants to claim ‘I am from here’ and everyone says ‘No, you are not from here’ . . . ‘You are not belonging to here.’ I always say: ‘You are all belonging here.’ But we just have to accept that some were lucky because they went to Khartoum, were raised there and educated there and others went elsewhere. But we are all South Sudanese here, and we have to accept each other and contribute to build this country. But they don’t. It’s always difficult to convince people from the beginning. It needs time. Everyone has bad ideas about the other. Kasia: Your parents, did they go back to South Sudan? Stella: No, my father is dead now. He had cancer and died from it. My mother is still here and said: ‘No, I don’t want to go. I have no house.’ Even my grandmother is here, and she said she was in no hurry to go back. When I told my mother that I want to go, she said go. She said:

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‘Because you don’t know South Sudan you want to see it and you can go see it and come.’ Kasia: So you came back. Do you think you will go back? Stella: I will go back; I am starting to live my reality. That is my country [she sighs]. I have to belong there, I have to contribute, I have to work there. I have to create a new life there [she laughs ironically]. Just to make it easier for me. This kind of being here and there, not knowing exactly where you have to be, is very hard. Azza: Why not just stay here, in Khartoum? Stella: Well . . . I cannot stay here. There’s no job for me here because of the South Sudanese nationality. Even our ID is no longer valid here and the drop of the nationality . . . and the four freedoms are also not implemented, none of it. You know the issues. Kasia: And it also keeps changing, right? Wasn’t there a decision by the cabinet a few weeks ago, a month ago, that South Sudanese are now foreigners and then they changed it again! Stella: Yes. It just depends on the political relationship between Silva Kiir and Omar al-Bashir. If Omar Bashir thinks that Silva Kiir supports Darfur or South Kordofan, he will just make a decision that South Sudanese are to be treated as foreigners. If the relationship is good, they say ‘No, they are like Sudanese. They can stay . . . friendly and do everything.’ In a situation like this, you cannot suggest what will happen today or tomorrow, because it all depends on the mood of the politics.

Being Home: Walking from Place to Place New Nation – New Stella Kasia: So do you feel that Khartoum is your home? Stella: Yeah, of course. Kasia: Is Khartoum much more home than Juba? Stella: I think it is something like I walk from place to place: if Juba is here and Khartoum is here. So in the first months I belong to Khartoum, to North. Even when I decided to go, I cried every day. I was so depressed. When I travelled, I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I took my children and went to the airport and left. And it was something [she takes a deep breath] very bad [she sighs].

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  And there I start a new life and something. Now, I can be in the middle, I belong to South Sudan and to the North Sudan to some extent. And [long pause] . . . I think if you want to say I belong to an area or to a country, if you feel you can do something, and you have rights to live, to work, to make changes, to do everything, I think you will belong more to that area. And this is what I feel in South Sudan. Yeah, here there are dark things, and there are negative things. But when I went there I feel like a new Stella was born. I feel like I have a power to make change. People are simple, even if you are doing small things, it will change the life of many people. And that feeling was very great for me that every day, I come from home and going to work, I was doing something that was making me satisfied some days. So I love to be there. Azza: Where are your siblings? Are they back in Khartoum now or back in the South? Stella: Some are in Egypt, one’s in the US, one’s in Juba, one does not want to go at all – the sister that is younger than me – but she doesn’t want to go . . . She just stays here. She is married now and staying . . . married from North also [she laughs]. Kasia: You and your sister are different! . . . You said a new Stella was born. You had the feeling of a new Stella being born. What was this new Stella that was born in Juba? Stella: New Stella . . . for me is that I didn’t think I can deal with things there in South Sudan because I was a writer here in Khartoum, and I am popular here, famous, everybody here appreciates my work and my audience is here. My family and my friends, every single thing was here. So it was difficult for me. If I go back to South, can I build up those things there, family, friends, can I start writing there, be popular there, and how can I fight the negative ideas?

Juba as a Space of Contestation: Stella as a Rebel or Agent Provocateur Kasia: So how was your stay in Juba? How did you experience it? Stella: I went there in 2012 and stayed there till last year. I came back in April 2015. Kasia: . . . This was really the first time you’d lived in the South properly? How was this experience?

