War Crimes, Reprisals and International Law: The Chechen Experience

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Andrew McGregor

Canadian Institute of International Affairs

Summer 2000

Vainakh Tower, Chechnya (Sputnik News)

In recent months, the warfare in Chechnya has entered into a bitter “no quarter” struggle, prompted in large part by what Chechens see as an unrelenting attack by Russian security forces on the dignity and well being of the civilian population. Rape, torture, murder and hostage-taking are all alleged by the Chechen resistance, who have brought their own Islamic perspective to the problems of what they see as Russian war-crimes. [1] There is, however, no single Chechen viewpoint. It is important to recognize that the Chechen resistance is not hierarchical in structure; it is a network of government forces, clans, bands of warlords and foreign volunteers from North Africa, Bosnia, Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia, bound only by a common hatred of the Russians. For these fighters, the enemy is waging a genocidal crusade organized by Orthodox Christians and a criminal Kremlin regime, aided materially and financially by the “hypocritical Western states” and the Zionists of Israel. The rhetoric of the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is couched in the language of a crusade, as he urges Christians and Jews to united against an international effort to restore the Islamic Caliphate.

The Russian forces are no less heterogenous; the current war is being fought largely by a bewildering array of special forces units rather than the line regiments of the Russian Army. The spetznaz units include marines, paratroopers (desantniki), SOBR (rapid reaction forces) and kontraktniki, as well as various para-military units, most notably the OMON forces who report to the Interior Ministry. There are, in addition, units of the GRU (Defence Ministry intelligence) and the FSB (heirs to the old KGB). The mujahidin response to this alphabet-soup of opponents is that the Russians `do not recognise that the Mujahideen do not care about the cool names and fancy titles of Russian forces – whatever units the enemy deploys in the field will eventually be annihilated by the soldiers of Allah.’ Allied to this array of forces is Bislan Gantamirov’s largely ineffective pro-Moscow militia. For its part, the Russian government claims to be engaged in a battle against `terrorists’ and `bandits,’ common criminals who fall outside the protection offered to legitimate combatants under international rules of war.

Chechen Fighters (Rferl.org)

Imam Akhmed Kadyrov, Putin’s choice as the new governor of Chechnya, opposed the Russians in the 1994-6 war. He represents the dominant mystical Sufi approach to Islam that has come under increasing pressure in Chechnya from more ascetic Islamic movements, such as Wahhabism. Kadyrov’s reconciliation with the Russians is largely a reaction to the growth of conservative Islam, which has been adopted by many of the most militant field-commanders and their fighters. Though the Kremlin is interested in foisting responsibility for security onto Kadyrov’s shoulders, the religious leader has no real armed force of his own and has to rely entirely on his former Russian enemies. Several of his aides have been assassinated, and the Chechen president, Asian Maskhadov, has publicly called for his death, as have a number of prominent warlords who accuse him of promoting “Russian atheism.”

Police and Martyrs

Certain elements of the Russian security forces have so antagonized the Chechen field commanders with their brutal approach to the civilian population that they have been especially targeted for reprisal attacks by the mujahidin. Among these are the kontraktniki, comparatively well-paid volunteers who are generally older and more hardened than the youthful conscripts of the Russian army and can thus be counted on to do the dirty work of re-occupation. They have generally been shown little or no quarter at the hands of the mujahidin and have been much reduced in numbers through casualties, desertion, or failure to re-enlist at the end of their contracts. The OMON para-military has also been singled out for special treatment by the mujahidin. Unlike units of the Russian armed forces, which may be drawn as a group from individual urban centres. Thus, the Russian command is forced to admit the scope of their losses when mass hometown funerals inevitably attract international media attention. OMON police un its are often unwitting victims of Russian propaganda. They are deployed into areas that have been optimistically declared free of mujahidin operations by the defence ministry, though in reality there is no such place south of the Terek River. With lighter weapons than the regular army (though no less so than the mujahidin) and little training for full-scale combat operations, the columns of OMON armoured personnel carriers are easy prey for mujahidin ambushes. OMON effectiveness is also limited by poor communications and often outright antagonism between the interior ministry and defence ministry forces in the field.

A wave of suicide bombings (or “martyrdom operations” as the Chechens call them) was launched in the spring of 2000 against Russian military units accused of participating in war crimes. The first attack was carried out by Hawaa Barayev, a 19-year-old woman who smashed an explosives-laden car into the barracks of the Russian Special Forces in Alkhan Kala, detonating a massive explosion that badly shook the confidence of the Russians.

The mujahidin made full use of Hawaa Barayev’s action in statements following the attack: “Her sacrifice was a clear message to the enemy: get out or die.” The Chechens claimed that another suicide bombing in Grozny less than a week later was the work of a captured Russian who had converted to Islam and wanted to strike the Russians “for the sake of Allah.” [2] These bombings and other acts of martyrdom were also intended as a message for those in the ummah (the larger Muslim community) “who waste their time with worldly exploits while Muslims are slaughtered in Chechnya and other parts of the world.” Though the Chechen leadership has largely written off the Western nations for being in league with Putin, they remain bitter about the lack of support not just from the Muslim territories of the Caucasus, but also from the larger international Islamic community.

Although the official response of the Chechen government to the suicide bombings has been cooler than the ringing endorsements of the mujahidin warlords, it blames the same factors: “The recent chain of Chechen suicide attacks is a direct response to the Russian inhumane torture, rape and murder of the innocent Chechen civilians including women and children. The Government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria cannot control every Chechen that seeks vengeance for his tortured, murdered and raped relatives. In the whole history of mankind, no one has managed to prevent suicides from committing acts of self-destruction. Because of the Russian brutality and international indifference, such acts are becoming an irreversible process in Chechnya.” [3]

Arbi Barayev, a militantly Islamic field commander and leading “Wahhabite,” has risen to prominence in the current war. Still in his twenties, Barayev is nonetheless a veteran of the 1f994-96 war. He is also the uncle of Hawaa Barayev. Barayev ran the region of Urus-Martan after the first war as a personal fiefdom through the deployment of his “Islamic Battalion,” but he ran afoul of the Chechen government’s Anti-Terrorism Centre when he became a prime suspect in a wave of kidnappings. [4] Several firefights ensued between government forces and Barayev’s men, but Barayev was able to escape prosecution because Maskhadov was reluctant to start an all-out civil war. Although Barayev has proven his effectiveness as a commander in the Chechen resistance, he continues to be surrounded by controversy, in part because of his ruthless methods. Reports (possibly Russian in origin) have circulated that his forces failed to secure the lines of retreat for non-Wahhabite Chechen fighters evacuated from Grozny. [5]

Amir al-Khattab and Shamyl Basayev

On 29 June, Shamyl Basayev, the chief of the Mujahidin Command Council, and Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi-born warlord, delivered a warning to the Russians that war would spill over into Russian territory unless all Chechen women and children held against their will were released within three days: “We see the repeated violations committed by the Russian military against innocent women and children; we hear the cries of the women who were violated and women who were widowed; we hear the cries of the elderly and the young, and see the concentration camps crowded with the innocent. Our patience has run out in view of these crimes unless a clear deterrent stands in their way.” [6] True to their word, the mujahidin struck on 2 July with five suicide bombings and intensified ambushes and attacks throughout the republic. Incredibly, the Russian security services appear to have taken no precautions against the attacks, even though they were given three days’ warning. The Russians reported scores of casualties, while the mujahidin claimed up to 1500 Russian dead in one day’s actions; it is nearly impossible to ascertain the true numbers because Russian security forces immediately made all the sites off limits to observers. It does appear, however, that incoming casualties strained Russian medical facilities to the limit.

While the Chechen commanders have not hesitated to claim responsibility for the suicide attacks within Chechnya, they have adamantly denied any involvement in the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings and the summer 2000 subway bombing in Moscow. After all, as they point out, there is an abundance of military targets within Chechnya. There is strong evidence that the apartment blasts at least were the work of the Russian FSB. The Chechen vice-president, Vakha Arsanov, claims that the subway bombing was also the work of Russian security forces, designed to revive dwindling Russian interest in continuing the war of attrition in Chechnya and to provide President Putin with greater centralized power. In many ways the war in Chechnya serves as an object lesson to those parts of the federation that followed Boris Yeltsin’s advice to “seize all the autonomy you can” after the dissolution of the USSR.

The Case of “Colonel-Sadist” Budanov

An incident earlier this year illustrates the bitter divide that has arisen between Western and Chechen perceptions of war crimes. In March, Colonel Yuri Budanov raped and murdered an 18-year-old Chechen before crushing her body beneath the tracks of his tank in full view of his regiment. Budanov was arrested and charged by Russian authorities on 29 March. But the mujahidin are suspicious of war crimes trials conducted by Russia, regardless of the outcome; such trials are seen merely as the sacrifice of a few individuals in exchange for a public excuse for Western governments to continue funding the Russian war machine. Thus, the mujahidin offered to exchange nine captured members of the Interior Ministry forces for Budanov, who would then stand trial before the Chechen shari’a court.

Colonel Yuri Budanov (RAPSI)

The nine OMON men, all from the Russian city of Perm, were captured by Emir Khattab while they were on a marauding mission near Zhanni-Vedeno. A mujahidin communiqué signed by Khattab and Basayev stated that the prisoners would face execution unless Budanov was handed over within 72 hours. According to the mujahidin, the brother of the slain woman was in their ranks and would perform the executions himself (as called for in the adat, the still influential pre-Islamic code of law in the north Caucasus). The Russians refused, and the nine OMON men were killed on 5 April. Their photos and identification cards were posted on the rebels’ internet site along with a promise that the execution of prisoners would continue until Budanov was turned over to the mujahidin.

On 9 July, bombs went off in the southern Russian towns of Vladi Kavkaz and Tostov, killing three civilians and injuring fifteen. Rostov is the home of Colonel Budanov, but again the mujahidin denied all allegations of involvement and claimed that the bombs were planted by the FSB to further inflame public opinion; “Let the Russian government and the whole world know that the Mujahidin do not disclaim any operations they conduct. The Mujahidin are proud of all operations they launch and acknowledge them without fear or hypocrisy. Had the Mujahidin conducted these blasts they would have admitted it; but such actions are against the morals of Islam which condemn the murder of the innocent and the weak.  Rather the murder of the innocent is part of the behavior of the cowardly Russians. This war is between us… and the Russian military; it is not between us and the Russian people. If we wanted to conduct explosions, we would have done it against the Russian military in Chechnya and beyond Chechnya.” [7]

Russian Special Forces in Chechnya (Rferl.org)

Other offers to exchange Russian captives for Budanov have failed and more prisoners have been executed. Many captives face summary execution; three Chechen employees of the FSB were killed on 24 July after they were seized by al-Khattab’s “Islamic Peacekeeping Army,” and in early August the mujahidin announced the execution of three captured GRU (military intelligence) agents.

The operations described above are typical of many carried out since March in which officers of the Interior Ministry, Russian intelligence services and “national traitors” (Chechens in the service of the Russian Federation or the puppet government of Akhmad Kadyrov) were executed after hearing the verdict of the Chechen shari’a courts (“Decision on neutralization of criminal activity in the territory of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria,” February 2000).

On 13 March 2000, the Chechen state-committee of defense listed 56 accused Russian and Chechen war criminals, including Yeltsin, Putin and Kadyrov, with an appeal to the international community for help in apprehending them. In September, the mujahidin issued cash contracts on the lives of 20 major Russian politicians and generals. During the September United Nations millennium summit, the Chechens officially asked the United States to arrest and hand over President Putin on charges of mass murder and genocide, and the minister of the interior, Vladimir Rushailo, narrowly escaped death in an ambush in Chechnya.

International vs. Islamic Law

Russian protests against Chechen treatment of prisoners-of-war are somewhat compromised historically by the Soviet army’s refusal to grant prisoner-of-war status to German troops, who they saw as war criminals, in World War II. The Geneva Convention of 1929 does not recognize reciprocity as grounds for violations of its articles by any of its signatories. The most relevant precedents for the Chechen actions can be found in the post-war conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, where the offending parties were not clearly bound by the Third Geneva Convention. The execution of French prisoners by the Algerian provisional government in 1958 and 1960 was justified as punishment for war crimes, but was more likely in reprisal for the numerous executions of captured Algerian fighters by the French military tribunals, which, like the Russians, refused to consider their captives prisoners-of-war. The reprisal executions occurred before the provisional government acceded to the Geneva Convention in 1960.

Russian Tanks in Chechnya

The mujahidin leadership has gone to great lengths to justify their selective execution of Russian prisoners as in accord with Islamic law and tradition. Basayev and Khattab, though not religious leaders or scholars, claim to have spent six months consulting Islamic texts and scholars “to ensure that our Jihad was within the guidelines of Sharia.” The question of the fate of non-Muslim prisoners-of-war has been addressed many times over the years, and a substantial body of work by Islamic scholars exists on this point. The Chechens have cited the opinion favored by three of the four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, which gives the leader of the Islamic forces and his deputies the option of choosing execution, ransom, confinement or release, whichever provides the greatest benefit to the Islamic community. This allows the mujahidin to reject criticism from within the Islamic world that the execution of the nine OMON men was a violation of the maxim that “No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another” (Koran, 35:18): “We are not obliged to treat prisoners in any particular way; we study the character and circumstances surrounding each prisoner and make a decision that is based upon and thoroughly backed by Divine Law.” [8] It should also be noted that reprisal killings and suicide attacks are consistent with the adat of the northern Caucasus highlands, which calls for blood revenge for the death or humiliation or relatives in the extended clan and provides for a tradition of pledging one’s life in the pursuit of ghazawat, the local form of holy war.

Reprisal punishments hold some attraction for desperate and inferior military forces: “For a technologically weaker party the prisoners it has captured may be one of the few ‘assets’ it possesses vis-à-vis the adversary. The inclination to use this asset is likely to increase if its combatants are not recognized as lawful combatants by the adversary, but are prosecuted and possibly executed as criminals.” [9] Such actions are often counter-productive, as the probability of torture and death provides little incentive for Chechen fighters to surrender. As Chechen commander Akhmad Zakayev has pointed out, it is safer to take up arms against the Russians than to wait for arrest and then attempt to prove that you’re not a fighter. The Chechens are not, however, blameless when it comes to battlefield atrocities. The heavily out-numbered mujahidin rely to a large extent on their fearsome reputation to help even the odds and are rarely averse to demonstrations of their own ruthlessness (The spring communiqué of the mujahidin to the Russian forces consisted of the cheery message: “The ground is turning green once again, and the Mujahidin are ready to reap the fruits of spring. O you Russians! We see that your heads are ripe for decapitation – you have no escape!”). Constantly on the move, the guerrillas do not have the facilities or resources to take many prisoners in any case.

The Chechen approach to the issue of war crimes and international law reveals deep divisions between Aslan Maskhadov’s official Chechen government and the more militant of the mujahidin represented by Basayev and al-Khattab. The mujahidin respond to allegations of violations of international law by citing the following:

  • The mujahidin are not members of the United Nations and have no wish to sign any of their accords or treaties.
  • The mujahidin have never given any commitment not to kill Russian prisoners and cannot therefore be accused of violating any prior agreement.
  • Several of the clauses of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners of war correspond to Islamic law and are to be followed, subject to the overriding needs of the Islamic community.
  • The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council routinely violate the Geneva Conventions.

As proof of the selective application of human rights accords, the mujahidin cite United Nations tolerance for the Serbian massacres of Bosnian Muslims at Zepa and Srebrenica, the alleged murder of 2000 Egyptian prisoners of war by the Israeli Army in 1973, and the massacre of thousands of unarmed or surrendering Iraqi troops at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. In August 2000 before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the Chechen government initiated legal proceedings against the Russian government on charges of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Russian has nevertheless received significant support from France and Britain in recent months, and the conduct of Russian operations in Chechnya was a non-issue at the G-8 conference in Okinawa in July 2000. According to Shamyl Basayev: “Most of the world today is against us. The Crucifix is being raised anew and war is being declared against Islam and Muslims… [The European nations] are supporting the Russian military by providing it with media support, international loans, important information – all of this is done openly or covertly.” [10] Basayev compares the current conflict to the 19th century massacres and expulsion of the Muslim Circassians of the northwest Caucasus by Russian armies, and identifies a continuous Russian policy to eliminate the Muslim minorities within its borders. In such cases the strict regulations binding military conduct in the harb al-bugha (war against Muslims) do not apply in the harb al-kuffar (war against unbelievers). [11] President Maskhadov has attempted to hold Russia to its obligations as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions by signing the accords on behalf of the Chechen government. [12] In response to Russian assertions that the war in Chechnya is an internal matter to which the conventions do not apply, the Chechens may point to article 1(4) of the 1977 additional protocol which provides that armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination, alien occupation, or racist regimes are considered international conflicts. Failure to recognize the government or armed formations of the Chechen Republic does not relieve the Russian Federation from its responsibilities under the accords: “The armed forces of a party to a conflict consist of all organized forces, groups and units which are under a command responsible to that party for the conduct of its subordinates, even if that party is represented by an adverse party. Such armed forces shall be subject to an internal disciplinary system which, inter alia, shall enforce compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflicts.” [13]

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov with Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin (Caucasian Knot)

President Maskhadov has also signed on to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Chechen participation in this accord has a more political purpose; the Chechens believe that acceptance of the convention implies de facto international recognition of Chechen sovereignty as an independent successor state of the Soviet Union. In support of that position the Chechen government claims that recognition was already granted in the 1997 Treaty on Peace and the Principles of Interrelations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria because treaties are normally negotiated between independent states under customary international law. [14] Accession to the 1948 convention also allows Chechnya to call upon signatory states to abide by their obligations to take action against states committing acts of genocide.

Conclusion

The latest war in Chechnya has entered a stage of bitterness and ruthlessness on the part of both protagonists that is unequal to anything experienced in 1994-96. The systematic atrocities engaged in by Russian security forces have revived the tradition of blood reprisals endorsed by the Chechen adat, with the claim of sanction from the shari’a. For their part, the Russian mix of police and special forces units live in constant fear of capture or death at the hands of the vengeful Chechens. Events have proved that the Russian soldier is unsafe anywhere in Chechnya, and the resultant psychological toil leads to acts of cruelty upon the civilian population that are unsanctioned by the customary or explicit rules of war. Maskhadov’s efforts to introduce international law in this conflict are unlikely to hold sway with most of his fellow Chechens, nearly all of whom have seen relatives raped, tortured or murdered. Nor is his appeal to the Convention on Genocide likely to have a greater effect than previous appeals to the international community, but it does establish the groundwork for continuing legal action against the Russian Federation.

