Issue No. 272

Reports from Ethiopia's western Gambella region suggest a sudden resurgence in cross-border cattle raids from the Murle ethnic group of South Sudan. Communities on either side of the porous border have long wrestled with cyclical cattle invasions, which are a particularly prominent feature of South Sudan's Jonglei region's profound instability. While the recent attack was the first cross-border raid since mid-2023, it is emblematic of the contraction of the Ethiopian state and the bleeding of instability across the Horn of Africa.

The Murle tribe are a transhumant, transnational pastoralist ethnic group predominantly residing in the Boma and Pibor areas of the Greater Pibor Administrative Area within Jonglei on the Ethiopian border. Cattle are core to the Murle's livelihoods and communities, with young men's identities intimately tied to the quality and quantity of their livestock. As part of this, livestock theft from neighbouring communities is often considered heroic, with well-armed young men even blessed by their elders before they depart for raiding. Violent cattle rustling is an established dynamic between a host of ethnic groups in South Sudan but has become increasingly militarised with the proliferation of small arms, and a feeble Juba has been unable to quell its spread. 

These Murle raids are also occasionally cross-border in nature, with militias seizing cattle and abducting people from remote communities in Ethiopia's Gambella region, which juts into South Sudan on three sides. The dynamic often worsens during the drier seasons, such as the ongoing Bega (winter) period between December and February. Though not as extreme as South Sudan's Jonglei, Gambella's internal politics are similarly dominated by relations and tensions between the agro-pastoralist Nuer communities, who also reside in South Sudan, and the largely settled farming Anuak. The Nuer also depend on cattle for their livelihoods and have a long, often violent history of livestock raids with the Murle. As of March 2024, Gambella was also host to around 375,000 displaced persons from South Sudan, which has increasingly strained relations between host and refugee communities and driven resource competition.

A particularly infamous incident occurred in April 2016 when well over a hundred women and children were abducted by Murle militia, and over 200 people were killed in a massive cross-border cattle raid on 13 Ethiopian Nuer villages in Gambella. Many thousands of cattle were stolen, and over 22,000 people were displaced as a result of the incursion. The Ethiopian military subsequently entered South Sudan in an attempt to return the abductees. Since then, raids declined before another uptick in early 2022 amid the Tigray war and the large-scale redeployment of the Ethiopian military to the country's north. At that time, a Gambella representative in a parliamentary meeting urged the federal government to support policing the remote border and that the Murle raids were "beyond the region's control."

Often accompanying cattle rustling is the abduction of women and children by raiding Murle militia, as was reportedly the case in the most recent Gambella incident. This has been motivated by a number of factors for the group– not least an attempt to grow their communities, with young boys often forcibly assumed into families without sons. Another driving factor is the auctioning of women and children to raise money for dowries, cattle, and arms. A complex cross-border illicit economy plays into this, with weapons bartered and sold for the attacks-- and revenge raids. Much of this is reported to happen in the town of Akobo in South Sudan near the Ethiopian border, with one report citing the cost of a child at over 20 cows or around USD 7,000. Across the border area, a Le Monde estimate in 2022 placed the number of women and children in captivity at around 9,000. Their existence is bleak, with children facing forced assimilation into new communities and women into sexual slavery. These trafficking networks are long-established but have grown in scale and profitability as the stability of both Ethiopia and South Sudan has declined. 

Some attempts have been made by Juba and Addis to subdue the dynamic, including a meeting in July 2024 where the Ethiopia-South Sudan Joint Border Administrators and Governors in Ethiopia discussed the cross-border raids. Representatives from Gambella in Ethiopia, as well as South Sudan's Greater Pibor Administrative Area, Jonglei and Eastern Equatoria were present to discuss solutions. However, while a transnational response is undoubtedly needed for the cross-border issue, with stability continuing to deteriorate in both countries, it is an uphill battle.

Following the evisceration of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) in Tigray and raging insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, Addis's ability to monitor and secure its porous borders has been severely compromised. This has had numerous impacts, ranging from the massive Al-Shabaab incursion into the Somali region in 2021 to the rise of gold, human and sesame trafficking networks in Western Tigray by Eritrean actors. Ethiopia's federal government no longer has a firm grip on the overwhelming majority of the country, as was the case in the 2000s. In South Sudan, meanwhile, continual instability and armed conflict have dominated the country since its inception in 2011, including the 2013-2020 civil war between two factions of the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). South Sudan's fractured military are unable to project force across the country, which has allowed militias to act with near impunity. 

In turn, the deepening insecurity of South Sudan and Ethiopia is consequently seeping into their neighbours. The Murle raids should be squarely understood in the context of this broader and intersecting instability of Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, with all facing concurrent and immense humanitarian and political crises-- and armed conflict. In all four countries, ruling administrations control an ever-smaller portion of the state, largely unable to rule the peripheral areas and instead focused on survival. Within Ethiopia, communities in Gambella are particular victims of this dynamic of a diminishing and disinterested federal government presence. While the raids are a long-running issue and the latest appear minor in scale, the Murle incursion is a grim indictment of Ethiopia's trajectory-- one of diminished control and rising conflict.