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Stella: Yeah. I just I went there to break, get over my fears about South Sudan. A lot of people even came here and said, ‘Oh Stella, you don’t have to go there, they hate you, they hate your ideas’ . . . How I start there to change things? I questioned if people will accept me, as one of the pens [writers] that was against the secession of Sudan, and having a different idea about the solution for Sudan. . . . So I went there and just faced people. I started to write about issues deeply relating to South Sudan. Slowly, slowly I had to explain my ideas, why I was against this separation. Because I said I was Sudanese  – like any Sudanese with full rights to make changes within their country – and Sudan is my country, and I have to protect my country from anything, as anyone can do . . .   But they’re writing a lot of things [in the South] against my . . . they’re saying from the beginning ‘You are against our independence and you are working with Arabs’ . . . Any article that I write and I bring Sudan, even if someone else write about my idea they will accept it, but not from me. . . . They told me that people there hate my ideas . . . I just said ‘They hate me because they do not understand me, actually.’ What I am talking about, it is one of the ideas of Dr John Garang, that the one Sudan is a new step, so if they are against me they are also against Dr John Garang’s ideas . . . Kasia: You were talking about a new Stella. Did you see that you were a different Stella from the Stella in Khartoum? Stella: I think Stella in Juba [short pause] . . . I was afraid a little bit, and I became careful about any words that I write, be careful about any actions that I do, be careful about the relationship and what people are thinking. I was not free like here. Here I am open . . . without thinking what this will lead to, but over there, there were many shocks; I had to be careful about what I am thinking, even If I want to write [pause] . . . I have to write in circles, just make decoration.

Gendered In-Betweenness: Subversive Women Betraying the Nation of South Sudan Stella: There was the film [to Azza: Ismu Burug al Hanine Inti shuftihu?]. It’s called Burug al Hanine [The Power and the Pain]. Did you see it? It is a documentary on Al Jazeera.4 They did a film documentary about the effects of separation in a social manner in Sudanese and South Sudanese. They did the documentary here in Sudan, and they went there and did it in Juba, and I was one of people interviewed in this ­documentary . . .

330  Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

In this documentary, I am talking about my experience after separation and when I went to Juba to get my passport and when I returned here to spend Eid with my husband. In the beginning, they didn’t want to give my kids the nationality and the passport. Someone just said ‘They are North, let them go there.’ So I went to the Sudan Embassy in the South and said ‘I am from South and my children are from North and we want to go there, so you have to give me some permit to visit my husband’ and they gave me. When I came here at the airport and they said: ‘The nationals, the Sudanese will be here and the foreigners will be here’ [she laughs uneasily]. I have to see my kids; they have to be in this line and I have to be in that line. So when I thought of that I just cried in the airport. Someone came and asked and I just told him ‘They are my kids. They belong to another country now and I belong to another country.’ And [he] helped me complete this entry . . . In the documentary, when I was telling people about this experience as a human experience it really pained me a lot, and I cried in the documentary. So [she laughs ironically] some of my colleagues, I’m writing with him in the same newspaper in Juba, he is just . . . and some other girls had experiences, and they’re all crying in the middle of the interview. He took our pictures with our tears and wrote ‘These South Sudanese girls are crying because they left their men [she laughs] . . . their Northern men in the North and they are against our independence’ . . . He took the pictures, just the pictures, no words, and added his captions and posted it on Facebook, in all South Sudanese media. It was like a fight, and for two days I had not been on Facebook. When I moved [around] people were looking at me. So one of the girls – she is a journalist also in the same newspaper, she was one – she called me and said ‘Stella, you don’t know what happened?’ I said: ‘No, I don’t know.’ She said ‘Open Facebook’ . . . She was engaged to a North Sudanese and she said when the separation came they just broke up because she said my family will be against this, we cannot continue . . . She also cried in this [film] . . . They attacked us on Facebook with so bad language . . . we are prostitutes to North men . . . we just want to open our legs to them to do something [she laughs derisively] . . . It was crazy . . . threatening us: ‘We will kill you.’ Because in the SPLM [Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement], and they started writing in all South Sudan newspapers in English and in Arabic: ‘Look at Stella! She is crying because we got our independence. She does not want it, she has to stay there! Why is she here? We request Silva Kiir and parliament to take her nationality, let her go there’ . . . It’s like someone wants somebody to take his gun and come to kill us, and they don’t want to do it directly. The newspapers and writers and