Endnotes

  1. The Chechen government recently alleged that Russia used bacteriological weapons within Chechnya and performed chemical and bacteriological experiments on Chechen civilians in Russian concentration camps. “Crisis in Chechnya,” August 12, 2000, http://www.kolumbus.fi/kavkaz/english/12_8.htm (August 14, 2000).
  2. There have been several instances both in the current war and in the 1994-96 conflict of Russian prisoners converting to Islam and turning their skills and weapons against their former comrades. Under Islamic law, non-Muslim prisoners who convert to Islam may not be used in prisoner exchanges with the enemy.
  3. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Press Release 10-667, 3 July 2000.
  4. Chechen government officials accused Barayev of leading the kidnapping gang responsible for beheading four Western hostages in December 1998. Itar-Tass news agency, Moscow, December 26, 1998; “Chechens accuse warlord of leading kidnap ring,” Chechen Republic Online – News – 13 December 1998, http://www.amina.com/news/98/98.12.13.html
  5. See Lyoma Turpalov: “Battered Chechen fighters say fundamentalists betrayed them,” AP, 17 March 2000; and “Meeting of Chechen mujahidin commanders deny the Kremlin propagandists,: 1 August 2000; http://www.kolumbus.fi/Kavkaz/English/01_8.htm (4 August 2000).
  6. “Mujahideen issue severe warning to the Russian government,” 1 July 2000, http://www.Qoqaz.net (4 July 2000).
  7. “Russian Intelligence murder Russian civilians,” 11 July 2000, http://www.qoqaz.net (14 July 2000). On 21 August, the mujahidin claimed that the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk was the work of a Daghestani Muslim crewman who was in league with the Chechen rebels.
  8. “The Islamic ruling on the permissibility of executing prisoners of war,” http://63.249.218.164/html/chechnyaexecart.htm (n.d.), c. June 15, 2000.
  9. Allan Rosas, The Legal Status of Prisoners of War (Helsinki, Soumalainen tiedeakatemia, 1976), p. 448.
  10. “Exclusive interview with commander of Mujahideen forces in Chechnya, Shamil Basayev,” 1 July 2000, Azzam Publications, http://63.249.218.164/html/interviews.htm
  11. Khaled Abou El Fadl: “The rules of killing at war: an inquiry into classical resources,” Muslim World 89, April 1999, pp. 144, 153.
  12. Office of the President, Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Decree no. 10-390, 7 July 2000; Instrument of succession to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two additional protocols of 1977, accepted by the Swiss Federal Council on 31 May 2000 and approved by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 21 June 2000.
  13. Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (Protocol 1), 8 June 1977, singed and ratified by the Russian Federation as a successor state to the USSR.
  14. See Francis A. Boyle: “Independent Chechnya: Treaty of Peace with Russia,” May 1997, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18(1), 1998.

Islamism in Dagestan: The Roots of the Crisis on Russia’s Southern Flank

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Strategic Datalink no. 80, September 1999

Andrew McGregor, Canadian Institute of International Affairs

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a low-level Islamist rebellion has simmered along Russia’s frontier with the new Central Asian states. In August of 1999, this rebellion crossed into Russia proper as Islamist fighters seized territory in the Russian republic of Dagestan. The explosive violence of the insurrection has dealt another embarrassing blow to Russian security forces and largely eliminated any hope of a Russian-Chechen reconciliation as Russian bombers struck deep into Chechnya in attempts to destroy rebel training bases.

Most of the current analysis of the conflict has depicted the rebellion in terms of a Chechen-inspired Islamic/nationalist revolt against the Russian state, much like the 1994-96 conflict in neighboring Chechnya. The presence of leading Chechen guerrilla commanders such as Shamyl Basayev lends weight to the notion that the fighting in Dagestan is an extension of the earlier conflict into a new arena. Lost in this line of reasoning are the severe divisions the fighting has revealed in the Chechen leadership and the importance of ultra-conservative Islamic “Wahhabism” in creating the direction of the revolt. The Wahhabi campaign in Dagestan is concerned just as much with conquering the Dagestanis as with expelling the Russians.

Rather than constituting a nationalist struggle, as in Chechnya, the campaign in Dagestan is the military expression of a two-and-a-half century old Islamic movement that has been reinvigorated as the ideology of the foreign volunteers who fought communism in Afghanistan. These mujahidin have gone on to form the core of Islamic resistance movements throughout Asia and the Middle East.

Traditional Tower in the Dagestan Mountains (Hotel-all.ru)

Russia, in seeking Western support for its 1994-96 Chechen war, overemphasized the importance of Islam as a source of the conflict, describing the Chechen nationalists as “Muslim fundamentalists,” which clearly, they were not. Even General Dudayev, the late Chechen president, warned in 1991 of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism if the nation did not follow a politically secular path. While nationalism drove the Chechen rebellion, it was the discipline provided by the introduction of the Shari’a (Islamic law) that helped keep the guerrillas in the front lines through the war’s darkest days. The appeal of a more conservative form of Islam grew among some commanders such as Shamyl Basayev, one of the war’s Chechen heroes. For many others though, Shari’a came into conflict with the still important pre-Islamic Chechen code of tradition know as the adat.

Wahhabi Origins

The Wahhabist movement derives its name from the puritan reforms introduced to Arabian Islam in the 18th century by ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a formidable religious reformer who took inspiration from the teachings of the Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). He rejected religious innovation, the survival of pre-Islamic traditions, pilgrimages to shrines, saint-worship and the cult of intercession; in short, the core of popular Islam as it is practised in the Sufi-influenced North Caucasus. The modern importance of Wahhabism is derived through the Wahhabi alliance with the founder of Saudi Arabia, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Sa’ud, whereby it became the officially recognized form of Islam in that nation.

Though the puritanism of modern Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia has been tempered by political necessity in the post-war decades, the Wahhabism espoused by missionaries and guerrillas in Central Asia and the Caucasus bears none of the restraints found in the Saudi court. Wahhabis often refer to a struggle against “Sufis, saint-worshippers and grave-worshippers,” whom they refuse to acknowledge as true Muslims, and therefore not subject to the prohibition against fighting fellow Muslims. Long seen as a militant expression of Arab superiority over backsliding non-Arab Islamic cultures, the recent growth of Wahhabism in the Caucasus and through the Turkic cultures of post-Soviet Central Asia and China represents an important step in the growth of the movement.

The core belief of Wahhabism is tawhid (literally the “unity” of God), an unflinching commitment to monotheism. The movement rejects the term “Wahhabi” (which implies worship of the man rather than adherence to his ideals), preferring the name muwahhidun, or Unitarians.

The Russian government has warned of the “dangerous expansion of Wahhabism” in Central Asia, and even signed a pact with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in May of this year to combat the movement. The pact is similar to one China signed with the Central Asian states in 1998 in an effort to dampen Islamic militancy in its western province of Xinjiang. [1] In late August, as the Russians battled Wahhabis in Dagestan, President Yeltsin attended a summit of the “Shanghai Five” (named for a previous summit) in Kyrgyzstan. While the summit of leaders from Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan continued, troops from the host country of Kyrgyzstan were battling Islamist guerrillas who had seized several villages in the east of the country. It has been suggested that the gunmen were also responsible for February’s assassination attempt on Uzbekistan’s president.

Islam in Conflict

While quick to designate fellow Muslims as guilty of shirk (polytheism) because of even slight variations from the spirit of eighth century Islam, the Wahhabis have always reserved a special antagonism towards followers of Shi’a Islam (as practiced in Iran, southern Iraq, eastern Saudi Arabia and elsewhere) and members of the mystical Sufi brotherhoods that often incorporate pre-Islamic elements in their rituals and customs. Sufism, or “popular Islam,” can be found everywhere from Bosnia to Indonesia, but it is particularly well grounded in the North Caucasus, making it seemingly infertile ground for Wahhabi expansionism. The lengthy list of prohibitions on personal and social activities demanded by the Wahhabists are also certain to dim their appeal to most Muslims of the North Caucasus. Dagestanis, who converted to Islam centuries before their Chechen neighbors, are on principle unlikely to accept Chechen leadership in any Islamic movement.

In the North Caucasus, Sufi Islam has long been seen to be the staunchest defender of national independence, with the tombs of great Sufi leaders martyred in the struggle against Russian imperialism being among the most revered and visited sites in the region. Sufism survived the Soviet period because the communist rulers of the Caucasus realized, after a long period of persecution, that the only effective way to combat Sufism was to re-invigorate more orthodox forms of Islam. This option was a non-starter for the atheist Soviets in Moscow.

The Mosque of Sulayman on Mount Shalbuz-Dagh (Hotel-all.ru)

At Mount Shalbuz-Dagh in southern Dagestan (a place where the Prophet Muhammad was said to have ascended to the summit on horseback, but is more likely to be a holy site of pre-Islamic origin), seven ascents of the mountain were considered locally to be the equivalent of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Traditions such as these represent the grossest heresy to the Wahhabis. Unlike some other areas where Sufi orders showed submissiveness to Soviet rule, the brotherhoods of Dagestan proved capable of mobilizing and leading resistance to those who would challenge local Islamic practice. The current Wahhabi revolt is not only a challenge to Russian rule, but is the first major challenge to Sufi leadership of independence movements in the North Caucasus since the eighteenth century. To the Wahhabis, the current state of religious expression in the Caucasus is akin to that found by al-Wahhab in 18th century Arabia; full of deviation and pre-Islamic custom, ripe for the most severe Orthodox reformation.

Wahhabism in the North Caucasus

The Wahhabists saw in the Chechen war an opportunity to expand their presence in the Caucasus, providing fighters and refugee relief while missionaries spread the word of Islamic reform and revival. Following the war, the continued Wahhabi presence produced violent religious tensions in Chechnya. In 1997, armed clashes occurred in Dagestani Kari-Makhi between hundreds of Wahhabist converts and more traditional supporters of Sufism. The Wahhabists gained the upper hand, policing the area themselves according to the Shari’a. An attempt by Russian prime minister Sergei Stepashin last year to buy off the Wahhabites with expensive Western medical equipment was a failure, with the Wahhabites accepting the equipment but refusing the presence of Russian police.

After declaring victory against the rebels in late August, the Russian security forces turned their attention to the Wahhabist enclave around Kari-Makhi and Chaban-Makhi south-west of the capital of Makhachkala. Instead of an easy victory over the villagers, the Russians only succeeded in opening a second front as the Dagestani Wahhabis fought back ferociously. Their bombing of a military apartment complex in the nearby town of Buinaksk sent shock waves to the highest levels of the Russian government. At the same time, Wahhabi guerrillas once again poured over the border from Chechnya into the Novolakskoye district in western Dagestan. Russian bombing raids on Chechen targets and the consequent civilian losses will only ensure a steady supply of Chechen volunteers to take up the fight against the hated Russians, thereby playing right into the hands of the rebel commanders.

The campaign mounted by an international group of Wahhabist fighters in Dagestan has gathered little public support, other than in the small Wahhabite communities, and, to a lesser extent, in the western border area of Dagestan, where 60,000 ethnic Chechens live. Isolated by language and geography from most other Dagestanis, these communities have little influence in the republic, which has a complicated power-sharing agreement among its 34 ethnic nationalities. [2] Moderate Muslim leaders have strongly opposed Wahhabism, and called for the arrest of the council of Muslim leaders who gathered in Botlikh to declare an independent Islamic State of Dagestan. The Wahhabis appear determine, however, to impose their will on the rest of the republic; according to one Wahhabi leader, “If the people of Dagestan don’t like to live in accordance with the law of Allah, we will take corresponding steps…”. [3] The rebels have even gone so far as to form a tribunal to judge the members of what they referred to as the “occupation government” of Dagestan. Despite three decades of resistance to the Russians offered by the legendary 19th century Dagestani Imam Shamyl, the current Dagestani government has sided solidly with Russia in the current conflict, even providing local militias with arms to combat the Wahhabi threat. This strategy has been questioned within Russia, which still has a standing army of 1.2 million men and several hundred thousand Interior Ministry troops.

Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, has denounced the presence of “foreign mercenaries” in Dagestan and sternly warned the Organization of the Islamic Conference (an umbrella group of Islamic governments) of the consequences of interference in Russian domestic affairs. Moscow has further accused Saudi Arabia and Kuwait of funding the Wahhabites, and even claimed a connection between the Dagestani rebels and the notorious Osama bin Laden. In September, Russian interior minister Vladimir Rushailo informed FBI director Louis Freeh that Bin Laden was directing the Wahhabi operations in Dagestan, but so far the Russians have failed to provide any evidence of their allegations of foreign support.

Leaders of the Rebellion

The Wahhabi fighters operating in the Caucasus are led by the high-profile Chechen commander Shamyl Basayev, and a shadowy but highly experienced Jordanian known only by his nom de guerre, Khattab. Beside the contribution of his formidable military talents, Basayev assumed the early role of public leadership of the rebellion, issuing statements and posing for photographers. Basayev is, however, a fairly recent addition to the troubles in the Dagestan frontier where the committed Wahabbist Khattab has been operating for several years.

Emir Khattab and Shamyl Basayev

Basayev’s pan-Islamist inclinations were shown as early as 1991, when he joined the armed force of the Confederation of the People of the Caucasus, eventually commanding a force of foreign Islamic volunteers in the Abkhazian separatist struggle against Georgia in 1992. During this conflict Basayev received covert military training from Russian security forces. In 1994, after further training in Afghanistan, Basayev was ready to emerge as a daring rebel commander in the Chechen war of independence, leading an audacious commando raid on the Russian town of Budenovsk as well as the stunning two-day re-conquest of the Chechen capital of Grozny against an entrenched Russian force at least ten times the size of his lightly armed group of fighters.

Basayev appears not to have found a niche in the post-war political structure of Chechnya. Having lost the presidential election to the more pragmatic Alsan Maskhadov (Chechen chief-of-staff in the war), Basayev recently served six months as prime minister before resigning to dedicate himself to the “liberation” of Dagestan. Tensions are well known between the conservative Maskhadov and the militant Basayev, who views the Chechen war as only the first step in the expulsion of Russia from the entire North Caucasus. Basayev and his allies are committed to restoring the Shari’a-based North Caucasus Emirate (1919-20). Led by Uzun Hadji, a 90-year-old Sufi sheikh, the Emirate united Dagestan, Chechnya, North Ossetia, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. The Bolsheviks admired Uzun Hadji for his iron will; as an old man he had survived 15 years imprisonment in Siberia and once promised to “weave a rope to hang students, engineers, intellectuals and more generally all those who write from left to right.” [4] The Wahhabis envision a theocratic “Islamic Confederation of the North Caucasus” covering the same area as the former Emirate. Some Russians fear that the Islamist Caucasians also have designs on areas within Russia proper, including parts of Stavropol and Krasnodar krais, and Rostov Oblast. [5]

Despite the trouble the Dagestan adventure has caused Maskhadov in repairing Chechen-Russian relations, ties of comradeship seem apparent in Maskhadov’s unwillingness to cooperate with the Russians in suppressing the Wahhabi bases and supply lines in Chechnya. The extent of Maskhadov’s patience with the fiery Basayev is, however, unknown. Many observers have regarded a civil war within Chechnya as inevitable, but so far the deep-seated Chechen aversion to killing other Chechens seems to have prevented open conflict.

In Russia, Basayev is publicly despised as a terrorist, and privately feared as a brilliant guerrilla leader and a major threat to Russian dominance of the Caucasus. His reputation is so formidable that once, after musing to shocked reporters that if food ran out for his men they could always eat dead Russian soldiers, he felt compelled by their expressions to add that he was only joking.

Shamyl Basayev and ChRI President Aslan Maskadov

In late August, Maskhadov sacked security advisor Mavladi Udugov and security chief Ibrahim Khultigov for their participation in the attack on Dagestan. Udugov was the energetic and often flamboyant spokesman for the Chechen forces in the 1994-96 war against the Russians, but reinvented himself for the subsequent presidential elections as a dour, black-suited Islamist. Well respected by the Russians for his control of information and handling of international media, Udugov’s support is a major contribution to the rebel effort. While Udugov presents confident rebel commanders in press conferences and television interviews, Russian public relations remain as confused and unbelievable as ever. After mistakenly bombing the Republic of Georgia, Russian spokesmen claimed that unnamed individuals had carried unexploded Russian bombs from Chechnya to Georgia before strewing them on the ground in order to cause embarrassment to the Russians. Only after this rather preposterous refused to float did the Russians finally admit to a mistake.

In his mid-thirties, like Basayev, Emir Khattab arrived in Chechnya in early 1995 leading a mujahidin battle group composed of Saudi Arabians and North African Arabs. A veteran of the Afghan war, Khattab keeps his origins secret but is believed to be a Jordanian ethic Chechen, a member of the extensive North Caucasus exile community in Jordan. By other accounts, Khattab is held to be a Saudi Arabian, marked by a heavy regional accent in his Arabic. Wounded three times in the Chechen war and denounced by the Russian government as a foreign mercenary, Khattab remained in Chechnya after the war, marrying a Dagestani woman. Known locally as “the Black Arab,” Khattab and his men have frequently been accused of forming one of the leading gangs in Chechnya’s lucrative post-war kidnapping business.

Emir Khattab with Rocket Launcher

Khattab gained immense notoriety in the Chechen war with his destruction of a Russian column at Yarysh-Mardy in March 1996, the humiliation of which is thought to have led the Russians to assassinate Chechen president Dudayev in reprisal. His contributions to Chechen independence have made Khattab impossible to remove from Chechnya, though the Maskhadov government is well aware that the Wahhabis regard Chechnya’s dominant form of Sufi Islam as heresy. Customarily accused by the Russians of any outrage in the region, including the murder of six Red Cross workers in the village of Novye Atagi in 1996, Khattab has responded: “Whenever anything happens, the Kremlin immediately accuses me, without a shred of evidence.” [6]

Since the end of the Chechen war, Khattab has run a number of guerrilla training bases in eastern Chechnya, though these were mostly destroyed by Russian air raids in late August 1999. It was from these bases that Khattab launched an attack on the Russian armour base at Buinaksk in December of 1997. Khattab claims that his force of 115 “foreign mujahidin” surprised the garrison and destroyed 300 vehicles, including 50 brand new T-72 battle tanks. [7] Though the Russians claimed only two tanks destroyed, they were clearly embarrassed by Khattab’s ability to launch a successful attack deep into Russian Federation territory.

