Silent war over the Elemi Triangle

By David Ochami and Peter Orengo

In 1986, the Government published a new atlas including part of the disputed Elemi triangle within its territory.

This ignited a protest from the Sudanese government, which believed the then insurgent Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) had traded it with the Moi regime.

Khartoum counter-claimed the triangle within its former Equatoria Province. Shortly afterwards Kenya established a paramilitary post and irrigation works at Kibish, a town on the edge of the territory.

The Elemi (Ilemi) triangle has seen its boundary change over the years and has locked Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia in an enduring ownership dispute for more than a century. The dispute arose from unclear wording of colonial-era treaties, which attempted to allow for the movements of Turkana nomadic herders. There are up to five ‘borders’ describing the ambiguously defined territory, which measures between 10,320 and 14,000 square kilometres.

Kenya has de facto control of part of the area. Military and paramilitary training by Kenya in this area pricked Khartoum to the quick, but Kenyan authorities considered it a deployment in an area, historically, scarred by cattle rustling and cross-border insecurity among Didinga, Inyangatom and Toposa of Sudan, Turkana of Kenya, Dessanach of Ethiopia and Karamajong of Uganda.

Search for oil

In 1988 Kenya invited an American company, Amoco, to prospect for oil in the disputed area. Nothing was heard of the triangle until 1994 when former Kabete MP Paul Muite raised a Motion in Parliament to debate the triangle’s ownership.

Following the dispute with Uganda over Migingo Island in Lake Victoria, the unsolved Elemi Triangle issue is returning to haunt Kenya’s policy makers. Despite their mediation of Sudan’s North-South conflict leading to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the CPA neither anticipated nor covered the matter.

Keen to consolidate the CPA and scandalised by recent claims that Kenya is arming autonomous South Sudan, Kenyan officials are reluctant to discuss the century-old dispute, which poses the greatest challenge to future relations among South Sudan, the more inflexible Ethiopia and Kenya.

Mr Majok Guandong, Sudan’s ambassador to Kenya’s blunt answer on Elemi does not clarify the legal status of the petroleum and mineral-rich territory.

Reports indicate that Chinese prospectors have struck petroleum deposits in South Sudan regions stretching into the triangle yet Majok says: "There is no dispute."

Uproot beacons

The status of Elemi Triangle is confusing according to international institutions and the three governments. According to a former Kenyan High Commissioner in Sudan, who asked not to be named: "Ethiopia has had no claims to this territory," yet independent reports indicate that despite a 1967 border settlement, Ethiopian forces often disregard the internationally accepted border at Nadapal.

In 2003 Ethiopian forces uprooted beacons at this border point after claiming the international frontier should be at Todonyang, four kilometres (within the triangle) southwards.

Ethiopia’s claims on parts of the triangle are historical.

Addis Ababa has also laid claims to this part since the time of the participation of Africa, through to the imperial reigns of Tewodros II and Menelik II and beyond, sometimes plotting a trade off with Sudan.

In 2005 Kenya stopped short of enshrining its claim on the triangle in the constitution when a draft charter supported by the Government including the whole territory in Kenya failed at last year’s referendum.

According to local residents, South Sudan’s former rebel forces left two garrisons at Nakeroman, about 30 kilometres south of Nadapal in 2007 after occupying it since 2000.

Differing views

Meanwhile UN’s map on Sudan reinforce the confusion on the issue variously classifying it as "Sudan claimed", "de facto Kenyan" and "Ethiopian claimed" territory.

The UN reproduces the century-old cartography of four main demarcations that define the three countries’ rival claims.

According to the former envoy, South Sudan politicians informally sought discussions with Nairobi over this matter as late as 2006.

"They have asked when we intend to return that part to them. Most of the time we would rather the matter is not discussed so that it does not become a conflict," he said.

The former diplomat says the South Sudan regime claims the territory should now revert to its control because it was never legally transferred to Kenya by a 1936 undertaking that allowed the British colonial governor of Kenya to administer it on behalf of the then colonial authorities in Juba. The territory was retained by Kenya after Sudan’s independence in 1956.

Sparsely inhabited by Kenya’s pastoralist Turkana the triangle is also often occupied through force of arms and traditional arrangements by the Dessenach of Ethiopia, Inyangatom and Toposa of Sudan and also Uganda’s Karamojong in search of its pastures and water especially in the plains (often rain fed) where it bestrides the Kibish and Omo rivers separating Kenya from Ethiopia.

In 100 years, the border has changed four times, three of which saw Kenya’s swathe of control expand.

As aforementioned, Ethiopia’s claims are traced to the inconclusive 1907 Anglo-Ethiopian treaty that recognised former Abyssinia’s control over communities in that general area and subsequent attempts by British colonial authorities in Kenya and Sudan to redraw the border without involving it.