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journalists write like they are directing someone to come and kill us. I was in a shock, and I was totally afraid. Like two weeks I can’t sleep, and anything that goes around in my house I say that they’re coming to kill me. I became calm . . . but I was afraid. I couldn’t go to work; if I go maybe they’ll kill me in the street or come home to kill my sister and my kids. But in the middle, some people, I had some good relationships; they have some power and people respect them, and some called me to support me: ‘Some people just want to destroy you because you are strong, you are bright, you are successful, and you are a woman.’ Some supported me . . . the leader of the parliament at that time was Atem Garang. He knows them . . . he wrote an article and said that ‘Our girls were right if they were crying about the secession of Sudan. Because what was between us as Sudanese is greater than political things,’ and then he moved the direction of the debate, and some started to be calm and some started to stand with us. But it was a nightmare! So after a lot of articles my audience and people who know what I am talking about requested that I write an article and respond to these people. I said ‘No, I will not pick my pen up again in South Sudan,’ because for me they are not against what I am writing, they are not against my ideas, they are against me personally. But they pressed, ‘It’s not only about you because there are a lot of families, they need this response; there are a lot of families between South Sudan and North, a lot, and they need this response.’   So I started to read all the articles they wrote about this film, and I responded to everyone. I responded in great, painful and powerful words. I said to them: ‘You are liars, you are all liars, and if you talk about South Sudan and South Sudan’s independence, if I was against it what would make me come and stay here? I have to stay in Sudan or any country I choose. I will let you answer this question: “Why Stella has come here and stay with you, with no services, no clean water, no electricity, and bring my small family and my kids to this danger?” Because I want to be with people. I want to give my support to my people. If I was against this, what would make me come here? You can just answer this question as you want.’ And then I am talking, ‘You are against women.’ I said, ‘If you are saying that we separated from Sudan because people there don’t accept us, you are doing what they do because you don’t accept us as families that are between South and North.’ And I talked about a lot of stuff . . . I wrote about two articles. Azza: So you told them you felt that you were more accepted in the North than you were in the South!

332  Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

Stella: No, I was not talking about this. I was saying that the issue that made us separate was acceptance because we were thinking they were not accepting us as South Sudanese. We were thinking that we are ­second-class citizens. I said, ‘You said they look at us like slaves, and I said if my kids’ uncles look at me as a slave and my kids’ uncles from my side look at me like a prostitute, what is the difference now?’ [derisory laugh] . . . Kan magal mubalaga samaitu irhab fikri: It was a very strong article. I called it intellectual terrorism.

Being Here and There, and Returning to Khartoum Azza: Do you need a visa to get back into North Sudan? Stella: I have noticed that the person who processes your passport deals with it according to their mood. If they hate Southerners, they tell you you have no residence permit and they will fine you – ‘Give us fifty dollars, a hundred dollars’ – just like that, in order for you to enter or exit. It depends on the person. On another trip, if I encounter an official who is sad about the separation or why we left, they say: ‘You are most welcome.’ And when I say I need alien registration, they say: ‘What do you mean by foreigner? You are part and parcel of us!’ [she laughs] . . . Yes, it is completely arbitrary. Kasia: It also depends who is in front of them. If it is somebody like you who is eloquent, who can speak Arabic, who can manage, maybe you get by. If it is not, you get different treatment! Azza: What is your mother’s situation? The fact that she does not have nationality any more! Stella: There is a card they renew every three months, and they have nationality and a passport from the South Sudanese embassy . . . No harassment, normal. Even our home, we didn’t sell it. Our land still belongs to us . . . But in the beginning people started talking about confiscation of land  – some were selling their land because they were afraid someone would come and take it from them, so they sold it, even at cheap rates. Kasia: Your husband also stayed with you in the South? Stella: We stayed there, but after the war started and there was insecurity, I told him you can take the children and go back, and I stayed there. . . . In the beginning there was free movement . . . I registered at the foreign office . . . I got an iqama [residence permit] because I come and go a lot with my sons.