Referred to by Basayev as “head of the Islamic Army of Dagestan,” it is most likely to be Khattab rather than Basayev who conceived the Wahhabist rebellion in Dagestan. The hard core of the fighters also appear to be mujahidin from Khattab’s command. While Basayev commands the headlines in the press, Khattab’s importance is recognized by the Russian military, which claimed to have seriously wounded and captured Khattab in mid-August. The Emir was shortly afterwards seen on TV, mocking reports of his capture and asserting the success of mujahidin operations.

Khattab and Basayev have both threatened to bring the war to Moscow through terrorist attacks on political leaders and installations. The Russians are taking the threats seriously, and have stepped up the visible military presence in Moscow, creating yet another strain on the Russian budget and the fragile political structure. As explosions rip through Moscow, Russian security forces are left wondering whether they are the work of gangsters, radical anti-materialists, Islamic terrorists, or even the product of Moscow’s decaying system of gas lines.

The initiation of the rebellion in Dagestan may yet prove to have been a strategic miscalculation on the part of the Wahhabi volunteers; Dagestan is more likely to dissolve into a bewildering web of ethnic violence than to suddenly rise as one under the Wahhabi banner. The initial success of their campaign will, however, sow the belief amongst the great number of Dagestanis disaffected by corrupt Russian rule that defiance of the militarily inept Russian security forces is possible. Resilient and aggressive by nature, the Wahhabi movement will provide a growing threat to the stability of most of the ex-Soviet Islamic nations ranged along Russia’s southern frontier.

Endnotes

  1. Andrew McGregor, “Mummies and Mullahs: Islamic separatism in China’s ‘New Frontier’,” Behind the Headlines, 56(4), CIIA, Summer 1999.
  2. The exact number of ethnic groups or nationalities in Dagestan is a matter of some dispute. Depending on your definition, the number of groups may range from 9 to 200.
  3. Bagaudin Magomedov, quoted in Reuter-AP, “A call for holy war: Islamic rebels want Russian states liberated,” Toronto Star (Toronto ON), 11 August 1999.
  4. Marie Bennigsen Broxup, “The Last ghazawat: The 1920-1921 uprising,” in MB Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus barrier: The Russian advance towards the Muslim world (C. Hurst, London, 1992).
  5. Boris Nikolin, “The Threat from the Caucasus,” Russian Politics and Law 36, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1998), p. 40.
  6. Jamestown Foundation Monitor, A daily briefing on the post-Soviet states 3, no. 202, 10-29-97 http://www.jamestown.org/pubs/view/mon_003_202_000.htm, 08-19-99. Blame for the massacre was eventually laid by the Chechen government against a pro-Russian Chechen who had fled to Moscow to evade charges. Geoffrey York, “Chechens believe assassin roams free,” Globe and Mail, Toronto,, 27 January 1998.
  7. Communiqué from Emir Khattab, “Mujahideen attack Russian base in Dagestan” (Parts 1-2), Azzam Publications, MSA News (12/29/97), http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199712/19971228.1.html, 08/19/99. The mujahidin claim to have videotaped the entire operation, as is their practice.

Quagmire in West Africa: Nigerian Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone (1997-98)

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Andrew McGregor

International Journal 54 (3) (Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

Summer, 1999 (pp. 482-501)

Following a long period of military rule, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected president of Sierra Leone on 17 March 1996. Little more than one year later, on 25 May 1997, he and his democratically elected government were overthrown in a bloody coup led by dissident military officers and rebels from Sierra Leone’s long-standing insurgency. In March 1998, a peacekeeping force under Nigerian leadership, with considerable help from a British/South African mercenary firm and a local paramilitary (the Kamajor), entered Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and restored Kabbah and his government. The motives for Nigerian intervention were twofold: there was a natural desire regional security; but General Sani Abacha also wanted international legitimacy for his discredited military regime. The initial success of the peacekeepers helped obscure some of the troubling aspects of the intervention – the lack of an international mandate, the use of mercenaries in peacekeeping operations, and the very undemocratic nature of the Nigerian regime. Peace has, however, eluded Sierra Leone: cities, towns and rural areas remain insecure and a supposedly defeated rebel army remains at large, indulging in a vicious retributive campaign of terror against a defenceless civilian population. Even though the situation remains fluid, the initial Nigerian intervention is worth examining both for the precedents it set and for the parallels with the current crisis in Kosovo – a large military power leading a sometimes reluctant regional alliance in a military campaign designed to bring an as yet undefined resolution to a civil conflict.

The assault on Freetown was apparently orchestrated by the Nigerian military without consulting their allies in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and its military arm – the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) – and without a United Nations Security Council mandate for decisive military action. Even though the offensive seemed well=planned, the Nigerian command described it as a spontaneous reaction to an attack by forces of Sierra Leone’s junta government, th Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). While the United Nations, the Commonwealth and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) all called for the restoration of Kabbah’s legitimate government, the long-term intentions of the Nigerians remain uncertain. In the short term, their efforts to ease international opposition to the Abacha regime were at least partly successful, but still fell far short of expectations.

BACKGROUND

Sierra Leone is an example, unfortunately not unique, of a nation in which the collapse of political and social structures made external intervention appear the only humanitarian solution. It is a small ex-British colony in west Africa with dense forests, rich agriculture and abundant natural resources that would normally allow for a prosperous lifestyle for its citizens. Instead, it is ranked by the United Nations as the world’s most unliveable country. Since independence in 1961 successi9ive regimes have failed to deal with the collapse of a patrimonial system of wealth redistribution and the inequitable exploitation of the country’s natural resources. The resulting social tensions produced military governments and armed rebels (the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone – RUF/SL) who shared a common origin in the ranks of disaffected and unemployed youths on the fringes of both urban and rural society. The military and the rebels have also shared a lack of vision regarding political reform or development in Sierra Leone, preferring to adhere to a programme of self-enrichment while passing through phases of confrontation and collaboration with each other.

The RUF rebellion was launched on 23 March 1991, 20 years to the day after the coup attempt for which its leader, Foday Sankoh, was jailed in 1972. Sankoh, once a corporal in the Sierra Leone Army (SLA), gained a thorough knowledge of the bush and forests of Sierra Leone during a stint as an itinerant photographer. Later training in Libya provided him with a background in the revolutionary arts. His movement developed out of a strain of revolutionary populism current in student circles in Sierra Leone in the 1970s and early 1980s. Its intellectual roots can be found in a blend of borrowed pan-Africanism and ideas from Muammar Khadafy’s Green Book.[i] These concepts would reappear as the slender ideological core of Sankoh’s revolutionary movement.

The obscure ideology that drives the RUF is of little help in explaining some of the movement’s questionable strategic decisions. The decision to join forces with the military junta in May 1997 provided the backbone for the junta’s struggle to retain power but also gave Nigeria the opportunity to impose a political/military solution on the Sierra Leone crisis. The RUF has also consistently failed to present a coherent political agenda to the international community. In its first real chance to address an international forum (the OAU-RUF meeting in Abidjan on 3-4 December 1995), the RUF delegation stressed that its target was not so much the ruling National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) as the prevailing ideology of corruption, which it viewed as a legacy of the All People’s Congress that had ruled Sierra Leone from 1968 to 1992.[ii] The delegation favoured postponing elections and made the rather startling declaration that Foday Sankoh “did not want to be the President of Sierra Leone and his only wish was to see Sierra Leone liberated.”[iii]

The current troubles in Sierra Leone can be traced back to the 1990 ECOMOG intervention in Liberia. As Sankoh began organizing his movement, Charles Taylor, the Liberian guerrilla leader, began to arm the RUF in retaliation for two battalions of the SLA which Sierra Leone provided to help the Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces in Liberia. The fighting strength of the early RUF depended heavily on Liberian and Burkinabe mercenaries, fighting mostly for plunder, with little sense of responsibility to the Sierra Leonans for whom they were putatively fighting. Charles Taylor, with some justification, saw ECOMOG as a Nigerian-inspired effort to rescue Samuel Doe, the Liberian president, whose authority at the time did not extend beyond the walls of the presidential compound in Monrovia.

The scant access of the rural-based RUF to communications to the outside world and Sankoh’s inexplicable reluctance to take advantage of every opportunity to express his position at international forums (in December 1996, for example, he refused to meet with United Nations negotiators in Sierra Leone) left the international community in the dark over the motives behind the brutalization of the civilian population of Sierra Leone. Those foreign capitals that took the time to consider the RUF found it lacking in credibility as an opposition movement. They hoped that the democratic election of Kabbah in 1996 would put an end to the relentless devastation of the country by rebels and state security forces alike.

Sankoh eventually agreed to outside mediation in negotiations with the newly elected president. With assistance from the government of Côte d’Ivoire and the participation of the OAU, the United Nations, the Commonwealth, and the International Red Cross, the Yamoussoukro communiqué was issued in April 1996, and in December the Abidjan agreement called for a ceasefire and “a framework to further the process of democratization and equitable social and economic development in Sierra Leone.”[iv]

The military coup in Freetown in May 1997 brought to a halt the implementation of the Abidjan agreement. At the time, Foday Sankoh was in detention in a luxury hotel in Nigeria where he had been arrested in February. Educated but non-combatant members of the RUF leadership had expelled Sankoh from the movement two weeks before his arrest, but the expulsion carried no weight with the fighters and battle-commanders, who remained loyal to him. Those responsible for his expulsion were abducted from a reconciliation meeting in early 1997 and have not been seen since.

Likely under Sankoh’s advice, the battle-commanders brought 500 rebels (many boys as young as 12) to Freetown at the invitation of the coup leaders, who believed they faced imminent foreign military intervention. The RUF decision to enter into a defined military alliance with the coup leaders brought the RUF out into the open where it could be crushed by conventional military force, a costly defiance of all traditional guerrilla strategy – RUF success had always been based on avoiding direct confrontation with government forces. The result was the elimination of much of the movement’s leadership and a good portion of its arms.

THE JUNTA GOVERNMENT

The coup that precipitated the ECOMOG military intervention began with an assault on Pademba Road Prison in Freetown, from which Major Johnny Paul Koroma was released, together with 600 felons and veterans of unsuccessful coups. Koroma was a member of the politically powerful Limba tribe of Sierra Leone’s Northern Province. His trial for participation in a September 1996 coup attempt was set to begin one day after he was released from prison. Although close to the leaders of the 1992 coup of Captain Valentin Strasser, Koroma’s only significant field operation was looting the vehicles of the mining operation he was supposed to be guarding from RUF rebels.

Twenty members of the new Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) were named on 1 June 1997. They included Foday Sankoh as (absentee) vice-chairman, RUF chief strategist Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie, and two other RUF members. Koroma’s brother, Brigadier S.F.Y. Koroma, was appointed chief of staff, while Solomon “Saj” Musa, the feared ex-security chief in the 1992-96 NPRC military government, became chief secretary. Junta leadership was dominated by the Limba tribe (10 per cent of the Sierra Leone population) and the northern Temne (25 per cent of the population). Other members were generally young, unknown, poorly educated junior officers and non-commissioned officers, most of whom had benefited from inflation in the ranks when the SLA grew from 8,000 to 12,000 men after the 1992 coup. Many of the new recruits were street children and petty criminals.

quagmire 1Executive Outcomes Mercenaries in Sierra Leone

The army eventually grew to a strength of 14,000 before the 1996 Abidjan agreement called for a 50 per cent reduction in its numbers. Though poorly trained and incapable in the field, the SLA was not happy when the South African mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes, was engaged to provide security in the mineral fields, the government promoted the Kamajor militia, and Kabbah chose Nigerian troops for his personal bodyguard. Many of the rank-and-file expressed their dissatisfaction by becoming part of the “Sobel” phenomenon – “soldiers by day, rebels by night.” The high level of resentment reached the senior ranks of the SLA: even the chief of staff, Hassan Conteh, gave his support to the junior officers’ coup.

A national “People’s Army” was formed soon after the coup from 8,000 SLA regulars and 5,000 RUF guerrillas. They were initially effective in holding off Nigerian forces in the Freetown area. In response to a Nigerian naval bombardment of Cockerill military barracks on 2 June, 3000 Nigerian troops were disarmed and taken hostage, an action that brought an early end to negotiations between the AFRC and the Nigerian high commissioner, Chedi Abubakr.

As well as the SLA and the RUF, there were two other active armed groups – the mercenaries and the Kamajor militias. The approximately 5,000 Kamajor, or “traditional hunters, have proven to be deadly opponents of the junta and the RUF. A rural militia, they combine bullet-thwarting talismans, traditional hunting skills and mercenary-provided military training in support of their leading civilian patron, Tejan Kabbah. They are drawn mainly from the Mende tribal group (about 25 per cent of the population and Kabbah’s biggest support-base). Sam Hinga Norman, a cabinet minister, important supporter of Kabbah, former Kamajor leader and long-time Executive Outcomes lobbyist, has played an important role in co-ordinating Kamajor training by mercenary units.

The hunters’ militia was already active against the RUF before the Koroma coup, fighting for control of coffee and cocoa plantations in the Kailahun District of eastern Sierra Leone. At the time, Kailahun was run as a mini-state by Foday Sankoh and was the centre for his trade in agricultural products and diamonds with merchants from Liberia and Guinea. Considering the hostility of the RUF and the resentment of the often unpaid SLA of the highly funded Kamajor militia, it was hardly surprising that the AFRC’s first official announcement was a ban on Kamajor activities. Open conflict followed swiftly as the junta forces attempted to disarm the militias, but the Kamajor were highly successful in operations against the “People’s Army” in southeast Sierra Leone, often with the benefit of superior weapons supplied by Nigeria. After Kabbah’s restoration, the Kamajor militia seized the provincial towns of Bo and Kenema, executed soldiers of the People’s Army and put the homes of AFRC backers to the torch.

THE MERCENARY ROLE

The 1992-96 NPRC government had engaged a force of Gurkha mercenaries to combat the RUF, but these troops became demoralized after the death of their commander and returned home. In their place came a number of South African and British “security” firms, on both government and private contracts. Executive Outcomes, a South African firm, proved very successful in action against the RUF, but was officially withdrawn from Sierra Leone on 3 February 1997 under the terms of the Abidjan agreement. Control of Sierra Leone’s prosperous diamond fields was considered essential by all parties to the conflict, as well as by the private mining companies. After the coup, Lifeguard (an affiliate of Executive Outcomes) was hired by Branch Energy Limited (a subsidiary of Canadian-owned Diamond Works) and two other mining operations. Two British mercenary groups were also active, Defence Systems Limited and Sandline International, which played a crucial part in the ECOMOG offensive against the junta.[v]

Recent revelations have confirmed earlier speculation[vi] that the restoration of the Kabbah government was carefully planned by Kabbah, senior Nigerian staff officers and Sandline International. In early May 1998, in response to a British Customs and Excise probe into Sandline’s alleged involvement in supplying weapons and military expertise to pro-Kabbah forces in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, Sandline’s lawyers released a letter listing numerous officials in the British and American governments who were fully briefed in advance about the March assault that expelled Koroma’s junta.[vii] The resulting “Arms to Africa” scandal proved a major embarrassment to Robin Cook, the British foreign secretary.

In a letter released on 12 May 1998, which was intended to support the besieged British Labour government, Kabbah stated that he had neither asked for nor received any military assistance from Britain and that the role of Sandline International in his restoration had been exaggerated. The letter unfortunately appeared the same day as press revelations that a major in the Scots Guards had been decorated by the Queen for his part in defending a position held by a pro-Kabbah militia against AFRC forces. The Financial Times claimed to have independent eyewitness accounts that the major was fighting alongside eight white mercenaries at the time.[viii] The permanent secretary to the Foreign Office, Sir John Kerr, was compelled to admit on 14 May that Lt Col Spicer of Sandline had regularly briefed senior Foreign Office officials about the situation, contrary to previous assertions that only junior officials had had some minor contacts with the Sandline chairman. The prime minister, Tony Blair, praised the work of the high commissioner to Sierra Leone, Peter Penfold, who was accused of working closely with the Sandline mercenaries, possibly with the encouragement of British intelligence agencies. Blair later claimed, in what seems a tacit admission of official British involvement, that Britain had been right to help restore the democratic government of Tejan Kabbah.[ix] Unfortunately for Nigeria, the emergence of the “Arms to Africa” scandal overshadowed its operations in Sierra Leone; operations which were, after all, designed to display a capable and benevolent image of the Nigerian regime to the international community.

ECOWAS and ECOMOG

Sandline’s collaboration with what was ostensibly a peacekeeping mission raises questions about the direction Nigeria has taken regional peacekeeping and the impact this has had on ECOWAS and ECOMOG. Almost from the beginning, the Nigerian role in Sierra Leone was one of intervention rather than peacekeeping. Nigeria frequently claimed that it had the full blessings of the United Nations, the Commonwealth, and the OAU as it gradually dropped any pretense of impartiality in the Sierra Leone power struggle. The Nigerian plan seems to have been to use military pressure to force on the ruling AFRC a diplomatic solution favourable to Nigeria; if that failed, the option of a direct strike with overwhelming force remained open. In pushing for a solution it desired, Nigeria made full use of its size and economic dominance of its ECOWAS partners – its population of 107 million exceeds the combined population of the other 15 ECOWAS nations, while its gross national product is only slightly less than that of its partners combines.

As justification for its interventionist approach, Nigeria cited the 1981 ECOWAS Protocol Relating to Mutual Assistance.[x] The relevant sections of the protocol are article 2 – “Member states declare and accept that any armed threat or aggression directed against any member state will constitute a threat or aggression against the entire Community” – and article 16 – “When an external armed threat or aggression is directed against a member state of the Community, the Head of State of that country shall send a written request for assistance to the current Chairman of the Authority of ECOWAS.” When a written request from Kabbah for intervention in Sierra Leone was receive in Abidjan, the Nigerian government was satisfied that the necessary conditions for direct action had been met.