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Azza: You got residency because your husband is from here, right? Stella: Yeah. I got an iqama [residency] . . . I wasn’t really coming back, as I said it was just coming and going between Khartoum and Juba because I am working there and my family is here. So three months there, three months here . . . This last time I came to launch my second book The Return. I came to publish it here because my audience and my readers are also lots here . . . My father got sick in Juba so I told my sister we have to come here to start medication. Azza: Your father was in Juba? Stella: I took him with me last year to visit, and because it had been a very long time, he went there to visit. We went to Torit to see our land there and just remembered everything  – every tree, everything. After that, his sickness started in Torit, and I brought him to Juba . . . We stayed in the South for six months and we came back to start medication and then he passed away. Because it was a long time and I have to support him to be here . . . to be here with him was one of my decisions, so I just froze everything in Juba and stayed here next to him. In the middle of his sickness, I found an opportunity to do my master’s at Ahfad University. I said: ‘I don’t have to stay this long time thinking about his sickness, about negative things. I have to do something.’ So I started my master’s . . . in public health.

The Meaning of Places Kasia: So now we’re talking about your next move back to Khartoum, from Juba to Khartoum, another place . . . Stella: I’m always going back and forth from Juba and Khartoum. Azza: Were you doing this as a child? Stella: No . . . Never. My mum said I was a baby . . . I don’t have any memory about it . . . It’s like an imagination . . . what my mum and grandmum told me about . . . and when people came here through displacement. South Sudan came here with the people . . . So it was like in the South but in a different place . . .   When I published this book The Return, the stories I wrote are about the South Sudanese when we returned and what the South is for us as the real experience for us as South Sudanese: the people, the politics, the independence and how we are facing ourselves in the mirror without blaming North. So I started to write about ourselves as South Sudanese

334  Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

and to what extent we can harm ourselves even more than the North. A lot of stories talk about insecurity in Juba, people come at night, looting people, and are threatening us with the gun. And I say: ‘They are our brothers; they are not the North anymore.’ I’m talking about the war itself. In one piece I talk about corruption. After I published this book here, I published it in Juba in Arabic, and then here in Khartoum, people started talking about the book ‘Stella is still begging the Arabs to come to help us, and what she is writing is she wants to tell us that South Sudan is a bad place . . . She wants to return back to the North,’ and, and, and . . . [laughter]. But I just said, I even said to the guy who talked about this issue: ‘I don’t think you’ve read the book, just the title,’ and he took The Return as back to the North. [laughter] . . . Azza: Very interesting . . . Stella: People started saying: ‘If South Sudan is bad, go back to the North.’ Azza: It’s a defensive attitude . . . Kasia: So how was your return to Khartoum? . . . Is Khartoum different now from before separation . . . How is it different for you as Stella number three? Stella: The new Stella! Number three [she laughs]. Yeah, I think it’s not that much different because I was not away for a long time. But I see that people are suffering a lot, and I think there is some sort of collapse in every aspect. And I don’t know, but the Sudan is in a much worse picture than before. Azza: All of Sudan? Stella: Yeah!

The Nation: One Vision for Sudan – Hope for the Future Kasia: Would you believe in this vision of one Sudan now? Before you believed in it! Stella: I still believe in the vision of One Sudan, but I think the timing is a very important issue. The timing of separation – I think for me it wasn’t the right time. And even if there will be time for us to be united, I think we will have to choose the perfect time. For me, South Sudan wants to discover itself now, and we have to deal with our own issues, [we] they have to deal with themselves [ourselves], with their [our] problems, and

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not put North as a wall on which we want to hang everything on. Maybe when they trust in themselves and are confident enough that they can unite with North Sudan, I think it will be the time. Azza: But Stella, do you not think that the north should apologize? . . . Do you not think that they actually historically need to apologize? Stella: Yes, yes, yes. I think some of the leaders have done that, Sadiq al-Mahdi, and during the CPA they apologized to some extent. But it’s not a matter of apology. How can we get these people to forget all these things? The war, it was a long fight, twenty years at war. I think it will make people different, and it is not easy for people to forget war and all these things. It needs time! Azza: So why do you think the Southerners would want to reunite with part of a country that they feel oppressed them for so long? You say that they might unite. Why do you think that would be a possibility? Stella: A possibility to unite because I think the world needs this kind of uniting or cooperation . . . on some issues: issues of the border, the movement of people, trade, participation in education and job opportunities. All these things are needed . . . People need to think about these issues, it’s for the benefit of the people of the South and North. I think it will be like all countries going towards uniting to help each other. I think South Sudan and North Sudan are nearer to doing that kind of thing! Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, with a special focus on Medical Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on cultural understandings of health and well-being, which largely feature an exploration of the interface between such understandings and biomedical configurations of health. She has in-depth experience working on these issues among individuals and groups whose lives have been subject to experiences of movement/migration in different forms. She equally focuses on how the sociopolitical impinges on constructions of identity and how this gives life to diverse sociocultural manifestations. Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway and a visiting professor at the Ethnology Institute, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on gender, generation, youth, displacement, refuges, return, identities, art and access to rights for refugees in urban settings. She has researched on displacement and forced migration issues in Egypt, Kenya, Sudan,

336  Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska

South Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland and Vietnam. Kasia works with visual media, art-based research, feminist methodologies and participatory methodologies. Since 2002, she has been carrying out a longitudinal study of gender relation transformations among Nuer from South Sudan in Egypt, Kenya, Jordan, South Sudan and in Sudan, Khartoum. She collaborates often with artists in her research. In 2016, in collaboration with a team of researchers and filmmakers, she produced a film based on her collaborative research project ‘Time to Look at Girls: Migrants in Ethiopia and Bangladesh’. The long version of the film, 2 Girls, has been awarded ten first prizes at international film festivals. She is also the writer, producer and co-director of the film Barbara HarrellBond: A Life Not Ordinary (2018). Kasia is the author of Gender, Identity and Home: Nuer Repatriation to South Sudan (2014), which received the Armory Talbot Prize in 2015; co-editor of Forced Migration: Why Rights Matter? (2008); and a co-writer of Adolescent Girls’ Migration in the Global South: Transitions into Adulthood (2019).

Notes 1. The wider research programme under which both Ahmed A. Aziz and Grabska carried out their research projects was part of the METRO 2 research programme (see the Introduction to this volume). 2. Wilting Flowers is in its 2nd edition. The first edition was published by Dar Azza Press in Khartoum in 2004, while the second came out in Juba from Rafiki for Printing and Publishing in 2014. The Return was published in Juba by Rafiki for Printing and Publishing in 2014. 3. This proves Stella’s focus on places rather than ethnic groups. Azza has to prompt her to mention her husband’s family ethnic group (Shaygiya). 4. For the documentary: ‘The Power and the Pain – Wagdi Kamil’, 2013, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h08kG8XDmI.

Index

‘asabiyya (agnatic patrilinear solidarity), 256 Abena (‘we refused’, name of a protest campaign) 96 ‘adat wa tagalid, 185 Addis Ababa Agreement, 236 Administrative Unit, 64, 258; A. U. of Omdurman locality, 54, Al-Rif Al Janubi A. U., 59; Salha A. U., 59 African. See Arab/African dichotomy African Union, 154 Ahamda, 32, 259 Al-Taghiyyr Alan (‘Change Now’, name of protest movement), 93, 95, 110 Al-Baraka, 17, 244 Al-Fath, 70 al-kashif, 81 Amarat, 17, 127–28, 269, 278n25, 282 Andersen, Benedict, 242 anomie, 123, 184 Arab. See Arab/African dichotomy Arab/African dichotomy, 2, 126, 129, 138n16, 146, 186, 238–39, 255–58, 276n11, 294, 300–2 Arab-Muslim model, 165n9, 255 Arabization, 238, 256–58, 275–76n8 Ba’ath, 100, 111n10 Baggara, 256–59, 262, 264, 267, 269–70 Barth, Fredrik, 7, 238 biomedicine, 184–5