The original purpose of ECOWAS was to promote economic integration amongst the disparate Anglophone, francophone and lusophone nations of west Africa. The organization is currently in financial peril; only Nigeria, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire are fully paid up members. Efforts at economic and monetary union have largely failed, distrust between Anglophone and francophone members has resurfaced, and organizations such as the European Union that once took a great interest in ECOWAS’s success have begun to divert their funds and energies to the more promising Southern Africa Development Community.

ECOMOG, the military arm of ECOWAS, was formed in 1990 to present a united front in the Liberian crisis. Increasingly, it has become the most active part of ECOWAS, even though many ECOWAS members have little or no participation in its operations. Nigeria has inevitably dominated ECOMOG, but a poor effort by the government to inform the population at home about the intent or value of Nigerian peacekeeping efforts has led to indignation over the large expenditure of national resources required to maintain such forces and to a number of popular campaigns to reduce Nigeria’s prominence in ECOMOG.[xi]

The original ECOMOG mission in Liberia quickly incorporated elements of peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Charles Taylor (now president of Liberia) refused to accept the legitimacy of the mission, especially as it seemed designed to halt what looked like the inevitable military victory of Taylor’s forces in 1990. After heavy fighting between ECOMOG and Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), the supposed impartiality of the ECOMOG forces was open to question. The mission tended to look more like a relief force for Samuel Doe, a close personal friend of Nigeria’s president, Ibrahim Babingida.

So far, ECOMOG forces have, for the most part, avoided the severe ruptures between the field commands of member-states that occurred in the underfunded OAU peacekeeping mission in Chad (1981-82),[xii] largely because Nigeria underwrites nearly the entire cost of the mission. The other ECOWAS states that provide combat troops to ECOMOG (Ghana Gambia and Guinea) have long-standing ties to Nigeria.

On 26 June 1997, the ECOWAS community took its first steps towards a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Sierra Leone. The foreign ministers meeting in Conakry declared their willingness to use dialogue, economic sanctions or military action to restore the elected government. A Committee of Four (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Nigeria) was established to oversee the process. (Liberia as a late addition made it a committee of five). Their recommendations were endorsed at the 20th ECOWAS summit, and a wide range of sanctions was implemented against the AFRC regime. Use of force to remove the Koroma regime was initially backed by Gambia ad Guinea, while Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (temporarily) led the call for a negotiated settlement.

Contacts between the junta and the Committee of Five (led by Nigeria’s foreign minister, Tom Ikimi) had some results. The Conakry peace agreement of 23 October 1997 called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, a monitored disarmament, recognition of Foday Sankoh’s leadership role, a broadening of the power base, and the restoration of the constitutional government of Tejan Kabbah by 22 April 1998. Unfortunately, considerable pressure from the RUF faction of the junta led to the effective scuttling of the agreement in December 1997 when Koroma issued a new set of condition, including the release of Sankoh, a reduction in the Nigerian contingent of ECOMOG in Sierra Leone, and full control of the disarmament process by the SLA.

After Freetown was taken and the AFRC junta was eliminated, Ghana and Gambia publicly approved the ECOMOG action, but other ECOWAS state resisted Nigeria’s claim that its mandate for Liberian peacekeeping now extended to Sierrra Leone. Liberia refused to turn over RUF fugitives who had fled from ECOMOG forces and complained that arms obtained by Executive Outcomes were transported by ECOMOG forces through Liberia on their way to pro-government Kamajor militias in Sierra Leone.

Ghana is seen as a moderating influence on Nigerian ambitions, and its continued involvement in the Sierra Leone peacekeeping force is strongly encouraged by Britain and the United States. Further Guinean military involvement in ECOMOG can also be expected, especially as Guinea has security concerns about a rebel movement operating from the Sierra Leone side of their common border. Aside from Guinea, however, most francophone members of ECOWAS (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo) are reluctant to become involved. Some have questioned Nigeria’s sudden opposition to regional military coups when it gave every indication of welcoming Captain Yahya Jammeh’s 1994 coup in Gambia and because it has its own notorious history of military coups.

THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations’ response to the Sierra Leone crisis may be described as ambiguous and reactive at best. Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter describes recourse to multipurpose regional security organizations, although their main roles are mediation and arbitration. In 1995 the Joint Inspection Unit recommended that regional organizations should be encouraged to form the first resort for resolution of local conflicts.[xiii] Article 53 of the Charter would seem to require explicit authorization for the use of force: “no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council.” The closest the Security Council came to such an authorization was on 8 October 1997 when it adopted a resolution empowering ECOWAS to impose oil and arms sanctions against Sierra Leone. The ensuing Nigerian naval blockade and occupation of Freetown’s Lungi International Airport proved very effective; AFRC government revenues fell by almost 90 per cent. In addition, all foreign aid (normally 30 per cent of the national budget) was halted. Some weapons were successfully smuggled to the regime in Freetown, along with Liberian recruits to the “People’s Army” and a dozen Ukrainian mercenaries,[xiv] but the smuggling was dealt with forcefully; the Nigerian navy shelled Freetown’s port in August 1997, killing 30 people.

A situation in which an arms embargo was authorized by the Security Council but the use of military force was not was identical to the situation in Liberia in 1992 when Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces took the initiative for military action. Winrich Kühne has noted the lesson that Nigeria must have absorbed from this earlier experience: “the political message of the Security Council’s behaviour is clear: if the leading powers in the Security Council are loath to involve the UN or themselves in a regional conflict, regional powers and regional arrangements will not have to worry about the stringent application of the authorization clause in Article 53 of the UN Charter.”[xv]

The almost total embargo on arms, fuel, food, and medical supplies went well beyond the official mandate but was doubtless encouraged by the equivocal remarks of the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan: “Where democracy has been usurped, let us do all in our power to restore it to the people. Neighbouring states, regional groups and institutional organisations must all play their parts to restore Sierra Leone’s constitutional and democratic government.”[xvi]

In early 1997, prior to the Koroma coup, the United Nations Security Council was divided over the value and expense of an official United Nations peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone. The reluctance of the RUF and the Sierra Leone government to implement the November 1996 peace accord and the continued instability within Sierra Leone were noted as impediments to deploying a peacekeeping force. A small observer mission was eventually settled on, which it was hoped would meet with more success than the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL), an earlier and largely unsuccessful effort at co-ordinating United Nations and ECOMOG activities.[xvii]

THE OAU AND COMMONWEALTH ROLES

As for the OAU, the Nigerian intervention was welcomed by its chairman, Robert Mugabe, and its secretary general, Salim Ahmed Salim, at the Zimbabwe summit in June 1997. A later ministerial meeting in Addis Ababa gave its support for sanctions and the imposition of an embargo. It also called, unsuccessfully, for United Nations financial and material support to ECOWAS efforts.[xviii] Ever since its embarrassment over the failure of its first and only attempt at peacekeeping in Chad, the OAU has been reluctant to initiate peacekeeping operations. Despite recent interest from the United Nations, the Western European Union (WEU), the United States, and France in establishing a permanent pan-African peacekeeping force under OAU direction, such a force is unlikely to develop without a solid and continuing financial commitment from external sources. Meetings of OAU military chiefs of staff in Addis Ababa in 1996 and Harare in 1997 confirmed that “the OAU’s main responsibility should be to anticipate and prevent conflicts but that, in exceptional circumstances, the OAU should deploy limited peace maintenance and observer missions.”[xix]

Despite Nigeria’s lengthy peacekeeping experience in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and lately, Guinea-Bissau, the question remains open as to what role, if any, Nigeria will have in a proposed United Nations/OAU peacekeeping force. So far it has not been involved in planning for the force, but it is difficult to envision this type of regional force without Nigeria’s clout and experience. The question if whether the Nigerian practice of unilateral decision-making at staff-level and unsanctioned use of force in the field will prove a useful contribution to such a force. The direction of a new democratic government in Nigeria and the success or failure of Nigerian field forces in Sierra Leone will eventually provide the answer. Nigeria’s president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, supports a continued military role in Sierra Leone (with extensive British financing) for the time being.[xx]

Although the Commonwealth secretary general, Emaka Anyaoku, claimed that military intervention was “totally justified,”[xxi] the Commonwealth nations are divided over their treatment of Nigeria’s role in Sierra Leone. Nigerian expectations of being welcomed back to the Commonwealth following a successful restoration of the Kabbah government met with strong opposition from Canada and Britain. Nevertheless, the Abacha regime had allies within the Commonwealth, notably President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana. Rawlings spoke on behalf of Nigeria as a proponent of ECOMOG activities in Sierra Leone, despite domestic opposition and a number of outstanding bilateral differences between the two countries. When Britain condemned Nigeria’s actions at the 2 March 1998 meeting of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, Ghana turned the condemnation into a statement of approval for ECOWAS operations (without mentioning the Nigerian-dominated ECOMOG). Britain has, nevertheless, committed substantial funds for both further ECOMOG activities and a disarmament and demobilization programme aimed at re-integrating rebels into Sierra Leone society.

THE NIGERIAN ROLE

Nigeria became a key mover in the ECOWAS/ECOMOG alliance not only because of its size but also because of its domestic economic crisis and the political isolation of the Abacha government. Nigeria has a US$34 billion external debt and has so neglected its petroleum facilities that, even though it produces 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, it has a perpetual fuel shortage. Political strife in the oil-rich Niger delta also severely reduced output in the last year. Despite financial mismanagement, endemic corruption and political intransigence in the democratic transition programme, the Abacha regime continued to receive mixed signals from the West. The last year of Abacha’s rule witnessed a growing rapprochement between Nigeria and France, which was seeking a new partner in west Africa after the overthrow of Zaire’s Francophile Mobutu government. Relations between the two have been strained since de Gaulle supported the Biafran secessionists (1967-70), but Abacha tried to make French Nigeria’s second language and moved its European oil headquarters from London to Paris. In an effort to win friends within ECOWAS, he awarded lucrative crude oil contracts to most of the francophone members who traditionally oppose Nigeria’s dominant role in the region.

Before his death on 8 June 1998, Abacha no longer trusted his military power base. ECOMMOG service was presented as a carrot to disaffected military units or officers; Nigerian troops on active ECOMOG duty are paid according to the ECOMOG pay-scale, a substantial improvement on the salary they could expect in Nigeria. ECOMOG service had the added benefit of keeping suspect units and officers out of the country for extended periods. Unofficially, service abroad also offered the chance for some unsanctioned looting – in Liberia ECOMOG was said to stand for “Every Car Or Moveable Object Gone.”[xxii]

Nigeria’s barely covert collaboration with mercenaries in the restoration offensive marked a full turn in Nigerian policy; it had reacted with outrage to the activities of mercenaries on its soil during the Biafran insurgency. Further revelations of deep mercenary involvement in the campaign threatened even the limited credibility the military regime had accrued through its costly intervention in Sierra Leone. After its initial military setbacks, the Nigerian command no doubt felt the need for external expertise which was, however, unavailable from United Nations, Commonwealth, or OAU sources.

THE POLITICAL FUTURE

The success of Nigeria’s efforts to restore stability to Sierra Leone will be severely tested in the coming months because the root causes of instability remain. Though the Nigerian assault on Freetown quickly achieved its military objectives, the unexpected depth of resistance was a clear indication of further turmoil. Mercenary activities are likely to continue for some time; Sierra Leone is still a long way from being able to provide effective internal security, the Nigerian military has no objection to mercenary security operations, and the security firms themselves are widely believed to have traded their services for financial interest in mining operations within Sierra Leone, lending credence to the belief that they are there for the long haul. New government-issued mineral contracts will likely contain stipulations for private security.

quagmire 2Kamajor Fighter

On 13 July 1998, the Kabbah government disbanded what remained of Sierra Leone’s standing army and began recruiting a small “reformed” armed force, but the loosely disciplined Kamajor militia remained the government’s strongest domestic defendant. Since the restoration of their patrons, Kabbah and Norma, the Kamajor have directed their operations against the Limba and other northern tribes who were seen as supporters of the junta. The militia appears to have had little impact on the RUF’s terror campaign; when the two forces do clash, the frontline fighters on both sides are usually well-armed and drug-stimulated children.

If a peace agreement can be reached between the RUF and the government, the Nigerians can still expect a lengthy stay. Even a reformed SLA cannot be expected to provide an effective level of security in the foreseeable future. The Kabbah government hardly returned to a hero’s welcome from many of the loyal Sierra Leonans who had to endure the privations, looting and violence of the Koroma regime. The bombardment of Freetown in early February 1998 by Nigerian jets and heavy artillery was little appreciated by those residents who opposed the AFRC regime, and blame for the destruction was eventually laid by many at the feet of Kabbah. A prolonged stay in Sierra Leone may well suit some factions within the Nigerian military who have an interest in the country’s mineral wealth and in helping Nigeria contain the regional ambitions of Liberia’s Charles Taylor. A Nigerian presence in Sierra Leone is unlikely to meet serious Western opposition if the alternative is the insertion of a Western-based peacekeeping force.

That a continued international military presence is desirable is shown by the random vengeance exacted upon the rural population by surviving RUF units through 1998 and early 1999. Far from being a spent force, the RUF has conducted a ruthless campaign of indiscriminate terror in the interior (codenamed Operation No Living Thing), amputating the hands and feet of thousands of rural civilians, including children, before striking into the heart of Freetown again in early January 1999. Apparently concluding that international acceptance for the movement was irrevocably lost after their initial defeat in Freetown, the RUF opted to surpass the worst excesses of its earlier terror campaigns and developed into a personality cult revolving around its imprisoned leader, Foday Sankoh.[xxiii] The ability of the rebels to penetrate the capital, commit major atrocities, and send government leaders fleeing to the ECOMOG airbase north of the city was a major blow to Nigerian military prestige and forced the Sierra Leone government to open negotiations with Sankoh, even though it had sentenced him to death after Kabbah’s restoration. The events of the last year have produced widespread alienation amongst potential RUF supporters and deepened the enmity amongst its traditional foes.

CONCLUSION: REPRISALS IN SIERRA LEONE AND POLITICAL OPENING IN NIGERIA

That the Nigerians have pegged their national prestige and reputation to the success of their ECOMOG activities can be clearly seen. The interim government of General Abusalam Abubakr pledged to commit 20,000 men (a quarter of the Nigerian army) to operations in Sierra Leone even as the 1999 Nigerian budget forecast a 54 per cent drop in revenues because of sharply reduced petroleum prices.[xxiv] Since the initial success of ECOMOG forces in restoring the Kabbah government, the intervention has had its weaknesses exposed through allegations of illegal arms transfers to loyalist forces, its inability to provide effective security in rural or urban areas, the pursuit of an internationally condemned policy of lethal reprisals by the government, and the incursion into Freetown by supposedly defeated rebels.

The seriousness of the continuing crisis, the obvious need for armed intervention, and successful democratic elections in Nigeria in February have tended to bring the international community on side with Nigerian efforts (together with its ECOMOG and mercenary allies) to preserve Kabbah’s tenuous presidency. While backing off from Abacha’s growing partnership with France, the Abubakr transitional regime made successful representations to the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in the autumn of 1998 and convinced Canada to restore diplomatic relations after a two-year suspension.[xxv]

A leading point of contention between Kabbah’s government and elements of the international community is the policy of retaliation against former army officers, captured rebels, and their alleged civilian collaborators. After Kabbah’s government was restored, over 5,000 accused collaborators were arrested and over 100 civilians and military officers were charged with the capital offense of treason. On 8 April 1998, the government suspended the Criminal Procedures Act so that suspects could be tried quickly under emergency regulations. In defence of the alleged collaborators, the London-based Alliance for Peace and Democracy in Sierra Leone pointed out that several leading government members, including Kabbah, had accepted public appointments under the illegal NPRC military regime. According to the Alliance: “No one charged them with treason or aiding and abetting. It seems ironic therefore that these same people now leading a civilian government see it fit to charge with capital offence civilians who found themselves in exactly the same positon as they did.”[xxvi]

Despite international appeals for clemency, executions were carried out by Nigerian ECOMOG members. On 19 October 1998, 24 army officers, convicted without appeal, were executed in Freetown. The dead included the former chief of staff, Conteh, and Col. S.F.Y. Koroma. At least one of the condemned expressed bewilderment at the role of the Nigerian; the last words of Col. David Anderson were: “So you Nigerians came here to kill us while you have more coups in Nigeria than any other country?”[xxvii]

Once begun, popular pressure for continued executions as the RUF carried out daily atrocities in an attempt to free Sankoh began to give the reprisal programme a life of its own, making it almost impossible for the government to back down, even if it were so inclined. Sankoh was returned to Sierra Leone from Nigeria in July 1998 and was sentenced to death on 23 October after a short trial in which he was unrepresented by counsel; no lawyer could be found in Sierra Leone willing to defend him. Documents presented during the trial indicated a continuing Libyan connection in the form of a RUF funding pipeline through the Libyan People’s Bureau in Ghana.[xxviii]

The Nigerian experience demonstrates that although the United Nations Charter appears to recommend the use of regional and sub-regional peacekeeping organizations, no effective framework exists for those organizations to report to a wold body such as the United Nations or to seek its approval for actions in the field. The Nigerian regime exploited this situation to further its own regional and international interests, always keeping one step ahead of what had been sanctioned by ECOWAS, the OAU, the Commonwealth, and the Security Council. So long as decision-making in peacekeeping policy continues to be made on the basis of winks and nods from members of the international community, rather than on the basis of verifiable resolutions and authorizations, the resulting operations will hold little credibility and will remain open to legitimate challenge from any of the involved parties.

Nigeria has demonstrated an affinity for a unilateral approach to regional peacekeeping, using its wealth and military power to drag its ECOWAS partners along with it. If the result of such unilateral action happens to coincide with the aims of the international community, as in Sierra Leone, the international response is bound to be confused. The new realpolitik from Britain’s foreign secretary (almost prophetic in light of Britain’s energetic defence of NATO’s unsanctioned intervention in Yugoslavia) was that “nobody should lose sight of the fact that the outcome of what happened was positive.”[xxix] Abacha was able to exploit these mixed signals to a certain extent in his attempts to regain international acceptance, if not respect. Ultimately he discovered that the main precondition for the re-admission of Nigeria to the Commonwealth and other international bodies was his removal in favour of a democratically elected government. But he was unwilling to step down, and his mysterious death went largely unlamented as Nigerians hastened to exploit the sudden opportunity for political reform. In light of the democratic transition, Nigerian was reinstated to the Commonwealth in May 1999.