bitt ‘amm (FBD, Father’s brother’s daughter), 256–57, 261–63, 265, 271, 275n7, 276n11, 286, 295, 303 Black Monday, 119 British colonization, 38, 267–9 Christian, 88n15, 295; Christian Arab, 301; Christian/Muslim polarization, 11, 20, 133, 184, 238, 258; Orthodox C., 128, 131, 135, 297–9 citizenship, community c., 17, 215, 234 ; concept of c., 212, 214–15, 240, dual c., 157; forms of c., 16, 173, 227; inclusive c., 16; legal c., 17, 237, 241–42, 247; loss of c., 37, 195; flexible c., 212, 214–15, 227–8; c. rights, 210, 212, 240, 247; Sudanese c., 195; ‘third space c.’, 212, 214–15, 227–8; translocal c., 16, 209, 228; unequal c., 176, urban c. 215. See also Sudanese nationality Civil Society Initiative, 102, 112n21 Civil Society Organization, 94, 120, 131, 134, 136 Civilizational Project, 185 Closed District Policy, 174 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), 11, 20n6, 20n8, 70, 92, 124, 149, 164n3, 166n16, 198n14, 236, 322 contested landscape, 172 Coptic, 131, 296–302 court, Nuer c., 212, 220–25; State c., 64

338 Index Dayama, 267, 277n20 Democratic Front, 106 demonstrations, 91, 96–97, 106, 111n2 Dinka, 128–29, 135, 137n9, 138n20, 149, 156, 165n8, 179, 189–91, 221, 223, 226, 229n2, 244–46, 263 early marriage, 83, 277n22 El-Nizam El-‘am. See Public Order Act endogamy, 17, 36, 38, 255–57, 261–62, 265, 267, 269, 272, 276n11, 278n25, 282, 295, 297 ethnicity, 7, 9–11, 54, 135, 165n7, 172, 193, 216, 238, 241, 246, 255, 257–58, 273–74, 275n8, 278n25, 287, 302–3 evictions, 74, 81, 147 exclusion, 95, 136, 144, 161–62, 176, 180, 182, 184, 210, 214, 283, 302, 304 exogamy, 261, 268, 277n23, 282, 293–94, 299, 301–3, 306n13 farmers, 43, 46n2, 63, 269, 271 Fellata, 129, 173, 182, 197n7 Fitahab, 42 Four Freedoms Agreement, 154, 156, 219, 249n7, 323 gabila (tribe), 34–36, 38, 42–43, 57, 260–61, 264–66, 271 Garang, John, 15, 119, 121, 125–28, 132, 134, 137n1, 137n2, 137n4, 148–49, 163, 171, 324, 329 gender, 9–10, 72, 78, 83, 104, 109, 223, 225, 289, 311, 317, 329; g. equality, 85, 88n20, 166n16 generational conflict, 65–66, 95, 103, 106, 154 Girifna (‘We are fed up’, name of protest movement), 93–98, 12, 104–6, 109–10, 111n7, 111n8 Haj Yousif, 107, 127–128, 319 Halfawiyyn, 285 Hall, Stuart, 216 Hawawir, 55, 58–60 Hawazma, 258–60, 264, 271–72 high-risk activism, 103

hiyaza, 64, 67n6, 75 housing strategy, 16 hybridization, 4, 6, 30, 35, 38, 216 Illegal settlement (al-sakan al-a’shawaiy), 63, 226 imagining the nation, 194 informal possession certificate. See hiyaza. institutional bricolage, 35, 42 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs); 4, 55, 70, 145, 170–76, 179, 180–81, 183–84, 189–90, 193, 218, 235, 242; IDP Camp, 47n11, 124, 146 Islamization, 238, 276–77n15, 303; and Arabization, 257–58, 275–76n8; and liberalization, 92 Ja‘aliyyn, 256, 271, 287–89, 293, 301 jallaba, 161–62, 166n24, 220, 225, 230n5 Jammu‘iya, 42, 57–60, 62–64 Janubiyyn (Southerners), 6, 11, 19n2, 145, 164n5, 178, 209, 218, 221–22, 229n2 Jebel Awlia, 127, 145, 187 Kababish, 55, 58–60, 67n1, 129, 256 Kalakla, 107, 111n2, 127–28, 134 khalwa, 80, 87n12 Khartoum University, 100, 106, 111n3, 112n24, 153 kinship, and ‘Arab marriage’ debate, 255; and residency solidarity, 36, 291, 302; kinship and marriage practices, 253; kinship representations, 253, patrilineal/agnatic kinship, 255, 266 Kordofan, 55, 58, 93, 107, 111n4, 151, 171, 238, 257–59, 262–267, 327 laji’iyn (refugees), 219, 236 lajna al gawmiyya lil-takhtit (national committee for planning), 42 lajna sha‘abiyya (popular committee), 35–37, 42, 64, 160, 165n14, 183 land property title (shihadat bahth), 75