[i] A number of Liberians and Sierra Leonans, including Foday Sankoh, received military and ideological instruction in Libya in the 1980s. Paul Richards has identified several aspects of the RUF movement which appear to derive from Khadafy’s Green Book philosophy (Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone [Portsmouth NH: Heinemann 1996], 21). But Ibrahim Abdullah sees it differently: “If the RUF had any ideology, it was definitely not shaped by the Green Book… Richards’ assumption that the Green Book was influential in shaping the views of student radicals led him to look for Green Book signs that were markedly absent in the RUF.” (“Bush path to destruction: the origin and character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone,” Journal of Modern African Studies 36 [June 1998], 225).

[ii] The only document offering anything close to an RUF ideology is the slim volume, Footpaths to Democracy, published by the RUF in 1995. This ‘manifesto’ borrows heavily from earlier pan-African liberation documents, adding a mixture of quotes and ideas from Amilcar Cabral and Mao Zedong, with a handful of reflections by Foday Sankoh. See Abdullah, “Bush path to destruction,” 217.

[iii] OAU Conflict Management Review, Echoes from Sierra Leone (OAU Political Department 1998).

[iv] Ibid, 6-8.

[v] Sandline International is run by Tim Spicer and Tony Buckingham, both British ex-officers. Buckingham is also the largest shareholder in DiamondWorks Limited of Vancouver. Defence Systems Limited are rivals of Sandline and are closely involved with Jean-Raymond Boulles’s Nord Resources and Toronto-listed American Mineral Fields. Defence Systems also provides security for United Nations relief convoys.

[vi] Africa Confidential 39 (6 March 1998), 8.

[vii] Jimmy Burns, “President denies military aid allegations,” Financial Times (London), 13 May 1998. Sandline arranged for the shipment of 35 tons of military equipment from Bulgaria to ECOMOG forces (Africa Confidential 39 [6 March 1998]1). An investigation into the abortive 1997 mercenary intervention in Papua New Guinea found that Heritage Oil and Gas owned Sandline. In January 1998, Heritage Oil and Gas was given a conditional listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Buckingham was named as director and principal shareholder (Richard Blackwell, “Heritage Oil given conditional TSE listing,” Globe and Mail [Toronto], 6 January 1999).

[viii] Andrew Parker and Michela Wrong: “Blair praises accused Sierra Leone envoy,” Financial Times 12 May 1998.

[ix] Madelaine Drohan, “UK knew of Sierra Leone plan, mercenaries say,” Globe and Mail, 9 May 1998.

[x] Protocol Relating to Mutual Assistance on Defence, ECOWAS Secretariat, Lagos, 1981.

[xi] See, for example, H.A. Saliu and F.A. Ebo, “Nigeria in international organizations: overview and limitations,” Foreign Affairs Reports 46 (January/February 1997), 1-24.

[xii] See Amadu Sesay, “Peacekeeeping by regional organizations: the OAU and ECOWAS peacekeeping forces in comparative perspective,” in David A.Charters, ed, Peacekeeping and the Challenge of Civil Conflict Resolution, Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conflict Studies Conference, University of New Brunswick, September 1992 (Fredericton: University of New Brunswick 1994), 111-34.

[xiii] Report of the Joint Inspection Unit (United Nations), Sharing Responsibilities in Peacekeeping: the United Nations and Regional Organizations, JIU/REP/95/4, 17 October 1995.

[xiv] Africa Confidential 38(21 November 1997), 5.

[xv] Winrich Kühne; “Lessons from peacekeeping operations in Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Rwanda and Libberia,” in Winrich Küne, Guido Lenzi and Alvaro Vasconcelos, WEU’s Role in Crisi Management and Confict Resolution in Sub-Saharan Africa, Chaillot Paper 22 (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union, December 1995), 41.

[xvi] Claudia McElroy, “Freetown battle shatters peace hopes,” Guardian Weekly (Manchester), 8 June 1997.

[xvii] Unite Nations Security Council Resolution 1181 of 13 July 1998 established the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) for an initial six months. Kabbah suggested a mission of 720 observers, but Sankoh insisted on only 70, and the Security Council agreed. The mission has a four-part mandate: 1) monitor the military and security situation in Sierra Leone; 2) monitor the demobilization and disarmament of combatants; 3) monitor and report on violations of international humanitarian law; and 4) advise the government on police practice and training.

[xviii] Communiqué of the 7th Ordinary Session of the Central Organ of the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution at Ministerial Level (Addis Ababa, 20-21 November 1997).

[xix] W.O. Leba, “Conflict management in Africa,” The Courier (United Nations) (no. 168, March/April 1998), 77.

[xx] After the sudden death of Abacha on 8 June 1998, General Abusalam Abubakr was sworn in as interim ruler, Obasanjo was elected president of Nigeria in February 1999 and was sworn in on 29 May 1999.

[xxi] “African leaders back intervention in Sierra Leone,” Globe and Mail, 3 June 1997.

[xxii] Abiodun Alao, The Burden of Collective Goodwill: The International Involvement in the Liberian Civil War (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998), 77.

[xxiii] On Kamajor indiscipline and RUF atrocities, see “Sierra Leone – sowing terror- atrocities against civilians in Sierra Leone,” Human Rights Watch 10 (no. 3A, July 1998).

[xxiv] William Wallis, “Sierra Leone peace hopes prove premature,” Financial Times 4 January 1999.

[xxv] Jeff Sallot, “Canada to restore relations with Nigeria,” Globe and Mail, 23 January 1999.

[xxvi] Baffour Ankomah, “Sierra Leone’s death list,” New African (no. 367, October 1998), 18.

[xxvii] Sheku Saccoh, “Nigerians execute Sierra Leone coupists,” Ibid (no. 369, December 1998) 24.

[xxviii] Africa Confidential 39 (23 October 1998), 4.

[xxix] Liam Halligan,” Foreign minister stumbles on ‘Arms-to-Africa’,” Financial Times 11 May 1998.

Mummies and Mullahs: Islamic Separatism in China’s ‘New Frontier’

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Andrew McGregor

Canadian Institute for International Affairs, Summer 1999

Confronted by separatist movements on several frontiers, the Chinese government watched with alarm NATO’s unsanctioned intervention in Yugoslavia. They needn’t have worried. There is little expectation of foreign support in Xinjiang, but the deeply divided Uyghur nationalists are determined to continue their struggle for autonomy.

The NATO air assault on Yugoslavia in support of the minority Kosovars has distressed the Chinese government which is trying to deal quietly with several minority movements of its own. Somewhere between the high-profile Tibetan independence movement and the virtually unknown separatists of Inner Mongolia is the Uyghur independence movement. The non-Chinese Turkic Uyghur people want independence for their traditional homeland of Xinjiang (or “Eastern Turkestan”), a mineral and petroleum-rich province in the northwest that covers one-sixth of China’s territory. Ever since Turkic Muslims displaced central Asia’s Indo-Buddhist civilization in the 11th and 12th centuries AD, Xinjiang has remained culturally Islamic.

Xinjiang

Lying at the heart of central Asia, Xinjiang acts as a bridge for the extension of Chinese trade and economic influence, while it also serves as a security buffer between the Chinese and their Turkic and Persian Muslim neighbors. Some of the world’s most formidable mountain ranges surround the northern Zungharia region of northern Xinjiang, while the southern Tarim Basin contains the forbidding Taklamakan desert. Most Uyghur settlement is in the oases on the fringe of the desert, but there are also two small but economically depressed areas, the Ili Valley and the Turfan depression. The harsh terrain means that many regions exist in relative isolation and often possess different histories.

The modern use of “Uyghur” to designate the main group of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang began only in 1924, when Soviet ethnologists used it to describe Turkic Muslim residents of the Soviet Union whose roots were in China. The term came into wide use after 1949, but many nationalists now prefer the old name of “Eastern Turkestan.” Whatever the designation, it should not be used to disguise the very real differences among the oases of the Tarim Basin or to imply a cultural and social unity that does not exist. Poor communications among Xinjiang’s population centers has meant that most oases historically look beyond the province for trade and cultural interaction. After the communist takeover in 1949, however, the city of Urumqi became a transportation hub for the rail exports of goods to eastern China. The province was also opened up to settlement by the majority Han Chinese.

Urumqi

Since 1949, Xinjiang has suffered almost continuously from ethnic division and a low-level insurrection that seems to be waiting for an opportune moment to blow wide open. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been vigilant in suppressing religious and political dissent, but the almost endless rounds of protests, mass arrests and executions have served only to keep the political pressure at boiling point. Since the early 1990s numerous small opposition groups have adopted violence in pursuit of independence. Assassinations, bombings and train derailments now accompany the more common street riots, demonstrations and attacks on ethnic Han Chinese.

In 1999, violence has become increasingly frequent, particularly in the separatist stronghold of the Ili Valley. In February, two leading Muslim separatists were executed in Yining City, while 1,000 crack troops were rushed in to dissuade retaliation. Because foreign correspondents and human rights organizations are generally barred from Xinjiang, the potentially explosive situation has an unusually low profile internationally. The absence of a high-profile spokesman (such as Tibet’s Dalai Lama) or a government in exile does not help, nor does the presence of a divided Uyghur opposition often consumed by personal feuds or such petty differences as what to call an independent Xinjiang. Some promote a “Greater Uyghurstan,” incorporating Xinjiang with parts of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Such dreams are not only unrealistic, they tend to ensure an unreceptive attitude among the central Asian states. The Islamic and pan-Turkic nature of the Uyghur separatist movement makes it generally unappealing to the Western social activists who have turned Tibet and even East Timor into international causes.

From Silk Road to Cultural Revolution

Xinjiang’s early history is revealed in the ruined cities of the famous Silk Road that ran through it, the great trading route that connected the Far East to the Middle East and beyond to Europe. There is ample evidence of Manichean, Buddhist and Nestorian Christian beliefs before the arrival of Islam. The province became part of the Chinese empire when Emperor Chen Lung defeated the ruling Zungarian Mongols in 1759. An independent Muslim khanate followed several minor revolts, and real Chinese authority came only with an invasion by the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1876. Resistance to Chinese rule continued under the republican government, with a short-lived Turkish-Islamic Republic of East Turkestan established around Kashgar. Massacres of Chinese, Hindus and Christian missionaries followed, until the nation was destroyed by the Soviet Union in 1934 at China’s invitation. During the republican period, ethnic-Chinese Muslims (Hui) enjoyed great power in Xinjiang as soldiers and administrators. Rebellions began to take on an anti-Hui character, especially after the republican leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, argued that all minorities were branches of the Han family.

Xinjiang’s Turkic Muslims took advantage of the turmoil of the Second World War to found the East Turkestan Republic (ETR), which lasted from 1944 to 1949. Having grown out of the Uyghur and Kazakh “Ili Rebellion,” the ETR government was multi-ethnic. At the time, Mao Zedong was promoting autonomous rule for Chinese minorities to win support for the CCP. After most of the ETR leadership died in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiations with the CCP in Beijing, Xinjiang was reoccupied and brought under communist control as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. [1] Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76) was a devastating period for the Turkic population as mosques were closed, books were burned, hard labor camps created and religious leaders arrested. More than 100,000 Uyghurs and Kazakhs escaped to the Soviet Union; others fled to Turkey, Germany, Taiwan, India, Afghanistan and Australia. A more lenient religious and cultural policy in the 1980s only encouraged the growth of nationalism.

The Mummies of the Tarim Basin

As in other ancient but disputed territories, archaeology has found itself at the center of territorial claims. In 1979, Chinese archaeologists began uncovering large numbers of well-preserved Caucasian “mummies” in Xinjiang Province, all of which appear to have belonged to an advanced Indo-European culture. A number of Uyghur nationalists, led by Turghan Almas, an officially banned historian, identify the mummies with the ancient culture of the Tarim Basin, as preserved in Uyghur folklore. The carbon-dated remains have been used to substantiate Uyghur nationalist claims that, not only were their ancestors the ancient inhabitants of Xinjiang, but their civilization was substantially older than that of the Han Chinese. The ancient Uyghur culture, language and script have always held the highest reverence in the Turkic nations across Asia as the earliest manifestations of Turkic civilization.

China’s Other Muslims

China has at least 20 million Muslims organized into at least ten ethnic groups. [2] Of these, only the Uyghur and the Hui are significant in terms of numbers. (The Chinese always distinguish between the Hui or “common Muslims” and the Turkic or “turbaned Muslims”). The approximately 9 million Hui – Han Chinese converts to Islam – are found throughout China, but particularly in Gansu and Ningxia provinces. Historically, many Hui in Xinjiang have been soldiers, administrators and even warlords, but they command little respect from the Uyghurs. Though the Hui and the Uyghurs are unlikely to make common cause, the Hui have also proven turbulent subjects at times; serious disturbances erupted in 1992-93 in Ningxia province when local government officials attempted to interfere with the Khufiya Sufi order.

The vast majority of Muslims in China are orthodox Sunnis (the mainstream of Islamic thought). Because Sunni Sufi orders pursue a mystical path of worship, they are seen as potential breeding-grounds for Islamic extremism. They flourish nonetheless in Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai, as well as in Xinjiang. Similar orders helped keep Islam alive during the communist occupation of the Muslim states of the Caucasus and central Asia.

Hui Muslim Girls

The Islamic Opposition

CCP efforts to restrain Islamic practice by closing mosques and Islamic schools create an opening for more extreme forms of Islam to penetrate the rather moderate Sunni-style Islam of the Uyghurs. Chinese attempts to control Muslim clerics are unpopular; in March 1996 a pro-government religious leader was assassinated in Xinjiang.

The Uyghur nationalist opposition is deeply divided. At least 20 distinct groups (mostly exiles from the Uyghur diaspora [3]) range from “letterhead” organizations to guerrilla groups running terrorist/low-level insurgency operations. The most prominent and credible of the exiled leaders is Erkin Alptekin, son of the former secretary-general of the ETR. He is the current chair of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), formed in 1989. [4] His father, the late Isa Yusuf Alptekin, joined with Tibet’s Dalai Lama in 1985 to found the Allied Committee of the Peoples of East Turkestan Tibet and Inner Mongolia, a group which organizes demonstrations and conferences to publicize alleged Chinese human rights violations. The movement, which favors dialogue over violence, is frustrated by Chinese refusals to talk with any “splittist” organization.

Attempts to build a cohesive nationalist consensus among Xinjiang Uyghurs have also been frustrated by what Justin Rudelson, a central Asian scholar, has called “oasis chauvinism.” Uyghur identity tends to be closely tied to the oasis of origin, be it Kashgar, Yarkand, Karghalik or Turpan. Each nationalist “attempts to create a nationalist ideology which places his own oasis at the forefront of Uyghur history in order to facilitate the acceptance of a national identity at the oasis level.” [5]

New States, New Policies

The collapse of the Soviet Union introduced five new central Asian states to the world community – Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. All were Turkic-Muslim in character, save Tajikistan, where the majority language and culture has Persian roots. Though the Uyghurs are the last significant Muslim group under communist rule, they have received little encouragement from their central Asian cousins. Aside from Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, the current central Asian leaders are all former members of the Soviet communist elite and are unlikely to support any activity that could threaten their positions. Pan-Turkic nationalism and Islamic sentiment played no role in the independence of these states, which were virtually cast off by a re-organizing Russia. Continued Russian influence, particularly in security matters, is another factor in discouraging activities which might threaten Russian-Chinese relations in what both nations would concede is a historically sensitive area. The damage to Islamic life and tradition over 70 years of communist rule in the ex-Soviet central Asian states makes a home-grown Islamic movement of any strength in the area (other than Tajikistan) unlikely in the near future.

Uzbekistan, the largest central Asian state, is the most fervently anti-Islamist. According to President Islam Karimov: “Such people must be shot in the head. If necessary, I’ll shoot them myself.” [6] In 1996, China used its economic power to pressure Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan into signing the Shanghai Accords, essentially an agreement to repress Uyghur separatists and other Islamic movements in any of the signatory countries. Karimov claims that recent bombings in which 16 people were killed in Tashkent were the work of Uzbek Islamists trained in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Kyrgyzstan has long-standing border ties with Kyrgyz communities in Xinjiang and with Uyghurs in Kyrgyzstan. In 1990, the Chinese subdued what they described as a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” led by Kyrgyz preparing for a jihad against Han Chinese, [7] and in 1998 a number of Uyghurs were arrested in Kyrgyzstan for “Wahhabist” activities. Because Kyrgyzstan is worried about the state of its relations with China, Uyghur exiles have been warned not to use it as a base for separatist activities. Like the other new states of central Asia, Kyrgyzstan is concerned about maintaining relations with China now that it can no longer count on Moscow’s might in support of decisions affecting cross-border ethnic ties.

With a population of 300,000 Uyghurs, Kazakhstan is most sensitive to potential difficulties with Beijing. Many of the urban “Russified” Kazakhs look to their Uyghur relatives in Xinjiang for authentic Turkic culture. After Kazakhstan signed a border agreement with China in 1994, the offices of several Uyghur nationalist groups in the capital of Almaty were closed. In 1998, Kazakhstan extradited two Uyghur mullah-s (Islamic teachers) and their families who had fled from Xinjiang. Chinese-Kazakh trade totals more than that of Turkey with all of central Asia, and the Kazakhs are currently engaged in joint ventures with the Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC) to develop Kazakhstan’s extensive energy reserves. Nonetheless, Kazakhstan has been a source of concern to China since it hosted military manoeuvres involving American troops as part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme. Because the Kazakh government also fears Islamist movements, it formed an alliance with Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan against “Wahhabist extremism.”

Although China would find it difficult to project its military power westwards into central Asia to suppress any cross-border support for a Uyghur insurrection, it may count for the moment on central Asia’s leaders to do the work for it.

Islamic Extremism?

The post-communist governments of central Asia are alarmed by any sign of “Wahhabist” activities, a reference to Islamist activists who take their inspiration from Wahhabism, a highly conservative religious revival movement founded in Arabia in the mid-18th century by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. The puritan movement became closely tied to the al-Sa’ud family, who eventually conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula. The Wahhabists (who prefer to be called Muwahhidun or Unitarians) reject any Islamic trend that interfered with the direct contemplation and worship of God. Wahhabist control of the holy cities of Saudi Arabia allows the movement to spread its influence amongst Islamic pilgrims, including those from Xinjian and central Asia. The use of jihad to establish an Islamic state is central to Wahhabist doctrine. The degree of Wahhabist influence in central Asia is difficult to gauge, as the term is often used by various governments to describe any militant Islamist group so as to justify extreme measures against them. China rarely uses the term in official declarations, probably in deference to Saudi Arabia, with whom China needs to maintain good relations because of its energy needs.

Terrorism, often described as the weapon of the powerless, has erupted in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China – allegedly the work of Uyghur nationalists. In 1997, there were bus bombings in Urumqi and Beijing. The latter was especially embarrassing to the Chinese government because it coincided with the funeral of Deng Xiaoping. The Organization for Turkestan Freedom, which has its headquarters in Istanbul, claimed responsibility for the bombings, which came only a day after punishments for terrorism were increased and new charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “taking advantage of religious problems to instigate the splitting of the state” were added to the criminal code.

Many Uyghurs were arrested and executed, but a statement from the UNPO questioned Uyghur participation: “We now believe that the Chinese authorities or some elements within the government may have set off the devices… to discredit the Turkic peoples of East Turkestan, and to create a pretext for even more severe repression in our region.” [8] The accusation is unlikely; the bombings brought world media attention to Xinjiang’s problems, and what the CCP fears more than anything is internationalizing the issue.

Language and Demographic Issues

At the core of Beijing’s attempts to pacify Xinjiang is a campaign to create a major demographic change in the ethnic proportions of the province’s population. When the CCP took control of Eastern Turkestan in 1949, Han Chinese [9] made up only five per cent of the population. With 300,000 arriving every year, the Han Chinese are now as numerous as the Uyghur, and there are plans to being many more settlers. A more liberal reproductive policy which allows two children per couple rather than one as in the rest of China encourages Han resettlement in Xinjiang. There are also plans to accommodate many of the up to two million people who will be displaced if the Three Gorges dam project proceeds.

Language is a major barrier between Muslims and Han Chinese, who live highly segregated lives in Xinjiang. While some Uyghurs may learn Chinese to facilitate trade, it is almost unheard of for Chinese to learn Uyghur or any other Turkic language. Most education in the province is in Chinese. The few Uyghurs who attain higher education can expect little in the way of employment opportunities; most of the preferred jobs are reserved for ethnic Chinese. Those works on Uyghur history and culture that are written in Chinese are all dedicated to proving the historical unity of the Uyghur and Chinese races. CCP intervention in Uyghur language issues has proved disastrous. The traditional Arabo/Persian script used for Uyghur was for twenty years replaced by the Pinyin Latin script before a reversal of CCP policy rendered a generation of Uyghurs illiterate in their own language.

Administrative Mechanisms

In the 1950s, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began an experiment with a “Production and Construction Corps,” a paramilitary force responsible for border defence and internal security, along with normal duties in agriculture and construction. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) is the only one still active. Run independently of the regional government, the XPCC has considerable autonomy and legal jurisdiction through its own police, courts and prisons and is a constant irritation to the Uyghurs. It diverts most of the available water for its irrigation schemes and pollutes the remainder with industrial waste. Land annexation is common and Uyghur farmers are often forced into agricultural “regiments” of the XPCC. As part of its internal security responsibilities, the XPCC rather than the PLA increasingly responds to riots and other disturbances. XPCC units were a major part of the 1996 “strike hard” campaign against “ethnic splittists” (the CCP term for minority separatists), carrying out mass arrests after meeting armed Uyghur resistance.

Communist Demolition of Mosques in Xinjiang (VOA)

China maintains an extensive network of prison camps in Xinjiang which receive thousands of criminals each year from all over China. After completing their sentences, the convicts are forbidden to leave the province, but are welcome to send for their families. Many Uyghurs blame rising crime rates on the presence of the hard-labor camps. In 1996, a leading Chinese dissident, Harry Wu, and Erkin Alptekin testified before a US senate subcommittee that the XPCC was using World Bank funds to build penal colonies.

Nuclear Testing and Petroleum Extraction

Another volatile issue is the ongoing programme of nuclear testing in the Taklamakan Desert. Protests against testing began in Xinjiang in 1985, and Uyghur émigré associations claim over 200,000 people have died from nuclear fallout. Illnesses and birth defects like those experienced by the victims of Soviet nuclear tests in neighboring Kazakhstan have been reported. While the Kazakhs are now receiving direct UN aid, the Uyghurs are still awaiting an investigation.

Chinese Oil Operations in the Tarim Basin (Upstream Online)

China’s determination to open up the oil resources of Xinjiang comes at a time when the nation has become a net importer of oil, but the reserves in the Tarim Basin are extremely difficult to tap. Though the experience of Western-based oil consortiums is essential, poor concessions and exorbitant fees have discouraged several companies. Worst of all is the lack of discoveries to support China’s estimates of 80 to 180 billion barrels of oil in the Tarim Basin. As estimates fall sharply, the attention of world oil companies has moved on.

International Implications

With its sovereignty challenged in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan, China is clearly alarmed by NATO’s unsanctioned military support of an internal rebellion in a sovereign nation, Yugoslavia. American strategic and economic interest in Kosovo is negligible; Taiwan, however, is another matter, and China fears a resumption of the pre-détente US/Taiwan military relationship. Chinese premier Zhu Rongji has even warned of the possibility of world war if the principle of non-intervention is not carefully observed in international law and conflict. [10]

The problem of Tibetan independence was raised repeatedly during Zhu’s visit to Canada in April 1999, but the lower profile problem of Uyghur separatism was not. Despite the continuing violence in Xinjiang, and to a lesser extent in Tibet, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien supported Zhu’s assertion that China’s minority difficulties were an internal affair: “There are no murders. We don’t have the rapes that we’re seeing right now in Kosovo. Those are two completely different positions. One is political, the other one is extremely violent.” [11]

With Chinese-American relations already strained over several issues, there is little political interest in Washington in inflaming relations by supporting Islamic minority rights in China. Closer to home, China maintains close ties with Pakistan and Iran, largely designed to counter the spread of radical Islamic movements from those countries. Pakistan has often been cited by the Chinese as the source of weapons for Xinjiang’s most militant nationalists, and they did not hesitate to ask Pakistan to crack down on a Muslim group suspected of smuggling arms to the Uyghurs. The Arab nations of the Middle East also want to maintain good relations with China, a major regional arms supplier.

Conclusion

With no expectation of substantial assistance or recognition from foreign sources, the Uyghur separatists have limited options; an extended terrorism campaign (which may get some international press but is unlikely to gain international support), a negotiated settlement (unlikely, as China refuses to talk to “splittists”), or an all-out revolt, as in Chechnya. Unlike the Chechens, the Uyghurs have little military experience to draw upon, while the PLA would have almost unlimited resources and manpower at its disposal from a strongly centralized state facing no major opposition.

China would be most reluctant to relinquish control of Xinjiang, which it needs for its energy resources, as a base for China’s still active nuclear weapons programme, as a security buffer to central Asia, and as a destination for China’s ongoing population resettlement. Most importantly, Xinjiang’s separatist movement does not exist in a political vacuum. Any sign of weakness on Beijing’s part could be interpreted as a sign for Tibet and Inner Mongolia to set up their own independence campaigns and cause serious problems for China’s effort to reunite Taiwan into the mainland fold. As in many post-communist states in Europe and Asia, nationalism and economic reforms have been used to keep multiethnic states together. The Uyghurs themselves have suggested that Beijing has deliberately exaggerated the militancy of the Uyghur nationalist movement in order to create an “internal enemy” around which the CCP can build strong nationalist sentiments amongst the Han Chinese at a time when economic and external pressures threaten the solidarity of the Chinese union. An emphasis on the threat of Islamic “fundamentalism” also serves to keep most Western governments at bay.

Some Uyghurs believe that only the collapse of the People’s Republic would create an opportunity for East Turkestan to secede, but others have become desperate in their belief that every new trainload of settlers makes independence a little more remote. Knowing that time is against them, it is clear that any serious drive for independence must be made sooner rather than later. Addressing their lack of international support, Ahmedjan Qari, a leading Uyghur nationalist exile, has warned that “The world doesn’t think we will die like in Afghanistan, like in Yugoslavia. We can. We will die in droves.” [12]

Endnotes

  1. There are five “autonomous regions” in China – Tibet, Mongolia, Ningxia, Guangxi and Xinjiang – which in practise often enjoy less autonomy than their non-autonomous neighbors.
  2. There are five Turkic Muslim groups in Xinjiang: Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tatars. There are also the Persian-speaking Tajiks and, in the region bordering Gansu and Qinghai provinces, the Salars (who speak a Uyghur dialect) and the Bao’an and Dongxiang, who both speak an archaic Mongolian language. The Hui, ethnic Chinese with a long Muslim tradition, are the tenth group. The language used by the Hui is Chinese, peppered with Arabic and Persian loan-words.
  3. There are Uyghur communities and exile organizations in Istanbul, Ankara, Almaty, Amsterdam, Munich, Melbourne and Washington DC.
  4. “Participation in UNPO is open to all nations and peoples who are inadequately represented as such at the United Nations.” At present, 52 “nations or peoples” have declared adherence to UNPO’s five principles.
  5. Justin Jon Rudelson: “The Xinjiang mummies and foreign angels: Art, archaeology and Uyghur Muslim nationalism in Chinese Central Asia,” in M. Gervers and W. Schlepp (eds.), Cultural Contact, History and Ethnicity in Inner Asia, Joint Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, Toronto, 1996, p. 173.
  6. See: “Republic of Uzbekistan: Crackdown in the Farghana Valley: Arbitrary arrests and religious discrimination,” Human Rights Watch 10(4D), May 1998.
  7. Lillian Craig Harris: “Xinjiang, central Asia, and the implications for China’s policy in the Islamic world,” China Quarterly no. 133, March 1993, pp. 117-18. Jihad is a complex concept that involves a militancy on behalf of Islam that can take many forms based on interpretations of the Koran and the hadith-s (sayings of the Prophet). In general, the “greater jihad” is the struggle against the evil within oneself, while the “lesser jihad” is the effort to bring Dar al-Harb (areas outside of Islam) within Dar al-Islam (the “House of Islam”).
  8. UNPO, “Bombings will be used as pretext for severe repression in East Turkestan,” May 27, 1999.
  9. While there are no less than 70 million belonging to ethnic minorities in China, the Han Chinese still comprise about 94% of the population. “Han” is a cultural rather than a racial designation in that its use disguises the significant linguistic and physical differences that exist across China. The CCP has encouraged the use of the term to foster national unity.
  10. Miro Cernetig: “Chinese leader warns of global war,” Globe and Mail, Toronto, April 3, 1999.
  11. Heather Scoffield: “PM and China’s Zhu take heat on rights,” Globe and Mail, Toronto, April 17, 1999.
  12. Quoted in Tony Walker and Charles Clover: “Bombs rock China’s far west: Islamic militants put Uighur nationalism on the map with terrorist blasts,” Financial Times, London, February 27, 1999.

This article first appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of Behind the Headlines: Canada’s International Affairs Magazine, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Toronto.

Peacekeeping in the Central African Republic: Canada’s Quiet Return to a Troubled Continent

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By Andrew McGregor

Behind the Headlines (Canadian Institute of International Affairs), 55(4), Summer 1998, pp.18-23

In the wake of misadventures in Rwanda and Somalia, and a near fiasco in eastern Zaire, Canada is back with a UN peacekeeping mission in Central Africa. What are the prospects for success?

Outside the tight circle of relations between France and the francophone countries of Africa, the words Central African Republic (CAR) usually evoke only hazy, if disturbing, memories of the brutal and farcical reign of `Emperor’ Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1966-79). Though long absent from the sensational headlines that accompanied the Bokassa regime, the CAR is today worse off than it ever was under Bokassa – a financial outcast, ruined by years of government corruption and political instability, and on the brink of sliding into the kind of violent turmoil that engulfs its neighbours.

CAR 1Following the public relations disasters of Somalia and Rwanda, and a still-born attempt at leading a mission to eastern Zaire, the Canadian government has chosen the CAR as the area for Canadian peacekeepers to return to Africa as part of a francophone peacekeeping mission that may provide the prototype for a much debated Organization of African Unity/United Nations permanent peacekeeping force.

The Central African Republic has known little of independence, democracy, or economic prosperity since it gained statehood in 1960. A land-locked country with few effective trade-links with its neighbours, Ubangi-Chari (modern CAR, Chad, Gabon, and Congo/Brazzaville) was intended by its first leader, Barthelemy Boganda, to be part of a larger post-independence nation comprising all of the former French Equatorial Africa. Boganda believed that a state of this size was necessary for economic viability and envisioned an eventual larger United States of Latin Africa, in which the former colonies of Belgium, France, Portugal, and Spain would be united in Central Africa. Boganda’s dream died with him when his plane exploded in 1959. Since then, the CAR has struggled through the financial dependency and gross mismanagement of David Dacko (twice), Bokassa, General André Kolingba, and the current president, Ange-Felix Patassé.

Effectively managed, the CAR has the potential to be self-supporting, even prosperous. The land is fertile, food plentiful (if poorly distributed), and the population of three million well within reasonable numbers for a country larger than France and the Benelux countries combined. A rich forest and abundant mineral and ore deposits (including diamonds and uranium) await exploitation, but for the moment the nation remains highly dependent upon foreign aid, mainly from France. Government corruption and incompetence placed the CAR on the International Monetary Fund blacklist, but the Fund has agreed to give the nation one last chance to mend its ways in conjunction with the UN peacekeeping mission. The long-neglected development of human resources and the continent’s lowest rate of literacy are two of the greatest impediments to developing a viable economy. Foreign debt is approaching the billion dollar mark, literacy remains rare, 65% of adults make less than US$100 per year, and 75% of children suffer from malnutrition.[1] Life expectancy is a meagre 47 years.[2]

The ethnic composition of the CAR is highly complex and constantly evolving, with some 30 groups displaying a high degree of social and cultural interaction. When describing the population of the Republic, observers often find it convenient to speak of groupings based on environmental adaptation in the three main geographic divisions of the CAR – the savaniers, the riverains, and the forestiers.[3] The last two dominated political life for 33 years, but Patassé’s presidency marked the ascendance of the savaniers. Lately, however, the savaniers are believed to have lost confidence in Patasse, who favours his own Sara group (15% of the savaniers). Patassé is protected by three private militias composed mostly of men from his home district of Ouham-Pendé, supported by Sara rebels from southern Chad who take refuge in Ouham-Pendé, including 1,000 mercenaries called Codos-Mbakaras (`Invulnerable Commandos’). He has also been able to call upon the French-trained Presidential Guard battalion, also recruited from Ouham-Pendé.

Patassé, the leader of the Mouvement pour la Libération du Peuple Centraficain (MLPC), was a prime minister in the Bokassa government. Following two abortive attempts in 1981 and 1982 to seize power from General André Kolingba (who himself took power through a coup in 1981), Patassé was eventually elected president in 1993. Allegations of corruption and tribalism against his government led, in part, to four successive mutinies by the army, which Patassé survived only by invoking a secret assistance pact with France. Nonetheless, he relies upon a platform of anti-French populism and is almost certain to run in the forthcoming presidential elections.

Kolingba remains among some groups a powerful political force with access to funding from wealthy ex-Mobutists who have taken refuge in the CAR. His 12-year rule was notable for corruption and tribalism. Kolingba, a former ambassador to Canada, may contest the elections, but his just as likely to pursue a more direct approach to the presidency. At present, French diplomacy and the UN presence serve to constrain him.

Kolingba is supported by several hundred Zaireans, ex-members of Mobutu’s Division Spéciale Presidentielle (DSP), and may be negotiating for further assistance from mercenaries. French internal security (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire) has reported a meeting between representatives of Kolingba and Christian Tavernier, a Belgian mercenary who led the ill-fated 1996-97 Serbian mercenary force in Zaire. The 3 April 1998 issue of Africa Confidential claims that Tavernier is eager to sell a mercenary force of Cambodian Khmer Rouge soldiers for use in the CAR. The new corporate-style mercenary firms that were so prominent in the recent Sierra Leone conflict have yet to take an interest in the CAR, aside from making enquiries about former French airbases at Bouar and Bangui for operations elsewhere in Africa.

Most notable among the other possible candidates for the presidency is Abel Goumba, one of the few CAR political leaders who was not compromised by collaboration with the Bokassa regime. Now in his mid-seventies, Goumba leads both the Front Patriotique pour le Progrès and the ‘G-11’ radical opposition alliance. But his democratic credentials are questionable, and there is some feeling in Bangui that his support for the mutinies was opportunistic.

One objective of the UN mission is to remove the CAR army from the political process. Unpaid and under-equipped elements of the army have participated in four abortive mutinies against Patassé that left hundreds of civilians, as well as many mutineers and French Foreign Legionnaires dead. Most of the mutineers are from Kolingba’s Yakoma tribe and are veterans of his Presidential Guard. Patassé’s repeated claim that France armed the mutineers cannot be reconciled with the rapid response France provided to his pleas for help. Most of the balance of the army are Gbaka forestiers (the tribe of Dacko and Bokassa); the almost total absence of savaniers in the ranks explains Patassé’s construction of an alternate security apparatus. At present the army has no command structure, vehicles, or communications equipment, and the security of the country has been left to a gendarmerie of 1500 men and an extremely limited operational capacity. The current demobilization and re-insertion project should retire at least a third of the army, the rest of which Patassé has resolved to build into a multi-ethnic force.