Index  339 land, access to a plot, 9, 34, 44, 57, 71, 145, 181; collective l., 32, 36–37; eligibility criteria to access l., 147, 165n14; l. committee (lajna al-ard), 35; l. property history, 148; l. property, 143; l. registration, 31, 62, 64–65, 146; l. rights, 36, 44, 57; l. transactions, 16, 40, 47n8, 143, 148, 154, 162; land speculation., 32, 40, 110n1, 148, 158, 162; land-grabbing, 32–35, 38, 44, 46n3, 47n3, 56; legal systems to buy l., 31, 165n13; l. property regimes, 34, 38, 75 language games, 173, 187–88, 192–93, 199n25 legal insecurity, 9, 45 liberalization, 29, 92–93, 105 liminality, 2, 3, 10, 71, 175–76, 178, 180, 182, 186, 211; from an anthropological perspective, 244–46; from a multidisciplinary perspective, 137n5; and marriage practices, 254, 274 livelihood, agropastoral l., 63, 220, 267; l. and education, 75; l. and liminality, 84, l. strategies, 45, 71, 211; urban l., 71 locality. See mahaliya mahaliya, 73, 77–78, 82; Khartoum l., 42; Omdurman l., 54, 56 mahar (bride-price), 262, 265, 277n16 Mahas, 43, 48n13, 129–30, 289 Mak, 57–59 Mamdani, Mahmoud, 240–42 marginality, 220, 227–28, 268 marginalization, 7, 17–18, 34, 44, 120, 122, 125–26, 135–36, 143, 162–63, 174, 182, 186, 194, 214, 220–21, 276n15 Markaz Iman (center of faith), 185 marriage, m. practices, 86, m. strategies, 253, 282 Matep, General, 129, 131, 135 middle-class, 128, 198n21, 213, 282, 301 migration, forced m., 92, 172, 194, 196n5, 199n25, 210, 235; internal m.,

1, 6, 54, 65, 197n8; local definitions of m., 183, 190; out-migration, 196n5, 305n2; rural-urban m., 60, 70, 78, 282, 284–85, 289, 292; seasonal m., 54 Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities, 40, 54, 63, 65, 75 mobility, and education, 76, 81; men’s and women’s m., 78; m. of agropastoralist groups, 264; m. of IDPs, 181, urban m., 107–8, 144; social m., 94, 184; Southerner’s m., 20n8, 220 multilocal belonging, 212, 228, 324 Muslim, 103, 135, 184, 239, 265, 271, 296–97, 300–3, 307n26. See also Christian/Muslim polarization and Arab-Muslim model nasab (patrilinear descent and genealogies), 256 nation building, 119, 170, 270, 273, 301 National Congress Party, 91, 111n10, 119, 131, 150, 243 National Intelligence and Security Service, 92 Native Administration, 9, 34, 36, 47n11, 57, 258, 264, 275n6 naturalization, 166n16, 241; ideologies of n., 273 nazihin, 145, 174, 197n9, 209, 218, 223, 236. See also Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Neoliberalism/neoliberal, 5, 9, 14, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 45, 268 Nubian, 48, 107, 285, 289–90, 293–94, 300, 303, 305n8, 306n18 Nuer, 16, 129, 131, 135, 137n9, 138n20, 156, 165n8, 166n21, 174, 189, 197n8, 209, 245–46, 275n5, 277n23, 316, 336 Nimeiry regime, 63 Omdurman, 2, 31–32, 54–57, 59–69, 62–63, 70, 80, 83, 96, 107, 125, 127–30, 132, 138n14, 138n15, 143, 146, 148–49, 152, 158, 187, 191, 196n4, 249n5, 269, 294, 306n15, 313, 316, 320 Otherness, 144, 282, 289, 302