In the face of domestic pressure over intervention on behalf of the unpopular Patassé, the French government created and funded the Misson Internationale de Surveillance des Accords de Bangui (MISAB), a peacekeeping force formed of francophone troops from Chad, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali, Senegal and Togo. Authorized by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter,[4] the force was charged with monitoring implementation of the 25 January 1997 Bangui Agreements. This includes supervising the surrender of arms by former mutineers, militias, and all other persons unlawfully bearing arms. Though MISAB disarmed about 85% of the mutineers, it failed to disarm Patassé’s militias, which led to a widespread belief in Bangui that MISAB were Patassé partisans.

The performance of the multinational force was uneven; some contingents displayed a general indiscipline. Another violent mutiny followed in which 50 people were killed in the crossfire between mutineers, MISAB troops and French helicopter gunships. The 19 June to 9 July mutiny (which had a measure of public support in Bangui) was ended by the mediation of General Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali, who pushed MISAB to be more even-handed in the disarmament process.

Despite its rocky performance, MISAB was seen by the French as a model for inter-African peacekeeping co-operation. France field-tested a prototype eight-nation African peacekeeping force in Exercise Guidimakha between 20 February and 3 March 1998.[5] Unfortunately the exercise served primarily to remind the participants how vital European operational assistance would be to any OAU/UN permanent peacekeeping force. France has shipped a significant amount of military equipment to Senegal for use by such a force and is willing to provide advisors from among officers currently attached to the Senegalese army.

Britain is involved in extensive training of Ghanian peacekeepers, who have substantial UN and Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) experience already. The United States, whose efforts at taking a leadership role in creating an African peacekeeping force were politely rebuffed by several nations (most notably South Africa), has become involved in training and equipping Malian peacekeepers. Nigeria’s former foreign minister, Tom Ikimi (a driving force behind Nigeria’s ECOMOG peacekeeping adventure in Sierra Leone), has denounced the peacekeeping scheme as a neo-colonialist plot to repartition Africa.[6] Nigeria was pointedly left out of plans for creating the force, but the Togolese president, General Gnassingbé Eyadéma, and the OAU secretary-general, Salim Ahmed Salim, have provided enthusiastic support. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela appears to have come on side. He questions the OAU’s strict principles of non-intervention and respect for state sovereignty and suggests that responsible governments have a duty to protect the rights of citizens in neighbouring countries.[7] Amadou Touré, a leader in African conflict resolution, cites le devoir d’ingérence (the duty of interference) in the context of an African village, where a neighbour has the right to step into a dispute between husband and wife, and believes the African tradition needs to be translated into diplomatic action.[8]

A main impetus for the pan-African peacekeeping force is the desire of France to limit its African obligations and roll back the number of troops and bases it maintains in Africa. France has made approximately 35 interventions in the post-independence period, often on behalf of leaders with little international credibility. The recently revealed “secret assistance pacts” with African francophone leaders have been annulled, and a new policy of rescuing only democratically elected governments has been implemented.

CAR 2Malian Peacekeepers in Bangui (UN Photo/Evan Schneider)

The transfer of peacekeeping duties in the CAR from MISAB to the UN’s Mission des Nations unies en République centrafricaine (MINURCA) relieves France of the burden of financial responsibility for MISAB and gives the force added international credibility. Wit Anglophone Ghana dropping out of the original line-up of participants, the new force is essentially MISAB with the addition of small contingents from Canada and Côte d’Ivoire. The leadership of MINURCA was initially offered to Amadou Touré, who turned it down, some think because he wants to be available when a commander for the proposed OAU/UN force is chosen. Field command of MINURCA has been assumed by General Ratanga of Gabon.

The MINURCA mandate is quite specific:[9]

  1. To assist in maintaining and enhancing security and stability in Bangui and the immediate vicinity;
  2. To assist national security forces in maintaining law and order in Bangui;
  3. To supervise and control the disarmament exercise (in practice this has meant arms disposal only);
  4. To ensure the freedom and security of UN personnel;
  5. To provide police training; and
  6. To provide advice and support for legislative elections scheduled for August-September 1998 (since postponed to December and now to be combined with presidential elections).

MINURCA is scheduled to leave 90 days after the results of the elections. Canadian involvement came about as a result of a direct request from th secretary-general of the UN, Kofi Annan, and consists of 45 communications personnel from Canadian Forces Base Valcartier. The Canadians are operating out of the French M’Poko Airbase in Bangui, which will be turned over to CAR authorities when the mission ends. The other French airbase at Bouar was stripped clean by looters after its transfer earlier this year.

Several of the CAR’s neighbours are watching MINURCA’s activities closely. The Rwandans claim that elements of the old Hutu-based Forces Armées Rwandaises and remnants of Mobutu’s DSP are active in the CAR and have launched attacks across the north-eastern Congo against the Rwandans. Chad’s Idriss Déby has recently taken steps to obtain a settlement with the Sara rebels in south Chad to facilitate the early pumping of vast reservoirs of high-grade oil recently discovered in south Chad. Déby would undoubtedly like to see a regenerated CAR army capable of denying CAR territory to Chadian rebels and bandits.

While the Canadian government hopes for a short and successful mission to assert Canadian peacekeeping credentials in Africa, there are few signs to encourage such hopes. With the CAR army largely disarmed and confined to barracks, the countryside has deteriorated into armed chaos. The continued dominance of CAR politics by and old guard of discredited leaders offers only the prolonged use of tribalism and regionalism as the guiding forces of government policy. Just as important as who wins the elections is the question of whether French external intelligence (Direction Générale de la Surveillance Extérieure), a powerful force in CAR politics for many years, abandons it manipulations and leaves Bangui to its own devices.

Regardless of the success of the democratization process, the CAR’s future prosperity will require stable relations with stable neighbours. Unfortunately the CAR remains in the centre of one of the world’s most volatile and faction-ridden areas.. A peacekeeping success in the CAR will be only the first step on a long rad of regional conflict resolution and structural adjustment. To succeed, African leaders must see MINURCA as the start of such a process and not just an attempt by France to pass off responsibility for an unprofitable territory to the UN.

[1] Figures provided in supporting documents for UN Resolution 1159 (1998).

[2] Brian Hunter, ed, Statesman’s Yearbook 1996-97 (London, Macmillan 1996), 333, 1992 figure.

[3] Pierre Kalck, Central African Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993), xx-xxi.

[4] UN Security Council Resolution 1125 (6 August 1997) authorized a three-month mission to ensure security. On 6 November 1997, a three-month extension was granted by Resolution 1136 (1997).

[5] Exercise Guidimakha was held on the borders of Senegal, Mali and Mauritania. The participating nations were Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Gambia, Cape Verde Islands, Senegal, Mali and Mauritania. There were also small units from the US Marines and the British Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Logistics were provided by the French.

[6] Tom Ikimi, speech at an ECOWAS meeting, Lomé, December 1997, quoted in Foreign Report 2485, 26 February 1998, 6.

[7] Nelson Mandela, speech at the 34th OAU Summit, Oaugadougou, 8-10 June 1998.

[8] Kay Whiteman; “A Conversatiion with ATT [Amadour Touman Touré],” West Africa no. 4119, 30 September-13 October 1996, 15611.

[9] UN Security Council Resolution 1159 (27 March 1998).

The Christian Fortifications of Nubia

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Andrew McGregor

May 12, 1995

Introduction

Parts of Nubia are a virtual open-air museum of mediaeval fortifications where successive generations and cultures have left samples of military architecture ranging from walled villages to imposing castles. Many of these works belong to the Islamic/Turkish period; most of the earlier Christian works were rebuilt or heavily modified in this era, adding to the difficulties of cultural identification. In this, the Muslims were only following the pattern set by the Christians, who had in their time rebuilt Pharaonic, Kushite, Meroitic and Roman structures.

Christian Nubia c.500 C.E.

Unfortunately, these important works have received scant attention from professional archaeologists. Proper surveys are rare and full-scale excavations almost unheard of. Our knowledge of many of these sites relies upon the observations of civil and military officials of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium who, with varying degrees of skill, attempted to date the ruins they came across on the basis of ceramic remains or brick-types. It is therefore entirely possible that upon closer investigation many of the sites identified in this paper may belong to other periods than those cited, and may likewise possess designs and features dissimilar to those described.

In examining the Christian sites, it is useful to keep in mind the various roles which the fortifications in Nubia could fulfill:

  • Control of river-traffic
  • Demarcation of political boundaries
  • Refuge for local populations in times of attack or upheaval
  • Housing for military and civil administrators
  • Symbolic value as symbols of government prestige
  • Customs house
  • Storage of government taxes and revenues
  • Internment of civil or political prisoners

This paper will examine the Christian sites by type of fortification:

1/            Walled settlements

2/            a) 2-storey houses; b) Blockhouses

3/            Re-used fortifications

4/            Forts/Castles of the Christian Kingdoms

a) Nobatia; b) Makuria; c) Alwa

Walled Settlements

The earliest of the Christian period walled settlements are notable for the strength of their walls and the apparent planning involved in their construction as fortified towns. This type is exclusively found in the northern extremes of Nubia, and its development is likely a response to the proximity of Egyptian military power and the raiding of regional nomads.

The sites, which include Kalabsha, Sabagura, Shaykh Da’ud and Ikhmindi, are characterized by large square or rectangular plans, enclosed by a massive stone wall equipped with bastions, corner towers and fortified gateways. [1] Stone and brick were both used in these defenses. [2]

The walled settlement in points further south is usually less elaborate, consisting of a dry stone wall that follows the terrain or the outline of a pre-existing village. Near Gemai a small settlement of 30 dwellings at Mugufil Island uses its position on a high bluff and a stone wall one meter in width for defence. [3] Close to the Second Cataract, in the Sarkamatto District, the village of Debba brought 70 houses together on a 20 meter high rock outcrop with dry stone walls. [4]

In the Dal district there are two major sites, Tiine and Sheeragi. [5] Tiine is a Late Christian settlement, built on a steeply rising island slope. The east side falls away in a sheer cliff. A semi-circular series of walls adapt to the contour of the hill, creating numerous small enclosures. The repetition of walls down the sloping face provided added defensive protection and a buffer against rock falling from higher levels of the site. Sheeragi also occupies a granite outcrop. Within a stone wall are dozens of houses and two larger works made of granite and schist, which may be the remains of a two-storey house.

South of the Second Cataract, on the island of Gergetti, a small community of 11 houses possessed a well-built double wall, the inner of rough stone and the outer of brick with a finished surface. The plan is in the form of an elongated hexagon, with bastions at the angles. The entrances were built with a zig-zag design and sloping ramps. [6] At Kitfogga (Ferka West), a fortified village uses the natural crest of the hilltop for the plan of its stone-walls. A church and smaller stone dwelling enclosures fill the interior. [7] At nearby Ferkinarti Island (also known as Diffinarti) is a walled village with possible traces of a two-storey house. [8]

Two-Storey Houses

The characteristics of the two-storey house have been clearly defined by Adams:

They are always two storeys high, square or nearly square in plan, and stoutly built; usually of mud-brick but occasionally with a mud brick supper storey resting on a stone-built lower storey. The ground-floor rooms are mostly blind cellars, accessible only from above, while the upper-storey rooms exhibit the typical arrangement of Christian Nubian living quarters. Rarely if ever is there an internal stairway connecting the upper and lower storeys. Many of the buildings lack any ground level access; they were reached originally by means of ladders leading to doorways a the level of the upper storey. [9]

From the evidence of ceramic remains and earlier levels of construction underneath the two-storey houses, it appears that these works are typically Late Christian, mostly of the 13th century. The two-storey house is common in the last Christian occupation phase of many settlements, and was often converted to other uses in the Islamic period.

The construction of sturdy two-storey buildings was made possible in Nubia through the use of brick vaulting, which was highly suitable for supporting upper stories of some weight. The walls are at least 80 cm. thick and are entirely constructed of brick, with the exception of several examples that use granite blocks in the lower courses. Doorways are present at the ground level, but these are in all cases but one post-Christian modifications.

Unique storage crypts are common to these structures, entered only through hatchways in the upper floor and often possessing their own brick vaulting. Secret crypts are often found cleverly concealed in the walls and other spaces of the building.

Most of the known two-storey houses can be found in the stretch of Nubia between Qasr Ibrim and Ferkinarti, though other examples can be found in the Letti Basin area. Some of the more notable examples of two-storey houses are found (from north to south) at:

Abkanarti            One example on a rock-shelf, elevated over the village and outside its defensive walls. [10]

Kasanarti             A late addition to the settlement and the village’s only apparent public building, the two-storey house at Kasanarti may have served as a combination watchtower and granary. [11] The structure is unusual, as it is joined on at least three side by contemporary structures. [12]

Gemai                   The two-storey house at Gemai is our lone example of such a structure with a ground-floor entrance and a stairway to the upper level. [13] Evidently the entrance was regarded as a mistake, for it was walled up at an early point in its occupation. [14]

Murshid West      A number of two-storey mud-brick buildings are found here, amidst a town-site built on a rocky outcrop. In their lower storey they consist of typical vaulted chambers with hatchway entrances from the upper floor. [15]

Kulme (or Kulma) This site consists of three small, steep-sided islands in the Second Cataract, two of which bear two-storey houses. In earlier times the three islands may have formed a single site. In one of these well-preserved mud-brick structures a Greek inscription was found. [16]

Diffi                       Another fortified island site near Kulme. Here a series of two-storey houses on the tops of rocky outcrops face the main channel on the east. [17]

The purpose of the two-storey houses is not as clear as it might seem at first. Adams has noted a conspicuous lack of domestic evidence (mastaba-s, fireplaces, buried pots in the floor, etc.) and the absence of accumulated dwelling refuse [18] despite a clear similarity between the upper floor plan and the plan of contemporary Nubian houses.

Use as a communal storehouse or granary has been suggested [19], but again there is little evidence for such use of these buildings other than their suitability. Nevertheless, the design and popularity of these works suggests that they were intended to protect goods from attack and make access as difficult as possible for those unfamiliar with the design.

A curious feature is that the ratio of two-storey houses to settlement population size is widely inconsistent, with some tiny communities having a number of examples, while larger towns may only have one. This would seem to out-rule their use as civic buildings or feudal-style residences. While in continuous use as watchtowers, the two-storey house were probably reserved for emergency use by the community. The number of such structures may reflect the prosperity rather than the size of the community.

Warrior Types in Christian Nubia (Osprey)

Blockhouses

The structures referred to here as “blockhouse” fortifications are not clearly distinct from the two-storey house, and are in most cases an elaboration of this basic structure.

The blockhouse of Meinarti is a larger version of the two-storey house and dates to the late Christian period (1200-1250 C.E.). [20] Potsherds are scarce on this site and the dating is reliant upon a painted Greek inscription. The blockhouse was built on the remains of an early monastery and served in part as a watchtower replacement for the monastery’s older tower. The building’s 15 room interior is labyrinthine, with some chambers accessible only through hatchways, or by crawling on one’s hands and knees. Adams, who excavated the site, emphasised the obvious defensive role of this structure with its metre-thick walls, and suggested a function as a community storehouse. [21] Most of the second storey was destroyed during this building’s use as a British gun emplacement in the Mahdiyya period. At Ushinarti is a very similar “blockhouse” with a labyrinth-type plan and secret chambers. [22]

Further south, in the Sai Island region, are a number of structures that outwardly resemble the Blockhouse-type, but lack the complex interior. These are found at Kayend [23], and on Nilwatti Island, where there are seven towers set out along the rock-crest. All have square plans and stone-and-brick construction. [24]

Re-Used Fortifications

Nubia was already an ancient land at the time the Christian kingdoms emerged and was wealthy in useful ruins, many of which were finely preserved. In many cases the Christians inherited fortified sites on hilltops from their military predecessors, such as at Jabal Adda and Qasr Ibrim, where Meroitic fortifications were re-used..

The Middle Kingdom fortress at Serra was re-occupied in late Christian times. Four churches and a pair of two-storey houses were built, but the ancient walls required only minor repairs. Askut was similarly occupied in the Late Christian period. The New Kingdom fortress at Jabal Sahaba was damaged byy wind erosion at the time of its early Christian occupation and was later built over by rough stone huts in the late Christian period, when a new stone wall was built round the plateau. [25]

Forts of the Christian Kingdoms

Kingdom of Nobatia

Jabal Adda:         The Late Christian occupants of Jabal Adda relied mostly upon the Meroitic-era wall for defense, adding a new stone gate and making minor repairs. [26] The so-called “palace” may have had a defensive intent, as well as serving as a royal residence. Some of the ruins may represent a pair of two-storey houses. [27] The fortress was taken by the Mamluks in 1276 C.E.

Qasr Ibrim:          This natural citadel had been fortified and later rebuilt by Taharqa (25th Dynasty), the Meroites and the Romans by the time the Christians re-occupied it and transformed Taharqa’s chapel into a Christian chapel. Three massive structures of the two-storey/blockhouse type were found here, but were removed by excavators without properly documenting the structures. [28]

Unlike most of the other forts of Nubia, we have historical evidence of Qasr Ibrim’s military role in the Christian era. An attack upon the castle in 957 C.E. was recorded by Yahya ibn Sa’id:

In that year the Kinig of Nubia came again up to Aswan and ravaged it. He killed and took prisoners. The armies of Egypt rushed against him by land and river. They killed and took prisoner, many of whom came from the Nuba [country]. Many others withdrew defeated and he [the King of Egypt] conquered their castle called Ibrim. [29]

In retaliation for a Nubian raid in 1172, an Ayyubid army under Shams al-Dawla Turan Shah laid siege to Ibrim, which fell after only three days. The town was laid waste and passed temporarily into Muslim hands.

Kulubnarti:          The remaining ruins at Kulubnarti are those of a kourfa, an Islamic defensive work consisting of a dwelling, a courtyard and a strongly walled tower. [30] This complex seems to have expanded from a Late Christian two-storey house. [31] There are four other two-storey houses on the island. [32]

The Second Cataract:     The defensive works of the Second Cataract region are alluded to by Salim al-Aswani (quoted by al-Maqrizi in his Khitat): “These mountains are the fortresses where the inhabitants of Maris take refuge.” [33] A large number of the villages here were fortified, the irregular shape of their walls indicating they were late additions. [34]

Significant Christian forts are found at Tanujur Island and Susinarti. The former is simple in plan, consisting of a dry stone wall around the peak of a small hill and mud=brick structures within. [35] Susinarti is far better built and designed – here a triangular wall faces onto the Nile in the south, the other two arms running up the side of the hill to a large tower-keep. Towers dominate the other two corners. Both of these forts rely unpn ceramic remains for their Christian period dating.

South of Dal, in the Kosha West district, is the Christian fort of Diffi, with a rectangular enclosure wall (80 x 40 cm.). Stone and brick are used in the construction. [36]

Kingdom of Makuria

Sai Island:            This highly strategic island at the southern end of the Dal Cataract is the site of another constantly re-built fort, from Napatans through to the Turks. Vercoutter, the excavator, believes the fort may have been a very late Christian stronghold against the Arabs, [37] but points out that the late Christian dating relies upon its similarities to other Christian forts in the Nile Valley.

Khandak and Bakhit: Crawford suggests that the Fung-era fort at Khandak was built on the ruins of a Christian fort. A rough stone set of walls with semi-circular towers has been rebuilt with wall extensions and buttresses of unburnt brick. [38] A similar fort is at Bakhit, where 18 semi-circular towers are set at the corners and at regular intervals along the wall. [39] Lepsius identified Bakhit as a Christian site with a small church in the centre. The main walls are 30 feet thick and consist of rough stone on a core of unburnt mud-brick. The plan is rectangular and the whole site is covered with Christian potsherds.

Old Dongola:      As capital of Makuria, Dongola was an extremely important Christian site, but not one possessed of natural defenses. As might be expected, it was necessary to respond with some innovative military architecture, a point driven home by the destructive Arab raid of 652 C.E., in which ‘Abdallah ibn Sa’d’s catapults destroyed the cathedral and most of the town. [40] a large amount of material from the “Church of Stone Pavement” appears to have found its way into the new defenses. [41] The implementation of the Baqt Treaty allowed the Christians time to construct an elaborate system of defenses, with a walled rampart near the river and bastions resting on a solid platform. [42] Semi-circular towers are spaced along the walls, mounted on granite foundations. The presence of many buildings outside the main walls may be explained by the existence of a series of outlying walls, as may have been described by Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (c. 905 C.E.), who says Dongola possessed seven walls in his time. [43]

The defenses of Dongola were likely badly damaged in the Mamluk expeditions against King Dawud (1276 C.E.) and King Shenaun (1287, 1289 C.E.), [44] but were re-built in the post-Christian era. [45]

Al-Kab                   The two “castles” of al-Kab were first recorded in the 1820s by Caillaud and Linant de Bellefonds. The southern fort is a small post-Christian work, but the larger stone and brick structure to the north is one of a type of Christian fort that is also found at Bakhit and the Kubinat [46] (discussed below), and at Sai Island. [47] The mud-brick may have been a post-Christian restoration, but the entire work was in a ruinous condition by the early 19th century. [48] The plan is that of an irregular rectangle and features six semi-circular bastions. The rocky interior was filled with circular stone dwellings.

Kuweib                 The area around modern Abu Hamid has been of strategic importance since at least the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom. As the terminus for caravan routes from the north and west, it is unsurprising to find a Christian fort in the area. Kuweib was also situated on a small jabal in order to survey the northern channel of the Nile as it passes around Mograt Island. The dating of this site relies upon the many sherds and Christian-style graves found around the complex. [49]

This site has used all its natural advantages to create a strong defensive work – mud-brick walls are built around cores of granite boulders and the main wall itself is not continuous, but often detaches to strengthen natural features. There are no clear remains of bastions or buttresses. [50]

Al-Koro                 Al-Koro is south of Abu Hamid, on the east side of the Nile, near modern Kedata. Governor Jackson first noted these stone ruins, suggesting that they were a monastery with a church converted to a mosque. The plan of the fort is rectangular, with towers at the north-west and south-west corners. An inner enclosure is accessible only from the outer enclosure, where stone foundations and mud-brick walls indicate intensive occupation. The outer walls are of stone with a core of red-brick rubble. [51]

Gandeisi              Gandeisi Island is mid-way between Abu Hamid and Atbara. The fort is small and irregularly rectangular, with towers at each corner and two additional bastions along the north-west wall. This wall is 17 feet thick and is along the riverside, the direction from which the defenders apparently expected an attack. The “L”-shaped entrance is on the inland side. Christian pottery is scattered across the area. [52]

Baqeir                   This site near Gandeisi remained unnoticed until Crawford found the foundation stones in 1951. Most of the plan was severely eroded, but it appears to have included bastions at each corner and one each on the longer walls, with a superstructure of mud-brick. The site is either that of a very small fort (35 x 20m) or a highly defended house. [53]

Al-‘Usheir            About 20 miles south of Baqeir is a fort that resembles al-Koro in having an inner enclosure accessible only from a large outer enclosure. A third enclosure seems to be a late addition and has no apparent entry to either of the older enclosures.

In front of the south wall and the south-east gate are the remains of a lower rampart and fire-step outside the main wall, a defensive device known from the Middle Kingdom forts in Nubia. On the flat ground east of the castle is a chevaux-de-frise of pointed stones [54] designed to impede a rushing force of attackers. Bastions, curiously constructed in layers, are set at irregular intervals on the main wall. Around the inner enclosure are a parapet-wall and parapet in the places where the approach is not protected by the steep cliff on the north and east sides. This enclosure must have served as the castle-keep.

The architect of the al-‘Usheir fortress displays a knowledge of mediaeval fortifications as practised in Europe and the Near East, though certain fundamentals had been in place since the construction of the Middle Kingdom forts. The Christian dating is provided by the many inscribed sherds on the site.

Jabal Nakharu    This fortress on the west side of the Nile, north of Atbara, was discovered by Crawford in 1951. It occupies a ridge of limestone that controls the narrow river-road below. The fort is square and built of dry-stone, probably with bastions in each corner and in the middle of each outer wall. Cross-walls run down from the plateau to the softer earth on the river’s edge and may have been equipped with gates to regulate traffic. [55]

The dating of Jabal Nakharu must be regarded as tentative. The ruinous condition prevents determining whether the bastions were semi-circular (as in Christian forts) or rectangular (as in post-Christian works). Red bricks are not in evidence at the site and the collection of painted sherds made by Crawford was subsequently lost.

Fourth Cataract (The Kubinat): At a strategic point where the Nile is only 170 metres wide there is a pair of forts situated on opposite banks. The walls of both forts run uphill from the river to the tops of rocky bluffs. Rock outcrops are incorporated into the defenses, which are otherwise built of dry stone with interior mud-mortar. The bastions are not bonded in and may be late additions. Strangely, the fort on the north bank has no less than ten entrances, but the broken ground round the fort makes visibility from the walls difficult, so that, according to Titherington, the number of gates “may commemorate a disaster when some of the garrison got surprised outside and jammed round an insufficient gate.” [56]

The Kubinat site is an enormous work in a highly barren area – each fort encloses an area of about three acres. The walls are ten feet thick and about 18 to 20 feet high. [57] The forts and their environs are covered with Christian and imported Roman pot-sherds. Typical Christian red-brick is present, as are earlier bricks of Meroitic type.

 

Kingdom of Alwa

Querri                   The kingdom of Alwa seems not to have relied upon great fortifications, although some of the fortresses previously described as Makurian may have been works of Alwa, depending on when and where political boundaries were drawn. A system of defenses is noticeably lacking at the capital of Soba. Distance from powerful external threats and a highly mobile army may have sufficed to preserve Alwan power until the Arab migrations into the region began.

Querri is located on Jabal Irau, overlooking the Sixth Cataract. The site is quite large, consisting of 12 hectares of dwellings and enclosures surrounded by massive walls of dry stone. Red brick and Christian wall-engravings are common at the site, as well as Islamic potsherds of the 15th and 16th centuries. [58]

The Arab penetration of Alwa met with little local resistance. [59] The Funj Chronicle describes the final defeat of the “kings of Soba and Querri” by Umara Dunqas in league with Abdallah of the Qawasma Arabs. The Abdallab Arabs preserve a tradition that the Christian survivors of the attack on Soba made a last stand at Querri, which Chittick described as the Sabaloka Gorge site in the Sixth Cataract. [60] The story and the interpretation are open to dispute:

Apart from the questionable authenticity of the site, however, the Funj Chronicle is far from explicit about the religion of Alwa at the time of its overthrow. The only mention of Christianity is in that part of the text which is taken from the much earlier account of Abu Selim. Since contact with Alexandria had been broken in the fourteenth century, it seems quite possible that Alwa might have passed under Moslem rule, unbeknown to the outside world, long before its final downfall. [61]

Conclusion

Most of the fortified Nubian sites dealt with in this paper belong to the Late Christian period, when external threats from the north endangered the existence of the Christian kingdoms. The traditional reaction of the Nubians to raids from the north was dispersal or concentration of the population. The proliferation of fortified sites may have seen the balance shift in favour of the latter strategy in Late Christian times, when the expiry of the Baqt Treaty renewed the northern threat.

The Muslim invasions had been highly destructive in 641 and 651-2 C.E., when the Christian kingdoms lacked effective defensive works. The invasion of Shams al-Dawla in 1172-73 C.E. and the seizure of Qasr Ibrim was a reminder of the necessity for strong defensive works. Jabal Adda and Qasr Ibrim became important sites of authority in the Late Christian period, able to offer refuge to the civil population in a crisis. Many of the settlements of the Classic Christian population in Lower Nubia show no signs of occupation after the 12th century [62], while Jabal Adda and Qasr Ibrim were the centers of an expanding population. The walled settlement of the early Christian period gave way to the two-storey building, which, despite its elusiveness of purpose, must have played a strong role as a watchtower, a secure place for the storage of goods and a temporary refuge for the local population. These towers were often a type of keep within a defensive wall, but there are cases of two-storey houses outside the town-walls.

A peculiar issue of the fortifications is the fact that so many of the watchtowers and defensive works were focused upstream [i.e. south], rather than towards the seemingly obvious threat from downstream Egypt. This suggests the Nubians’ most immediate security concerns were with populations or groups penetrating the kingdoms from other directions. The Nubian Christians desired control of the river trade and defenses against desert nomads. A strong defensive posture was not enough to deter the nomadic tribes, however:

The clashes which really and fatally exhausted Nubia were the raids on all, or a large part of, the Nile Valley, from the 10th century onwards. These were by nomads, coming from the deserts east and west of the Nile. Beja, Rabiah and Juhaynah attacked from the east; Luwatah, Zaghawa and other tribes from the west. [63]

The mobility of the Arab and African tribes precluded the old tactic of population dispersal and inspired a new form of defensive architecture that included the two-storey house/blockhouse in Lower Nubia. Further south in Makuria, especially upriver from Dongola, a more centralized means of defense evolved in which the resources of the state were devoted to the construction of massive forts rather than the small-scale community defenses of the north.

The Late Christian emphasis on military rather than religious architecture may reflect, if not an increasing secularization of Nubian culture, at least a weakening of its Christian component. As fortifications grew larger and more complex, the great churches and cathedrals were no longer being built, replaced by ever-shrinking and impoverished religious architecture. The fort/castle became the symbol of authority, meeting the urgent needs of the present, rather than those of the hereafter.

The role of feudalization in Late Christian society is uncertain; for example, did the two-storey houses belong to feudal lords or the community at large?  What role did the defenses south to the 6th Cataract have in the governance or repression of the citizenry? Was command centralized or local? Were the commanders of defensive works of local origin or appointed by the King and his agents?

In the larger fortresses of the south we have no idea of the make-up or origin of the garrisons, or even if they had permanent garrisons at all. Some sites may have been intended as sanctuaries for the civil population, but would be largely ineffective without trained defenders capable of making sorties to secure supplies or disrupt offensive operations. Forts such as those of the Kubinat must have had permanent garrisons due to their isolated location, but the problem of supply must have been a difficult one.

The known history of the fortifications of Christian Nubia reveal that the most effective defense ever constructed by the Nubians was the Baqt Treaty negotiated with Egypt. At the time of its expiry, control of the Nile trade routes was rapidly diminishing in importance. The arrival of the Bani al-Kanz and their camel caravans brought an end to the prosperity of the Nile’s fortified customs houses as the caravans could set out from Egypt across unpatrolled desert routes, touching back upon the Nile wherever desired. The Mamluks, combining rapacity, ferocity and advanced military tactics, were more than a match for the Nubians. They penetrated the Christian defenses at will, taking Dongola in 1276 C.E. and again in 1289 C.E. Most telling is the record of the 33-day Mamluk pursuit of King Shenamun upriver from Dongola in which only Mamluk two soldiers died – one in combat while the other drowned. [64] Most effective of all, however, was the peaceful penetration of Christian Nubia by Muslims and their usurpation of the old inheritance system. Against this type of social transformation the great fortresses of Christian Nubia were helpless.

Notes

  1. W.Y. Adams: Nubia – Corridor to Africa (2nd ed.), Princeton N.J., 1984, p.493.
  2. P.F. Velo: “Les Fouilles de la Mission Espagnole à Cheikh Daoud,” in Fouilles en Nubie (1959-61), Cairo, 1963, p.28.
  3. A.J. Mills and H.A. Nordstrom: “The Archaeological Survey from Gemai to Dal – Preliminary Report on the Season 1964-65,” Kush 4, 1966, p.15.
  4. A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 2, Les districts de Dal (rive gauche) et de Sarkamatto (rive droite), Paris, 1975, p.29.
  5. Ibid, pp. 49, 57.
  6. A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 6 – Le district d’Attab, Est et Ouest, Paris, 1977, p.32.
  7. A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 3 – District de Ferka (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976, p.50.
  8. Ibid, p.90; W.Y. Adams: “Castle-Houses of Late Medieval Nubia,” Archéolgie du Nil Moyen, vol. 6, 1994, p.14.
  9. Ibid, p.11.
  10. Ibid, p.13.
  11. W.Y. Adams: “Sudan Antiquities Service Excavations in Nubia: Fourth Season, 1962-63,” Kush XII, 1964, p.222.
  12. Adams, op cit, 1994, p.13.
  13. Ibid, p.19.
  14. Ibid, p.13, fn.2.
  15. Mills and Nordstrom, op cit, 1966, p.14.
  16. Vila – Fasc. 2, op cit, 1975, p.62.
  17. Ibid, p.22.
  18. Adams, op cit, 1994, p.36
  19. Adams, op cit, 1964, p.222
  20. Ibid, p.225.
  21. Ibid, p.233.
  22. G. Donner: “Preliminary report on the Excavations of the Finnish Nubia Expedition 1964-65,” Kush 15, 1967-68, p.233.
  23. A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 10 – Le District de Koyekka, Les districts de Morka et de Hamid – L’île Nilwatti, Paris, 1978, p.81.
  24. Ibid, p.104.
  25. T. Säve Söderbergh: “Preliminary Report of the Scandinavian Joint Expedition – Faras-Gemai, 1963-64, Kush 15, 1967-68, pp.235-37.
  26. N.B. Millet: “Gebel Adda Preliminary Report, 1965-66,” JARCE 6, 1967, p.62.
  27. Adams, op cit, 1994, p.13.
  28. Ibid, p.13.
  29. Vila – Fasc. 3, op cit, 1976, p.99
  30. W.Y. Adams: Kulubnarti I – The Architectural Remains, Lexington Kentucky, 1994, pp.81-83.
  31. Adams, op cit, 1984, p.518.
  32. Adams, op cit, 1994, p.14.
  33. The Excavations at Faras – A Contribution to the History of Christian Nubia, Bologna, 1970, p.113.
  34. Adams, op cit, 1984, p.513.
  35. “Antiquities of the Batn el Hajjar,” Kush 5, 1957, p.45.
  36. A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, aud Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise): Fasc. 4 – District de Mograkka (Est et Ouest); District de Kosha (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976, p.101.
  37. J. Vercoutter: “Excavations at Sai, 1955-57 – A Preliminary Report,” Kush 6, 1958, pp.144-69.
  38. O.G.S. Crawford: The Funj Kingdom of Sennar, Gloucester England, 1951, p.37.
  39. Ibid, p.44.
  40. Y.F. Hasan: The Arabs and the Sudan, Edinburgh, 1967, p.20.
  41. Godlewski, op cit, 1991, p.109.
  42. Ibid, p.107.
  43. J. Vantini: Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia, Heidelberg, 1975, p.92.
  44. J. Vantini: Christianity in the Sudan, Bologna, 1981, p.92.
  45. Godlewski, op cit, 1991, p. 111.
  46. Crawford, op cit, 1951, p.44.
  47. Vercoutter, op cit, 1958, p.160, fn.72.
  48. Crawford, op cit, 1951, p.50.
  49. O.G. S. Crawford: Castles and Churches in the Middle Nile Region, SAS Occasional Papers, no.2, Khartoum, 1961, p.9.
  50. Ibid, p.9.
  51. ibid, pp.32-33.
  52. Ibid, pp.29-30.
  53. Ibid, p.30.
  54. Ibid, p.22.
  55. Ibid, p.18.
  56. G.W. Titherington: “The Kubinat – Old Forts in the Fourth Cataract,” Sudan Notes and Records 22, 1939, p.270.
  57. Ibid. p.269.
  58. Mohi el-Din Abdalla Zarroug, The Kingdom of Alwa, Calgary, 1991, p.62.
  59. Hasan, op cit, 1967, p.128.
  60. H.N. Chittick, “Antiquities of the Batn el Hajjar,” Kush 5, 1957, p.272.
  61. Adams, op cit, 1984, p.539.
  62. Adams, op cit, 1984, p.511.
  63. Vantini, op cit, 1970, p.267.
  64. Hasan, op cit, 1976, p.115.

 

Bibliography

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Fasc. 2   Les districts de Daol (rive gauche) et de Sarkamatto (rive droite), Paris 1975

Fasc. 3   District de Ferka (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976

Fasc. 4   District de Mograkka (Est et Ouest); District de Kosha (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976

Fasc. 6   Le district d’Attab, Est et Ouest, Paris, 1977

Fasc. 9   L’Ile d’Arnyatta, Le District d’Abri (est et Ouest); Le district de Tabaj (Est et Ouest), Paris 1978

Fasc. 10   Le district de Koyekka (rive droite); Les districts de Morka et de Hamid (rive gauche); L’Ile Nilwatti, Paris, 1978

Zarroug, Mohi el-Din Abdalla: The Kingdom of Alwa, Calgary, 1991