340 Index pastoralists, 34–35, 63, 256, 260, 269; and invisibilization of pastoral and agricultural production, 30, 32, 37–38, 40, 44 peri-urban, 4, 9, 53, 70 planning, 47n10, 64–65, 126, 245; replanning, 146–47; town p. 38; urban p. 14, 54, 56, 62, 64, 110n1, 267; and policies, 54 Popular Committee. See lajna sha‘abiyya population growth, 54, 56, 60, 66, 174 positionality, 211–12 production of locality, 173, 187–88 Public Order Act (1991), 185 public order laws, 92, 111n5 public space, 92, 95 raan (citizen), 222–23, 227–28 referendum (2011), 20n7, 92, 111n6, 148–50, 152–53, 157, 163, 164n3, 166n18, 236, 239, 242–43, 247, 263; participation to r., 158 refugees, 4, 145, 170, 179, 183, 215, 217, 219, 221, 234–36, 239, 242–43, 245, 247, 268, 295–96, 311 relocation, 14, 74, 100, 110n1, 146–48, 305n8 repertoire of protest, 101 Return, 20n8, 93, 143–44, 148–52, 156–163, 166n15, 179–81, 189–90, 195, 199n26, 211, 213, 217–18, 222–23, 234–37, 243–44, 247, 311, 324, 332–32; r. of political parties in exile, 92 Riek Machar Teny, 234 right to the city, 186 rites de passage, 7, 175, 191, 197n12, 197–98n13 rural-urban migration, 60, 282, 289, 292. See also rural-urban mobility Sadiq al-Mahdi, 92, 97, 111n10, 335 Salva Kiir Mayardit, 234 Salvation regime (Inqaz(, 126, 165n11 scapegoat, 181–83, 199n24 school leavers, 85

Second civil war, 174, 234 sedentarization, 32 shantytown, 17, 213, 236–38, 242, 244–47 sheikh, 9, 35, 42, 57, 65, 84, 285, 307n23 Shilluk, 149, 156, 161, 165n8, 191–92, 199n27, 199n28, 223, 245–46, 249n8, 270, 316 Shimaliyyn (Northerners), 19n2, 149, 218 Simmel’s stranger, 181, 183 Siraw village, 53 slavery, 119–20, 165n7, 211, 238 social cadets, 104 social services, 56, 60, 62, 65–66, 75 social status, 57, 109, 285–86, 291, 293–94, 296–97, 300–2 Souk, al Arabi, 223; S. al Markazi, 224 South Sudan, and independence, 5, 11, 15, 121, 143, 155–57, 242, 248, 271, 331; nationalism, 242, 247, 313; South Sudanese nationality, 153, 237, 254, 322, 327 squatter settlement (al-sakan al-a‘shawaiy), 4, 55, 62–63, 147 Sudan Call, 102, 111–12n10, 112n21 Sudan People’s Liberation Army/ Movement (SPLA/SPLM), 15, 20n7, 92, 111n6, 111–12n10, 127, 131–32, 148, 150, 171, 244, 330 Sudan People’s Liberation Movementin-Opposition (SPLM/IO), 217, 223–25, 228 Sudanese Communist Party, 92, 97–98, 111n10, 268 Sudanese Congress Party, 98, 111–12n10 Sudanese Doctors’ Union, 91 Sudanese nationality, 153, 166n16, 237, 244, 322, 327 sudani, 209, 288–89, 306n16 sukkot, 289–90 Syrian, 170, 294–95, 307n27 tarayuf al medina, 188 territorial allegiance, 193 threshold, 244, 246. See also liminality

Index  341 translocal, 209 transnational, 211; t. political agency, 211, 227 Tribal/traditional authority, 47n11, 307n23 Tuti Island, 37–43, 47n8, 47n10, 48n13, 48n14, 56, 129–30, 139n22 Umma Party, 97, 111n10, 112n21 UNHCR, 55, 234, 236–37, 243 Upper Nile Region, 217, 229–30n3, 244 urban planning, 54, 56, 62, 64, 57n5, 75, 110n1, 267 urban-rural dichotomy, 30, 35, 45. See also rural/urban migration urban, u. policy, 146–47, 165n10; u.

violence, 119; urbanization, 9, 14–15, 30–31, 33, 35, 41, 44, 53, 56, 65, 120–22, 197n8, 268–70, 282, 302 Village Organization Unit, 54 Village Organization administration(Idarat Tanzim al-Qura), 62–64, 66 vulnerability, 16, 72–75, 176 wafidin (arrivals), 236 Western Upper Nile, 209–10, 212–13, 217–18, 229–30n3 youth movement, 99, 104, 106 Zanakha, 42